Ranjit Singh
was born on 13 November 1780 to Maha Singh Sukerchakia and Raj
Kaur, the daughter of Raja Gajpat Singh of Jind, in Gujranwala, Punjab. Several
different clans have claimed Ranjit Singh as their own. His grand-daughters,
the daughters of his son Duleep Singh believed that their true
ancestors belonged to the Sandhawalia family of Raja Sansi. Ranjit
Singh has been described as "Sansi" in some records, which has led to
claims that he belonged to the Sansi tribe. However, it is more likely that he
belonged to a Jaat gotra named Sansi; the Sandhawalias, who
claimed Rajput descent, belonged to the same gotra. Ranjit Singh's
birth name was Buddh Singh, after his ancestor who was a disciple of Guru
Gobind Singh, a Khalsa, and whose descendants created the Sukerchakia misl before
the birth of Ranjit Singh, which became the most powerful of many small Sikh
kingdoms in northwestern Southern Asia in the wake of the disintegrating Mughal
Empire. The child's name was changed to Ranjit (literally, "victor in
battle") by his father to commemorate his army's victory over the Muslim
Chatha chieftain Pir Muhammad. He was short in stature, never schooled, and did
not learn to read or write anything beyond the Gurmukhi alphabet, however,
he was trained at home in horse riding, musketry, and other martial arts. At age
12, his father died. He then inherited his father's Sukerchakia misl
estates and was raised by his mother Raj Kaur, who, along with Lakhpat Rai,
also managed the estates. The first attempt on his life was made when he
was 13, by Hashmat Khan, but Ranjit Singh prevailed and killed the assailant
instead. At age 18, his mother died and Lakhpat Rai was assassinated, and
thereon he was helped by his mother-in-law from his first marriage.
Ranjit Singh received support from Muslim Punjabis who fought under his banner and repeatedly defeated invasions of Punjab by Muslim armies who were arriving in Punjab from Afghanistan and created the Sikh Empire of Punjab. Almost 777 years of foreign rule, starting from the Turkish invader Mahmud of Ghazni in 1022 after ousting the Hindu Shahi ruler Raja Tarnochalpal, until the time Maharajah Ranjit Singh entered the gates of Lahore on July 7, 1799; Punjabis had not ruled their own land.
Maharajah Ranjit Singh's reign introduced reforms, modernization, investment into infrastructure, and general prosperity. His army and government included Sikh Punjabi, Muslim Punjabi, Hindu Punjabi, and included Polish, Russian, Spanish, Prussian and French officers. His court reflected a secular pattern, his Prime Minister Dhian Singh was a Hindu Dogra Punjabi, his Foreign Minister Fakir Azizuddin was a Mulsim Punjabi, his Finance Minister Dina Nath was a Hindu Brahmin Punjabi, and artillery commanders such as Mian Ghausa, Sarfaraz Khan were Muslim Punjabi.
The Khalsa army of Maharajah Ranjit Singh reflected the regional population. In the Doab region, his army was composed of the Punjabi Jat Sikhs, in Jammu and northern Indian Hills, it was Punjabi Hindu Rajputs, while relatively more Punjabi Muslims served his army in the Jhelum river area and closer to Afghanistan. Maharajah Ranjit Singh ensured that Panjab was self-sufficient in all Panjab manufactured weapons, equipment and munitions that his army needed. His government invested in infrastructure in the 1800s and thereafter, established raw materials mines, cannon foundries, gunpowder and arms factories. Some of these operations were owned by the state, others operated by private operatives. The prosperity of his Empire, in contrast to the Mughal-Sikh wars era, largely came from the improvement in the security situation, reduction in violence, reopened trade routes and greater freedom to conduct commerce.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the East India Company controlled southern India, Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa (modern Odisha). Dominance was gained at the expense of its French equivalent, the Compagnie des Indes. After taking power in 1799, French leader Napoleon Bonaparte won a string of military victories that gave him control over most of Europe. He annexed present-day Belgium and Holland, along with large chunks of present-day Italy, Croatia, and Germany, and he set up dependencies in Switzerland, Poland, and various German states. Spain was largely under his hegemony despite continuing guerilla warfare there, and Austria, Prussia, and Russia had been browbeaten into becoming allies. Only Great Britain remained completely outside of his grasp.
Napoleon had proposed a joint Franco-Russian invasion of India to his Imperial Majesty Paul I of Russia. In 1801 Paul, fearing a future action by the British against Russia and her allies in Europe decided to make the first move towards where he believed the British Empire was weakest. He wrote to the Ataman of the Don Cossacks Troops, Cavalry General Vasily Petrovich Orlov, directing him to march to Orenburg, conquer the Central Asian Khanates, and from there invade India. Paul was assassinated in the same year and the invasion was terminated. Napoleon tried to persuade Paul's son, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, to invade India; however, Alexander resisted. In 1807, Napoleon dispatched General Claude Matthieu, Count Gardane on a French military mission to Persia, with the intention of persuading Russia to invade India. In response in 1808, Britain sent its own diplomatic missions, with military advisers to Persia and Afghanistan under the capable Mountstuart Elphinstone to avert the French and possible Russian threat. However, Britain was left with concerns about being able to defend India.
Britain and France were at war, and the Franco-Persian alliance of 1807 followed the same year by the Franco-Russian Treaty of Tilsit and attempt to negotiate trade deals with Maharaja Ranjit Singh and the Talpur Amirs of Sindh, alerted the HEIC to the external threat posed from the northwest. In 1810, Lieutenant Henry Pottinger and Captain Charles Christie undertook an expedition from Nushki (Balochistan) to Isfahan (Central Persia) disguised as Muslims. The expedition was funded by the East India Company and was to map and research the regions of "Balochistan " and Persia because of concerns about India being invaded by French forces from that direction. After the disastrous French invasion of Russia in 1812 and the collapse of the French army, the threat of a French invasion through Persia was removed. By 1819 only Sindh and the Sikh Empire of Punjab remained outside the Company's control. Napoleon was vanquished, but the Empire of the Tsars had begun to expand south and east.
The Great Game began on 12 January 1830 when Lord Ellenborough, the President of the Board of Control for India tasked Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General, to establish a new trade route to the Emirate of Bukhara. Following the Treaty of Turkmenchay 1828 and the Treaty of Adrianople (1829), Britain feared that Persia and Turkey would become protectorates of Russia. This would change Britain's perception of the world, and its response was "The Great Game". Britain had no intention of getting involved in the Middle East, but it did envision a series of buffer states between the British and Russian Empires that included Turkey, Persia, plus the Khanate of Khiva and the Khanate of Bukhara that would grow from future trade. Behind these buffers, states would be their protected states stretching from the Persian Gulf to India and up into the Emirate of Afghanistan, with British sea-power protecting trade sea-lanes. Access to Afghanistan was to be through developing trade routes along the Indus and Sutlej Rivers using steam-powered boats, therefore, access through the Sindh and Punjab regions would be required. Persia would have to give up its claim on Herat in Afghanistan. Afghanistan would need to be transformed from a group warring principalities into one state ruled by an ally whose foreign relations would be conducted on his behalf by the Governor-General and the Foreign Office. The Great Game meant closer ties between Britain and the states along her northwest frontier.
Britain believed that it was the world's first free society and the most industrially advanced country, and therefore that it had a duty to use its iron, steam power, and cotton goods to take over Central Asia and develop it. British goods were to be followed by British values and respect for private property. With pay for work and security in place, nomads would settle and become tribal herdsmen surrounding oasis cities. These were to develop into modern states with agreed borders, as in the European model. Therefore, lines needed to be agreed and drawn on maps. Two proud and expanding empires approached each other, without any agreed frontier, from opposite directions over a "backward, uncivilized and undeveloped region."
Britain intended to gain control over the Emirate of Afghanistan and make it a protectorate and to use Turkey, Persia, the Khanate of Khiva and the Emirate of Bukhara as buffer states between both empires. This would protect India and also key British sea trade routes by stopping Russia from gaining a port on the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean. Russia proposed Afghanistan as the neutral zone. The results included the failed First Anglo-Afghan War of 1838, the First Anglo-Sikh War of 1843, the Second Anglo-Sikh War of 1848, the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878, and the annexation of Khiva, Bukhara, and Kokand by Russia.
After 1830, Britain's commercial and diplomatic interest in the northwest became difficult. In 1831, Captain Alexander Burnes and Colonel Henry Pottinger's surveys of the Indus River would prepare the way for a future assault on the Sindh to clear a path towards Central Asia. Burnes embarked on a dangerous 12-month journey beginning in 1831 into Afghanistan and through the Hindu Kush to Bukhara, returning in 1832. Burnes and Christian traveling through a Muslim country were one of the first to study Afghanistan for British Intelligence and upon his return; he published his book, Travels To Bukhara. Between 1832 and 1834, Britain attempted to negotiate trade agreements with Maharaja Ranjit Singh, ruler of the Sikh empire of Punjab, and the Talpur Amirs of Sindh. However, these attempts were unsuccessful.
In 1835, Lord Auckland was appointed Governor-General and replaced Bentinck who had pursued a non-intervention policy. In that year, Lieutenant John Wood of the Indian Navy commanded the first steamboat to paddle up the Indus River and surveyed the river as he went. In 1838, he led an expedition that found one of the River Oxus' sources in central Asia.
In 1837, the Russian envoy Captain Jan Vitkevitch visited Kabul, and the British believed that it was to facilitate some form of diplomatic or military presence in Afghanistan. While in Kabul, he dined with the British envoy, Captain Alexander Burnes, who reported negatively on Russia's intentions. Russia feared British inroads on their commerce in Central Asia, as well as the influence that a Muslim power with British support might have on the other khanates.
During 1838, there were rumors in London of a coming Russian move towards Khiva. Additionally, Persia intended to annex Herat to make up for territory. However, the allegiance of Herat to Afghanistan was crucial to the British strategy. The Siege of Herat began in November 1837 when the new Shah of Persia, Mohammed Mirza, arrived before Herat. His intention was to take Herat then move on to Kandahar. With him was the Russian Envoy Count Simonich, seconded Russian officers and a regiment of Russian deserters under the Polish general Berowski. Eldred Pottinger, an officer of the Bengal Artillery, who had earlier entered Herat in disguise, stiffened the defenses and despite the presence of Russian advisers, the siege lasted eight months. Britain threatened to take military action and Persia withdrew in September.
Meanwhile, the conflict between Afghanistan and Punjab focused on the Khyber route. Dost Muḥammad Barakzai appealed to the HEIC for aid in recovering Peshawar, but the Company could not help him without alienating its treaty ally Maharaja Ranjit Singh. When Dost Muḥammad Barakzai redirected his appeal to Russia, the Governor-General Lord Auckland resolved to depose Dost Muḥammad Barakzai and replace him with Shah Shuja Durrani. Dost Moḥammad Barakzai had been dealing with Persia and Russia, while it was thought that Shah Shuja Durrani could be trusted to have nothing to do with them.
Long before 1838 the British in India had been alarmed by the Russian advance into Central Asia and by the interest of the czar’s agents in Persia and Afghanistan. At stake was the market for Russian or British products in Central Asia. British imperialists dreamed of sending goods in steamboats up the Indus and overland into Central Asia and Russian imperialists aspired to gain possession of Ḵīva in the belief that it would become the center of all the commerce of Asia and would undermine the commercial superiority of those who dominated the sea.
From 1829 onward the British considered it a matter of urgent national importance to extend their influence into Central Asia before the Russians arrived. They also feared that their hold on India would be jeopardized if Russia were dominant in Central Asia and militarily present in or near Afghanistan. To protect their interests, they sent an envoy, Alexander Burnes, by way of Sindh to Lahore in 1830 and by way of Kabul to Bokhara in 1831-32 (for which he became famous as an explorer and political agent and earned the nickname “Bokhara Burnes;”.
At this time the strong Russian influence in Persia was being used to encourage a Persian campaign against the strategically important fortress of Herat, which was ruled by a Sadozay. The British sought to save Herat from Persia and thus to hold the Russians at bay in the west. Meanwhile, the only Indian state of any significant independence and military power was Punjab under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The British could not hope to establish a strong influence beyond the Indus unless they first either conciliated or conquered Punjab.
The spectacle of the well-trained and equipped armies of Lahore persuaded the British to make friendship with Punjab a high priority. It was impossible for the British to befriend Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Dost Muhammad Barakzai at the same time, for there was a fierce quarrel between them over the Sikh occupation of Peshawar and the shelter and encouragement given to Shah Shuja Durrani. Even Burnes, on a mission to Kabul, was unable to reconcile Dost Muhammad Barakzai with Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Burnes’ masters could not offer Dost Muhammad Barakzai anything that he really wanted in return for giving up a correspondence with Persia and Russia.
In 1838 the Governor-General, Lord Auckland, signed the Simla Manifesto, which was in effect a declaration of war upon the Barakzai rulers of Kabul and Qandahār and of intent to restore Shah Shuja Durrani while saving Herat from Persian designs. Punjabis played a minimal part in subsequent military operations. The Punjabi "Army of the Indus", as the British called it, entered Afghanistan in the spring of 1839 and made its way through Qandahār and Ḡaznī to Kabul. Governor-General Lord Auckland restored the throne of Shah Shuja Durrani in Kabul, on term and condition that the exiled former ruler would accept the Punjabis gains west of the Indus, and the Company controlling his foreign policy. The agreement was formalized with the Treaty of Simla signed in June 1838 between Shah Shuja Durrani, the HEIC, and Maharaja Ranjit Singh. British influence was to be extended into Afghanistan and it was to become a buffer state.
Shah Shuja Durrani had ascended the throne in 1803 and had signed a mutual defense agreement with the British in 1809 against a possible Franco-Russian invasion of India via Afghanistan. In the same year, he was deposed and imprisoned by his half-brother. There were a number of Amirs of Afghanistan until Dost Muḥammad Barakzai gained power in 1836. Shah Shuja Durrani was not popular with the Afghans and tensions grew, leading to the killing of the British envoy, Captain Alexander Burnes, in 1841. By January 1842, the Afghans were in full revolt. With a weakening of military discipline, the British decided to withdraw from Kabul. The Kabul garrison of 4,500 troops and 12,000 camp followers left Kabul for Jalalabad that was 80 miles and 5 days march away. They were attacked by 30,000 Afghans. Six British officers escaped on horseback but only one, the wounded Dr. William Brydon riding on a wounded horse, made it to Jalalabad. Over one hundred of the British and 2,000 sepoys and camp followers were taken a hostage and the rest killed. In April, a punitive expedition by the Punjabi "Army of the Indus" was dispatched and recaptured Kabul and freed the captives in September. The new Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough, decided to withdraw all British garrisons from Afghanistan and Dost Muḥammad Barakzai was freed in India to return to the throne.
In 1843, Britain annexed the Sindh and after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, between 1845 and 1846, the First Anglo-Sikh War was fought between the Sikh Empire of Punjab and the East India Company, which resulted in the partial subjugation of the Sikh kingdom. Between 1848 and 1849, the Second Anglo-Sikh War was fought between the Sikh Empire and the British East India Company, which resulted in the subjugation of the Sikh Empire and the annexation of Punjab.
The Great Game is a term used by historians to describe a political and diplomatic confrontation that existed for most of the nineteenth century between Britain and Russia over Afghanistan and neighboring territories in Central and Southern Asia. Russia was fearful of British commercial and military inroads into Central Asia, and Britain was fearful of Russia adding "the jewel in the crown", India, to the vast empire that Russia was building in Asia. This resulted in an atmosphere of distrust and the constant threat of war between the two empires.
The timing of the beginning and end of the Great Game is not completely agreed. One author believes that the Great Game commenced when the Franco-Persian alliance of 1807 followed the same year by the Franco-Russian Treaty of Tilsit and attempt to negotiate trade deals with Maharaja Ranjit Singh and the Talpur Amirs of Sindh. Another believes that it began with Russia's victory in the Russo-Persian War (1804–13) and the signing of the Treaty of Gulistan of 1813 or the Treaty of Turkmenchay of 1828. Another believes that it started in the aftermath of the Crimean War (1853–6) and the Caucasus war (1828–59).
One author proposes that The Great Game was over at the end of the First Anglo-Afghanistan war in 1842 with the British withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some authors believe that the Great Game came to a close with the three Anglo-Russian agreements of 1907 which delineated the spheres of interest between British India and Russian Central Asia in the borderland areas of Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet.
Another that it was trailing off not long after that time, and another with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the end of Russia's interest in Persia. One has stated that unofficially, the Great Game in Central Asia might never end. When everyone is dead, the Great Game is finished. Not before. - Rudyard Kipling
Note: - Almost the same game was played in the 1980s. Three players Russia, Pathan, and Punjabi were the same players but the British were replaced by the America and Punjabi nation supported America in the game, as supported the British in 1839.
Exactly the same game is again in practice. Three players Russia, Pathan, and Punjabi are the same players but the British are replaced by America. However, British is still a joint venture player with the main player America and India is also included in the game as a proxy player for America to create a situation of Indo-Pak war for building pressure on Pakistan to Armtwist the Punjabi nation and to pressurize the Punjabi nation to act in the game according to the will and wish of America. China is an additional player. Some regional players are also added in the game but, these players are assisting America, China, or Russia, therefore, they may be called the extra players of the game and the game is called a ‘’New Great Game’’.
Nevertheless, the role of Punjabi nation in present Great Game is not only essential like the role in previous games but, it is significant too due to the inclusion of China in the Great Game and project of CPEC as a joint venture project of Pakistan and China.
What will be the Strategy of Punjabi Nation in the New Great Game?
1. The Punjabi nation will support America in the game as supported the British in 1839 and supported America in the game of 1980s to obstruct the Russian advancement via Central Asia into Afghanistan to reach the warm water?
2. The Punjabi nation will support Russia in present Great game to facilitate Russia to reach the Gwadar via Central Asia and Afghanistan to join the CPEC project by expanding the CPEC (China, Pakistan Economic Corridor) project into PCPREC (Pakistan, China, Pakistan, Russia, Economic Corridor) project?
3. The Punjabi nation will keep himself neutral in the present Game in Afghanistan and concentrate only on the CPEC project. Therefore, the game in Afghanistan will be played by America, Russia, and China?
4. The Punjabi nation will stop to facilitate China to reach the Gwadar. Therefore, Pakistan will withdraw himself from the CPEC project to get the support of America in Pak-India war or to withdraw the support of America for India in Pak-India war and the game in Afghanistan will be played by America, Russia, and China?
