CHAPTER III FOREIGN WARFARE. THE PUNJAB AND BURMA 1 In this chapter an attempt is made to show the causes and effects of Lord Dalhousie's policy towards two countries situated beyond the limits of the Company's territory, the Punjab and Burma. Nanak, the founder of the Sikh 1 sect, was born in 1469. He was one of India's greatest religious reformers; he hated tyranny and superstition, and strove to bring about religious peace and union between Hindus and Muhammadans. Some hundred years later, a second leader arose. Guru Gobind rejected his predecessor's policy of peaceful persuasion, and bound his followers into a great military caste. Equality among themselves, a bitter hatred of Muhammadan tyranny and cruelty, and a Spartan hardiness of life, then became the chief characteristics of the Sikhs. Their enemies from Delhi strove hard to exterminate this troublesome race, but their strength was already tried to its utmost by Afghan invasions. The Sikh confederacy, therefore, grew steadily in power and, by the end of the eighteenth century, formed an admirable buffer state between the Company's territories and the thorny countryside of Pathan, Afghan, and Beluchi tribesmen beyond the Indus." And after the departure of Zeman Shah, Ranjit Singh, the Lion of the Punjab, united the hitherto discordant units into one powerful kingdom. The treaty of friendship formed between him and the British soon developed into a definite alliance which was respected by both parties until the death of the Great Maharajah in 1839. It is difficult to over-estimate the importance of the part played by the Sikhs during the later part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries. Accounts of the development of their power and of their political importance are given below. 1 The word means a disciple. The Development of Sikh Power Source.-Sir John Malcolm; "Sketch of the Sikhs." It would be difficult to give the character of Nanak on the authority of any account we yet possess. His writings, especially the first chapters of the Adi-Grant'h, will, if ever translated, be perhaps a criterion by which he may be fairly judged; but the great eminence which he obtained, and the success with which he combated the opposition which he met, afford ample reason to conclude that he was a man of more than common genius; and this favourable impression of his character will be confirmed by a consideration of the object of his life, and the means he took to accomplish it. Born in a province on the extreme verge of India, at the very point where the religion of Muhammad and the idolatrous worship of the Hindus appeared to touch, and at a moment when both these rites cherished the most bitter rancour and animosity towards each other, his great aim was to blend those jarring elements in peaceful union, and he only endeavoured to effect this purpose through the means of mild persuasion. His wish was to recall both Muhammadans and Hindus to an exclusive attention to that sublimest of all principles, which inculcates devotion to God and peace towards men. He had to combat the furious bigotry of the one and the deep-rooted superstition of the other; but he attempted to overcome all obstacles by the force of reason and humanity, and we cannot have a more convincing proof of the general character of that doctrine which he taught, and the inoffensive light in which it was viewed, than the knowledge that its success did not rouse the bigotry of the intolerant and tyrannical Muhammadan Government under which he lived. The history of the Sikhs, after the death of Tegh Behadur, assumes a new aspect (under the influence of his son, Guru Gobind). It is no longer the record of a sect who, revering the conciliatory and mild tenets of their founder, desired more to protect themselves than to injure others; but that of a nation, who, adding to a deep sense of the injuries they had sustained from a bigoted and overbearing government, all the ardour of men commencing a military career of glory, listened with rapture to a son glowing with vengeance against the murderers of his father,1 who taught a doctrine suited to the troubled state of his mind, and called upon his followers, by every feeling of 1 Tegh Behadur, the father of Guru Gobind, who is said to have been born in the year 1661, was murdered by his nephew, Ram Rai. The Moghul Empire was then at the height of its power under the rule of Aurungzeb, whilst the Sikhs were distracted by their own internal dissensions. manhood, to lay aside their peaceable habits, to graft the resolute courage of the soldier on the enthusiastic faith of the devotee, to swear eternal war with the cruel and haughty Muhammadans, and to devote themselves to steel, as the only means of obtaining every blessing that this world, or that to come, could afford to mortals. It is here only necessary to state the leading features of those changes by which he subverted, in so short a time, the hoary institutions of Brahma, and excited terror and astonishment in the minds of the Muhammadan conquerors of India, who saw the religious prejudices of the Hindus, which they had calculated upon as one of the pillars of their safety, because they limited the great majority of the population to peaceable occupations, fall before the touch of a bold and enthusiastic innovator, who opened at once, to men of the lowest tribe, the dazzling prospect of earthly glory. All who subscribed to his tenets were upon a level, and the Brahmin who entered his sect had no higher claims to eminence than the lowest Sudra who swept the house. It was the object of Gobind to make all Sikhs equal, and that their advancement should solely depend upon their exertions; and well aware how necessary it was to inspire men of a low race and of grovelling minds with pride in themselves, he changed the name of his followers from Sikh to Singh, or lion; thus giving to all his followers that honourable title which had been before exclusively assumed by the Rajputs, the first military class of Hindus; and every Sikh felt himself at once elevated to rank with the highest, by this proud appellation. The disciples of Gobind were required to devote themselves to arms, always to have steel about them in some shape or other; to wear a blue dress; to allow their hair to grow; to exclaim, when they met each other, Wá! Gúrújí ká Khálsa! Wá! Gúrújí ki futteh! which means, "Success to the State of the Guru! Victory attend the Guru!" The intention of some of these institutions is obvious; such as that principle of devotion to steel, by which all were made soldiers; and that exclamation, which made the success of their priest, and that of the commonwealth, the object of their hourly prayer. It became, in fact, the watchword which was continually to revive, in the minds of the Sikh disciple, the obligations he owed to that community of which he had become a member, and to that faith which he had adopted. * * The character of the Sikhs, or rather Singhs, which is the name by which the followers of Guru Gobind, who are all devoted to arms, are distinguished, is very marked. They have, in general, the Hindu cast of countenance, somewhat altered by their long beards, and are to the full as active as the Mahrattas; and much more robust, from their living fuller, and enjoying a better and colder climate. Their courage is equal, at all times, to that of any natives of India; and when wrought upon by prejudice or religion, is quite desperate. They are all horsemen, and have no infantry in their own country, except for the defence of their forts and villages, though they generally serve as infantry in foreign armies. They are bold, and rather rough, in their address; which appears more to a stranger from their invariably speaking in a loud tone of voice; but this is quite a habit, and is alike used by them to express the sentiments of regard and hatred. The Sikhs have been reputed deceitful and cruel ; but I know no grounds upon which they can be considered more so than the other tribes of India. They seemed to me, from all the intercourse I had with them, to be more open and sincere than the Mahrattas, and less rude and savage than the Afghans. They have, indeed, become, from national success, too proud of their own strength, and too irritable in their tempers, to have patience for the wiles of the former; and they retain, in spite of their change of manners and religion, too much of the original characters of their Hindu ancestors (for the great majority are of the Hindu race), to have the constitutional ferocity of the latter. The Sikh soldier is, generally speaking, brave, active, and cheerful, without polish, but neither destitute of sincerity nor attachment; and if he often appears wanting in humanity, it is not so much to be attributed to his national character, as to the habits of a life, which, from the condition of the society in which he was born, is generally passed in scenes of violence and rapine. The Political Importance of the Sikhs Source. Sir Alfred Lyall," British Dominion in India," It may be added that the north-western gates of India were soon to be double-locked against outside invasion. For while this independent Afghan kingdom formed an excellent barrier against all attempts to break into India from Central Asia by the only land routes through which an army can enter, the Afghans themselves were about this time barred off from the Punjab by the Sikhs. The rapid expansion of the power of the Sikhs, who are Hindu sectaries, illustrates the almost invariable process by which in Asia every great proselytising movement tends to acquire a political and militant character. The two tendencies of course react on each other, for while a religious revival is sure to rally under its flag a good deal of political discontent, on the other hand civil commotions usually set up the standard and appeal to the sanction of religious enthusiasm. Towards the end of the last (eighteenth) century the votaries of the Sikh faith, fanatically hostile to Islam, and in open revolt against their Muhammadan rulers, were gathering into a close association, whose stubborn fighting qualities and rapid political development under military chiefs were extending their power across upper India from the Sutlej to the Indus. They were thus erecting a second and inner barricade against inroads from Central Asia, which cut off the communications between Islam in India and the rest of the Muhammadan world. Yet the political vacuum created by the final disintegration of the Moghul empire, and the withdrawal of the Afghans, was already filling up in the Punjab, by the rapid rise and compact organisation of the Sikhs. Under this new Hindu federation, much more closely knit together by ties of race and common faith than the Mahrattas, the people became animated by a martial spirit and a fiery enthusiasm such as the Hindus had not hitherto displayed. The history of the Sikhs illustrates a phenomenon well known in Asia, where an insurrectionary movement is always particularly dangerous if it takes a religious complexion, and where fanaticism may endure and accumulate under a spiritual leader until it explodes in the world of politics with the force of dynamite. The martyrdom of their first prophet, and their persecution by the later Moghul emperors, had engendered in these hardy peasants a fierce hatred of Islam. They had been repressed and broken by the Afghan armies of Ahmed Shah, who routed them with great slaughter in 1761. But in 1762 they defeated and slew his Governor at Sirhind; and in 1764 Ahmed Shah was recalled to his western provinces by a revolt in Kandahar. He died in 1773, after which date the grasp of his successors on the Punjab relaxed, and the Sikh confederation became closer and more vigorous. They were subdivided into misls or military confederacies under different chiefs, who fought amongst themselves and against the Muhammadans, until in 1785 the Sikhs had mastered the whole country between the Jhelum and the Sutlej rivers in the centre of the Punjab, were threatening the Muhammadan princes about Delhi, and had made pillaging excursions eastward across the Ganges into Rohilcund. To the English in Bengal this revival of Hindu nationality in upper India was exceedingly serviceable and opportune. For, in the first place, their real danger, the only substantial obstacle to their rising ascendancy, lay always, then as now, in the possibility of some foreign invasion by the army of some rival power led by a chief at the head of the fighting tribes of Central Asia. But the Sikhs were making it impossible for any such Asiatic army to penetrate into the heart of the Punjab, |