Creator Of The Punjab

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30082, 16 March 1963, Page 3

Creator Of The Punjab

Ranjit Singh. Maharajah Of The Punjab. By Khushwant Singh. Geo Allan and Unwin. 237 pp. In this detailed biography of the Sikh Maharajah, the author describes how, between 1800 and his death in 1839, Ranjit Singh built from diverse Hindu, Sikh, end Muslim elements, not merely a Sikh kingdom, but an independent and unified Punjabi State. In the south' he ultimately extended the frontiers of his State to the deserts of the Sindh; in the north, through the conquest of Kashmir, to the borders of China ate Tibet. For the first time in a thousand years the territories of the Pathans and Afghans, the traditional conquerors of the Punjab, were successfully invaded. While the author gives full emphasis to Ranjit Singh’s ruthless pursuit of power, he is careful to correct the prejudice of previous biographers, who have, according to their different political and racial sympathies, described the Maharajah as a wily and treacherous oriental, a freebooter and a saint. The author has drawn extensively on the contemporary observations of diplomats arid travellers, among them Alexander Burnes, the botanist Jacquemont, and Sir Henry Fone." Both Jacquemont and Burnes stress the Maharajah’s humanity. Jacquemont says that in a country where religious intolerance was traditional, men of fiercely-opposed religious creeds were united in loyalty to their leader. The secret, he considers, was Ranjit’s religious cynicism: “A Sikh by profession, a sceptic in reality.” Burnes was impressed by Ranjit’s lack of ostentation. This, his biographer thinks, was at least partly due to a native shrewdness. He compromised between becoming a maharajah and remaining a peasant leader. He refused to wear an emblem of royalty on his turban, and did not sit on a throne. Nor did the new coins which he had struck bear his effigy. “My sword,” he is reported to have said, “procures for me all the distinction I desire. I am quite indifferent to external pomp.” Almost as much as war, Ranjit loved women and wine, and there are many descriptions of feasts, spring festivals and marriage ceremonies of an Arabian sumptuousness. Ranjit appears a man unusually warm- hearted and likeable for the despotic ruler' of a great empire. The two good maps of Northern India are an indispensable guide to an understanding of the complicated political situation and everchanging manoeuvres of war.

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