A
GENERAL notion persists that Punjab (i.e., east and west Punjab, including Haryana and parts of
Himachal Pradesh) was loyal to the British in the stormy days of 1857. The
Punjabis, especially both the ‘dominant’ communities, the Muslims and Sikhs, it
is believed, helped the British with men, money and material during the Revolt.
The
usual argument made for this attitude of the Punjabis is that after the
annexation of Punjab (1849), John Lawrence (who became chief commissioner of
the province) and his band of dedicated and dynamic officers had not only
turned the badly disturbed Land of the Five Rivers into the best governed
British Indian province from 1849 to 1857, but had also given to its people peace,
prosperity and happiness, something which they had not seen in their long
history. Consequently, the ‘grateful’ Punjabis stood by their benevolent rulers
and thereby saved the British Empire.
This
is absolutely untrue! John Lawrence’s rule was the worst thing that could have
happened to Punjab. Its main aim was, in Lord Dalhousie’s words, “to kill
the spirit of the Khalsa”, and “isolate the Muslims from the worlds beyond the Indus and the Sutlej”.
They
had put a girdle of troops around the Majha, the home of the Sikh soldiery,
under their two best generals. And they had done almost some similar intizam in
the northwestern region, too, where there was a preponderance of the turbulent
Muslim tribes. In all, 45 per cent of the entire Bengal Army composed upon the Purbias
Sepoys (Bhaiya, Bihari, Bengali) and 60 per cent of its European troops were
deployed and kept in a stand-to position in Punjab. In Bengal and the North-Western Provinces there was one sepoy over the
heads of five thousand persons, but in Punjab there was one sepoy over the
heads of 120 persons.
There
was a terribly tight bureaucratic grip over the people: “The authorities had
made full preparations to meet any emergency in the province in 1857”. Still Punjab was afire, though in varying
degrees.
There
were serious sepoy mutinies at Ferozepur, Hote Mardan, Jullundur, Phillaur, Jhelum, Sialkot, Thanesar, Ambala, Lahore, Peshawar and Mianwali. Some people
underestimate these risings and negate the role of the Punjabis, dismissing
these uprisings as the doings of Purbias (Bhaiya, Bihari and Bengali).
This
is incorrect: the regiments, which played a heroic role in these mutinies, were
the ‘mixed’ ones and they consisted of Hindus (of high and low castes), Purbias
(Bhaiya, Bihari and Bengali), Muslim Punjabis, Sikhs Punjabis. All of them
stood together. They fought together. They died together. For one cause —
ousting the Firangi from their country.
There
is another very significant feature of these mutinies that has not been
highlighted. Nowhere in Punjab did the sepoys rebel without the tacit
understanding and positive support of the local civilian population. Aberrationally,
if they rose on their own anywhere, they did not succeed in their mission.
Ambala is a good example to prove the point. About nine hours before the
outbreak at Meerut (10 May), the 5 NI, 60 NI and 4
LC regiments stationed at Ambala revolted. They attacked their regimental
kotes, seized arms, and arrested their officers. They had no liaison with the
civilian population in the city. Their rebellion failed. On the other hand, the
sepoys at Jullundur, Ludhiana, Ferozepur, Sialkot, etc., had established contact
with the local inhabitants of the respective areas. It became possible for them
to carry on their struggle with widespread local support. We can see this
phenomenon working even outside Punjab. The failure of the mutiny at
Barrackpore, and its resounding success at Meerut, for instance, can be explained
only in the light of this factor.
The
Revolt was, at least in Punjab, everybody’s concern. Barring a few ruling princes
and their hangers-on, the people belonging to different religions, castes, and
classes had an interest – a positive interest to be precise – in it. The poorer
sections of the people, the illiterate, and the lower castes were a part of the
struggle. “The lower orders and castes among the Hindus and Mohammedans” at
this place, remarked the deputy commissioner of Ludhiana, “followed any casual leader that
turned up and joined in promoting general disorder”. According to the deputy
commissioner of Sialkot, at his station “the menial
servants were very generally implicated (in the Revolt)”. At some places where
Anti-Firangi feeling was universally strong and deep, even such sections of the
population who derived personal benefits from the British, and who were in
their hearts, for this reason, on the side of the British, were not prepared to
back their masters openly. They were penalized later by their colonial masters
for betraying their salt (namak-harami).
As for
the Sikhs, their supposed loyalty to the British is a myth. They played an
outstanding part in the uprising. “It is a curious fact”, says T D Forsyth,
deputy commissioner of Ambala, “that the first man, not a soldier, in the Punjab – and I say in all upper India – who was hanged for sedition was
a Sikh”. Forsyth was referring to Sardar Mohar Singh of Rupar (Ambala) who led
an uprising in the area. Mohar Singh openly supported Bahadur Shah Zafar, going
as far as declaring a Khalsa-Mughal Raj in Rupar. Also the first village to
have suffered the punishment of ‘burning’ in the province was the village of Dabri in the state of Nabha. The
residents of Dabri were predominantly Sikhs. They collectively became victims
of British terror for having helped a ‘grand rebel’, a Hindu faqir named
Shamdas. In the cities too the Sikhs did not lag behind others in fighting
their enemy. In Ludhiana, according to the deputy
commissioner of the district, “almost every class had its representatives on
the gallows”. The Sikhs were also there, he says, for their men had taken part
in the rising.
It is
a fact of history that the Sikh sepoys stood by their comrades in the regiments
that rebelled within and outside Punjab. F B Gibbon, a major authority on
the subject and author of The Lawrences of the Punjab (1908), explodes the
whole myth of Sikh loyalty very forcefully: “The part played by the Sikhs
during the Mutiny crisis, has been largely misunderstood, and far too much
credit has been given to them for an enthusiastic loyalty that was never
theirs, owing to the practice of calling all Punjabis indiscriminately as Sikhs
— a short and easy but misleading term”. The protected Sikh chiefs were
“gloriously loyal throughout” but not the Sikhs as a community. According to
Gen. McLeod Innes, “One often reads loosely worded allusions to John Lawrence
having sent down large bodies of newly raised Sikhs to Delhi. In point of fact, he sent none”.
The British authorities tried to bribe “the spirited Sikhs to come to their
side”, but to no avail. A disheartened Nicholson wrote to John Lawrence on
August 27, “We have been trying to get Sikhs without success”. Thus, barring
the chiefs of Patiala, Nabha, Jind, etc. Sikh masses
were not loyal to the British.
In the
northwestern areas of Punjab there were unprecedented popular risings led by
Muslims. Hundreds of people rose up in open revolts in the whole region. The
biggest and fiercest of these revolts took place in district Gogira, in the
Neelibar region, around Sahiwal, where tribe after tribe, village after
village, people after people rose up to oust the Firangi from their land. In
John Lawrence’s estimate the rebels numbered 1,25,000. Surprisingly they were
fighting for Bahadur Shah even after the fall of Delhi.
The
British crushed the movement in Punjab with a heavy hand. Thousands of
persons were hanged, or blown from guns, without any trial or formal
investigation. Several towns were plundered and villages destroyed. Frederic
Cooper, the deputy commissioner of Amritsar, ordered the killing of hundreds of
rebels at Ajnala. Their bodies were thrown in a well, Kalyan-da-khuh, which
still exists. The Ajanala ‘black-hole’ episode remains one of the blackest
spots in the history of British rule in India.
In
Haryana the uprising was still fiercer. The region was, materially speaking,
very backward. Because of the loot and plunder of the colonial rulers it had to
face frequent famines which led to the death of countless people and cattle
year after year. Not surprisingly, there was widespread discontent against the
British in Haryana.
The
news of the outbreak of the uprising at Meerut and Delhi was greeted with joy in every
nook and corner of the state. The districts of Gurgaon, Rohtak, Hissar,
Panipat, Thanesar and Ambala came under the influence of the rebels in no time.
The people, cutting across religious affiliations and belonging to all classes,
came forward in large numbers to put an end to the oppressive Firangi Raj once
and for all. So strong was the popular indignation against foreign rule in the
region that unlike their Punjab counterparts, all the local chiefs of Haryana –
the chiefs of Jhajjar, Farrukhnagar, Bahadurgarh, Dujana, Ballabhgarh, etc. –
elected to side with the rebels.
The
people of Haryana were lucky to have found some really good leaders of stature
and substance such as Sadruddin Mewati in Mewat, Rao Tula Ram in Rewari,
Mohammad Azim in Hissar, Gen. Abdus Samad Khan in Jhajjar, Nawab Samad Khan in
Sirsa, Ramo Jat in Karnal, and Imam Qalandari in Panipat. The peasant, the
worker, the poor and the rich all fought bravely under these leaders and kept
their land free until the fall of Delhi (September 20, 1857).
After
recapturing Delhi, the British sent their most
experienced commanders to bring Haryana “under their control”. Gen. Van
Courtland, Brig.-Gen. Showers, Col. Gerrard, Capt. Drummund, etc. launched
heavy attacks from all sides. The brave Haryanavis fought desperately even in
those very dismal days. In the battles of Narnaul, Ballah (Panipat) and Mewat,
fought as late as November 1857, they showed their true mettle. Their defeat
was, for obvious reasons, a foregone conclusion but it is really a creditable
thing that even the victors praised their bravery and devotion to the cause
they were fighting for.
The
British let loose an unprecedented reign of terror in Haryana. They killed
thousands of people and destroyed property worth many crores of rupees. They
burnt over eighty villages — sixty in the Mewat region alone.
British
rule had meant unimaginable humiliation and oppression for the people of
Himachal Pradesh. In the words of Gen. Napier: “We force the Indian to work at
plough and we force him to walk thousands of miles carrying the luggage of the
English soldiery. The Indian peasant loses his harvest, his land remains
uncultivated and his family perishes, his oxen overworked by the soldiers, fall
on the way and he does not receive a farthing as compensation for this. His
broken plough is left on the way and he is dragged to shoulder another plough
whose master has fled away in desperateness. And after six or eight months the
peasant is sent back ruined to his house where he used to live happily and
peacefully before our arrival there. There he may find his wife and children;
but if the wife is beautiful, he will hear that the European magistrate has
taken her for himself. I am told that these magistrates have no scruples about
taking the Indian women.
This
is just one grievance. There were many more such grievances. As a result, the
Himachalis were very unpahhpy with the British raj. They wanted to get rid of
it somehow or the other. But their task was difficult. They had no leaders.
They suffered from the inadequacy of the material means necessary to wage a war
effectively. They had no formidable army. No sufficient fire-arms and
ammunition. Not even sufficient rations with which to sustain themselves and
fight for a long time.
It
must, however, be said to their credit that despite all these problems and
inadequacies the hill people fought against the colonial enemy. They made the
best possible use of whatever was available with them — their courage, their
wisdom, and so forth. They used, for instance, rumor as a strategy, and an
effective weapon in their struggle. This worked very well. For instance with a
small rumor that the governor-general had asked the authorities to send human
flesh, they got hundreds of hapless forced laborers and domestic servants
working in British homes freed. This hurt the sahibs at their weakest spot.
However, at a number of places, people made a positive effort to rise in open
revolt. Raja Pratap Singh of Kula, Ram Prasad Bairagi, Raja Pratap Chand of
Teerah, and the Rani of Jutog are some of those brave leaders. Some others
tried to follow them. But the alert British officials barred their way almost
everywhere. In most of the cases they lost the struggle even before these
commenced. But successful or unsuccessful, they joined the struggle against
colonial rule bravely despite heavy hurdles and a formidable enemy.
It
seems appropriate that the truth about the courageous people of Punjab in the great war of their freedom
lying buried under the debris of falsehood be extricated, and presented in
colours true to history.
