The colonial history of the subcontinent is full of stories of fallen kings and warriors, of dispossessed rajas and princes, stories of betrayals and lost causes, displaced men and women. Maharaja Duleep Singh’s life is one such story.

Duleep Singh, the youngest and the last surviving son of Ranjit Singh, was anointed as the Maharaja of Punjab in September 1843 at the age of five. By this time, the East India Company had acquired unlimited power throughout India ,while all major indigenous powers had been eclipsed: in 1798 the Nizam of Hyderabad had been coerced into signing subsidiary alliance with the British, in 1799 the Company with the assistance of Hyderabadis, successfully took on Tipu Sultan, and 1803 marked the eventual submission of the Marathas. After this, the British chafed to take down the last standing power — the Sikh Empire. But this was unthinkable during the reign of Ranjit Singh. Nevertheless, the opportunity came with Ranjit’s death, and consequently, bloody wars of succession brutally weakened the empire.

The British, who had been biding their time, watching events at the Punjab court with keen interest, made their move ,,launching a series of savage wars upon the Sikhs, starting from the year 1845 and lasting up till 1849. The British army ultimately gained a decisive victory against the Sikh forces at the battle of Gujrat in February 1849. This tragic outcome forced Duleep to surrender his kingdom as well as the Kohinoor to the British in March 1849. The Punjab and the famous diamond became possessions of the Crown and the 10-year-old king “a British problem”.

Of course, the British had an answer to the problem. They tore Duleep apart from his mother, Rani Jindan, and banished him to Fatehgarh in Uttar Pradesh, where Dr Login was appointed as his tutor companion. Under his paternal care ,Duleep’s metamorphosis into an Anglophile began. Young and malleable as he was, Duleep soon expressed the desire to give up the Sikh faith, accept conversion to Christianity, become a complete English gentleman and go to England.

According to Indian writer Khushwant Singh, the news was received with great delight by Lord Dalhousie, “not because he felt that the Church would gain an important adherent, but because it would forever kill Duleep’s chances of being acknowledged by the Sikhs as their maharaja.” Duleep was sent to England soon after, where he became a frequent visitor to Buckingham Palace and was treated by Victoria as her godson. He was given an allowance of 40,000 pounds a year and a large estate in the county of Suffolk. In 1861, he returned to India for a short while and took his mother (who at the time was living in exile in Nepal) back with him to England.

The extraordinary story of Maharaja Duleep Singh, Ranjit Singh’s youngest son and his mother, the spirited Rani Jindan, much of whose life was spent defying the British colonialists

Duleep’s reunion with his mother marked an epiphanic moment in his life. His condition of lulled consciousness, brought on by ready acceptance of British rule, started to wear off. He awakened to the fact that he had been unfairly done out of his rightful place in life and, for this reason, he set about redressing it.

To fully understand Duleep’s actions from this point on, it is important to say a few words on Rani Jindan. Intelligent and fearless, she was the youngest wife of Ranjit Singh and the regent of the Sikh empire from 1843 until 1846. Historian, William Darlymple informs us that when Duleep was made to sign the Treaty of Bhyroval with the Company — whereby “the British vowed to protect him until he reached the age of sixteen, as long as he, in turn, submitted to the presence of a resident who would have full authority to direct matters in all departments of the state” — it was the politically perceptive Jindan who understood what the British were doing; seizing Sikh lands by “stealth” and she duly warned her people.

But sadly, the supine response of courtiers emboldened the British to impose another outrageous document on Duleep, the Treaty of Lahore, which was signed by him in March 1846. According to Darlymple, under the treaty, “the British notionally allowed him to remain on the throne, though they took away all that Duleep’s kingship was built upon. Articles One and Two of this treaty talked of friendship and his right to rule, yet Article Three transferred control of his fortresses to the British. Articles Four and Five dealt with reparations which crippled Duleep’s exchequer, and Articles Seven and Eight decimated his army and gave away all his heavy guns.” Incandescent with rage at the Company’s insolence, the Rani urged her son to defy the British. Duleep obeyed. This was something the British never saw coming.

Duleep’s reunion with his mother marked an epiphanic moment in his life. His condition of lulled consciousness brought on by ready acceptance of the British rule started to wear off. He awakened to the fact that he had been unfairly done out of his rightful place in life and for this reason he set about righting it.

Jindan’s courage proved one thing to the wily Lord Dalhousie: If Duleep were to be moulded into a loyal subject of the Crown, Jindan’s influence on the child would have to be diminished. He, therefore, had the Rani thrown into the dungeon of a fortress in Sheikhupura. Moreover, to justify his actions back home, Dalhousie resorted to the most favoured colonial strategy: epistemic violence, that is, defaming those Indian rulers through the written word who dared to challenge the Company’s authority. Jindan was thus painted as a “sexual predator and described as the Messalina of Punjab, evoking the promiscuous wife of the Roman emperor Claudius. It was suggested that she would use her beauty to bewitch men to follow her in an uprising. That is why she had to be locked away.” (Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond by William Darlymple and Anita Anand.)

It is this spirited Rani who once again inspired in her son courage to do the right thing. He therefore questioned “the terms of the settlement he had been forced to sign all those years ago.” He also demanded the restoration of his personal property in India as well as the return of the Kohinoor. Singh persistently petitioned the court for the return of his kingdom, appealed to the British public through newspapers, and tried to win the support of the French Government, the Tsar, the Kaiser and other European rulers. But rebel and riot though he may have, nothing came of his protests. Duleep’s cause was lost.

Having passed through a stage of infatuation with the British as well as the bitterness of struggle against them, Duleep decided to reconcile with them, but with the realisation of the full extent of British vanity and his own helplessness. This compelled him to write the following letter of apology to the Queen:

“It seems to me now that it is the will of God that I should suffer injustice at the hands of your people. I can find no one to curse Great Britain, and in spite of all her faults and her injustices, God blesses and makes her Great, and when I look at her, I feel that, in fighting against your country, I have been fighting against God. I would return to England if I were assured of your free pardon.”

Singh’s experience of the British brought him face to face with bitter truth. His was not a world where people are masters of their fate, but slaves of the colonial establishment. This was a world that allows no room for an individual who can think, feel and dare. And so with this recognition, Duleep died an unhappy, dispirited and a broken man in October 1893, in a dingy hotel room in Paris.

A more painful aspect of Duleep’s tragic story, I believe, is the fact that he had become a faded memory back in his native homeland. When, in his attempt to reclaim his kingdom, Duleep opened correspondence with several Indian princes and Sikh sardars, no one took him seriously. The Punjabis had simply forgotten the manner in which the Sikh Empire was destroyed. And it was this dangerous forgetfulness that shaped their future actions. This notion is so firmly drafted by Khushwant Singh that I prefer to borrow the whole passage as he writes:

“In the Punjab, the memories of the men who fought the battles of Ferozeshahr and Sabroan, Chillianwala and Gujrat were soon forgotten. In the Great Mutiny of 1857, only eight years after the annexation of their kingdom, the Punjabis helped their erstwhile conquerors to defeat their Hindustani compatriots. A new generation of Punjabis who disowned their past was born. Instead of having nostalgic regret over the passing of the last kingdom of India, many were proud to be the foremost in loyalty to the British Crown. Instead of boasting of their forefathers’ achievements in hurling back foreign invaders, they were pleased to be known as ‘The Sword Arm of the British Empire.’ Thus was the sponge of oblivion passed over the slate of history.”

The writer is a lecturer of English at University of the Punjab

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 29th, 2020