Empire of the Sikhs (17 page)

There was little doubt in anyone's mind that with the Sikhs' conquest of Multan – the richest addition yet to their state – the next in line would be Kashmir, the second richest. And indeed, the very next year, on 3 July 1819, Sikh forces defeated the Afghan army led by its governor, Azim Khan, in a hard-fought battle at Supaiya; once again it was the Nihangs who decided the day, with their do-or-die charge against the Afghan horsemen and infantry. The remnants of the shattered Afghans fled into the hills, and the Sikh forces entered Kashmir's principal city, Srinagar, on 5 July. With the Afghans on the run from most of Punjab, Ranjit Singh's thoughts now turned increasingly to the North-West Frontier, the gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia, Peshawar being the pivotal town of this wild and unruly region. But before he launched any major moves in this direction the administration of Kashmir had to be placed on a sound footing.

Srinagar was made the capital of the Kashmir Valley, and from it the governors appointed by the Lahore court would administer this vast region. That a great deal had to be done in Kashmir after
years of Afghan misrule is graphically expressed in this quatrain by Gwasha Lal Kaul:

Khwast Haq keh in zamin-e-mina rang,

Chun dil-e-nai shawad ba fughan rang,

Kard bar wai musallat Afghan ra

Bagh-e-Jamshed dad dahqan ra.

(God willed that this enchanting land

Should become stinking like the smoking reed pipe with lamentation;

Placed it under the control of Afghans,

Gave away the garden of Eden to the vulgar.)
³⁴

The first of the governors appointed to improve conditions in the woefully run and neglected valley, Moti Ram, was the son of Diwan Mohkam Chand, who had outmanoeuvred Wazir Fateh Khan in the rescue of Shah Shuja. He gave priority to the restoration of law and order and the administration of even-handed justice; he was considered an outstanding governor, compassionate, popular and by all accounts incorruptible. Kirpa Ram also had a reputation for honesty and good governance and did much to add to Srinagar's appeal by laying out beautiful gardens such as the Rambagh Garden and another on the west side, Bud Dal (on Dal Lake) at the village of Badmarg, which is named after him, the Diwan Kirpa Ram Ka Bagh.

Another outstanding governor of Kashmir under Ranjit Singh was Hari Singh Nalwa. Like Ranjit Singh he was born in Gujranwala and lost his father at an early age, at seven. His grandfather and father had fought alongside the Maharaja's father and grandfather, Sukerchakia chiefs Mahan Singh and Charat Singh. He had distinguished himself as a soldier time and again, at the siege of Kasur in 1807, Multan in 1810 and 1818 and Kashmir in 1819. He
was a no-nonsense man, a strict disciplinarian and considered at times to be too harsh. Yet he was a spiritualist, a reformer and a man with strong social concerns who constructed gurdwaras at Kathi Darwaza, Srinagar, Matan and Baramula, places that had been visited by Guru Hargobind. He did away with all the restrictions which the Afghans had imposed on Kashmiri pandits regarding worship, dress and various customs, freed Hindus who had been made to convert to Islam to return to their original religion and abolished
bega,
forced unpaid service by villagers to government officials. He encouraged the cultivation of saffron by reducing the government share in its production and enforced correct weights and measures. He accorded priority to the government's humanitarian responsibilities, especially during the famine of 1820-22, when at a time of complete economic, social and political chaos he geared the entire administrative machinery to a rescue operation.

Like Ranjit Singh, Hari Singh Nalwa has attracted adverse judgements from a number of historians. Syad Muhammad Latif, while acknowledging him as a good soldier, calls him a failure as an administrator and a tyrant. According to Henry T. Prinsep, Nalwa was removed from his post as governor because he was ‘obnoxious to the inhabitants of Kashmir'. William Moorcroft accuses all Sikhs of looking on Kashmiris as little better than cattle.

What such comments from both contemporaries and later historians show, if not a deep-seated reluctance to give credit to the Sikhs or even a form of anti-Sikhism, is surely this, that it is rare to find accurate accounts of eventful times. The charges against Hari Singh Nalwa have been repeated among the voluminous commentary on Ranjit Singh – failure as an administrator, tyranny and much else, without any factual evidence. Who are we to believe when we are also told by a contemporary how much the Kashmiris benefited under Sikh rule in Kashmir? ‘Before Ranjit Singh took possession of the valley, her trade routes were not safe
and the costly shawls were often looted
en route
by the robbers. The Maharaja made special arrangements to safeguard the goods of the traders … In case of any loss of goods in transit, the traders were compensated. The trade routes were made safe to the extent that highway robberies became a thing of the past … The longest trade route was from Lahore to Petersburg via Kashmir.'
³⁵

Ranjit Singh devoted much attention to the shawl-making industry and helped promote this trade more than did any other foreign power. Shawl-weaving came to account for almost one-third of Kashmir's revenue. Some years later Russian shawl dealers started to visit Kashmir, although shawls intended for export to Russia had hitherto usually been dispatched via Kabul and Herat.

Ranjit Singh's agenda after Kashmir included the trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh, with its borders touching Kashmir, Baltistan and Tibet – a 30,000-square-mile tableland at a height of 14,000 feet, surrounded by mountain ranges 26,000 to 28,000 feet high. Its Buddhist population was of Mongolian descent, while its neighbour Baltistan, with its capital at Iskardu, was ruled by a Muslim prince, Ahmed Shah. Ranjit's governor of Jammu, the Dogra Gulab Singh, also had his eyes on Ladakh. An obsessively ambitious man, he annexed it in 1834 with Ranjit Singh's consent. Since the latter was a ruler few men in their right mind would cross, Gulab Singh stayed subservient to him during his lifetime, but after his death the wily Dogra was to show his true colours.

More importantly, Peshawar, the last major symbol of Afghan rule in northern India, was also very much on Ranjit Singh's agenda; but before that a number of lesser foreign territories throughout the Derajat belt had to be brought under Sikh rule. These included Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Ismail Khan, Leiah, Mankera and Bannu. While the first two and the last lay west of the River Indus, the remaining two were located east of it. This entire region north-west of the Indus, whether part of Peshawar province or outside it, was of great importance to anyone with
designs on the strategically important city of Peshawar located almost next to the Khyber Pass. So a year after annexing Kashmir, in 1820, Ranjit Singh personally led an expedition to Dera Ghazi Khan and invested this dependency of Kabul. It was a valuable acquisition since it brought Sikh forces nearer the route that Central Asians and Afghans had customarily taken into India on their way to its other rich regions and nearer realization of the Sikhs' aim of cutting it off altogether.

In the following year the busy trade centre of Dera Ismail Khan was annexed, and then, when the key fort of Mankera fell, its Afghan governor was made a feudatory of the Sikhs. After the capture of Leiah towards the end of the same year Ranjit Singh had the arid 1,650 square miles of Bannu district in his sights. Its annexation, accomplished in 1825, consolidated the hold of the Sikhs on this area west of the Indus inhabited by the most turbulent people who harboured a fierce hatred of Hindus and Sikhs. It was first made a tributary of the Dera Ismail Khan region before being brought under the direct control of Lahore in 1836. The warlike tribes of this volatile region – the Pathans, Baluchis, Sials, Awans, Saiyads, Qureshis and others – have lived by their own laws and codes of conduct for centuries. In establishing his sway over these formidable people, Ranjit Singh achieved a solution that has eluded the dominant powers of this part of the world in our own time, for whom the lawlessness of the area causes such grave problems.

Before the prized city of Peshawar was brought under Sikh control many more possessions of the Afghans and other regional chieftains were taken over: Kohat, Manzai, Rawalpindi, Bhera, Jhang, Kangra, Kasur, Waziristan – the land of the Waziri Pathans – and a number of others. Finally it was the turn of Peshawar.

Peshawar was perhaps the most strategically vital city in India at that time. It had been used as the gateway into the Indian subcontinent over the centuries by the Lodhis, Mughals, Durranis, Nadir Shah of Persia and many others. The name of this historic
city has many variants. The Chinese pilgrim Hieun Tsang referred to it in the seventh century as Po-lu-sha-pu-lo, while the eleventh-century Muslim historian A.D. Alberuni called it Parshawar and sometimes Purshur. The Mughal emperor Babur referred to it as Parashawar, which was the name Akbar, too, preferred, although Akbar's court historian Abul Fazl used the name Peshawar (frontier town) as well. The original name of the city was Poshapura, among the many other names it was given. It became the seat of Gandharan art and culture around the middle of the first millennium BC and an important fountainhead of the Buddhist faith, despite the alien environment in which it found itself. Several historians hold the view that Peshawar was a part of the Kushan Empire (first to third centuries AD).

In keeping with its critical strategic importance, the conquest of Peshawar demanded all of Ranjit Singh's tenacity and military skills. The first attack on it was launched from Attock in 1818 by his favourite general Hari Singh Nalwa. It was currently in the hands of the Barakzais, the powerful Afghan chiefs who had dispossessed the Durranis of it. The Barakzais, who had found it easy to defeat the Durranis, met their match in the combined Sikh forces which first occupied Peshawar on 20 November 1818. While its governor Yar Mohammad Khan Barakzai fled, the city's citizens raised a tribute of 25,000 rupees and offered it to Ranjit Singh for its protection. He in turn appointed Jahan Dad Khan, former governor of Attock, to administer Peshawar. It was Ranjit Singh's frequent practice as his conquests multiplied to levy a yearly tribute on his fallen foes, instead of a policy of permanent occupation. He broke with this policy only if tribute was not paid on time or if the tributary tried to double-cross him. Since he treated his defeated adversaries fairly, he did not take well to any attempt to disregard agreements arrived at.

This, in fact, is what happened in the case of Peshawar. No sooner had Ranjit Singh left for Lahore after appointing Jahan Dad
Khan as governor when Yar Mohammad Khan returned to expel the latter. Because of his other priorities in the north, it took Ranjit Singh several years to address the situation, which he finally did on 14 March 1823, the opportunity being provided by the Afghans themselves. Muhammad Azim Khan, former governor of Kashmir, was now prime minister in Kabul, and he had no love lost for Ranjit Singh. He decided to assemble a formidable force to put an end to Ranjit Singh's spectacular career and advanced from Kabul towards Peshawar, to be met by the Sikh army at Nowshera.

As the
Gazetteer of the Peshawar District,
based on first-hand data, states: ‘The Pathans fought with desperate valour, but could not make head against the superior numbers and discipline of the Sikhs; frequently rallying, however, upon some low hills adjacent, they bore down bravely upon the enemy, who began to waver towards evening, but regained their advantage when Ranjit Singh, seizing a standard, himself led them to victory. The last stand was made at sunset by a party of 200 Yusafzai, who fell gallantly fighting. In this action 10,000 Pathans are said to have been slain.'
³⁶

After the Battle of Nowshera, a victorious Ranjit Singh once again rode into Peshawar and with his customary liberality made Yar Muhammad Khan his tributary governor of Peshawar. The defeated prime minister of Afghanistan, Azim Khan, a broken man, unable to deal with the humiliation of this defeat, died soon afterwards.

The permanent Sikh occupation of Peshawar, however, was still years away. It was not until 1834 that the Sikhs brought it directly under the control of the Lahore Durbar. In the intervening years the Afghan rulers made repeated attempts to re-establish Kabul's suzerainty over the city, but Ranjit Singh always foiled them. In 1834, feeling it was time to take direct charge of Peshawar, he chose an able and trusted man to annex it, General Hari Singh Nalwa, who has been called ‘the Murat of the Khalsa' – after Napoleon's brother-in-law and outstanding marshal of the French army. With
a force of 9,000 men, Hari Singh crossed the Indus and took up an unexpected position to the west of Peshawar. His moves unnerved the Barakzai Sardars, who fled and left the city to the Sikhs. In 1835 the Afghans under Dost Mohammad made an unsuccessful attempt to retake Peshawar, but it remained a part of the Sikh kingdom with Hari Singh Nalwa in charge of it with a force of 10,000 men.