Harking back: Bengalis who came with the British to rule us

Many eons ago when we lived near Saddar Bazaar in the Lahore Cantonment, one noticed that most markets and roads had Bengal-origin names. My assumption then of East Pakistani roots proved incorrect. Research showed them of 1850 origin.

As I researched the subject it became clear that in the 1857 War of Independence, this is where the most killings of ‘sepoys’ from Bengal took place. But then all the Bengal Native Infantry regiments lived here, or nearby. The first Officers Colony in Saddar is where they first shot dead two British officials, a Major and a doctor. So in this piece let me dwell on the story of Saddar and the coming of the Bengali elites who served the East India Company.

When the Punjab Sikh kingdom was overthrown and the East India Company officially took over on the 29th of March, 1849, British colonial expansion in the sub-continent was complete. This was also the beginning of a great social change in Lahore, and Punjab. With the coming of the British a slow but sure societal change started, and those nearest to the East India Company moved into Lahore with their British overlords.

The very first Indians to take over the offices were a group of “educated westernised Bengalis”. The British had been in Bengal for over a 100 years and had cultivated an ‘elite class’ to serve them. The ruling elite were British, but the middle and lower order officers and clerks were invariably Bengalis. After all they had annexed Bengal in 1699 and appointed their very first Governor.

After the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the Bengal Presidency was set up including Bihar, Orissa and Bengal with Calcutta as their first capital city. It was almost ‘magical’ the change as the researcher Denzil Ibbetson was to write. Suddenly, almost every office in Lahore was filled by Bengalis, with a few from Delhi who could speak Punjabi. This sudden societal change was reflected in the introduction of Urdu and English in legal undertakings. But the office work was handled by Bengalis who were fluent in English.

The Saddar Bazaar of Lahore owes its origins to the Bengal Native Infantry regiments based in Lahore in 1850 and beyond. In the 1857 Uprising the 16th Grenadiers of the Bengal Native Infantry was disarmed in Lahore, as was the 26th Bengal Native Light Infantry. The same was the case of the 49th Regiment of the Bengal Native Infantry. Most of the soldiers who lived in Saddar Bazaar, or nearby, were shot dead, most trying to flee across the Ravi towards Delhi. Sadly, the Punjabi soldiers of the old Sikh regiments assisted the British. That we do not remember them, as we do not the Partition victims, is part of our ‘Claims Psyche’ as my late father used to say.

But the fact is that Lahore was full of Bengalis pre-1857, in the cantonment and in the civil area around Anarkali, after all that was the very first cantonment. Their numbers were fairly high and their influence considerable. But the influence of Bengal over Punjab was to grow in terms that a large number of educationists and missionaries who moved into Lahore and Punjab.

In Lahore, a Christian convert named Lala Radha Ram helped to set up the Lahore Religious Book Society within the outer compound of the emerging Punjab University facing Anarkali Bazaar. He was joined by another famous converted Christian Kali Charan Chatterjee, who soon managed to become a professor of mathematics of the Government College, Lahore. Later, he was made Director of the Forman Christian College, Lahore.

The good thing about Christianity was that inter-caste marriage was not discouraged, especially in a very liberal Lahore. Here we see the Christian Bengali community growing fast. A few names deserve to be mentioned. Miss Mona Bose was made Principal of the Government Girls College, Lahore, as was her sister Mrs Dutt who was a teacher. Her son Dr S.E. Dutt helped to set up the YMCA of Lahore, while his Bengali associate Prof. Radha moved on to join St, Stephen’s College, Delhi.

As the Bengali clerks and the educated religious-minded Christians established themselves firmly, we see the arrival of Bengali Hindus of the Brahmo community starting to move towards Lahore. The Bengali-led Brahmo Samaj started by spreading equally to other Punjab cities. But unlike the westernised Christians, the Hindu Brahmos insisted that other languages also be equally adopted.

In this regard as Dr G.W. Leitner was setting up Lahore’s Oriental College, they clashed over the issue, with the famous Leitner insisting that historical Indian languages get preference. The Brahmos contention was that Oriental College did not prepare students for government service. Leitner insisted that he wanted scholars not bureaucrats.

Among other prominent Bengalis of Lahore were Sivanath Shastri and Pratap Majumdar. So in a way a competition started between the emerging Punjabi English-speaking elite and the English-speaking officials from Bengal. If we study Ibbetson’s ‘Outlines of Punjab Ethnography’ we see that in the case of Bengali officials in Punjab they rose in 1881 from 2,891 officials to 4,852 by 1921, almost doubling in 40 years or a 25 per cent increase in every decade.

So a close competitive relationship between the Punjabis and Bengalis was visible. Here let me narrate a few persons in Punjab’s later history. The famous Bhagat Singh incident had a Punjabi and a Bengali Batukeshwar Dutt, as well as two others. We see over the years the revolutionaries of the freedom struggle were mostly from Bengal and Punjab.

For example, the Indian Resolution for Freedom, known as ‘Purna Swaraj’ was passed in Lahore’s Bradlaugh Hall on Rattigan Road in January 1930. But then so was Pakistan’s freedom resolution passed nearby in March 1940 at Minto Park. Amazingly both were first drafted by Bengali leaders.

But there are many other issues that one can explore, and they being how the Punjabi-led establishment refused to accept a fairly won election in 1971. This was to lead to a fatal breaking of ties and countries. Mind you Bengal and Punjab were the only two states that were partitioned in 1947.

The reason for this can be traced to the power these states held, and continue to hold. In Ranjit Singh’s days in a way Punjab was effectively divided into west and east portion. In 1905, the British rulers effectively partitioned Bengal into Muslim eastern Bengal and a Hindu western Bengal. This led to considerable trouble which was undone in 1911 thanks to the Swadeshi Movement.

Many scholars contend, and for good reason, that this was the real reason the All-India Muslim League was founded in 1906 by Bengalis in Muslim Dacca by Nawab Salimullah. But then again we see the partition of Bengal on religious lines in August 1947. Most scholars blame the British for promoting religious difference just as they had in Catholic Ireland against the minority Protestants. In Ireland, the Catholics won freedom. It seems the minority Protestants of Northern Ireland are these days slowly headed towards reunification.

This year as both Pakistan and India celebrated 75 years of freedom, many scholars and researchers are seriously researching the history, social and economic, of Punjab and Bengal and of the entire partitioning episodes over time. It is a very complex puzzle that will, hopefully, one day be unfolded.

The role of beliefs have led to serious rational scientific education being discarded in both India and Pakistan. Rationality and faith in reason, not to speak of tolerance, will one day prevail. Till then we must all struggle for reason to prevail.