Complete biography of Ranjit Singh and the Sikh empire

The rise of the Sikhs from an obscure and persecuted religious sect in the Punjab to a great and formidable Empire is one of the most dramatic episodes in Indian history.

In the middle of the fifteenth century, Nanak, the founder of the movement, was born not far from Lahore in the Punjab. Nanak in due course grew up and, renouncing the world, became a wandering religious teacher. Like his predecessor Kabir, he was anxious to find a common bond between Hinduism and Islam. “God is one,” said Kabir, “whether we worship Him as Ali or as Ram.

The Hindu God lives at Benares, the God of the Muslims at Mecca; but He who made the world lives not in a city made by hands.” The same spirit stirred in the breast of Nanak. When questioned by the Mohammedan governor about his religious views, he is said to have replied in the following stanza:

When reproached for sleeping with “his feet towards God” (i.e. Mecca), he replied, “Show me where God is not.” Nanak went round preaching in Moham­medan mosques and Jain temples, and to the great crowds assembled at Hindu places of pilgrimage, and he gradually collected a body of followers who called themselves Sikhs or disciples, and acknowledged him as their Guru or religious teacher. While retaining the Hindu doctrine of Karma and transmi­gration, he rejected caste, idolatry and, above all, the authority of the Brahmans. On the evils of caste he uttered a famous saying, which reminds us of Christ’s words of rebuke to the Pharisees:

Evil-mindedness is the low caste woman, cruelty is the butcher’s wife, a slanderous heart the sweeper woman, wrath the pariah woman; whatavaileth it to have lines drawn round thy cooking-place, when these three sit ever with thee?

In due course, Nanak was gathered to his fathers, and as he felt his end approaching, he heard his disciples disputing whether his body should be burnt as a Hindu or buried as a Mahom- Medan. According to a beautiful legend, he asked that flowers be heaped at his right side by his Hindu followers, at his left by the Muslims. Those whose flow­ers were fresh in the morning could claim his body. Next day both heaps were still fresh, and when they lifted the winding-sheet the body had disappeared.

Before he died Nanak nominated his successor. The first four Gurus were peaceful religious teachers, with an ever-growing following. The great Emperor Akbar granted the fourth Guru a piece of land on the banks of a lake known as Amritsar or the Pool of Immortality, and here he built a shrine, the precursor of the famous Golden Temple. The fifth Guru, Arjun, compiled the Adi Granth or Sikh bible, from the inspired sayings of his predecessors. Arjun, unfortun­ately, came to blows with the authorities. For taking part in the rebellion of Prince Khusru, the son of Jahangir, the Emperor had him put to death. This changed the whole autlook of the Sikhs.

When Arjun’s successor, Hargobind, was about to be invested with the turban and necklace which were the badges of office of the Sikh pontiffs, he declared, “My necklace shall be my sword-belt, and my turban shall be adorned with the royal aigrette.” Teg Bahadur, the ninth Guru, was seized by the Emperor Aurangzeb, and thrown into prison. When he was accused of the crime of gazing from the top of his gaol at the abode of the Royal Harem, he is said to have replied, “Emperor Aurangzeb, I was not gazing at thy apartment or thy Queen’s. I was looking in the direction of the people who shall come from the West to tear down thy Purdahs and destroy thy Empire.”

Teg Bahadur was put to death, and his son Govind, the tenth and last Guru, fled to the hills. In due course he returned, and thousands flocked to his banner. Govind made the Sikhs into a militant sect, known as the Khalsa or Elect, dedicated to unrelenting war against the Mughal Empire. Converts were ad­mitted to the order by a mystic ceremony, in which they drank water stirred with a sword, and ate in solemn communication cakes prepared from consecrated flour. They took the surname of Singh or Lion, and were distinguished by the five badges of long hair and beard, short breeches, a comb, a dagger and an iron bracelet. After Govind’s death, the struggle was continued by a leader named Banda, who carried on a relentless campaign until his capture and execution.

During the Great Anarchy-which was the result of the break-up of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century -the Punjab was in a state of constant turmoil, invaded by the Afghans from the north-west and the Marathas from the south; until it became a kind of no man’s land. The Sikhs had now become split into twelve great mists or clans, each jealous of its neighbour. The Sikh char­acter had greatly deteriorated. Strong drink and drugs, in defiance of the pro­hibition of the Gurus, were freely con­sumed, and the only law in the Punjab was that of the sword.

At this crisis in the national fortunes, Ranjit Singh was born in 1780. His father, Mahan Singh, was head of the powerful Sukarchakia confederacy/which was at constant war with the rival clan of the Bhangis. At the age of ten, seated upon his father’s war-elephant, he saw his first battle and he was nearly killed by one of the opposing side, who climbed into the howdah and was on the point of dispatching the child when he was cut down. Two years later, in 1792, Malian Singh died, and Ranjit Singh was left, at the age of twelve, to control the destinies of his turbulent and unruly clansmen. Soon after, he nearly lost his life in a flood, which swept away his camp, with a number of men. horses and camels. His first object was to shake off the “petticoat govern­ment” of his mother and mother-in-law, two fierce and war­like ladies, who led their armies in per son. Both of them were, after some show of resistance, captured and sent to honorable confin­ement in fortresses.

Ranjit Singh was now master of his own house, and a lucky chance enabled him to occupy Lahore, the capital of the Punjab. Shah Zaman, the Amir of Afghanistan, had been making one of his periodical raids on the country, when he was cut off by a rising of the Jhelum River. He was forced to abandon twelve of his guns, and in those days artillery had an enormous value in the eyes of Indian commanders. Ranjit Singh undertook to salve the guns and forward them to Peshawar, provided that he was recognised as ruler of Lahore. The offer was accepted, and Ranjit Singh duly marched on the city and occupied it, in July, 1799. He followed up his success three years later by appearing in front of Amritsar, the sacred city of the Sikhs, held by the rival clan of the Bhangis, and demanding the surrender of the Zam Zam gun, which was looked on as the “Luck” of the Sikh nation. These famous cannon, which now stands outside the Lahore Museum, was originally cast from copper water-pots collected in lieu of jaziah or poll-tax by the Mohammedans from the Hindus,’ and had a romantic history. It had passed from hand to hand, and had been at one time in the possession of Ranjit Singh’s grandfather, Charrat Singh.

Ranjit Singh’s master passions were for guns and horses. “The Raja’s attachment to guns,” wrote: Metcalfe, “and his opinion of their weight, are so great, that he will never miss an oppor­tunity of obtaining a gun. If he learns there is a gun in any fort, he cannot rest until he has taken the fort to get the gun, or until the gun has been given up to him to save the fort.” The Bhangis put up a poor resistance, and with the capture of Amritsar and its coveted weapon, Ranjit Singh became the leading chief in the Punjab and assumed the title of Maharaja.

It was at this juncture that Ranjit Singh came into contact with the English. The defeat of Holkar by Lord Lake had brought the British power to the banks of the Sutlej, and they had taken under their protection them. Phulkian Sikh chieftains in the cis-Sutlej districts. Ranjit Singh, on the other hand, wished to bring all the Sikhs under his rule, and in 1806 he crossed the Sutlej with a large force in order to intervene in a dispute between the chiefs of Jind and Patiala. For a time it looked as though his action would result in war, but the British Government wished to utilise the Sikhs as a buffer between themselves and possible invaders, French or Russian, from the north-west. Ranjit Singh, on the other hand, was not anxious to cross swords with the formidable power which had beaten Tippu Sultan in the south and had routed the Marathas. He knew that he was surrounded by a ring of enemies, and while he was fighting beyond the Sutlej he would he attacked in the rear by Afghans and Gurkhas, as well as by his rivals in the Punjab. He therefore welcomed the arrival of Charles Metcalfe, a rising young political officer who was sent by Lord Minto in I808 to negotiate with him at Amritsar. The result was an agreement by which Ranjit was left in possession of his territories south of the Sutlej, but was to leave the cis-Sutlej chiefs alone, while the Com­pany undertook not to interfere north of the river.

An incident occurred during the visit which was destined to have momen­tous consequences. The little escort of two companies of Indian infantry which accompanied Metcalfe was attacked by a raging mob of Akalis, puritan fanatics armed with steel quoits and two- handed swords, and beat them off with ease. This convinced the Maharaja of the advantages enjoyed by disciplined troops trained in the European manner, and he decided to engage a number of for­eign officers to build up a regular army for him. Of these the most important were Generals Ventura and Allard (soldiers of fortune who had fought under Napoleon, and after his downfall had offered their services to the Shah of Persia), Colonel Court, and an Irish artillery officer named Gardner. Later they were joined by a Neapolitan general of the name of Avitabile. Hitherto, all Sikhs had fought in the cavalry, and service on foot was despised. Ventura raised a regular brigade of all arms known as the Fauj Khas, and on this model the Maharaja built up a magnificent force of 29,000 men and 192 guns, known as the Army of the Khalsa. This he steadily enlarged as his resources grew.

Armed with this formidable weapon he proceeded to make himself complete master of the country. His first objec­tive was Multan, a stronghold ruled over by Nawab Muzaffar Khan, an Afghan chief of ancient family, who refused to pay tribute and defied all attacks. In January, 1818, Ranjit Singh laid siege to Multan, and brought up the Zam Zam gun to batter down the walls with her huge stone missiles. But as fast as a breach was made it was filled up, and the storming parties were driven back in hand-to-hand fighting. Month after month the siege dragged on, and the garrison was reduced to 300 men. At length, on June 2, a party of Akalis seized an important bastion and an entrance was effected. But still the old Nawab, conspicuous by his white beard, held out, with his eight sons and the remnants of the garrison. Time after time the attackers were driven off, unable to face the Afghan swordsmen. “Come on,” cried the defenders, “and let us perish like men.” But the Sikhs preferred to pick them off with their matchlocks, and Muzaffar Khan andfive of his sons, refusing quarter, fell dead. The other three surrendered. Multan brought the Maharaja spoils estimated at two million pounds.

A more notable exploit was the conquest of the large and beautiful province of Kashmir. The Maharaja had originally planned to undertake this in conjunction with the Afghans. But the Sikhs were poor hands at mountain- warfare; the Afghan general stole a march on them, and refused to give his allies their share of the plunder. Ranjit Singh in retaliation seized the fortress of Attock, commanding the chief ford over the Indus. This led to a pitched battle between the Afghans and the Sikhs at Hardaru, on July 13, 1813. Prince Dost Mahommed Khan, afterwards ruler of Kabul, broke the Sikh line by a brilliant cavalry charge, but was in his turn defeated by the Sikh general, Diwan Mokham Chand, who brought up his reserves at the critical moment. The following year, however, Ranjit Singh’s army suffered a severe reverse in the mountain passes of Kashmir, and had to retreat after the monsoon had burst and rendered the roads and rivers impassable. It was not till 1823 that the country was subdued, and even after that there was fierce fighting with the Hazaras and other mountain tribes.

The conquest of the Punjab was rounded off by the capture of Peshawar, which was held by an Afghan general named Yar Mahommed Khan. One of Ranjit Singh’s reasons for attacking Peshawar was in order to get possession of Laili, an Arab mare renowned for her beauty throughout Afghanistan and the Punjab, and said to be the finest steed in Asia. She was not surrendered until the Afghan general was arrested and told that he would stay in prison till she was given up. Ranjit Singh boasted that she cost sixty lakhs of rupees and 12,000 good men. Baron Von Hugel, the German traveller, describes her as a grey with black points, sixteen hands high and magnificently caparisoned. She lived in a silver-plated stall, with golden bangles round her fetlocks. No horse since the fall of Troy, it has been said, had been the source of so much suffering.

The Maharaja, though, like the Emperor Akbar, Shivaji the Maratha and many other great Indian empire-builders, he had had little or no formal education, was an enlightened man with an enquir­ing mind. His Court was the resort of men of all religions and nationalities. His Chief Minister was a Muslim from Bokhara named Fakir Azizuddin, a physi­cian by profession, whom Ranjit Singh consulted on all important occasions and left in charge of the Govern­ment when he went on his campaigns. Azizuddin was an adherent of the mystic Sufi sect, and when asked whether he was a Muslim or a Hindu by religion, re­plied, “I am a man floating in the midst of a mighty river. I turn my eyes towards the land, but can distinguish no difference in either bank.” He was an accomplished Persian and Arabic scholar, and maintained a college at his own expense.

Fakir Azizuddin was Foreign Minister. The Finance Minister was a Rajput named Raja Dina Nath, one of three brothers of great talent and personal bravery who had all made their names in the Court of Lahore. Raja Dina Nath was responsible for organising the revenue systems which supplied Ranjit Singh with the funds for building up his army, no light matter in a fierce and law­less country, where for years taxes had been collected at the sword’s point. Azizuddin, unlike Raja Dina Nath, was pro-British in his outlook. The Maha­raja was at first deeply suspicious of the ever-advancing tide of English supremacy, and there is a well-known story that, on looking at a map of India,

he exclaimed, Sab lal hojayega (“It will soon be all red”). But fortunately, the wise counsels of the Foreign Minister prevailed, and there was no clash in Ranjit Singh’s lifetime. Another out­standing figure was Lehna Singh, a Sikh, the Master of Ordnance, who was respon­sible for casting the artillery of the Khalsa, and was a mechanical inventor of distinction. By arranging that his coun­cillors, civil and military, should be drawn from these widely differing nationalities and” classes, Ranjit Singh shrewdly and effectual! Prevented any plotting against his authority. Mention has been made of the European military officers in his employ, and visitors and travellers from the West always receiveda ready welcome at the Court; they in­cluded the intrepid traveller Moorcroft, who afterwards died while exploring the mountain fastnesses of the Hindu Kush, the French botanist Victor Jacquemont, the German Baron Carl von Hugel, and several others.

When Lord William Bentinck came out to India in 1831 the British Govern­ment was still perturbed about the advance of Russia in Central Asia, and the new Governor-General was ordered to enter into negotiations with the Lion of the Punjab. The two met at Rupar on the Sutlej and here for some days a grand durbar was held, which recalled the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The scene was picturesque in the extreme; the

regular infantry, looking like a wall of scar­let, made a striking contrast to the irregu­lar cavalry, with their shirts of mail, their helmets inlaid with gold and decked with heron’s plumes, their small round shields and their bows or match­locks. The members of Ranjit Singh’s own bodyguard were gaily attired in red and yellow satin, with pink turbans and gold-embroidered sword belts. Sports and tourneys were held, in which the Maharaja, in spite of his paralysis, dis­played his superb horsemanship to the admiration of all. The result was a treaty of amity between the two nations, which was renewed seven years later at a meeting between the Maharaja and Bentinck’s successor, Lord Auckland.

The British authorities, still dominated by fear of the Russian bogey, had now resolved upon prosecuting-their unlucky policy of deposing Dost Mahommed, the able and gallant ruler of Afghanistan, and placing on the throne his brother, Shah Shuja, as a puppet ruler in his place. Shah Shuja had long been an exile in the Punjab, and Ranjit Singh had the poorest opinion of him. When he first took shelter in Lahore, the Maharaja, and hearing that he had in his possession the historic diamond known as the Koh-i- nur or Mountain of Light, had persecuted him mercilessly until he gave it up.

The meeting between Ranjit Singh and Lord Auckland has been pic­turesquely described by the Governor- General’s sister, Miss Emily Eden, in her charming volume of letters entitled Up the Country. As the two state elephants came alongside, Lord Auckland, in his uniform of diplomatic blue, was seen to take a bundle of crimson cloth out of the state howdah, and it was known that the Lion of the Punjab was then seated on the elephant of the English ruler. In a minute the little, tottering, one-eyed man, who had founded a vast empire on the banks of the fabulous rivers of the Macedonian conquests, was leaning over the side of the howdah, shaking hands with the principal officers of the British camp as their elephants were wheeled up beside him.

Miss Eden describes him as looking like a little old mouse, with his grey whiskers and his plain red coat bordered with squirrel’s fur. The negotiations ended in a Tripartite Treaty between Lord Auckland, Ranjit Singh and Shah Shuja, by which the latter was to be installed at Kabul. The whole plan was fundamentally unsound, and the Maha­raja himself viewed it with grave mis­giving. But he loyally supported his English allies, though at the time his health was rapidly deteriorating. He died in June, 1839. A life of almost continual exertion in the field, coupled with hard drinking in defiance of his physician’s advice, had undermined his iron constitution, and he had already had more than one paralytic stroke. Before his death he distributed his jewels and horses of state among various shrines. Two Ranis accompanied him to the funeral pyre. He was only fifty-nine at the time of his death.

Ranjit Singh was by far the greatest Indian of his generation. He found the Punjab a warring confederacy, a prey to its factions and chiefs, pressed by the Afghans and Marathas, and ready to submit to English supremacy. He con­solidated the numerous petty states into a kingdom, he wrested from Kabul the fairest of its provinces, and he gave the potent English no cause for interference. He found the militia of his country a mass of horsemen, brave indeed, but ignorant of war as an art, and he left it mustering fifty thousand disciplined soldiers, fifty thousand well-armed yeo­manry and militia, and more than three hundred pieces of cannon. Victor, Jacquemont spoke of him as an extra­ordinary man, a Bonaparte in miniature; in versatility, religious and racial toler­ance and organising ability, he came near to Akbar. He is described as a little man, careless in his dress, with a wrinkled face pitted with smallpox, a grey beard and long arms. Only on horseback, riding at the head of his army with his small black shield slung over his shoulder, did he appear the man he really was. Miss Eden says, “he made himself a great king; he conquered a great many power­ful enemies; he is remarkably just in his government; he hardly ever takes away life, which is wonderful in a despot, and is excessively beloved by his people.” It was impossible to rule the haughty and martial races of the Punjab with kid gloves on, and General Avitabile, the Warden of the Northern Marches, ruthlessly hung marauders at the gates of their villages or blew them from guns.

But in the settled districts, government was strict but just. Ranjit Singh, says Cunningham, took from the land as much as it could readily yield, and from the merchants as much as they could profit­ably give. He put down open marauding; the Sikh peasantry enjoyed a light assessment, and no local officer dared to oppress a member of the Khalsa. If elsewhere the farmers of the revenue were resisted in their tyrannical pro­ceedings, they were more likely to be changed than to be supported by battalions, for Ranjit Singh never arro­gated to himself the title or powers of a despot or a tyrant. The Maharaja himself toured indefatigably, and punished officers who abused their powers. Villages near which a robbery took place were taken to account and made to pay for the value of the goods stolen, and booty taken by his soldiers was ordered to be returned. Time was when Sikh and robber were synonymous terms, but now few thefts were heard of, to say nothing of the forays to which the chiefs were formerly addicted. Remis­sions of revenue were made in cases of famine, and the records teem with instances of the ruler’s acts of generosity, irrespective of caste or creed. Affable and unassuming as he was, Ranjit Singh was every inch a king, and his personality overawed all who came near him. Early in life he had lost an eye from smallpox, and Azizuddin was once asked which eye it was. “Such is the splendour of his face,” replied the diplomatic Minister, “that I have never dared to look close enough to discover.”

The sequel must be briefly told. After the death of the great Maharaja, the commanders of the Army of the Khalsa became completely out of control. The prestige of England was at its lowest ebb owing to the evacuation of Kabul and the annihilation of the British force during its return, and in 1845, the Sikhs, in defiance of the treaty, crossed the Sutlej. They were defeated in four pitched battles, and a peace was patched up. But it did not last, and in 1849 war once more broke out. “The Sikh nation has called for war,” said Lord Dalhousie, “and upon my word, they shall have it with a vengeance.” The fighting was the fiercest in the history of British India; but at Gujarat, on the Chenab, the flower of the Sikh army was annihilated. The Sardars laid their swords at the conquering general’s feet. The cavalry, with bitter pain in their hearts, surrendered the horses which were their pride; and man after man, filing past, flung sword and matchlock on the ever-growing heap of weapons.

Ranjit Singh mar gya, “Today Ranjit Singh is dead,” exclaimed a grizzled warrior, as he lifted his hands in a last salute to the glittering cairn of arms which symbolized that the glory had departed from the last great Indian principality.