Sahib (26 page)

Brigadier General John Jacob, the first commander of the Sind Frontier Force and political superintendent of the Upper Sind Frontier (and after whom the town of Jacobabad was named), was firmly of the conviction that the success enjoyed in his area reflected a sense of moral superiority. In 1854 he affirmed that:

The highest moral ground is always taken in all dealings with predatory tribes, treating them always as of an inferior nature so long as they persist in their misdeeds: as mere vulgar criminal and disreputable persons with whom it is a disgrace for any respectable persons to have any feelings, and whom all good men must, as a matter of course, look on as objects of pity not of dread, with hatred possibly, but never with fear … The feeling instilled in every soldier employed being, that he was always of a superior nature to the robber – a good man against a criminal; the plunderers being considered not as enemies, but as malefactors.
³¹

The spirit Jacob inspired amongst his men was remarkable. One of his native officers, Durga Singh, chased a party of Baluch raiders with fifteen horsemen. After a hard ride of thirty miles he had only two troopers and a Baluch guide left with him. The raiders, perhaps forty strong, now rounded on them, and the guide pressed Durga Singh to turn back. But he would not: declaring that ‘he should be ashamed to show his face to Major Jacob if after coming in sight of the robbers he should retire without killing some of them’, he charged with his two troopers. The three of them were cut to pieces, but not before they had killed or disabled fifteen of their enemies. The survivors of the robber band looped a red thread around Durga Singh’s wrist in recognition of his bravery.

Things were never quite the same on the Punjab frontier. Its inhabitants – mainly tribesmen whom contemporary British officers called Pathans but are more correctly termed Pushtuns – were, and to a very great extent remain, a law unto themselves. They formed tribes, such as the Afridis, Mahsuds, Mohmands and Wazirs, which were themselves subdivided into
khels,
or clans. Their clan leaders,
maliks,
enjoyed as much power as they could enforce by the strength of their sword arm, and the tribal gathering, or
jirga,
was the tribe’s parliament, court and governing council. They spoke Pushtu, and
lived by their own law, Pukhtunwali, which emphasised the duty of
badal,
revenge for an injury, real or imagined, balanced against
melmastia,
the hospitality that a Pushtun must accord even to an enemy. Most disputes stemmed from
‘zar, zan
and
zamin’
– gold, women and land. Winston Churchill, who fought on the frontier in 1897, thought that ‘every man [was] a warrior, a politician and a theologian’ and ‘a code of honour not less punctilious than that of old Spain, is supported by vendettas as implacable as those of Corsica’.
³²

In 1914, when Fred Roberts was a field marshal and a peer (and, though he did not know it, only days away from death from pneumonia), he visited Indian troops in France. Aboard a hospital ship, in a cabin marked ‘Pathans, No 1’ he spoke to a soldier ‘with strongly Semitic features and bearded like the pard’. ‘Whence come you?’ said the Field Marshal.

From Tirah, Sahib.

Ah! We have had some little trouble with you folk at Tirah.

But all that is now past. Serve the Emperor faithfully and it

shall be well with you.

Ah! Sahib, but I am sorely troubled in my mind.

And wherefore?

My aged father writes that a pig of a thief hath taken our cattle and abducted our women-folk. I would fain have leave to go on furlough, and lie in a
nullah
at Tirah with my rifle and wait for him. Then I can return to France.
³³

Many British officers who served on the frontier formed a particular bond with these deadly men. In 1862, Roberts, then a major, was with a small party escorting Colonel Reynell Taylor, commissioner for Bannu, which was surrounded by hostile tribesmen who debated whether to kill them. They were saved by Bunerwal tribesmen who had undertaken to furnish them with safe passage.

The most influential of the tribe, a grey-bearded warrior who had lost an eye and an arm in some tribal contest, forced his way through the rapidly increasing crowd to Taylor’s side and, raising his arm to enjoin silence, delivered himself as follows: ‘You are debating whether to allow these English to remain unmolested. You can, of course, murder them and their escort;
but if you do, you must kill us Bunerwals first, for we have sworn to protect them, and we will do so with our lives.’
³⁴

Writing much later, the distinguished administrator Sir Olaf Caroe described how when a man crossed the great bridge over the Indus at Attock ‘there was a lifting of the heart and a knowledge that, however hard the task and beset with danger, here was a people who looked him in the face and made him feel at home’.
³⁵
And Philip Woodruff, another Indian civil servant, admitted that even after the First World War:

Life on the Frontier still had an immense appeal … There were no long hours at an office desk, and although there was always the chance of a bullet and often a good deal of discomfort, it was a life that everyone on the frontier enjoyed. Everyone liked the Pathan, his courage and his sense of humour … And it was all still oddly personal; allegiance was given, if at all, not to a Government but to a man.
³⁶

The frontier was in an endemic state of minor war, with frequent raids and punitive expeditions, and the small change of warfare was counted out so often that it was said that the Government of India would only grant a campaign medal if artillery was engaged: mere small-arms fire did not count. When Lieutenant Colonel James Kelly’s tiny column was on its way from Gilgit to Chitral in 1895, it fought its first action at Chakalwat on 9 April. There were two guns of the Kashmir Mountain Battery with the force, and when their first round was fired (it ‘pitched over the river and burst over a sangar. It was as pretty a sight as one could wish for … ’) the Irish gunner subaltern shook the gun’s commander by the hand, and told him that he had earned them all a medal.
³⁷
Even when things were apparently peaceful, a watchful enemy might pounce on an idle sentry, ambush a complacent patrol, or snipe at a lamp glowing through canvas. It was a harsh landscape which bred hard men, and was the most obdurate school of soldiering.

Irregular units were good at frontier warfare and, into the bargain, were far cheaper than regular troops. But the danger of a large-scale rising, coupled with the threat of a Russian invasion, meant that numerous units of the Bengal army were also stationed in frontier
districts. Their chain of command was wholly different, however, and in 1856 Sir Charles Napier, Commander in Chief, India, complained that while he controlled the regulars he could not move a single sentry of the Punjab Irregular Force. In 1886 the Punjab Frontier Force became part of the Bombay army, and as such came under the Commander in Chief, India, but it retained its separate character until 1903. Even after this, some units still included ‘Frontier Force’ as part of their titles, and the nickname ‘Piffers’ lasted longer than British India. Today one can still, very occasionally, see the Frontier Force tie, its stripes capturing the colour of the
chikor,
or Himalayan partridge, making off for a restoring pink gin at London’s Oriental Club.

S
ERVICE ON THE FRONTIER
often blurred distinctions between military and civil authority. Some British officers in India held appointments on the staff, while others commanded British or native troops. But one distinctive characteristic of India was that military officers were used to fill a number of administrative, judicial and diplomatic posts. They were the ‘politicals’, military officers by title and early training, but serving in what were essentially civilian appointments. Some emerged as proconsuls of a very high order, like Henry Lawrence in the Punjab, Arthur Phayre in Burma (‘to speak of Burma was to speak of Sir Arthur Phayre’) and Henry Ramsay in Kumaon. Others had a lasting impact on everyday life in their areas: Major General Sir William Sleeman was largely responsible for the suppression of the murderous practice of
thuggee
in 1839–42.

Even if they did not rise to these heights, the politicals were often very striking characters. In 1857, J. W. Sherer found himself in the little state of Rewah.

When the party I was with reached the staging house at Rewah we were received by a young English officer – looking indeed younger than he really was – well dressed, jaunty and amusing, who gave no sort of impression of being in any responsible position, and did the honours of the bungalow as if the poaching of eggs and the currying of fowls were on the whole as important duties as life presented. But this airy and wholly
wonderful person was Lieutenant Willoughby Osborne, a young political, who was performing the astounding feat of keeping Rewah quiet, entirely by himself. A solitary European without a comrade – a soldier, you may say, without a regiment – was by sheer force of character overawing the authorities of Rewah.

When a villager ‘who seemed to be a man of authority’ called him what may be translated as ‘blackguard Feringhee’, or ‘Frank’, Osborne tied the fellow behind his cart and took him for a long run, letting him loose some way from home ‘with the recommendation to be more circumspect in his language for the future’.
³⁸

A young political officer might find himself running a large and unstable area entirely on his own. Captain Neville Chamberlain, left in charge of Hazara on the North-West Frontier in 1850, when his master, the redoubtable Major James Abbot, went off on tour, listed his duties:

1. I am Magistrate, which means I have to seize and try all offenders for every offence which human beings can be guilty of; also control the police.
   
2. As Collector, to manage and look after the revenue in all its branches, and to decide all civil suits, as likewise those cases which in Europe would be tried in ecclesiastical courts.
   
3. As Superintendent I receive appeals from myself to myself, both in criminal and civil cases; and I have to submit my opinion on heavy cases, such as murder etc., for the confirmation of the board at Lahore.
   
4. The charge of the jail.
   
5. Charge of the treasury, and responsible for all accounts.
   
6. Physician and Surgeon-General to the troops and population, and keeper of Medical Stores.
   
7. Executive Engineer and Superintendent of all public works.
   
8. Postmaster.
   
9. Superintendent of mule train and bullocks.
   
10. Commissionary of Ordnance.
    
11. Commanding 1 regiment of infantry, 2 troops of cavalry, 1 Company of artillery, with mountain guns and falconets
    attached, 1 Company of pioneers (irregulars), 1 Company of the Utzai tribe, 1 Company of the Mathwazi tribe, 1 Company of messengers, guides, and spies.
    ³⁹
    

The best-known politicals were the towering figures of the 1840s and 1850s, for some of whom the term ‘band of brothers’ might very well have been invented. The widow of one of them, Herbert Edwardes, wrote that her husband and another of the band, John Nicholson, ‘became more than brothers in the tenderness of their whole lives henceforth’.
⁴⁰
Of the older generation, the brothers George, Henry and John Lawrence had been educated in the most robust, God-fearing tradition at Foyle College in Londonderry. George and Henry went into the Bengal army, and John into the Indian Civil Service. George was a political assistant in the Army of the Indus, served as military secretary to Sir William Macnaghten, and was captured by the Afghans. Henry was a political agent in the Army of Retribution, served as Resident in Nepal and, after the Sikh Wars, Resident at Lahore and effectively ruler of the Punjab. He sent his elder brother George to be political agent in Peshawar, and appointed his younger brother John as his deputy and commissioner of the territory between the Sutlej and Beas rivers. Henry kept a small notebook in which he recorded the names of officers who might do well in the political department, and in August 1849 he asked Neville Chamberlain, then a Bengal infantry officer,

What pay would satisfy you to enter the Civil Department, and would you be prepared to serve as an assistant perhaps under a young civilian, or an officer junior to yourself? After a year or two’s training under a man of civil experience, I should be glad to see you in charge of one of our frontier stations – Hazara, Dera Ishmael Khan, Ghaznee-Khan or Peshawar … 

Chamberlain rose to the fly, and was appointed assistant commissioner in Rawalpindi.
⁴¹

The Lawrence brothers were very different by temperament, and Henry and John disagreed about the way ahead in the Punjab: Henry favoured ruling with the support of the
jagirdars,
while John sought to reduce their powers and do more to improve the lot of the peasantry. Eventually the Governor-General backed John, who became Chief
Commissioner of the Punjab, where he became so well loved that the personal loyalty he inspired did much to ensure Sikh loyalty during the Mutiny. Henry was shunted off to be the Governor-General’s agent in Rajputana, where George soon joined him. In 1857, Henry went on to be Chief Commissioner of Oudh, and it was thanks to his foresight that the Residency at Lucknow was able to stand siege. He was mortally wounded by a shell which burst squarely in his room, and the inscription on his tombstone fittingly read: ‘Here lies Henry Lawrence who tried to do his duty.’ There was universal regret at his death. A grief-stricken Henry Daly wrote: ‘Though public calamity overpowers the thought of private and personal bereavement, I do indeed feel that I have lost a prop in the world. He was a rare specimen of God’s handiwork.’
⁴²

His brother John became the first Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, and in 1863 he succeeded Lord Elgin as Viceroy, coining the expression ‘masterly inactivity’ for his policy of non-interference in the affairs of Afghanistan. He was elevated to the peerage as Baron Lawrence of the Punjab and Grateley on his return to England in 1869, plunged into an assortment of good works and, from his seat in the Lords, vigorously opposed the Second Afghan War. George became agent to the governor-general in Rajputana, and retired on health grounds in 1864. All three brothers were knighted: Henry in 1847, John in 1857, and George in 1866. They were a remarkable trio, a striking example of one of the many families which produced whole broods of imperial legates.

They left an unexpected legacy. The huge Koh-i-Noor diamond (its name means ‘mountain of light’ in Persian) had a long history, first recorded as being owned by the Raja of Malwa before becoming the property of a succession of Mughal emperors. Carried off to Persia by Nadir Shah in 1739, it then fell into the hands of the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah, and Ranjit Singh obtained it from the unlucky Shah Shujah. After the Second Sikh War it was given to John Lawrence, who wrapped it up, put it in a pillbox and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket. Six weeks later he received a message from the Governor-General saying that Queen Victoria wished to have the diamond. John asked Henry for it, only to be reminded that he had the stone himself. He summoned his personal servant, who
remembered that he had put the pillbox into one of the sahib’s trunks. The trunk was fetched, and the diamond was unwrapped. ‘There is nothing in here, sahib, but a bit of glass,’ said the servant.

The diamond was presented to Queen Victoria in 1850, and then, recut from just over 186 carats to a little more than 108, it was mounted in a tiara worn by the Queen. In 1936 it was set in the crown worn by Queen Elizabeth, wife of King George VI, at her coronation, and in 2002 it rested on her coffin as she lay in state. There was already a campaign under way to ensure the diamond’s return to India, and on 17 May of that year, a major Indian daily newspaper declared that: ‘If all goes well, the most prominent symbol of colonial plunder, the Koh-I-Noor diamond, may be back in India.’
⁴³
However, even if Britain decides to hand back the diamond, there remains a lively dispute as to whom it should be returned: while the Government of India has a claim, so too do Ranjit Singh’s descendants.

Of the same generation as the Lawrences were James Abbot and Frederick Mackeson. Abbot had three brothers in the Bengal army, and had first come to public notice as a result of a trip across central Asia to rescue some Russian prisoners, writing
Narrative of a Journey from Heraut to Khiva … 
and becoming ‘something of a hero’.
⁴⁴
In 1846 Henry Lawrence sent him to Hazara, that wedge of land north of Rawalpindi, between the Jhelum and the Indus. The Moslem inhabitants had never accepted the rule of their Sikh suzerains, and when Abbot arrived they were determined to resist that of Gulab Singh of Kashmir, who was meant to become their monarch under the terms of the Company’s recent treaty with him. Abbot persuaded Henry Lawrence that Hazara should remain part of the Punjab. Initially he worked through a Sikh governor, but many of the Sikhs joined the general rising after the outbreak of the Second Sikh War, and Abbot, supported by local levies, hung on only with the greatest difficulty. He then ruled Hazara with a rod of iron until his superiors, mistrusting his idiosyncrasies and total identification with his people, posted him back to the army.

James Abbot spent the rest of his career running an arsenal near Calcutta, reached the rank of general and was eventually knighted. Yet his name was well remembered long after he had left. His new
district capital was called Abbotabad, and still is today. And in the 1930s, Sir Olaf Caroe met a very old Hazarwal and asked him if he had met
Kaka
(Uncle) Abbot. ‘He was a little man with bristly hair on his face and kind eyes,’ said the man.

I was in the
jirga
when he was asking us if we would stand and fight the Sikhs if we stood by him. We swore we would, and there were tears in our eyes, and a tear in Abbot Sahib’s eye too. And we did! He was our father, and we were his children. There are no Angrez like Abbot Sahib now.
⁴⁵

Ironically it was a dispute with another hero of the frontier, Frederick Mackeson, which led to Abbot’s removal from Hazara. Mackeson had accompanied the Army of Retribution as a political agent, and, with his considerable experience, was unlucky not to be appointed agent to the governor-general for the Punjab and North-West Frontier when John Lawrence got the post. At Ferozeshah he committed the mistake of suggesting that Gough might make more use of his artillery before attacking the Sikhs, and was sharply told to shut up. As commissioner of Peshawar he led a force to assist Abbot against a rising in 1852, and when the two clashed the dispute was eventually resolved in his favour. In 1853 he was stabbed to death on the verandah of his bungalow. Some said his murderer feared further British advances; others suggested that there had been a
fatwa
against him; some even maintained that he had been having an affair with a local woman.

The rumour about Mackeson’s love life infuriated one of the younger generation of soldier-administrators, John Nicholson. Another Ulsterman, he had gone to India as a Bengal cadet in 1839 and joined the 27th BNI at Ferozepore. He soon found himself escorting Shah Shujah’s harem to Kabul, and at the fortress of Ghazni he met Neville Chamberlain, who became a good friend. Captured when Ghazni surrendered to Akbar Khan’s supporters, he encountered Captain George Lawrence, a fellow prisoner, who generously gave him a shirt to replace the one he had worn for months. Shortly after his liberation, Nicholson met another of Henry Lawrence’s young men, Lieutenant Harry Lumsden, another Bengal infantryman,
born at sea off the coast of India, where his father was serving as an artillery officer.

John Nicholson’s brother Alexander, whose regiment of Bengal infantry had marched up into Afghanistan, was killed in the Khyber Pass as the force withdrew, and it was John’s misfortune to find him stripped, his genitals cut off and stuffed into his mouth. Nicholson never wrote about his experiences in Afghanistan, and the episode probably did much to case-harden his character. The historian Michael Edwardes described him as ‘a violent, manic figure, a homosexual bully, an extreme egotist who was pleased to affect a laconic indifference to danger’.
⁴⁶
As a schoolboy I was taught the poem which began
‘John Nicholson by Jullundur came, on his way to Delhi fight
 … ’ and where Edwardes sees vices it is possible to see some virtues as well. That he was violent there is no doubt, but he was a soldier in perilous times at the outer edge of empire. He insisted on instant obedience and brooked no insult: he was known to strike junior employees with a large black ruler, and when a local mullah in Bannu, pacified by Nicholson between 1852–57, glared at him with open contempt Nicholson had his beard shaved off. He never married, but it is impossible to be sure what this says about his sexuality, and there is no real evidence to link this and his bullying.

Nicholson certainly believed in ‘swift, stern justice’, thinking summary flogging more effective than imprisonment or fines, and during the Mutiny he hanged men without trial, arguing simply that ‘the punishment for Mutiny is death’. He would have gone further with the perpetrators of massacre, telling Herbert Edwardes: ‘Let us propose a bill for the flaying alive, impalement or burning of the murderers of women and children at Delhi. The idea of simply hanging the perpetrators of such atrocities is maddening.’
⁴⁷
Yet a young officer saw him quietly weeping behind his tent after he had passed a death sentence. Fellow administrators often found him insufferable, arrogant, and opinionated, and one officer lambasted his ‘haughty manner and peculiar sneer … ’. A subaltern with whom he shared a bungalow as a young man thought him ‘reserved almost to moroseness’, but that ‘there was great depth behind his reserved and at times almost boorish character’.
⁴⁸
John Lawrence, for long Nicholson’s superior, believed that, despite his arrogance and rudeness, he was
worth ‘the wing of a regiment on the border, as his prestige with the people, both on the hills and the plains, is very great’.