Winston Churchill's Account of Anglo-Sikh Wars and Its in-Side Tale

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Annals of the Sikh wars deserve close academic scrutiny for more reasons than one. Even the casual students of history are struck by the total absence of any contemporary Sikh account of these Wars. That is not incidental. There is evidence to show that even sympathetic accounts were systematically eliminated by the Britishers who appear to have been keen that only their version must be accepted as authentic. The voluminous record of Sohan Lal Suri the court historian of Ranjit Singh does not contain a single word about the wars or the period immediately preceeding it. There is however a note in the manuscript copy of the record in which the author says that the account was borrowed by Sir Herbert Edwardes and was never returned. Joseph Davey Cunningham had to pay a heavy price just for being fair while writing his History of the Sikhs. Shah Mohammad's famous Var could survive only perhaps because of its poetic character as it was possible to preserve it in memory.

The lack of objectivity, or better still, the display of the unabashed partisan treatment of this part of history is enough to make one put down the book again and again. In the present work the author has set out to examine the statements of Winston Churchill regarding the Sikh Wars. During the course of his enquiry he is able to convincingly demonstrate that the famous historian and the great man of letters has singularly disregarded the truth. Indeed, a propagandist inclined to mislead could have hardly done better.

The truth, however, has a way of asserting itself. No account of the Sikh wars is really lacking in full measure of heartfelt praise of the unsurpassed valour of the Sikh soldiers. The spirit of the Sikh is personified by the deathless Sardar Sham Singh Attariwala appropriately attired in white. To him this work has been dedicated. There is still much in such accounts which makes one feel proud to belong to the Nation of Singhs who fought on the battle fields of Ferozeshah, Mudki, Sabhraon and Chillianwala. A proper appreciation leaves no doubt that even according to the admissions or responsible adversaries, the Sikhs defeated the British in each and every engagement. It is remarkable that this should have happened when treachery was the order of the day Sardar Karnail Singh has been able to cogently trace how a proud and patriotic Nation was brought to its knees before a people they convincingly routed in war.

Just as there is much in the history of the period which clevates the mind, equally so there is much that depresses the spirit. It is this element which makes it impossible for a sensitive person to go through it without an excruciating pain in the heart The author has been able to focus attention on the treachery of soulless men like Missar Lal Singh, Missar Tej Singh, Missar Bhai Ram Singh, Dhian Singh, Gulab Singh, Hira Singh and Mian Sohan Singh. It is also remarkable that while the ordinary Sikh soldiers had so imbibed the revolutionary spirit of Sikhism as to have died so gallantly in its defence, their Brahmin and Dogra leaders should have been left completely untouched by it. They were cold even to the considerations of mundane patriotism, honour or even ordinary self-respect. Betrayal and treachery characterised the men the Khalsa had so trustingly patronised and raised consequently to the highest civil and military offices. How they arranged massacres of the invincible Khalsa armies and set the house on fire to roast a few chestnuts of their own, makes a sordid reading.

The writer has no claims to a deeper study of history, still less to any research work. He is just a casual reader and an occasional contributor of an odd article. In the present work he has merely pieced together the labours of illustrious authors and placed them in the context of Sir Winston's pronouncements, regarding Anglo-Sikh relations after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

To the general reader the narrative may provide the nucleus of an untold story. Amongst the intellectuals it may be read as an example, how Governments are ever prone to exploit certain situations to their advantage and to the complete ruin of their less fortunately placed adversaries and even friends and yet proclaim to the world that they had been themselves grossly wronged.

Nations like individuals are not accustomed to learn from experience. Also, public memory is proverbially short. Yet the writer hopes that this acutely painful chronicle will help arouse the dormant national feelings of the well-wishers of the Country and guard against the Machiavellian designs of the modern traitors and sychophants who are once again shamelessly engaged in the same ruthless manner in destablizing the country from within as the following pages will now unfold regarding subverting the Sikh empire.

This account will also disclose that the young Khalsa under one of the greatest sons of India, Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780-1839) built a powerful kingdom, brick by brick, after humbling the Afghan invaders and by extending national frontiers from Sirhind to Khyber a distance of well over five hundred miles, and that how the same was subverted in less than decade by a foreign power only with the help of Indian mercenaries and traitors.

The indulgent readers may ask what kind of kingdom it was, which went under so easily? It was a kingdom where the monarch, during his forty years long rule, out of sheer modesty, would not even once sit on the throne, where he would strike the coin in the name of the Khalsa Commonwealth rather than his own, where he appointed two officials (S. Amir Singh And Faqir Noon-ud-Din) to bring to his notice any inappropriate act of the monarch, the princes of the Ministers for rectification, where the most favoured queen Raj Kaur had to appear in the Court to explain the mis-management of her estate from where revenue was to accrue to Govt., where the fort of the heir apparent was invested for recovery of inheritance fee of Rs. 5 lacs on the death of his mother, where the celebrated General Hari Singh Nalwa was fined Rs. 2 lacs for not maintaining the required number of troops, where criterion for internal law and order was that a domestic animal returned home after straying away for a day and night with the golden necklace on its neck, where a hunter could not shoot a tiger with his gun, but could only fight him out with his spear, where the horsemen while exercising their greyhounds had strict orders not to chase or run down a hare, where should the Maharaja happen to hear a fowl scream or a goat piteously bleat when being slaughtered for the royal kitchen, he would at once intervene and order its release, where saints of almost all religions had received the monarch's tribute or royal humility when in the open darbar stepping down from his chair he would wipe out dust from their feet with his white flowing beard and where once adjudged guilty of violating a religious canon by the Jethedar Akal Takhat the Maharaja at once bared his back for the Akali to lay his whip across.