Harking Back: Of ‘grievous betrayals’ that cost us our freedoms

It seems like a familiar theme -- the betrayal to powers foreign. It seems like the story, rightly or incorrectly, on everyone’s mind. But then this is not a new story. In our history, especially that of Lahore Darbar, betrayal and loot are familiar topics.

Last Sunday in the used books stall in the open market, I bought a book on ‘The Sikhs’ by the famous writer, the late Patwant Singh, a distinguished journalist, researcher, historian and writer. The book has a very long chapter on Sikh army generals under the topic ‘Grievous Betrayals’, which is a well-researched description of the treachery of Sikh generals and how numerous battles won were deliberately in reality lost, in many cases with detailed battle plans being supplied to the British before a battle.

Mind you over time it was betrayal of various Lahore governors (subedars) to numerous Afghan rulers that led to earlier invasions. Very few cities in the world have been invaded and looted as has been old Lahore. Yet such is the inner strength of the people that it bounces back to its lost glory. The Mughals, themselves foreign invaders, were seeped of their strength by betrayals. Ancient history is full of such happenings. The trend continues.

We see that it is a strong charismatic ruler with an attractive personality surrounded by wise counsellors that overcome such shortcoming. Names of Chandragupta Maurya, Akbar and Ranjit Singh stand out. Otherwise either the ruler proves to be a crook, and in the process, his followers become millionaires. This is true of governments and huge organisations. Pakistan is full of such examples with the stolen wealth of the poor stashed away in faraway havens.

In this piece let us discuss the doing of Lal Singh, a Hindu shopkeeper of Sahgol village in Jhelum, who moved to Lahore, allegedly converted to Sikhism, and through his connections with the Hindu Dogra chief minister Raja Dhian Singh Dogra, joined the darbar of Maharajah Ranjit Singh. He started off in a lowly position and from there rose in power. The death of the maharajah saw him shoot up and then he carried out two major undertakings.

The confusion concerning power in the Lahore Darbar saw Lal Singh plan and personally execute the murders of two leading court officials, they being Beli Ram, who actually introduced him to the court in the first place, and of Bhai Gukmukh Singh, son of a Sikh scholar and custodian of the Sri Darbar Sahib of Amritsar. Beli Ram was no less a scholar and when Maharajah Sher Singh rose to power he was his main advisor and in return being gifted with huge jagirs.

But in the power struggle led by Raja Dhian Singh Dogra we see Lal Singh being assigned such murderous tasks. The murder of Gurmukh Singh led the ruler Sher Singh to suspect Dhian Singh for the killing, which led to Sher Singh and his teenage son being killed at a military parade in Lahore, only for his supporters to murder Dhian Singh and his brother in retaliation.

In this confused state we see that Lal Singh had been promoted and made an army general, and this is where his betrayals touched new heights leading to the final defeat and collapse of the Sikh Empire. The Lahore Darbar before it collapsed actually tried this traitor, convicted him, but then through British manoeuvres allowed him to move to British India. He took all his wealth to this ‘foreign country’ and even today his family is among the wealthiest in Indian Punjab. It is amazing how even today the families of so many traitors are the wealthiest.

During the First Anglo-Sikh War of 1845-46 he personally headed the Khalsa Army, and while they seemed to be winning battles, little did his soldiers know that he was supplying the British with all battle plans. He managed a secret connection with the Ferozepur-stationed Capt Peter Nicholson. He deliberately, according to East India Company records in the British Museum Library, kept his army stationed in Ferozeshah as the British attacked Ferozepur.

At places where the Sikhs managed to surround the British and ready for an attack, he would mysteriously withdraw his army. His own army began to suspect him and he hid in a ditch, only to later with his personal guards’ desert and head back to Lahore. The battle was simply handed over to the EIC.

In the Battle of Sobraon on the 10th of February 1846, the Lahore Darbar Army was poised to crush the British, only for General Lal Singh to secretly hand over the complete battle plans to Nicholson, only to keep his artillery and cavalry far away from the field, then in a mystery move he returned with them to Lahore.

After the First Anglo-Sikh War, the British richly rewarded Lal Singh, confirmed him as the ‘Wazir’ of Lahore under Lord Lawrence, and allotted him huge jagirs in the British portion of Punjab. But then Punjabi spies discovered that the new Wazir, the super traitor, had supplied the British with plans and instructions to defeat Gulab Singh’s attempt to occupy the Vale of Kashmir, which the British had anyway under treaty handed over to him.

The Lahore Darbar tried him and found him guilty, and the British passed a sentence sending him in exile to Agra with a pension of 12,000 rupees a year in 1846 value terms. He moved to one of his houses in Dera Doon and died in 1866 after the British had fully conquered the Punjab in 1849. Such were the rewards of being a traitor.

Another traitor was Gulab Singh, who had tried to stop the son of Ranjit Singh, the Maharajah Sher Singh, from taking over the throne in January 1841. He captured the Lahore Fort and left it only after an agreement to leave for Jammu with his army and the wealth in Lahore’s famed Toshakhana. This made him the richest raja north of the Sutlej.

In the Second Anglo-Sikh War of 1849, which led to the final collapse of the Lahore Darbar and the Sikh Empire, the army of Gulab Singh was given the option of either deserting to fight with their original army, or of siding with the British. It was a tactic that allowed him to keep the British at bay.

If one was to read the ‘History of the Sikhs’ by Cunningham, a book that cost him his job in India, but has won him much academic acclaim, or even J.S. Grewal’s ‘The Sikhs of the Punjab’, the role of these two traitors comes across very clearly. But the treachery of Gen Lal Singh had surely done the most damage.

We know that in the Battle of Chillianwala, near Mandi Bahauddin, the British were sounded defeat with 2,512 deaths, as can be seen in the massive Commonwealth Graveyard there. One of the commanders was Lal Singh, who converted a battle won to a defeat. The British had started retreating but Lal Singh had other ideas. That is another story that needs to be in our textbooks.

So the role of treachery and betrayal in every sphere needs to be narrated in detail in our textbooks and media. After another betrayal at Gujrat the Lahore Darbar Army finally surrendered at Rawalpindi in March 1849. At that spot the British built their new army headquarters. It still remains an army headquarters.