A Sikh tragedy
Priya Atwal chronicles the rapid rise and fall of the mighty 19th-century Sikh empire
The fall of the mighty Sikh empire in the 1840s has long been attributed to the death of its brilliant leader, Ranjit Singh, a few years earlier. But the truth is far messier. Priya Atwal reveals how miscalculation, misogyny and British ruthlessness sealed the fate of the Indian powerhouse
Despite the summer heat enveloping the walled city of Lahore in late June 1839, a chilling sense of anxiety and grief pervaded the hearts of Punjabi ministers and courtiers gathered inside the royal chambers of the imperial palace. Their master, Maharajah Ranjit Singh, lay senseless and on the verge of death in his opulent bedchamber, inside the Lahore Fort. Countless prayers were being offered for his recovery, and vast sums of alms – gold, jewels and elephants, no less – were given away from the fabulous riches of the Sikh imperial treasury, in the desperate hope of saving Ranjit Singh’s life, or at least procuring God’s mercy for his soul.
The palatial apartments occupied by the ailing maharajah were originally constructed centuries before by the great Mughal emperors, but they had been restored to a different kind of glory by Ranjit Singh, who, as a 19-year-old, had conquered Lahore in 1799.
Famed as the ‘Lion of Punjab’, Ranjit Singh was a self-made king who established the rule of his ancestral warrior-clan, the Sukerchakia misl, at the head of a new empire in northern India. With Mughal rule entirely decimated, the Sikh king’s might came to equal that of his greatest ally and rival, the East India Company – the enormously powerful trading organisation that, by the early 19th century, was acting as an agent of British imperialism in India.
These two new powers established competing empires during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but in Ranjit Singh’s lifetime an alliance was cemented between them that kept the ambitions of both sides in balance.
Within six years of his death, however, the picture was utterly transformed. Ranjit Singh’s erstwhile allies, the British, were at war with his heirs. Four years after that, in March 1849, the East India Company subjected his entire kingdom to its rule, effectively cementing British imperial predominance in south Asia. Despite all this, the Company’s leading authorities claimed that they had consistently shown unstinting loyalty to the friendship and memory of the late, great maharajah. How could this be fairly squared?
Colonial mythologies
The answer to this messy political history lies in the mythology spun around Ranjit Singh’s life – most prominently by the Company’s political officers working in and around the Punjab. Across a growing array of press coverage, fictional writings and government proclamations, a compelling narrative was offered about Ranjit Singh’s personality and glowing career as an empire builder. The maharajah was viewed – according to European colonial logic – as an admirable exception among the “oriental despots” of his day. “For his age and country, he may truly be called a great, and in some respects, a good king,” wrote Henry Lawrence (who became Resident at Lahore in 1846) in his 1845 novel, Adventures of an Officer in the Service of Runjeet Singh. “Kind and liberal to those within his sight, he is much beloved by his personal followers.”
→
On the other hand, Lawrence’s novel