DAWN - Cowasjee Corner; 24 January, 1999
What has changed?
By Ardeshir Cowasjee
LITTLE has changed since Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the first and the last true Lion of the Punjab, ruled over his kingdom.
After his seventeenth annual punitive plundering raid into Northern India, Ahmad Shah Abdali of Kabul decided in 1764 that enough was enough. The Sikh chieftains of the Land of the Five Rivers, who had greatly profited over the years of anarchy and disorder, then decided that they must organize themselves.
They divided up the land into private estates, which were distributed amongst the Sardars. One Sardar, Churut Singh, was allotted lands comprising Gujranwalla, Wazirabad, Chakwal, Pind Dadan Khan and the adjoining areas. He was killed in 1774 when his matchlock blew up in his face, and was succeeded by his ten-year-old son, Maha Singh, who turned out to be not only a redoubtable warrior but also an expert intriguer and thus considerably extended his territories. When he died in 1792 he was succeeded by his precocious twelve-year-old son, Ranjit Singh.
In 1796, Shah Zaman of Kabul marched into Punjab and met with no opposition. All the Sardars along his route fled their lands except Ranjit Singh who quietly remained at his Ramnagar estate. Facing a revolt back home in 1799, Shah Zaman withdrew his troops, leaving Lahore under the charge of three Sikh governors. His return march led him through Ranjit's territory. Crossing the swollen Chenab near Ramnagar, ten of his guns were sunk. Shah Zaman promised Ranjit that were he to recover the guns when the waters abated and forward them on to him at Kabul he would present him with the formal grant of the city of Lahore. Ranjit, at nineteen, duly performed his task, marched on Lahore, seized the city, and never looked back.
Shah Zaman was deposed by his brother and blinded. The Afghan raids into Punjab ended, and Ranjit was released from all allegiance. In 1801, with the Sardars in disarray, Ranjit proclaimed himself the Maharaja. He captured Amritsar a year later, proceeded to subdue the scattered Sikh and Pashtun holdings, and in 1809 signed a treaty with the British, who had checked his eastward forays, settling the River Sutlej as the eastern boundary of his kingdom.
He then turned his ambitions towards the north and west. He captured Multan, then Peshawar, expelled the Pashtuns from the Vale of Kashmir, and by 1820 had consolidated his rule (he later added Ladakh to his kingdom). The armies with which he achieved his victories were composed of Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus, as were his commanders.
In 1838, he made another treaty with the British and marched with them to restore Shah Shuja to the Afghan throne. He returned to Lahore where in 1839, exactly forty years after he had entered the city as its conqueror, he died.
Within seven years the state he had created collapsed, destroyed by the squabbles of the chieftains and the ineptitude of his eldest son Kuruck. Kuruck died in 1840, and his son, Nehal, was killed while returning from the funeral, crushed by the fall of an archway as his elephant passed beneath it. Anarchy and confusion reigned until 1849, when the last of Ranjit's successors was deposed and Punjab was annexed to the British possessions in India. Law and order took over, lasting, with few interruptions, until the British Raj marched off into history.
Ranjit Singh had no judges. The revenue collectors, themselves the principal oppressors, dealt with crimes, if they had the mind to it, but in general things just took their course without either police or courts until someone in authority was bribed or an official found it less trouble doing right than wrong. The British instituted independent judges, courts and a police force and under them, the people, satisfied that they would be free from lawlessness and extortion, cultivated their land and paid their taxes. The British constructed roads and canals throughout the broad tracts of desert, and planted trees all over the proverbially treeless Punjab where the Sikhs had destroyed trees thoughtlessly and on an enormous scale.
From the preface to 'Punjaub Before the Raj' by Steinbach, written in London in 1845: "The Author and Compiler of the following work does not profess to be alive to the intentions of the British Government in respect to the Punjaub, but he thinks the annexation of that extensive and fertile territory to the provinces of British India so necessary and unavoidable a result of its present state of disruption that he regards it as a duty to give his countrymen the clearest notion of the Sikh state it is in his power to convey."
Steinbach on 'Commerce and Manufactures of the Punjaub': "During the latter years of the rule of Runjeet Singh, the tranquillity which prevailed stimulated traffic, and a considerable commercial intercourse between the Punjaub, British India and Afghanistan was the result. Since the demise of the Old Lion, however, trade has declined owing to the distracted and insecure state of the country; the robberies upon the high road, vexatious exaction's in the shape of duties and tolls, interruptions to manufactures, the absorption of capital in military armaments and civil contests, the withdrawal of large monetary resources from circulation and their removal to places of security, have all had their effect in checking and cramping mercantile operations. In ordinary and peaceful times, and under a wholesome system of rule, a very large trade might be firmly established; for, as we have shown, the products of the country are abundant, and in the hands of people to whom the results of their industry are secured, may be turned to excellent account in a variety of ways....
"The transit of goods from countries beyond the Indus to Hindostan, and vice versa, forms a larger source of mercantile revenue than the returns upon the home manufactures of the country. But in this respect also the paralyzing effect of internal disturbance has been felt, and the want of a fair system of collection of dues and tolls has at all times rendered the gross revenue precarious and infinitely below what would be obtained by an active, wise, and liberal administration."
On 'The Government of the Punjaub': "The Sikh chieftains formed themselves into an oligarchy, which, like all similar institutions of which history preserves a record, gradually fell under the yoke of one family more potent than the rest, and at length of one man. The only government, therefore, of which the Sikhs have had any experience were the aristocratic and the despotic, and judging from their conduct under these respective systems, we have no hesitation in coming to the conclusion that a despotism is best suited to their temperament....
"Runjeet Singh exercised an absolute and arbitrary sway over the people, constituting himself chief judge and referee in the question of importance, collecting and appropriating the revenue, appointing and removing all the state officers at will, personally regulating all political negotiations, and exercising the royal prerogative of coining money and making war. Under his rule the whole country was divided into provinces, and these provinces into districts, which were farmed out to the highest bidders. The Maharaja pressing upon the provincial administrators for their quota of revenue, and these authorities, who were armed with the terrible power of life and death, in their turn grinding the farmers with their exaction's, the condition of the peasantry, whom the farmers in like manner squeezed for rents, was always the most abject and pitiful that can be conceived. The provincial governor, remunerating himself with the surplus of the revenue which he had contracted to pay the sovereign, was unscrupulous as to the means by which he wrung their substance from the landholders."
And on one of the most remarkable men at the court of Ranjit Singh, "Faquir Uzoozerdeen," a barber-surgeon, who added astrology to his knowledge of quack-salving and served Ranjit as his 'hukeem' and private secretary, and in confidential negotiations with the British. "He was a very able negotiator; insidious beyond measure, and a complete master of humbug. He was the mouthpiece of the stupid Sikh sirdars, and as he almost always formed the nominal head of the missions they were sent on had their free leave to talk while they sat by and listened in silence and admiration to the voluble flow of his ceaseless harangues. Nightingales of esteem warbled in meadows of attachment, and rivers of devotion rushed into oceans of affection. His other most important duty was interpreting the Maharajah's words. A few inarticulate growlings of the old lion were quite enough to vivify the Faquir's imagination and so lengthy often was his paraphrase of the Maharajah's verbal text that one became inclined to wonder whether one word in Turkish could mean so much."
One change: The present would-be 'Loin' of Punjab, doubling as the 'Loin' of Pakistan, has no need to even growl. His 'Faquirs' merely look into his eyes to learn the message he wishes conveyed.