Empire of the Sikhs (10 page)

Among other influences working on Ranjit Singh in those years up to early adulthood were two strong-willed women – his mother
Raj Kaur (also known as Mai Malwain) and his mother-in-law Sada Kaur. His marriage to her daughter Mehtab Kaur was a complete failure, not only because of his abiding interest in other women – he was ultimately to have twenty wives in all besides a very sizeable harem – but because of Mehtab Kaur's deep and continuing conviction that Ranjit Singh's father Mahan Singh had had a hand in her father Gurbaksh Singh Kanhayia's death in battle, although he had died in a clash with the Ramgarhias. Sada Kaur's view was more pragmatic. She hoped to repair the rift between the two
misls
through this marriage, with the aim of creating a grand alliance with far bigger goals in mind.

Sada Kaur played a major role in Ranjit Singh's life. It was, however, preceded by his mother Raj Kaur's more modest but nevertheless significant contribution. She was only twenty-four years old when Mahan Singh died in 1790, but despite her young age she was of considerable help in holding the
misl
together for seven years through a form of regency which included Diwan Lakhpat Rai and Dal Singh, who was Mahan Singh's maternal uncle and Chief of Akalgarh. But her regency was the cause of strife between the two power camps around Ranjit Singh, with Raj Kaur and Diwan Lakhpat Rai being opposed with increasing bitterness by Sada Kaur and Dal Singh, each trying to bring young Ranjit Singh under its influence.

In this face-off Sada Kaur and Dal Singh, the more aggressive of the protagonists, were determined not only to undermine Raj Kaur's effectiveness as an administrator but to tarnish her personal reputation as well. Aside from an ongoing smear campaign against her over her relationship with Lakhpat Rai, many intrigues well beyond the bounds of decency were hatched to destroy her in the public's esteem. In 1797 her seventeen-year-old son took over the
misl
's affairs because, according to some reports, he had grown impatient with her control of things.

The death of Raj Kaur was a mysterious and controversial
episode. The most vicious rumours soon circulated suggesting that Ranjit Singh had a hand in the killing of his mother and were believed by many. One British army officer, writing nearly half a century later, gives a distinctly novelettish version of events. Ranjit Singh, his story goes, entered his mother's chamber early one morning and, finding a man there, quietly left, summoned some followers, took up a sword and returned to his mother's room where he now found her alone. In an increasingly heated argument Raj Kaur is said to have upbraided her son for casting a slur on her moral character and Ranjit, ‘stung to madness by her reproaches', to have dispatched her ‘as she was sitting up on her bed half naked and with dishevelled hair'.
¹¹

The historian Hari Ram Gupta, a specialist in the period, comments as follows:

Some writers accuse Ranjit Singh of having killed his mother with his own hands … Kushwaqt Rae, Sohan Lal, Amar Nath and Bute Shah [writers and chroniclers of distinction whose judgments are based on first-hand observation or on a serious study of events of the period] do not mention this event. Kushwaqt Rae wrote his book in 1811, and he was not in Ranjit Singh's service. Bute Shah was an employee of the British Government at Ludhiana. He says that Ranjit Singh took charge of his
misl
in consultation with his mother … N.K. Sinha says the story is based on ‘mere gossip'. Sita Ram Kohli considers the charge entirely false and baseless. In our view, by any stretch of imagination, Ranjit Singh cannot be called a matricide. The story is purely malicious and absolutely unfair and unjust.
¹²

There would seem to be no justification for the charge of matricide against a man whose patent decency throughout his life is especially striking seen in a historical context so replete with the
most extreme examples of cruelty and bloodthirstiness on the part of rulers not only towards persons defeated by them but even towards the innocent. A British historian comments: ‘Ranjit Singh was not cruel or bloodthirsty. After a victory or the capture of a fortress he treated the vanquished with leniency and kindness, however stout their resistance might have been, and there were at his court many chiefs despoiled of their estates but to whom he had given suitable employ.'
¹³

Eventually it came to be accepted that Raj Kaur had been poisoned at the instigation of her adversaries.

Sada Kaur was on an altogether grander scale of ambition than Ranjit Singh's mother Raj Kaur and possessed of both courage and ability in abundance. On several occasions she proved herself a valuable ally to her son-in-law. Lepel Griffin describes her as ‘a widow of great ability and unscrupulousness [who] took command of the confederacy and held her own against her son-in-law successfully till 1820'.
¹⁴
After Raj Kaur's death Diwan Lakhpat fell in an expedition against the Chatthas, and with both her rivals removed from the field Sada Kaur had ample scope to pursue her ambitions. The alliance between the Sukerchakias and the Kanhayias, the two most eminent of the twelve
misls,
created by the marriage between her daughter Mehtab Kaur and Ranjit Singh was a formidable starting-point, and Sada Kaur planned to establish her writ over the entire Punjab by drawing on their combined military strength and material resources. But despite her sharp intellect and understanding of the centrality of war and political intrigue in getting what she wanted, she failed to gauge her own limitations with regard to her son-in-law who was already thinking far beyond her vision of the future. He envisioned not only all of Punjab under his control but also territories well beyond India's boundaries which belonged to
those who had savaged the country for centuries. He was clear in his mind that without first bringing the different
misls
under his control he would lack a sound power base.

Bikrama Jit Hasrat pinpoints the political situation in the Punjab at the time when Ranjit Singh took over the Sukerchakia
misl
in 1797. ‘The
misl
system born out of a sense of national unity to combat foreign aggression had foundered on the rock of personal ambition and lust for power. The carving out of several principalities by the powerful Bhangis, the Ramgarhias, the Ahluwalias and the Phulkians had struck a blow at the mystic ideal of the Commonwealth of Guru Gobind Singh … The unity of action or concerted will in the name of the Khalsa had become a thing of the past.'
¹⁵
Ranjit Singh's vision of where and how far he wanted to go to recreate the Commonwealth – although he ended up creating an empire – was beyond Sada Kaur's powers of conception. And his mother-in-law, able and sharp-witted as she was, could not have been more wrong in believing that she could bring Ranjit Singh under her tutelage.

In the first years after Raj Kaur's untimely end, however, and while Ranjit Singh was still coming to grips with running his extended
misl,
he gained a good deal from Sada Kaur's decisiveness, as when, for example, Zaman Shah appeared in Punjab on his fourth invasion of India in September 1798 and crossed the River Indus at Attock in October. Ranjit Singh prepared to oppose him at Ramnagar on the River Chenab but headed back for the Amritsar-Lahore region when some of the Muslim landlords of the area along with the Afghan governor of Kasur, Nizam-ud-din, prepared to occupy some of the Sikh forts. In the ensuing action a wounded Nizam-ud-din had to be removed along with dead Afghani soldiers who were more than twice the number of Sikh soldiers killed.

While Sikh contingents under Ranjit Singh continued to attack the Afghans, several Sikh chieftains and their men in Amritsar at
this time were most reluctant to combine forces with him, despite his urging. Sada Kaur, also then in Amritsar, promptly made her presence felt. Addressing the Sardars, she said: ‘If you are disposed to assist Ranjit Singh, advance and join him, if not, throw off that dress and take mine, give me your clothes and I will march against the enemy.'
¹⁶
On 24 November 1798 Zaman Shah, temporarily occupying the city of Lahore, which had been under Bhangi rule since the ousting of the Afghans in 1765, sent a force of 10,000 men to Amritsar to teach the Sikhs a lesson by occupying their holy city, too. Ranjit Singh with 500 horsemen waylaid the advance contingents of Zaman's army and after particularly intense fighting – in which the Sardars from Amritsar with 2,000 of their men joined in – the Afghans retreated to Lahore. These were the same Sardars who had been addressed by Sada Kaur; her taunts had born fruit.

The following year provides another example of Sada Kaur's resourcefulness. The citizens of Lahore had become thoroughly discontented with Bhangi rule and had sent a petition to Ranjit Singh for help, which he agreed to provide. He left Gujranwala with a very small force for Amritsar – ostensibly to visit the holy city (which was shared between the Bhangi and the Ramgarhia
misls)
but with the underlying aim of attacking Lahore from there. For that he needed more troops. When he sent an urgent message to Sada Kaur for help, she promptly arrived with a sizeable force of several thousand and helped him to annex Lahore in July 1799 – except for the city's well-fortified fort, which was left in the hands of the Bhangis. The role Sada Kaur played here had been made possible by the far-sightedness of the third Guru Amar Das (1552-74) in the sixteenth century, who had given complete equality to women in every sphere of life – as radical a change as any ever brought about in India's archaic social customs.

While Ranjit Singh was determined to storm the fort as well, Sada Kaur advised him against it. She argued that the people
besieged inside the fort were left with no option but to surrender because of lack of provisions and communications with the outside world. Her assessment was right; the Bhangi chief surrendered the very next day and his stronghold was taken without bloodshed. On other occasions, too, as Ranjit Singh fought on many fronts to consolidate his hold, Sada Kaur was there to lend him a hand.

Ranjit Singh's first move on occupying Lahore was to issue an order that his officers and troops were to treat the people of the city with courtesy and consideration and that failure to obey this order – as also any attempt at plunder – would bring severe punishment. He rode through Lahore's streets to assure citizens of their personal safety and the safety of their property and to leave no doubt in their minds that they would be safe under his rule. And, in a gesture reminiscent of Alexander's treatment of the defeated King Porus, he made certain that Sardar Chet Singh, the defeated Bhangi ruler of Lahore, would not only be treated with full respect but given a handsome grant of land.

Lahore, once the prized possession of the Mughals and then of Abdali who after his victories over the Mughals in 1748 had declared Punjab a territory of Afghanistan with Lahore as its capital, was now in the possession of Ranjit Singh. The nineteen-year-old conqueror was master of one of the most historic cities of India. Lying on the banks of the Ravi, one of Punjab's five great rivers, 2,000-year-old Lahore had not only borne wave after wave of Muslim invaders beginning with Mahmud of Ghazni in 1014 but had been home to dynasties established by numerous earlier invaders including the Ghoris, Mongols, Tughlaks, Khiljis, Lodis and Suris. The myths, legends and lore associated with it were age-old, and among the many who made mention of it were Ptolemy and Hiuen Tsang.

When the Mughal emperor Akbar shifted his capital to Lahore
in 1584 he built a strong brick fortress with imposing towers which would intimidate his enemy and within its walls constructed spacious villas for his harem and himself. His successors continued to fortify the walls of Lahore Fort until it was well-nigh impregnable. It had twelve gates, three of which opened on to the river. The elegant buildings inside were decorated with fine paintings, engravings and carved and pierced marbles, some even finer than those in the Taj Mahal in Agra. The Badshahi Mosque and the Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque) were but two of the imposing structures inside the citadel. Lahore Fort became Ranjit Singh's principal residence, workplace and the Durbar, or court, from which he ruled when he was in his capital.