Harking back: Tej the traitor, Harbanspura and fall of Lahore

The other day as I was searching for a charging cable, the shop owner, a Baloch with a BSc in electronic engineering, realising that I was a journalist, shot the question: “When did the seed of the idea of Pakistan really begin?”

My answer was that ‘Tej the Traitor’ 175 years ago got the ball rolling. He was the man who betrayed the Khalsa Army against the British in both the Battle of Sobraon in February 1846, and then his companion Lal Singh in the Battle of Chillianwala in January 1849. Both battles the Punjabis had won hands down, and British archive documents clearly state so, had it not been for Tej Singh the commander-in-chief of the Khalsa Army who burnt bridges, made tactical withdrawals and deserted fields after winning on a number of occasions.

In return the British honoured him by, initially, making him the Raja of Batala, and later also the Raja of Sialkot. In Sialkot, as in Batala, people talked of Tej Singh in unmentionable terms, sentences I would not like to repeat lest Sialkotis feel offended. So once the British had taken Lahore he moved there, where his adopted son Harbans Singh created the settlement of Harbanspura. This once posh estate outside Lahore again earned a not very pleasant reputation, which in a way still sticks. But let me explain, briefly, what happened at Sobraon.

After the British were soundly defeated, Tej Singh crossed the River Sutlej as now the Punjab Army had secured both banks. Once on the western bank he deliberately ordered the bridge to be blown up. The trapped soldiers on the eastern bank were butchered by the British. One account states over 7,000 soldiers were massacred. This was the beginning of the end of the Lahore Darbar.

A Treaty of Lahore was signed and Kashmir was sold off to his cousin Gulab Singh. The very first British soldiers were then allowed into the Lahore Fort. Gen Tej Singh, according to archive documents, advised that the British spread communal rumours to weaken the Army of the Lahore Darbar. This led to considerable desertions.

But then the army collected and after attacking and defeating the British at Multan, they faced them at Chillianwala. The British faced what the Punjabis called ‘Dhai Phut’ (hit and run) tactics. Hundreds of British officers and soldiers were butchered and the Punjabis fired a victory cannon round. The archive document ‘British Subaltern’ states: The Sikhs fought like devils, never retreating, running into bayonets and butchering the soldiers of the 24th Regiment with their swords. Never have such soldiers ever been seen … plucky as lions”.

“As the sun set the field lay strewn with Prince Albert Hats and military shoes, as over 3,000 British soldiers lay dead in the fields of Chillianwala”, the document penned by Gen Thackwell states. Today their graves can be seen in the British Commonwealth Graveyard as you drive from Gujrat to Dinga along the river. But then Lal Singh struck as the guns of artillery Gen Elahi Bakhsh ran out of ammunition. Sher Singh Attariwala had beaten the enemy who withdrew to Gujrat. Here Lal Singh again betrayed and got more Punjabi soldiers killed. As an old Sikh soldier famously said: “Aj Ranjit Singh marr gaya”. (Today Ranjit Singh has died).

As we study the history of the Lahore Darbar after the death of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, all we see in the ten odd years was confusion and strife. The first new maharajah was imprisoned by his own son, who then was killed in a mysterious gateway fall at Hazuri Bagh. Family infighting broke out and the Maharani Chand Kaur was poisoned and Sher Singh became Maharaja, who was then assassinated and replaced by a child and mother combination. The bureaucrats of Lahore were effectively ruling with most Punjab Army commanders working as British spies. Everyone was blamed as corrupt.

Among the patriots there was confusion as to who was the real leader. Within five years of Ranjit Singh dying, the British with the help of its highly-placed agents had started a war known as the First Anglo-Sikh War and by 1845 its soldiers had entered the Lahore Fort as ‘Protectors’. But then in Multan under the Raja Mulraj the patriots struck and from there the Second Anglo-Sikh War broke out.

As battle after battle followed, the last two were at Chillianwala and finally Gujrat. Here the treachery of Lal Singh played a massive hand in converting battles won into mysterious losses. The British loss at Chillianwala is still quoted by British war historians as the worst defeat the British had ever faced in their colonial history. But they also teach the usefulness of agents and spies, all of whom were decorated and given ‘jagirs’, like the Harbanspura settlement.

Recently, an international conference in Chandigarh of Indian military historians reached the conclusion that ‘Pakistan would never have been created had the Punjab Army commander Tej Singh not betrayed his country’. According to an archive document the British were informed that spreading communal discord would weaken the people of the Punjab and British India. It seems that philosophy is still operative in all the three major countries of the former British colony. Politicians and bureaucrats, through whom they operate, are not all honest. But our readers do not have to be educated about that.

The son of the traitor Tej Singh was Harbans Singh, who founded the settlement in 1886 thanks to the family being endowed by the British for the role of the family in toppling the Lahore Darbar. To try to erase the negative image of the family in the minds of the people, Raja Harbans Singh donated considerably to public causes. In ‘Tehkiqat-e-Chishti’, Maulvi Noor Ahmed Chishti states that of Lahore’s non-Muslims no other person donated more to charity than Raja Harbans Singh.

The events of 1947 can be said to have been considerably influenced by the advice Gen Tej Singh passed on to the British, who were already past masters at the Catholic-Protestant game that divided Ireland. But then moves are now on to reunite Ireland as people get wise to the immense damage communal games unleash.

But in Pakistan’s Harbanspura we see that it was owned by the widow of Harbans Singh. In 1947 the family left for India and people living on rent in the settlement became the owners in the shameful ‘Claims Scandal’ that followed Partition. Today it is covered with impressive overhead bridges and underpasses, with the Arain community being the major stakeholder of properties.

The contention that Pakistan would never have been created had Gen Tej Singh not betrayed his rulers sounds unreal. But then this is the considered opinion of Punjabi military historians in Indian Punjab. My contention is that given the family infighting and the lack of revenue resources, coupled with growing corruption in Lahore’s bureaucracy, to keep the British at bay for long would have been impossible.

But then as my late father used to instill in our minds at the dinner table: “To discuss the Ifs of history is stupid”. All we can do is learn from history that is if we are interested in our past at all. What one can certainly say is that events in today’s Pakistan and those of the ten years of post-Ranjit Singh years have an uncanny resemblance. I hope I am wrong.