Ghosts of Empire (15 page)

Dalhousie didn't trust Gulab for one minute: ‘I do not, never have trusted, and never will trust him.' He added with the irony for which British imperialists were famous, that ‘I am not unskilful enough openly to exhibit distrust.' Dalhousie was a pragmatic Scot, though he had gone through the usual ruling-class treadmill at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford. He was a short, capable and highly ambitious politician, who had been made governor general at the age of thirty-five. He understood that Gulab Singh's attachment to Britain was one forged purely by self-interest. As he explained in a later letter to Queen Victoria, ‘Whatever may have been the character and conduct of this man during his adventurous life, from the time when he ran as an orderly by the side of Ranjeet's horse, till the present day when he reigns over wide dominions, his interests are now too closely and too clearly united with ours.' Britain had cast its lot with Gulab; they sank or swam together. Gulab's sycophancy knew no bounds. Dalhousie relayed to the Queen other obsequious remarks which had poured from Gulab's lips. The British government was ‘now seated in the heavens: I have laid hold of its skirts and I will never quit my grasp'. Gulab was wondering if the Queen would accept as a gift the collection of cashmere shawls he had sent for the Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace.
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Gulab had been both lucky and shrewd. It was true that he was a clever man, though he almost certainly was not the ‘cleverest man ever India produced', which an Indian had told Napier.
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Hardinge's son, who had visited Kashmir with his father in 1846, remembered Gulab as a ‘fine handsome old man with a long beard'.
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The Maharaja was shrewd in picking his friends. Hardinge, the practical military man, supported him, even though he knew he wasn't an ideal ruler. Gulab was even more friendly with Sir Henry Lawrence, the political officer in the Punjab.

Lawrence was the middle of three brothers who had all gone to serve with the East India Company in the 1820s and 1830s. The Lawrences were a special breed of British hero, Christian warriors who combined deep religious conviction with a tough-minded pragmatism. When Gulab asked Sir Henry how it was that the British always conquered their foes, Lawrence, a little embarrassed, refused to answer. But he then asked for a sheet of paper and wrote ‘IHS' on it. He did not explain that these letters stood for the Latin words ‘Iesu Hominum Salvator', Jesus Saviour of Men.
The Maharaja thought that the letters were a mystical sign and had them stamped on the silver rupee coins in newly acquired Kashmir. The Lawrences were one of those Anglo-Irish families who were often drawn to service in the empire. Henry, his elder brother George and his younger brother John, who would be viceroy of India in the 1860s, were all educated at Londonderry's Foyle College, which has been described as a ‘tough, no-nonsense, God-fearing institution that produced boys ideally matched to the East India Company's needs'.
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To the soldier-diplomat Herbert Edwardes, on the other hand, Gulab was the ‘worst native' he had ‘ever come in contact with'; he was a ‘bad king, a miser, and a liar, and the dirtiest fellow in all India'. For the Kashmiris the sale of their homeland to Gulab Singh was a misfortune. The British officials themselves were never entirely comfortable with the decision to support Gulab and his family, a Hindu dynasty, in their rule of a predominantly Muslim state. Napier had written a ditty about Gulab's new kingdom:

Others were more seriously critical. They knew even in the 1850s that the company had made a big mistake. As early as 1851, Colonel Henry Steinbach, a British officer of German origins, was highly critical of the British policy and even let Lord Dalhousie know what he thought. He had ‘a mean opinion' of Gulab's talents. ‘In no single thing that he does, can I detect ability.' The whole policy Britain had pursued was wrong. If Dalhousie visited Kashmir, he would find ‘the entire population . . . prostrating themselves at your Lordship's feet to beg to be relieved from the Maharajah's rule'. Steinbach's letter was prescient and direct, though he tried to cover himself with an air of tact and diplomacy: ‘Far be it from me to animadvert upon the policy of the British Government,' he began. ‘I
will merely observe, en passant, that the Government made a great mistake in assigning over to the Maharajah so beautiful a country.'

The British had handed over ‘a whole people to the Maharajah's oppressive rule'. This had happened even though everyone knew what kind of ruler he would be. Gulab was indeed rich. But there was a catch. He was rich because he was an avaricious, unscrupulous ruler. Steinbach continued, they ‘make an outcry in England about the abolition of slavery, whereas the British Government have in reality . . . given over an entire people to a slavery of the most oppressive description'. It was Gulab's greed, more than anything else, which oppressed the people. ‘The Maharajah has taken everything into his own hands, and is, with the exception of 5 or 6 shawl merchants, the only trader in Cashmere.' Taxes were exorbitant; from every 100 acres' worth of grain cultivated, Gulab ‘takes 90, leaving 10 to the cultivator . . . upon shawls and every other article of manufactured goods he takes exactly half of its sale price'. The result of all this greed was that the people lived in the ‘most abject poverty'.
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Not that any of this bothered the Lawrence brothers. Sir Henry, who has been described as the ‘virtual ruler of the Punjab from 1847', perfected what was known as the Lawrence system.
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He was a fatherly figure to native rulers. He wanted to keep the region quiet from a strictly external point of view. He was relatively unconcerned about what went on inside the province, as long as it didn't give any trouble to the Raj. Under his younger brother John, this system was dubbed ‘masterly inactivity' by its opponents. It entailed a policy, so far as was possible, of non-intervention towards both India's neighbours and the princely states. There was little trust or love involved, but so long as things were quiet that would be sufficient. Along with the inactivity and world-weariness, these imperial bureaucrats sometimes offered penetrating insights into the men and affairs of the region. John Lawrence was bright. In 1829 he had passed out third from the East India College (which later became Haileybury), where he was remembered for having a ‘good deal of the Irish element' in his behaviour.
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He observed of the Afghans that they would ‘bear poverty' and ‘insecurity of life; but will not tolerate foreign rule'.

In defence of the pragmatists, they were always having to consider the wider picture, the geopolitical situation. Kashmir was an important part of
the so-called Great Game–the name, immortalized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel
Kim
, for the battle over Central Asia which was being fought almost continuously, on an informal basis of espionage and posturing, by Russia and Great Britain throughout the nineteenth century. A local ruler was needed to preserve a figleaf of independence. If Britain annexed Kashmir outright, the Russians might be offended. In the 1860s Lord Mayo, who had been appointed viceroy in 1868, was writing to the Duke of Argyll, the Liberal Secretary of State for India under Gladstone, that Russia ‘can be truly told that our only object is commerce and peace'. To Mayo, geopolitical manoeuvring in Central Asia was hazardous: ‘Russia hardly seems to be aware of the dangerous game she is trying to play in Central Asia.'
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The term ‘the Great Game' describes pithily the strategic dimension of imperial politics in which Kashmir played an important part. It is in the context of this kind of realism in foreign affairs that the granting of Kashmir to Gulab Singh can be more precisely understood.

In this far-sighted letter Mayo pointed out to Argyll something which he felt the Russians did not understand. There were, in India, ‘such differences of Religion and Race as enable us to play Mahomedan and Sikh, Hindoo or Buddhist against each other'. In Central Asia, Russia ‘is now face to face with millions of poor fanatical and warlike Races inhabiting almost inaccessible mountains or half desert plains–who . . . are to a man almost Sunie [Sunni] Mahometans'. These tribes and warlike people needed only ‘some Prophet of influence . . . to lead them against the infidel invader'. This was a shrewd assessment of Central Asian politics, and of the unifying and galvanizing power of Islam. Mayo quoted the
Moscow Gazette
of 5 April 1869, which referred to the Russian plan ‘to make Central Asia a strong strategical point against England in the event of an Eastern War'.
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What went on inside Kashmir was not nearly as important as its role in the great theatre of Central Asian politics. The Kashmir maharajas were also well aware of their strategic value. Gulab Singh, a diabetic, died in 1857. He was succeeded by his son Ranbir Singh, who irritated the British by trying to curry favour with the Russians, just as his father had been expert at winning the favour of the British. When the Russians occupied the city of Tashkent in today's Uzbekistan in 1865, it was Maharaja Ranbir Singh who was the first Indian prince to send secret emissaries to convey
his ‘congratulations' to the Russian General responsible for this success. Ranbir was very careful not to enter into any written communications with the Russians. All contact would be oral; he even established a Russian-language school in Kashmir.
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Ranbir was every bit as wily as his father. While trying to ingratiate himself with the Russians, he was also keeping the British satisfied. Given his machinations, it is interesting to see that Lord Mayo was not very impressed by his abilities: ‘My interview with the Maharaja was satisfactory –he is a very good man but weak.'
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Ranbir had clearly perfected the art of playing the stupid innocent when dealing with the British, while sending congratulations and marks of affection to the Russians. For the Maharaja, independence was paramount. For the British, a quiet life and the promotion of greater trade were what mattered. Sir Charles Napier had remarked that the British object in ‘conquering India, the object of all our cruelties, was money'.
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This was cynical, but there was a large element of truth in the claim. Lord Mayo was anxious, at the beginning of 1870, to secure a treaty with the ‘Rajah of Cashmere which will have the effect of creating a free Road from our frontier to the borders of Eastern Turkestan'. Trade with eastern Turkestan, the area we would call Azerbaijan or Armenia, was of ‘daily increasing importance to the subjects of the British Government and those of the Maharaja'. The Maharaja was worried about his independence, whereas Mayo was fantasizing about establishing ‘for the
first time
a secure and duty free route from Central Asia to India' within twelve months.
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Kashmir was a classic case of extending the empire by franchise, a way of allowing local rulers the freedom to do what they wanted so long as everything was quiet externally and trade routes remained safe and secure. The family of Gulab Singh, in the meantime, were becoming very rich. They had a policy of making ‘every product of the Valley a state monopoly'. Even prostitutes were taxed, for which they were divided into three classes, ‘according to their gratifications', which were taxed at 40, 20 and 10 rupees a year respectively.
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According to Walter Lawrence, a British official in the Indian Civil Service (ICS) writing in the 1890s, ‘everything except air and water was under taxation'. This policy not only killed initiative and enterprise, it also led to social unrest in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir.
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The hopelessness of the franchise system was exposed during the great famines which crippled India in 1877–9. In Srinagar, a population of 127,000 was reduced to 60,000. ‘Oil cake, rice, chaff, the bark of the elm and yew, and even grass and roots were eagerly devoured by the starving people.'
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The famines ravaged the whole of India, particularly affecting the southern part of the subcontinent. In London the Lord Mayor of London received large donations from businessmen and City financiers anxious to help alleviate the crisis.
The Times
recorded in August that N. M. Rothschild and Barings gave £1,000 each. Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, the brewers, gave £210, while P&O, the shipping company, gave £105. This shows the relative standing of these companies at the time. By October the Lord Mayor's fund stood at £415,000, roughly £41.5 million at today's values.

In Kashmir, however, it was felt that the Maharaja hadn't done enough. Ranbir Singh was under scrutiny, and his death in 1885 gave Britain its opportunity to influence events in Kashmir more directly. The British government immediately told the new Maharaja that the Officer on Special Duty would be replaced by a full-fledged resident.
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The Resident would be able to keep a watchful eye on the Maharaja, particularly in connection with intrigues with the Russians. It was even suspected that the new Maharaja, Pratap Singh, had been engaged in treasonable correspondence with representatives of the Russian Tsar.
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The relationship with the Indian princes is complicated and even now historians are often confused about the degree to which Britain allowed them to be independent. To understand the status of the princes, we can start by looking at certain aspects of British society of the time. British local government had always depended on the resident aristocracy and gentry. In India, the British officials transplanted the status, the petty snobberies and the fine gradations of rank and privilege which prevailed in Britain itself. The class system was replicated in India. The Raj, it seemed, was happiest when dealing with a ‘feudal order'. One-third of India was ruled ‘indirectly through the princes'.
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No one has ever been sure of exactly how many princes there were. There were certainly over 500, perhaps nearer 600, and they varied greatly in status and wealth. There were three categories of Indian princely state: at the top there were about
140 large states; then came a little more than 100 or so middling states, followed by about 300 minor states, which were really just landed estates.