Reginald George Burton - The First and Second Sikh Wars

THE SIKH STATE BASED AROUND THE CITY of Lahore that was annexed by the British in 1849 was a relatively recent creation, but was singular for being the last major independent Indian polity and for its European-trained army. It is not easy to define this kingdom because neither the geographical term the Punjab, nor the religious one the Sikhs are accurate synonyms for this state, as not all its dominions lay within the PunjabThe Five Rivers Landnor did all the Punjab come under its sway. Likewise, not all its subjects were Sikhs, nor did it rule over all Sikhs, nor even over all territories under Sikh princes. However, it was a militarised state to the extent that its army had become the dominant force in internal politics and external relations.

The Sikh army, known as the Khalsa (the pure or the follower) had been developed from the elite warrior caste. Building upon the ethos of Sikh warrior culture, Maharaja Ranjit Singh (17801839) developed an army of 29,000 regular infantry, an artillery park of 192 guns, supported by traditional armoured and lance-armed cavalry. European instructors drilled the infantry regiments and imported technicians advised on the manufacture of muskets and cannon at Lahore. For the period of three decades up to Ranjit's death in 1839 the Sikh army dominated the region, defeating Afghan, Kashmiri and other neighbours. In 1802 it took Amritsar, in 1818 Multan fell, in 1819 Kashmir was annexed, and in 1833 and 1834 Ladakh and Peshawar were captured respectively. If the Punjabi state were to further expand territorially and dominate a larger sphere, then crossing the River Sutlej to the south-east would be inevitable, as would a clash with the British. The Khalsa represented the most formidable native army on the subcontinent(growing to 150,000 strong in 1845, including all arms), but it also sowed the seeds of its own destruction by its arrogant dominance of its own society.

This was an example of a polity overshadowed by a military caste and of the nominal rulers eventually seeking to throw off military domination. Such a situation might be likened to other historical contexts where the sword of state, perhaps originally fashioned as much to protect the rulers from their own wider society as to be instrumental in martial expansion, turned itself back on those rulers. The Roman Empire, with emperors bullied and occasionally replaced by their Praetorian Guard, is a case in point. Closer to the Khalsa as a military caste were the mamluk slave troops and their officers who came to dominate the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad in the ninth century AD and the rulers of Egypt from Cairo in the fourteenth century. The last centuries of the Ottoman Turkish Empire were similarly marked by the interests and revolutions of the Janissary slave regiments. However, in the Roman and Punjabi cases, unlike in the Abbasid, Mamluk Egyptian, and Ottoman Turkish states, the military cast was native to the parent society.

As control of government over the Khalsa slackened, so the latter marauded in the countryside and assassinated a series of leading officials, unpopular officers and, in 1843, even the Maharajah Shere Singh. In 1845 they murdered the Wazir Jawahir Singh. The Wazir's sister, the Maharani Jindan, courted the Khalsa leaders after his death and acted as regent for her son the (last) Maharajah, Duleep Singh, whilst secretly swearing vengeance and to bring about the destruction of the Khalsa. Her influence was such that two of the senior Sikh commanders in the First Sikh War, Tej Singh and Lal Singh, were actively working for her interests and moved their armies with treacherous hesitation. Jindan was supposed to have used her sexual wiles to further her plans, and she was one of those female native figures about whom the Victorians fantasised with particularly salacious pleasure (along, later, with the Rani of Jhansi during the Indian Mutiny).

AT ALMOST EVERY STAGE OF BRITISH expansion in India from the mid eighteenth century onwards a case could be made for wars being essentially defensive and reactive in nature, although India played its part as a field of conflict during the first two world wars, the Seven Years War and the Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars. This empire by accident rather than design stance was of course partly the ready self-justification of imperialists through history. A threat to already-established territories, or a need tointervene in the affairs of fractious or corruptly governed neighbours, could always be played up for political expediency. Indeed, at every stage, there were voices raised both for opportunist expansionism (often on the ground), and in favour of caution and non-involvement (often back home at the centre of empire). This was not necessarily the whole picture. Threats did exist (perceived or real), but the very presence in a region of an expansionist power could breed instability through fear of future conquest. Worst still, a vacillating policy might give off the most disquieting signals, combining supposed non-intervention and the rhetoric of peaceful intentions with a concern not to allow national reputation and honour to be impugned.

In northern India the British fought a series of short wars against different polities, first in the north-east in Bengal, then progressively through Bihar, Oudh, Rohlkand, and the North-West Provinces. They were drawn not only to the Sutlej frontier of the Punjab but also deep into Afghanistan. Meanwhile the Pindari and Mahratta War had secured vast territories for the British in central India (181719) with smaller states being gobbled up though the 1830s and early 1840s. The First Afghan War (183842) took British forces on their furthest excursion to date but, despite the final result being the successful installation of a British candidate as Afghan ruler, it had also resulted in the complete annihilation of a whole British expeditionary force made up of both British and Indian sepoy regiments (184142). This disaster had seriously damaged British prestige and the unprovoked annexation of Sind in 1843 did nothing to allay the fears of the remaining independent principalities in the region. Also in 1843 the Gwalior War was fought to suppress the local Maratta revolt, two sharp contests being fought on the same day.

The following list of dates summarises the chronology of the period: