Soldier Sahibs

Title: Soldier Sahibs – The Men Who Made the North - West Frontier

Author: Charles Allen

Publisher: Abacus, 2009 (First published 2000)

ISBN: 978-0-349-11456-9

Pages: 341

We are so used to look at the map of the Indian Subcontinent in our everyday lives that we seldom pause to reflect upon the events that made the boundaries between groups of people who loathed each other worse than they did locusts. Particularly rugged seems the terrain adjoining Afghanistan that we ought to salute the brave people who claimed the country and drew boundaries roughly in the same shape as we see today. Charles Allen tells the story of how the North – West frontier was made by subjugating the people with battles, ruses, gifts and providing them with occasions for plunder by taking them along for raids on other people. The East India Company officials who carved out the frontier tract for their company and the kingdom assumed legendary status among the natives with their acts of valour and steadfastness on the face of adversity. Though the subject matter covers only two decades in the temporal sphere, the stories are action-packed and full of anecdotes not heard before with the reading of textbooks on history. The author was born in India, where six generations of his family served under the British Raj. A writer and historian specializing in colonial and military subjects, Charles Allen is the author of several books including Tales from the Dark Continent, The Search for Shangri-La and most recently, Kipling Sahib, a biography of Rudyard Kipling in India.

The author presents the story of how the British ended up subduing the fiercely independent and war-like tribes of Afghans, Afridis and other fringe clans steeped in medieval notions of honour and blood feuds. The plot begins with the First Afghan War (1839) and goes on to the 1857 War through a brief period of consolidation of the Sikh kingdom in whose favour the British first tried to keep the frontier tribes in check. After the Pyrrhic victory in Kabul, Afghanistan was handed back to the rebels in return for nominal allegiance. The company played on the aspirations of the courtiers of Raja Dulip Singh’s court who ascended the throne as a boy upon the death of his father Maharaja Ranjit Singh who was also called the Lion of Punjab. Allen’s elaboration of the events is too transparent for the readers to fail to identify the wily tactic of ‘Divide and Rule’ which underlay all the company’s maneuvers. To conquer the Afghani Muslims, they sought the alliance of Sikh soldiers and Hindu sepoys. To quell the Sikhs who rose up in revolt during the Sikh wars, the company cleverly used the Muslim tribesmen and Hindu sepoys. And finally, when the Hindu sepoys began the Mutiny in 1857, it was the turn of the Sikhs and Muslim frontier tribesmen to act as right-hand men to the British. The seeds of discord among the three religions, though definitely not sown originally by the British were watered and nourished well by them to reap the poisoned fruit of partition nearly a century later. The author however, treats all aspects of the issue as the natural course of action suggesting itself worthwhile as seen by the alien conquerors.

Of the many soldiers who assumed administrative positions in the frontier government and eulogized by Allen, only a couple - John Nicholson and James Abbott - seems to have acquired a legacy still flourishing in folk mind. Nicholson established the company’s authority with an iron fist, giving scant regard to British law or civilized conventions. Flogging and hostage taking to punish incursions by other members of the tribe were common. Accounts of his haughtiness and vile temper spread along with tales of admiration engendered by the respect commanded by people who are feared and obeyed absolutely by others. Wildly exaggerated accounts of his system of justice compared him with none other than King Solomon of the fables. The inherent nature of Indians to worship people of authority came out in the open in the form of a sect of Nikal seynis (the cult of Nicholson) who worshipped him as an incarnation of godhead! Even today, in the regions in which he ruled, the legend he spawned has not lost its splendour. A question of irritation shot out by the people in Bannu even now is “who do you think you are? Nicholson?”. Another such figure was James Abbott who commanded immense respect from his subjects and lived among them as one of them. There were instances when Abbott parted ways with his British masters to uphold a word of honour he made to the natives. The people were really fascinated with this young soldier and his name is preserved in the appellation of Abbottabad in Hazara region of Pakistan. We now know it was the place where the terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was gunned down.

The War of Independence, or Mutiny depending on which side of the fence you are in, provided a real testing ground for the mettle of the young officers celebrated beyond measure in the book. Collecting masses of Sikhs and Pathans as mercenaries, the British marched to Delhi where the rebels had captured the Red Fort. The legend however couldn’t survive the onslaught of disciplined firepower. Within days of storming the bastion, Nicholson was shot down and found abandoned on the wayside. Medical care couldn’t bring him back to life and he breathed his last nine days later. Thus ended the life of a racist, arrogant and insubordinate officer of the Company’s army. Though Allen presents him as a hero and legend of the Pathans, what we read from the text are gruesome accounts of extra-judicial killings of native Indians at the merest whim of this deranged alien in a foreign land in which he didn’t have any moral right to govern.

This book provides the answer to the question of why authors like William Dalrymple fire up the imagination of our society and why Charles Allen, even with a better researched work, fails to do so. The subject matter of the work, namely, annexation of the North – West frontier of the East India Company’s Indian domains virtually envelops in its fold the plot of Dalrymple’s latest work, Return of a King (reviewed earlier), but the contrast cannot be more sharp. Allen sees the whole episode from a Briton’s perspective and with ethos more of a historian than a storyteller. Even though I have not read Allen’s The Search for Shangri-La, the similarity denoted by the title with the content of Dalrymple’s To Xanadu (reviewed earlier) is striking. We may pardon him for his insistence on calling the First War of Independence (1857) as only a mutiny on historical grounds, but there is no denying that in narrating the acts and heroic deeds of his protagonists, never for an instant had he cared to leaf through the mountain of discontent and dishonour the native principalities had had to endure under the conquering yoke of the company. It is true that considerable mellowing had taken place in the tone of comments on the journals of the army officials who fought in the frontier in 1840-60 repeated in the book, which may be attributed to the rise of liberalism and shunning of racism. Shorn of these feeble traces of modernity revealed occasionally in the book, Indian readers look upon the contorted countenance of soldiers of fortune descended upon a land for no more ennobling spirit than his own livelihood. Allen is dead sure of the fact that British intervention in a native state produced benevolent effects on the populace, even though such acts of aggression were often masked with subterfuge and desertion.

Allen’s book covers a geographical stretch now included in the borders of modern Pakistan. Indeed, the style of narration and bias towards the supposedly noble qualities of the tribesmen in these regions like their sense of humour, independence and abhorrence to yield to authority are glorified, which does not leave the reader in any doubt about the targeted audience of the work. At the same time, the Afghans are portrayed as a treacherous people who won’t bat an eyelid to condemn their brothers to death, if it somehow suited their purpose. Depictions of loyalty displayed by the border tribesmen are felt as nothing more than the feeling of subjection shown by a slave to his master.

The book is recommended only for those readers who won’t mind thumbing through 341 pages with not much to commend for.

Rating: 2 Star