The Rajas Of The Punjab

· 1873 · Public domain (published pre-1930) · archive.org ↗

1THE RAJAS OF THE PUNJAB.

2The Sikhs were

3never a united

4people.

5But they were at no time a united people. During

6the eighteenth century each leader was absolutely inde-

7pendent, conquering and plundering on his own account,

8and only joining other chiefs to make an attack on the

9common enemy, the Muhammadan. Banjit Singh con-

10trived to make a compact kingdom out of the Punjab

11proper, north of the Bias, but he did not unite the Sikh

12people generally under his rule. At the time of his

13greatest power, in 1830, there may have been 1,250,000

14Sikhs in the whole Punjab. But of these 500,000 lived

15to the south of the Satlej, under the rule of 'chiefs who

16looked upon Banjit Singh as an upstart, and hated him

17even more than they feared him, if indeed this were

18possible. The Sikhs of the Cis-Satlej States had, indeed,

19a secret sympathy with their northern co-religionists, as

20was very evident during the Satlej campaign ; but they

21had never united with them for any common object

22during the nineteenth century. Even the Sikhs of the

23Jalandhar Doab were only partially under the rule of

24Banjit Singh. Their leader was the Ahluwalia Chief, who

25claimed to be the equal of the Maharaja ; and although

26he was compelled to send a contingent to every campaign,

27and often to attend himself, yet he hated the Lahore

28Government fully as much as the Cis-Satlej Chiefs, and

29always looked for protection and countenance to the

30English, who, had they chosen, might have moved their

31boundary to the Bias thirty-five years earlier than they

32did, and have maintained themselves there without a

33struggle. But it was thought politic to leave a barrier

34of independent chiefs between British territory and that

35of Lahore ; a policy intelligible enough, and perhaps wise,

36but denied or forgotten on the only occasions when it

37should have been remembered.