Khalsa - Anglo Sikh Wars

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The Anglo Sikh Wars

"Whenever he dies, this great kingdom which he has raked together, will probably fall to pieces again. His Prime Minister, Dhian Singh, will probably take Cashmere and the hill provinces, and they say is strong enough to take the rest. But the people generally incline to the foolish son Khurruck Singh, and he will have the Punjab. The army is attached to our dear friend Shere Singh; but Ranjeet has deprived him of most of his income, or it is just possible his dear fat head will be chopped off, unless he cross to out side of the river."

Emily Eden's predictions in December 1838, 6 months before Ranjeet's death

Ranjit Singh died of a stroke in the hot summer of 1839. With his death came the end of the strong Sikh state. Anarchy reigned in the lavish court of Lahore. The administration system, which had been the lynchpin of Ranjit Singh's control over the region, was reduced to chaos. The prized Khalsa army, built by Ranjit Singh into the premier fighting force of Asia, became a law unto itself. Control of the army passed down the ranks to elected representatives who were at constant odds with their officers. The Punjabi officers were reduced to mere drill sergeants and, realizing this, the once-influential foreign generals fled back to their homeland in Europe and America.

The army swelled to three times at size, but was devoid discipline or direction. With huge numbers of unpaid and hungry soldiers, civil war loomed. The Khalsa army threw its lot behind the succession of opportunist claimants to the throne of Punjab who courted its favor. In bloody scenes reminiscent of the later emperor of Ancient Rome, successor to the throne were continually murdered, until the six year old son of Ranjit Singh, Maharaja Dalip Singh, Maharani Jindan Kaur, the Queen Mother and an incompetent vizier were left to rule.

The machinations of murder and intrigue spilled out into the streets and virtual civil war ensued between feuding families, leading to the destruction of many of Ranjit Singh's palaces and gardens. At this juncture, after forty frustrating years tied to boundary treaties with Ranjit Singh that he was too astute to break, the death of Maharaja in 1839 found the British in no position to take advantage of the situation. Having recently suffered serious reverses in Afghanistan and with the Lahore court absorbed in its own bedlam, they had neither the power nor the excuse to move against the Sikhs.

By 1845, however, the situation had changed dramatically. In Lahore, with the other claimants to the throne, now dead, the Khalsa Army was proving very disturbing for the child maharaja and the new Maharani. The army clamored for long overdue payment for supporting the new regent, but were themselves in total disarray under new generals, the treacherous survivors of the court murder and mayhem. The British, meanwhile, had reorganized themselves. Camped in large numbers south of Ranjit Singh's Kingdom on the Satluj River, they realized that Punjab was ready to fall. reserve troops from various parts of British India were brought in to form a strong line on the south bank of the Satluj. In the bitter Punjabi winter of 1845, the British prepared for action under the noses of Sikh frontier guards. Boats were commissioned in Bombay and a pontoon bridge built. tens of thousands of men and their provisions were provocatively camped in strategic places on the Anglo-Sikh border.

Recognizing that the fate of her son's kingdom lay in the hands of the deeply divided Khalsa Army, the Maharani hoped to unite them against a common enemy, the British. Her council included Gulab Singh and two of the Brahmin generals of the Sikh army. Sensing that there was no future in defending the court of Lahore, these three powerful men entered into negotiation with the British. Their offer was a simple one: they would lead the Sikhs into defeat for the promise of rich principalities in the annexed Punjab.

On February 10 1846, the first Anglo-Sikh war commenced at Mudki. The Sikhs lost the precious initial advantage when their treacherous generals refused to attack British installations until 'General Gough himself entered the battle.' When the restless army finally attacked, they mauled the British in the early days of the first battle. Reinforcements promised by their commanders to finish off the British army, were deliberately held back. Instead of gunpowder, sack loads of sand and grain were sent. The treachery had the intended effect and led to the defeat of the Sikhs at Mudki.

The next battle was fought at Frozshah. Despite the retreat of their generals, the Sikhs fought on leaderless. The result was an inconclusive end, with 2,331 British dead in half a day's fighting. The British were close to complete surrender. According to Robert Cust the assistant to the political agent at Ludhiana:

"News came from the Governor general that our attack of yesterday had failed, that affairs were desperate, that all state papers were to be destroyed, and that if the morning attack failed, all would be over; this was kept secret by Currie and we were concerting measures to make an unconditional surrender to save the wounded, that part of the news that grieves me the most."

However, three more battles were fought, at Aliwal, Buddowal, and at Sabraon, where the Sikhs were beaten. Again, the British profited from the traitorous Sikh generals who withheld reinforcements and helped to turn British defeat into victory. Despite this, the outcome of the struggle was not a forgone conclusion. The British still found the Khalsa Army a formidable opponent.

"The Seikh Artillery, with whom we contended were picked men, both for valor and size; they were indeed gigantic, their unusual stature from being six feet to three inches, muscular and active in proportion. We were only like Lilliputians in comparison with those huge monsters, and I marvel they did not kill us all and swallow us slick out of the way. Had they been without tasting the food for a while, I am sure we would have been but a scanty meal for their numerous army, but fortunately they had been well fed, or possibly we might have become their prey...

We lost lots of men before we got to the enemy's principal battery, for we were pushed, as it were, into the lion's mouth; when we did reach it, the gunners resorted to their tolwols (giant swords) and we our bayonets, then came the tug of war with clashing steel in earnest. In describing, to the best of my ability, the most desperate conflict which then took place, I might present to your imagination such scenes of horrors as were never witnessed in this country. What a picture of horror I beheld when we and the Seikhs were straining every nerve to deeds of barbarity, wholly bent on mutual destruction, wielding sanguinary weapons, swords and bayonets. the ground in a few minutes was sprinkled with the blood of hundreds of brave men. Those overgrown brutes of artillery men had great advantage over us, and they fought with unusual courage, many of their lives being bought at the price of ours, when some of our men plunged their bayonets into the Seikhs, they held them fast by the sockets with their left hands, and cut our men's heads off with their massive tolwols; with deep regret I saw several of my comrades thus killed..."

J.W.Baldwin, A Narrative of four months' campaign in India between 1845-46

When the treaty of surrender was signed on March 11 1846, nearly half of the Sikh kingdom was taken over by the British and a British Resident was installed in the capital with a small army. the betrayal of the generals was duly rewarded. Gulab Singh received the principality of Jammu and Kashmir, but Lal Singh and Tej Singh, the Brahmin generals, were not quite so fortunate. James Dalhousie, the new British governor general of India wrote:

"The task before me is the utter destruction and prostration of the Sikh power, the subversion of its dynasty, and the subjection of its people. This must be done promptly, fully and finally."

The scene was set for the final chapter of the Sikh Kingdom. The excuse used to annex Punjab to the British empire was a minor insurrection in a small Punjabi province. The British described it as a Sikh rebellion, giving them the excuse to take what remained of Punjab. The end of the Sikh kingdom and the annexation of Punjab signaled the last significant piece of land that the British would take from the Indian people. the major battle of the campaign was fought at Chillianwala on January 13 1849. The bruised British suffered the worst reverse ever to take place in their history of empire building in Punjab; the fight put by the leaderless soldiery of the Khalsa army surprised both the British army and traitorous Sikh ruling classes.

"Our English cavalry with their blunt swords were most unequally matched against the Sikhs with talwars so keen of edge that they would split a hair... I remember reading of a regiment of British cavalry charging a regiment of Sikh cavalry. The latter wore voluminous thick puggries round their heads, which our blunt swords were powerless to cut through, and each horseman had also a buffalo hide shield slung on his back. They evidently knew that the British swords was blunt and useless, so they kept their horses still and met the British charge by laying flat on their horses' necks, with their heads protected by their thick turbans and their backs by the shields; and immediately the British soldiers passed through their ranks, the Sikhs swooped round on them and struck back-handed with their sharp, curved swords, in several instances cutting our cavalry men in two..." Sgt William Forbes Mitchell

All the same, at Gujrat and Ramnugger, the British routed the Sikh forces. On March 10 1849, after months of fighting, the Sikh armies laid down their arms. In Lahore, a fortnight later, a proclamation was read annexing the Sikh Kingdom to the British Crown. The British had finally taken the coveted Punjab, but they were reeling from their losses on the battlefield. In spite of ten years of incompetent and extravagant rule by Ranjit Singh's successors, the Sikh army still put up one of the hardest fights the British had encountered, a fitting eulogy to the strength and power of the secular state built by Ranjit Singh. Exile from his kingdom, the young Maharaja Dalip Singh eventually became an English acquire, and towards the end of his life, was a ceaseless thorn in the British side as he conspired to raise an armed revolt to free Punjab.

The major cities of the Punjab were reduced to rubble as sites of the bloody battles. the ferocity of the fight resulted in a British Army that committed bloody atrocities rather than leave anyone fit to challenge them. Scavengers and looters moved in to pick through the remains of the dead and to plunder the once great citadels of Punjab.

"Months and years have rolled by, and I have been removed far from a theatre of that fearful tragedy to an English fireside, yet so deep is the awful picture painted on my memory, that neither time nor change can efface it. Promiscuously scattered, and in some places, literally piled on each other, were thousand of slain. Englishmen, Hindus, Afghans, and Sikhs were indiscriminately scattered over the jungle. The merciless plunderers, and the fierce demoniacal Akalis had done their work, and most of the corpses were partially stripped, those of my countrymen nearly all totally naked, and cut and hacked in a most frightful manner. Here was a leg there was an arm, here a head, and there a body frightfully gaping with deep wounds, while their rigid and marble like faces looked ghostly in the pale moonlight. In contrast to these last were the dark and grim-visage Sikhs, with their long flowing hair and beards. These thousands of human beings, thought I, were all life and animation a few short hours ago, but the swords and bullets have made a fearful leveling. Friend or foe, 'tis all the same now. Death has made all alike. Sikh and Briton now lay side by side in the calm repose of death. What an awful lesson for the human passions!" James Gilling