The British plan to overthrow Sikh Kingdom
The proposals of Henry Lawrence at Peshawar to entice some Sikh Chiefs and the negotiations of Sir George Clerk at Lahore served a double purpose of the British. They secured active support of the Sikh Government for operations in Afghanistan and bound Gulab Singh and Avitabile to their own political interests in the Punjab. They also drove a wedge between the Ruler (Sher Singh) and his Chiefs. The seeds of division and dismemberment of the Lahore Kingdom were thus sown with the Dogras already dreaming of the accession of their family to the throne of Lahore. This ultimately led to the murder of Maharaja Sher Singh, his son Partap Singh and Dhian Singh Dogra on the same day (September 15, 1843) at the hands of Sandhanwalia Sardars. Photo Caption: Lawrence
According to Sita Ram Kohli’s Sunset of the Sikh Empire (page-41) ‘Dhian Singh was responsible for a policy whereby the more violent elements in the army, very often Sikhs, were transferred from important military stations to others where scope for making trouble was slighter, and of recruiting new men, mostly non-Sikhs, from Jammu and the other Punjab hills. Between the months of June 1841 and February 1842, some six thousand of these hill men were formed into 8 battalions of infantry and 3 units of light artillery. This, very naturally, aroused suspicion of him, both as disciplinarian and a Dogra’. This version is also supported by Dr. Ganda Singh in his, Maharaja Duleep Singh, Correspondence, (pages 18–19), when he writes, This has been confirmed by the Memories of Alexander Gardner, edited by Major Hugh Pearse, 1898. Gardner was a confidant of Raja Dhian Singh who had given to him a wife out of his own house. Through her and living always among the Dogras he knew and had he and a great deal about the intrigues then afoot. According to his Memoirs, pp. 212-13:
This dream was that Hira Singh, the heir of their family, or at least the most promising of its rising generation, might eventually succeed to the throne of Ranjit Singh. Those to be swept away were the male members of the Maharaja’s family, and all those ministers, advisers and chiefs who would not join the Dogra party. All these murders were brought about directly or indirectly by the Dogra brothers, Dhian Singh and Gulab Singh, for the eventual aggrandizement of their family in the person of Hira Singh’.
It is thus crystal clear that rather than resolve to try their hand at the British territory after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in June, 1839′, Maharaja Sher Singh, true to the treaty of friendship with the British, provided 15,000 Darbar troops to avenge the Afghan treachery and to force open the Khyber pass at a time when their position in Afghanistan was critical, when they could not relieve their besieged personnel at various places in the Afghan heartland without the active support of the Sikhs and when the ‘repute of European arms was deeply smitten and the massacre resounded throughout the peninsula’. It is equally clear that while receiving active support of Sikhs in men and material in ‘re-deeming their name’, the British were simultaneously planning intrigues and treachery to subjugate the empire of their saviors (the Sikhs) in Afghanistan.
British plans for the occupation of Punjab, were long since in their mind. Sir Henry Fane, the British Commander-in-Chief, came to Lahore in March 1837, to attend the marriage of Prince Nau Nihal Singh. Writing about him Captain J.D. Cunningham, the illustrious Historian, who had held several important political posts from 1838 to 1846 and who had remained in close contact with Punjab affairs and who later had to pay with his blood for writing History of the Sikhs, says (page 193), That able Commander (Sir Henry Fane) was ever a careful observer of military means and of soldierly qualities, he formed an estimate of the force which would be required for the complete subjugation of the Punjab.
Cunningham adds:
This visit to Lahore was perhaps mainly useful, in enabling Lieutenant Colonel Garden, the indefatigable Quarter-Master General of the Bengal Army to complete a detailed map of that part of the country, and which formed the ground work of all the maps used, when hostilities did at last break out with the Sikhs.
It is thus obvious that it were the British who had planned the subjugation of the Punjab during the life time of Ranjit Singh and who maneuvered and precipitated the Punjab crisis, after his death.
And the plans for occupation of the Punjab were based more on treachery and intrigue rather than chivalry or force of arms. Raja Gulab Singh Dogra had been detailed by Maharaja Sher Singh to help the British in the second expedition to Afghanistan in 1842. Meeting him on the other side of the Indus it occurred to Henry Lawrence in January, 1842 that a consideration should be offered to the Dogra Rajas Dhian Singh and Gulab Singh; for their assistance, they alone in the Punjab being now able to give aid. We need such men as the Rajahs and General Avitabile and should bind them to us by the only tie they recognize self-interest. The Rajahs secured in their territory, even with additions, General Avitabile guaranteed out aid in retiring with his property, and any other sardars aiding us cordially, be specially and separately treated for. He proposed that on the terms of efficient support we assist Raja Gulab Singh to get possession of the valley of Jalalabad and Endeavour to make some arrangement to secure it and Peshawar to his family. Life of Sir Henry Lawrence by Major General Sir Herbert Edwardes. Having completed the design of putting the Maharaja and the Dogra Chiefs against each other.
Even five days after the declaration of war by the British, the Governor General was not convinced of its moral justification. Robert writes
December 18th I rode behind the Governor General and we sat under a tree to, await the infantry. The Governor General remarked : Will the people of England consider this (Crossing the Sutlej by the Sikhs) an actual invasion of our frontier and a justification of war? But by now the die had been cast and they were already in the midst of a war with the Sikhs.
Royal Family of Patiala
Emily Eden’s ‘Portraits of the Princes and People of India’. Eden wrote of the Raja of Patiala: “[He] is the chief of the largest of the Sikh Principalities on the South Bank of the Sutlej which owe allegiance to the British Government and are under its protection … the revenues of the Raja of Putteealla are supposed to be from £300,000 to £400,000 a year.” Patiala had collaborated with the British against Ranjit Singh (the ruler of the Sikh nation) and entered into a treaty with them in 1809 when Lord Minto was Governor General. At this time both the British and Ranjit Singh were vying to extend control over the states between the Sutlej and the Jamuna rivers.