The complex and strange life of Dalip Singh, almost theatrical in the way that it subdivides into different scenes and acts compresses into the life of a single individual all the tensions and violence brought about by the clash of two great cultures. It contains the sadness and dignity of human beings trying to act with decency to each other, despite being caught up in this clash and, on one side at least an almost complete misunderstanding of the other’s position.

Dalip was born as the youngest son of one of the junior queens of Ranjit Singh and with no likelihood of becoming ruler. Ranjit Singh had created a great Sikh kingdom. The drama and spectacle of its court entranced English visitors like Emily Eden while its power and stability gave the Governors of British India grave concern. Ranjit had led the embattled Sikh community to found a mighty state in the Punjab, Kashmir, the Himalayas and part of Afghanistan. He had then proceeded to modernise it, starting with the army. Every community was involved in his administration, Muslims ran his foreign policy, Hindus his financial administration and Sikhs the army and provincial government. An extraordinary band of Europeans were employed in senior positions to help with his modernising and military innovations. Many of these were officers who had been displaced by the end of the Napoleonic wars. The most senior of these, General Allard, also ran the increasing trade with France in shawls, the production of which Ranjit had moved from Kashmir to his capital at Lahore. Ranjit was quite pragmatic enough to follow a policy of accommodation with the British government despite intense provocation over the Cis-Sutlej states and the annexation of Sind, and covert British support for the campaigns of Syed Ahmed Barelvi against Sikh rule, in addition to following a position of friendly neutrality over British involvement in Afghanistan.

Ranjit’s position at this head of this state was complex. The Sikhs themselves had grown up as a popular protest movement against feudal Muslim and Hindu rulers and had a strong egalitarian tradition. As far as they were concerned Ranjit was the appointed nominee of the Khalsa, the Sikh community in arms. On his coins and to the end of his reign Ranjit was careful to make clear that he ruled by the grace of the Sikh gurus and of the Khalsa. On the other hand he had acquired a kingdom with communities who had quite different traditions of authority. To them he was a Maharaja. A modernising state with an element of egalitarianism and popular involvement not only was a serious potential threat to British rule but ran counter to their whole justification as the bringers of civilisation to a moribund traditionalist East incapable of modernising itself. So dominant had this view become that it was genuinely difficult for the British to understand the Sikh state, and it even managed to convince Marx that the British conquest of India was in fact the only way forward.

When Ranjit died the inherent tensions in the Sikh state began to cause chaos. The oldest son Kharrack Singh simply did not have the personality to rule. His son Nau Nihal Singh acted for him and succeeded after his death. When he too died in a mysterious accident the council of the Khalsa appointed his uncle Sher Singh, the second son of Ranjit as ruler. The struggle between the Court and the Khalsa now came out into the open.. It is a strong endorsement of the strength of the union of different communities that the struggle when it came was not between Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus but between competing aristocratic factions at the Sikh court, the Dogras and the Sandhanwalias, and the Khalsa army. In a bewildering series of coups first Sher Singh, Partap Singh, and their opponents Dhyan, Ajit and Lechna Singh first seized power and then were brutally assassinated.

Dalip came to the throne at the age of five in 1843 largely because there was hardly anyone else left and through the ability of his exceptional mother, Rani Jindan. As a political compromise and an attempt to hold the state together representatives of all factions were appointed to her administration, this move proved disastrous as it simply allowed the infighting to continue.

At first the young boy catapulted on to the throne of a major state in the grip of a crisis cannot have been aware of all this. The first scenes of his life were played out against the rich background of the court and the beautiful Mughal palaces of Lahore and the pageantry of a state that left English visitors breathless.. He enjoyed falconry, he had the best of horses and elephants to ride. Every day trays of jewels and of costumes were brought to him to choose which to wear. At the same time he was receiving the education of a ruler. He had two tutors, one in the Persian of the court and one in the Gurmukhi in which the Guru Granth Saheb is written. He was taught to shoot with gun and bow and trained in command by being given a troop of sixty boys to command. The love of his mother Jindan and his uncle Jawahir Singh, who as his mother’s brother was expected to play a particularly warm and affectionate role in the young boy’s life, surrounded him.

It must have seemed a kind of heaven to the boy. Certainly it seems so on the various European and Sikh pictures that have survived of his early years. But as these sketches reveal Europeans had always been part of his life, whether as respectful portrait painters, charming lady guests or the more distant figures of his father’s European officers.

Yet the brutal realities of politics soon invaded. Jawahir had been getting rid of his rivals and following a pro-British line, both of which had alienated the Khalsa who summoned him before them. Though accompanied by Rani Jindan and Dalip Singh he was killed before their eyes despite his sister, Jindan’s desperate pleas. The child was horror struck. In later life he was often to recall his fear and shock, describing how he had been in his uncle’s arms at the time, and how he had come to realise that he might well be next.

Events were now spiralling out of control. The British did not know whether to be more alarmed at Sikh power or Sikh anarchy or whether to be excited at the potential for control and intervention. Sikh politicians were keen to present themselves as the true heirs of Ranjit Singh ‘s policy of friendship with Britain and to seek British support against their rivals. The new leaders of the court party, Tej and Lal Singh, had neither genuine support nor commitment to the state. They were neither able to control the Khalsa army, now seriously alarmed by British military exercises along the Sutlej border, which included building a boat bridge over the Sutlej or willing to see them victorious. The Governor-General Hardinge was preparing for war, and when the Khalsa crossed over the Sutlej to nominally Sikh territory he found the cause he wanted. Tej and Lal Singh seem to have entered into secret negotiations with the British and to have been in their pay.. Against the wishes of its own government it very nearly won at Mudki, Ferozepur, and Sobraon..

The Dogra governor of Kashmir, Gulab Singh, negotiated a peace. Gulab Singh had owed his own government the equivalent of a million pounds, this he paid to the British who then made him the independent Maharaja of Kashmir. Thus ended the First Sikh War, with the Khalsa defeated, the Sikh state having lost lands and Tej and Lal Singh protected by British bayonets. The fact that the defeated Tej and Lal Singh as the nominal commanders against the British during the war should have been promoted, protected and rewarded by them reveals the complicated nature of politics at Lahore.

The British had won, just, because the Sikh State was divided. |However the defeated Khalsa was still formidable and a long drawn out war throughout its huge territories an alarming and expensive prospect. The solution that the Governor general chose was to agree to sign a treaty acceptable to the Sikh government, preventing a movement forming rallying to the cause of national survival and then step by step use his ever increasing power to unilaterally impose more and more crushing conditions. By the terms of the Treaty of Lahore (on 9 March 1846) the Sikh state lost territories and some of its independence (the army was curtailed in size, the British army was to be allowed free passage, the British were to adjudicate disputes between the Sikhs and the new kingdom of Kashmir and the Sikhs were not to employ Europeans or Americans without British agreement) but no British Resident was to be imposed, there was to be no permanent British force and the Sikhs were still free to make their own foreign policy and to retain full control of internal affairs. In signing this treaty Hardinge can hardly have been said to have acted in good faith, for he was to write to his deputy in the Punjab, Sir Henry Lawrence, that by the Treaty of Lahore, March 1846 the Punjab was never intended to be an independent state yet clearly the Sikh signatories to the treaty had every reason to believe they were to keep considerable authority. Two days after the treaty was signed tougher Supplementary Articles were added.

Disturbances that followed the imposition of the Hindu Gulab Singh on Muslim Kashmir provided the pretext for a new Treaty, that of Byrowal in December 1846. This finally did impose a Resident with full powers, a Council of Regency (including Tej Singh but not Rani Jindan), and a British garrison, but even this treaty stipulated that this was to be only during Dalip Singh’ s minority. This treaty was to determine the entire future life of the Maharaja. At first sight the treaty appears to have been very generous, the young Maharaja was to be protected until his state could be handed over to him intact, though reduced in size. Whatever the Treaty said, the reality was that the British now ruled the Punjab from behind the young Maharaja. One painting captures the moment of signing the treaty of Byrowal, amidst the colour and splendour of the Sikh court the sirdars including Gulab Singh are gathered together, seated on European armchairs in conference with the stiffly correct figures of Sir Henry Lawrence, Lords Gough and Dalhousie and Frederick Currie. Lost amongst them is the diminutive figure of the boy Dalip.

Henry and John Lawrence who ruled the Punjab as Residents were exceptionably able men. They and their subordinates became heroes to later British administrators for their energy and thoroughness. They must have seemed larger than life figures to the isolated child in the palace. Henry Lawrence was charmed by the boy and personally kind to him, organising activities and magic lantern parties for him. The principal features of their Punjab administration were twofold, the man on the spot must act swiftly and with determination and he must receive the full support of his superiors. Given that they were all young men unfamiliar with the country a less flattering way of interpreting this would be that they were encouraged to act arbitrarily and that there could be no appeal against their decisions to any higher authority. Given that they were all also encouraged to see their task as protecting Muslim and Hindu peasants against Sikh administrators they were in fact charged with dismantling Sikh power in the provinces.

Dalip now made his first recorded political act when at the annual Dussera festival in1847 he publicly refused, despite British instructions, to mark Tej Singh as his accepted Commander in chief. Hardinge and his Resident Henry Lawrence in the Punjab, were furious and were convinced, probably correctly, that his mother had put him up to it. For the Rani was the sole Sikh leader who understood what was going on. The Resident, Henry Lawrence acted swiftly. He asked the young prince to go out riding with him late at night. It was impossible to refuse, and when Dalip asked to return to the palace he was told that it had been arranged for him to spend the night in the Shalimar gardens. The next day he learnt that his mother had been seized while he was away and put under house arrest, and he was forbidden to have any contact with her. Both mother and son were devastated.

The Rani wrote to Lawrence Restore my son to me, I cannot bear the pain of separation---my son is very young. He is incapable of doing anything. I have left the kingdom. I have no need of a kingdom---there is no one with my son. He has no sister, no brother. He has no uncle, senior or junior. His father he has lost. To whose care has he been entrusted?

Hardinge was to write to Lawrence too, stressing the necessity of keeping mother and son apart. Soon Henry Lawrence was to be replaced with his brother John, and then in quick succession Hardinge was replaced by Lord Dalhousie as Governor general, and John Lawrence with a man called Currie. It is possible, just, to think that Governor-General Hardinge and the Lawrences may have taken the Treaty of Byrowal seriously. They might have intended to uphold the form of Dalip Singh’’ government and exercise real power indirectly through Dalip and his administration. Rani Jindan did not think so however and in desperation wrote ‘Why do you take possession of the kingdom by underhand means? Why don’t you do it openly? On the one hand you make a show of friendship and on the other you have put us in prison. Do justice to me or I shall appeal to the London headquarters. Preserve three or four traitors and put the whole of the Punjab to the sword of their bidding. ‘ Forty years later her son was to reach the same pitch of exasperation and to attempt to carry out her threat.

There can be no doubt that Dalhousie was a very different kind of man who represented a very different view of how to rule India. Dalhousie had absolutely no time for indirect rule. Indian rulers who had accepted that the British had replaced Mughal and Maratha rule but who thought that their submission to British power was all that was required of them were quite mistaken in Dalhousie. Unlike previous British rulers in India he wished not only to rule India directly through British administrators but also to change India, and he promoted and support the work of the Christian missionaries. On a variety of pretexts he greatly expanded British rule by swallowing up various friendly allied states, Jhansi, Tanjore, Coorg, Sambalpur, Sattara, Nagpur and Awadh. He also found reasons to cease the payments of pensions to deposed rulers, such as Nana Saheb Peshwa, and the Nawab of Arcot. ( It is not surprising that Nana Saheb Peshwa, the Rani of Jhansi and the people of Awadh were so heavily involved in the Mutiny of 1857).The men of his administration were embued with the values of Christian evangelism and an unassailable view of themselves as the touchstones of morality. There is evidence of considerable tension between Dalhousie and Henry Lawrence.

Dalhousie’s man Currie soon replaced the Lawrences. Currie ruled with a high hand. He exiled Rani Jindan from the Punjab and cut the money that she was supposed to receive under the treaty. He stalled the forthcoming marriage of Dalip Singh to a daughter of Chattar Singh Attariwala governor of the difficult Pathan province of Hazara. His subordinate Abbott came close to organising a Muslim Pathan uprising against Chattar Singh’s governorship. Another English official was cut down when entering the town of Multan side by side with its governor Mulraj. Mulraj, who had been at odds with Lahore for some time over back taxes, seems to have felt that he had no option but to rebel against Lahore in case he was made a scapegoat for the murder of the Englishman.

He and Chattar Singh joined forces. There is a strong suggestion that Chattar Singh and his son Sheer Singh were goaded deliberately into revolt to provide a legal fig leaf for what was to follow. There is also a claim that more prompt action against Mulraj would have put an early stop to trouble. However that may be the British fought and barely defeated a combined Sikh Pathan army at Chilianwala. This was the Second Anglo-Sikh War and the Sikhs now had to face the reality of their defeat.

Dalip, isolated in the palace had little idea of what was going on. It was at this point in his life that he was to meet another Scot who was to play an important role in his life, the new tutor who had been selected for him, Dr. John Login. As well as acting as the boy’s tutor, Login also had to catalogue all the treasury and personal wealth of the Maharaja; and it was he who acted for Dalhousie in acquiring the Koh-I ‘Nur for Dalhousie to give to the Queen. The bizarre inconsistencies of the British position can be seen in the birthday party that Login arranged for Dalip, about which he wrote to Dalhousie, saying that it would be kind to show the child honour, but at which Dalip remarked that at his last party he had been wearing the Koh-I-Nur. From now on Login’s career had become linked to the status and career of his young charge. Dalip had become adept at using his considerable likeability to charm Henry Lawrence, even to some extent the grim Dalhousie and to win Login’s personal loyalty.

While the rebels had claimed to be fighting to restore Rani Jindan to Lahore and avenge her wrongs, no one ever provided evidence to show that Dalip Singh or the other Sikh rulers in Lahore or even Rani Jindan herself had had a part in the revolt.

Mulraj at least was quite as much a rebel against Lahore as against the British. The British were under treaty obligations to protect the government of Dalip Singh who was still a minor and who had not yet come to the throne and was in fact completely in their power.

Nevertheless the rebellion gave Dalhousie the legal figleaf he needed. Despite the fact that the British had been sworn to uphold Dalip’s reign against rebellion, and had successfully done so, they now deposed him and sent him into internal exile to a town called Fatehgarh with his guardian, Dr. John Login. He left behind his throne, his palaces, much of his personal fortune and his country, never to return.

Fatehgarh was a remote provincial town near Kanpur, head of the Farrukhabad district. It had something of a reputation as a punishment posting for British officials who had reached a dead end in their careers, and who were therefore proverbial amongst other English officials for their dislike of Indians. After the collapse of the indigo market in 1840 property in the district could hardly be given away. However the place did have one distinctive feature, it was an admired centre of Christian missionary activity in North India, run by the Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church. It had churches, orphanages, schools, a carpet factory, and a village of Indian Christian converts.

Here Dalip lived in some state and wealth, a not unimportant figure in this provincial backwater, as the portrait of him by Beechey shows. His household was part European, largely run by the Logins, but shared with his sister-in-law and her son, the shadowy Shahzadeh Shah Deo Singh. He had both English and Indian servants. But essentially he was an orphan in internal exile, the subject of continual political surveillance and reporting. Following Dalhousie’s lead Login kept up a constant stream of pressure to separate Dalip Singh’s affections from his mother, who was now on the run and staying under the protection of Jang Bahadur Rana in Kathmandu. It was now that Dalhousie began to spread rumours about Dalip’s birth. A whispering campaign was started that an impotent Ranjit had encouraged Jindan to have an affair with a poor watercarrier, for the entertainment of the elderly Maharaja and that Dalip was the result. Actually this makes no sense because as a small child with no effective backing Dalip had been given precedence by both the Sikh court and the Khalsa over two older illegitimate half brothers, Kashmira and Peshora Singh, as well as Sher Singh’s son, Shahzadeh Shah Deo Singh. Why on earth they would have done so if the boy was widely known to have been the result of such a perverse arrangement was never suggested. Still ‘ a brat begotten of a bheeshtee’ was how Dalhousie was to describe Dalip in his private correspondence while writing to the young Maharaja asking him to ‘Believe in the strength and sincerity of the regard in which I shall ever feel towards you, and to remain, now and always Your Highness’s sincere and affectionate friend’. Dalhousie made sure that Dalip was fed the most scurrilous rumours about his mother, and the boy knew enough to agree with Login that it was all true and that in Lahore he had thought of executing her. A letter in Urdu sent back to Lahore tells a different story however with Dalip, now about fourteen, eagerly asking for information on his mother. As we shall see his mother’s personal influence remained very strong on Dalip in his adult life with no sign of such animosity.

Dalip had to some extent got the measure of the British with whom he was surrounded, and had learnt his lines. In his careful handwriting he wrote elegantly composed letters to Dalhousie, in which, for example he suggested how much he would like to make a present of the child sized suit of armour that had been specially made for him to lead his personal guard to be presented to the Prince of Wales as a gift.

It was during his time at Fatehghar that he was to convert to Christianity. This conversion, which became a major turning part in his career, is very difficult to assess. Without bringing any direct pressure to bear on the boy, it is important to remember his position. Login and his wife had taken on the role of the only father and mother in the boy’s life; they were both devout Christians. He was encouraged to have two English boys as his closest friends and companions, one the son of a missionary. The English textbooks that he was reading were full of Christian messages. He was in fact a political prisoner, totally dependent on the limited goodwill of the Governor General and he was living in the centre of Christian missionary activity. He was after all a highly intelligent young man, fairly fluent at speaking reading and writing a variety of languages in different scripts, with sudden bursts of curiosity for all sorts of things, watercolours, woodwork, and above all in people. Left at that it would have been surprising if Dalip had not been affected. But one of his servants just happened to be a Brahmin convert to Christianity, Bhajan Lal, rather in the same way that Fatehghar just happened to be a mission and Bhajan Lal just happened to read from the Bible to the boy.

The strange feature of the conversion, which was reported at length by Bhajan Lal, is that the points which seemed to have convinced Dalip that Christianity was preferable had nothing to do with Sikhism rather, they were connected with Hinduism.

Dalip Singh had asked the former Brahmin about Sudras, the benefits of bathing in the Ganges, the merits of giving cows to Brahmins, the truth of the stories contained in the Shastras. Dalhousie put the matter succinctly Dalip had come to think that the Pundits tell him humbug and moreover he wanted to take tea with his best English friend, Tommy Scott, (which would have caused him in Hindu eyes to lose caste). All these issues were features not of Sikhism but of Hinduism, as Dalip himself was to point out on his reconversion.

But they precipitated a crisis for the young prince. He was touched on his intense feelings for friendship and personal loyalty to both his young friends and to Mrs Login. They were the burning issues of the day (Dalip’s problems coincide with the founding of the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal and a general intense questioning of one form of Brahmin Hindu orthodoxy). Perhaps also he saw a way out of the requirement under Sikh custom that he marry his brother’s widow, the Shahzadeh’s mother.

There was no adult well instructed Sikh to whom Dalip could have turned. His sister in law was in fact a Rajput and a Hindu. It is difficult not to think that Dalip was consistently misinformed as to what were the actual teachings of his own religion. Later Bhajan Lal was replaced by another Brahmin convert, Pandit Nilakanth (Nehemiah) Goreh. In all his later conversations with Queen Victoria on the subject Dalip Singh returned to his same dissatisfactions with what were the teachings of Hindu orthodoxy. We can take Dalip Singh’s conversion as the result of deeply laid psychological pressure on a helpless victim, or the natural outcome of intellectual curiosity and the desire to please, or a genuine spiritual awakening. Or indeed perhaps the youth who had learnt to forward gifts specially made for him to another young prince with a smile, and to agree that his mother was a slut whom he wished he could kill was acting in accordance with apad dharma, rules for behaviour in extreme hardship or emergency in accordance with the Hindu teachings of the Manushastra. Manu says that a ruler can sacrifice land, wealth, and his family to preserve his throne and should use four expedients, conciliation, bribery, dissension and physical force to attain his goal. Perhaps it was the result of pressure, combined with the glamour of the exotic and the desire to be accepted by his English companions; perhaps it was a calculated political manoeuvre. Perhaps it was a mixture of all these.

Whatever his motives he acted with customary generosity in supporting all the mission schools in the area financially. It was also the Maharaja who forced the pace on the issue, setting up the fateful tea party with Tommy Scott, and over -riding the resistance of his servants and sister-in-law and the hesitation of the British. In any case it was a decisive act which changed the whole situation.

Up to that point Dalhousie had turned down the appeals of Login and Dalip to allow the young prince to visit England. In fact he was concerned about Indian ex-rulers turning up in London and appealing directly to the Queen or to the Home Government. The children of Tipu Sultan, the Raja of Coorg, the powerful Jang Bahadur Rana, Dictator of Nepal, Azimullah Khan the agent of Nana Saheb, Luftullah Khan for the Nawab of Arcot, ( Piroji Bhonsla of the Nagpur family had died enroute), had all made the journey, to Dalhousie’s annoyance. It is interesting to remember that Azimullah Khan paid a visit to Dalip Singh at Fatehgarh but was shown the door in no uncertain terms by Login.

Dalhousie was pleased at the conversion because if nothing else it appeared to destroy any possible political threat from Dalip. It opened up the possibility of a marriage between Dalip Singh, and the recently baptised daughter of the Raja of Coorg ( another ruler deposed by Dalhousie), Princess Victoria Gouramma, and therefore of creating a highly influential family of Indian Christian ex- rajas. After all if Dalip did not marry her, there was no other available Indian Christian prince for her to marry. So, on 19 April 1854 Dalip Singh, Dr. and Mrs. Login, Pandit Nehemiah, the whole strange household, minus the Shahzadeh Shah Deo Singh and his mother, set sail for England. In his possession was a Bible from Lord Dalhousie inscribed ‘This Holy Book in which he (Dalip) has been led by God’s grace to find an inheritance richer by far than all earthly kingdoms is presented with sincere respect and regard by his faithful friend.’.Later Dalip was to quote this note in a way that showed that its irony, in coming from the man who had cost him his earthly kingdom did not escape him.

On arrival he quickly gained a royal audience. Dalip Singh had reached the centre of the most powerful court in the world, that had dominated his country and his life from afar from before his birth. And he was an immediate success with the Queen. Even allowing for a kind artist the Winterhalter portrait that Victoria eagerly arranged shows why. He was young, very handsome, he was exotically dressed, he had had a romantic past, he was a suppliant at her feet (even to continually wearing her picture at his neck), he had learnt how to behave, was very charming.

She kept him close to her at great occasions of state, despite opposition from some English grandees and continental diplomats, and private growling in the background from the dying Dalhousie. She invited him into her family circle on the Isle of Wight where he was wonderful with her small children especially her sick boy. The Queen sketched him several times happily playing with the small children. Albert photographed him. Bizarre incidents still surrounded him, perhaps none more so than when during the painting of the Winterhalter portrait, while the Maharaja was standing in his full costume on a plinth, a brief conversation was held between the Queen, Prince Albert and an understandably nervous Mrs. Login. To the latter’s, and presumably Dalip’s astonishment as well, at a signal a party of Yeoman warders in full uniform escorted an official into the room carrying a box, the Queen called the Maharaja over and showed him the newly recut Koh-I- Nur, which he took to the window to inspect.

With a gesture worthy of the most polished Renaissance courtier, or a royal favourite from a bygone age the Maharaja presented the Koh-I-Nur back to the Queen,saying how much pleasure it gave him to be able this time to make the gift in person. Dalhousie’s rage when the incident was reported to him, thus overshadowing Dalhousie’s own original gift of the stone,is well recorded.

>From now on the friendship between the Queen and the Maharaja was sealed. For seven uneventful years Dalip learnt to sample all the pleasures of an English gentleman. He had estates in Scotland, apparently dressing himself and his household in kilts, and in Yorkshire, he liked shooting and photography, and he travelled on the continent, through France, Italy (Rome and Venice), Sardinia and Corsica, through Austro-Hungary and down the Danube ( still in part Ottoman).

He was even able to skate over the potentially lethal depths that news of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 created, and perhaps, he may have had some indirect influence in moderating British policy upon their victory.. He retained the Queen’s sympathy despite various attempts to compromise him, and a general intense inspection of his behaviour, especially by ladies for signs of a naturally innate Eastern cruelty. He was able to maintain his dignity and his silence, never either endorsing the Mutiny or condemning it. Whether or not he knew of his old acquaintance Henry Lawrence’s brutal suppression of any signs of unrest amongst regiments in the Punjab is unknown. Mass shootings, blowings from the mouth of cannon or paying a price for every deserter’s head had created a reign of terror in which many of their British officers had breakdowns. His own property at Fatehghar had been seriously damaged in the fighting ( his losses were estimated at 20,000). The Queen was able to write of his difficult position with much genuine understanding. Perhaps her own obvious distaste for the policy of extreme reprisals and support of Cannings more moderate policy can be ascribed to her personal involvement and knowledge of Dalip Singh, Victoria Gouramma, and the other Indians with whom she had formed personal relationships.

Yet during this period and progressively in the years that followed three explosive questions began to emerge that were finally to destroy this calm. What political position could be found for even the most Anglicised member of the Indian elite ? what indeed was his own personal position with respect to the Government of India ? who could he marry ?

Dalip Singh wanted to be a bridge between the two cultures. But there was simply no way in which this could be done. His position as a court favourite of the Queen, able to gain her ear and her support, not only for his own case, but on Indian matters in general, was anathema not only to Dalhousie but to the whole of the India Office. In any case it was of doubtful constitutionality.

He was to try to stand for Parliament, as a Conservative candidate for Whitby, receiving editorial support in the Times, and as an opponent of Gladstone’s son. The Queen was not keen that he should become an M. P. and worked out a deal with Gladstone whereby if Dalip Singh were to stand down as a potential M. P. then Gladstone would make him a member of the Lords. However in 1875 Gladstone lost the election anyway. Disraeli in turn offered Dalip a peerage, but Dalip was actually a Maharaja, a King, admittedly a King under an Empress, so how could he possibly accept a lesser noble rank ? So foundered the constitutional approach.

Even in his personal crisis of 1885 he was still offering himself to serve as A. D. C. to the British High Command in India, pointing out quite correctly that other Indian princes had military commissions and that he might be able to raise Punjabi volunteers in the face of the Russian threat. His friends suggested that a place as an advisor might be found for him on the Indian Council as an advisor. Despite the Queen’s endorsement the British government in India would have none of it. Underneath it all was the gut-feeling that to give Dalip Singh any kind of official recognition at all in India would simply be too dangerous for a Government that relied so heavily on Sikh troops.

Who could he, an anglicised Christian Indian ex-ruler marry? There was quite literally only one Indian girl alive in a comparable position, Victoria Gouramma of Coorg. Dalip felt no attraction for her, and she was to show herself at least as troubled as he was himself, and compromised herself completely. No Hindu, Sikh or Muslim Indian could marry him, and would the Government of India allowed him a free choice in any case?. The Queen and Albert, while he was alive had constantly warned him of falling into the wrong hands. He was clearly attracted to upper-class English women but he was himself worried about the problems of mixed race children, and he would have been aware of the enormous scandal such a marriage would have caused. In fact he sent Mrs. Login into a panic by revealing that he was thinking of proposing to a young relative of hers.

What was his position with regard to the government of India? In England he might be a trusted friend of the Queen and largely accepted as an English gentleman with many close English friends. To the India Office he was however suspect politically, an embarrassment and a pensioner living by their favour. If he were to visit India could he travel freely, could he meet whomever he wished, what about his properties there?

All these issues were to come to a head when he returned to India in 1859. The main purpose of this visit was to rescue his now ageing mother, still a political exile at the court of Jang Bahadur Rana in Nepal and a considerable embarrassment to that ruler. (That he took the trip, and showed her so much affection, despite the advice of the Queen and his own equerry shows that he had never been convinced by Dalhousie and Login’s campaign to turn him against her as a child). While he was in Calcutta he was besieged by ex-members of his court, and more dangerously by hundreds of soldiers from Sikh regiments visiting him and saluting him. He could find nowhere to settle his mother and his own movements were curtailed by the government. He was seriously worried that over enthusiastic Sikhs would somehow compromise him and in the entire visit was an unhappy and painful experience.

Still he was reunited at last with the mother from whom he had been forcibly separated, and she was to return with him to London. The Rani made considerable attempts to adapt, attempting, not always successfully to wear English dress, going to church, encouraging him to take an English wife, not standing on caste rules. And he was delighted to be reunited with her, commissioning portraits, sculptures of her hands in marble and staying with her. The British authorities were terrified quite rightly of her influence on him and were discussing ways of getting her back to India when she died. She had had enough time to make him remember the past, to think, and to become curious about his estates, and links had been made with other relatives.

Following a return to India for her funeral, and her death had coincided with that of Login, the Maharaja was once more on his own, but determined to remain so no longer. He decided that he must find an Asian Christian, but non-Indian bride and did so by correspondence, finally choosing a part German, part Ethiopian girl, speaking only Arabic, from a Cairo mission school.

He took her home to his new estate at Elveden selected and purchased for him by the India office out of his pension. He had transformed the rather rundown estate into an efficient modernised game preserve and internally into a semi-oriental palace. With halls decorated with glass mosaic in the fashion of a shish mahal and dominated by the huge oil paintings of Ranjit Singh in darbar or at the Golden Temple, of his brother Sher Singh in regal splendour and with sculptures of past glories and cases of jewels the whole place was a powerful reminder of his former status. In it he lived with his part Asian bride, his growing family, the sons wearing a variety of costumes but frequently photographed in Sikh dress with uncut hair. Here too discrete Sikh visitors including his cousin Thakur Singh would come and go. As well as shooting the Maharaja built up a considerable mews for his continuing interest in falconry and something of a general menagerie Here also he invited Edward, Prince of Wales and all the local landowners and nobility to highly successful shoots. Dalip loved Elveden and rebuilt the church, cottages and a school. At the height of his troubles the threat of his leaving the village panicked the rector into describing the effect that this would have on the afflicted, the aged and the extreme poor, ‘ for the schools, clubs, and charities, hitherto entirely supported by His Highness, will be supported by him no more’.

The new home had brought new expenses, as a father of three boys and two daughters Dalip had to look to his future. A position at the top of English polite society was expensive, he had gone into land-owning in time for the agricultural depression, he was beginning to realise, as we have seen that there was no place for him in British government, and there is reason to believe that poor Princess Bamba could not give him the companionship he needed. Dalip Singh was a man in trouble. He was forced to look into his finances.

He wanted the India Office to give him a full account of the money he had been supposedly receiving from them since the time of his deposition,(he had never received the full amount of 400,000 rupees as stipulated under the treaty). He wanted an account of his personal fortune as a member of Ranjit’ s family, not the head of state. At first and modestly enough he did not want all the arrears, but an increase in his annual pension (which, as he pointed out was less than that still being paid to the man who had been his Prime Minister at the time of the second Sikh War) and a settlement of his existing debts. It was after all the India Office who had lent him the money for Elveden, who was charging him interest on that loan and who was not allowing him to reduce the principle by lump payments. The Queen asked the India Office to look into the matter favourably. The Maharaja agreed to his accounts being examined to see if he had been extravagant. ( In fact the investigation proved that he had been generous in supporting Lady Login and his equerry Oliphant’s widow, and other old English servants, in settling debts of his friend Tommy Scott ( of the fatal tea party) and other English acquaintances as well as charity work in Elveden but hardly wastefully extravagant in terms of his position in society).

All looked set for a reasonable compromise. Yet gradually he was forced to realise that he had hit a stone wall. The Queen supported him, many of his high society friends, including Lady Login and others in a position to have information of their own on the case and a section of public opinion supported him, his lawyers assured him that he had a good case, but the India Office was flatly hostile. He would not receive any increase; he should sell up Elveden; or it should be sold up after his death leaving his children without property; under no account would he receive a detailed accounting of how his pensions had been administered for him; he owned no lands in the Punjab ( despite having got legal evidence to the contrary). In 1886 in correspondence with the India Office the Duke of Grafton was to write the truth is, they have spent the money and have no funds to fall back on and so fear an investigation.

As Dalip began to realise that he was being stone ‘walled and as his financial pressures mounted so too he began to raise broader questions. The whole of his treatment by Dalhousie, that not only had he never received all he should have had under the terms of the deposition, but that the deposition itself had been unjust and a violation of the Treaty of Byrowal, all his hidden grievances emerged. The stakes rose on both sides with the India Office first suggesting that he was a spendthrift, then a gambler, then that he kept mistresses before returning to Dalhousie’s old libel that he was a bastard, and that no Indian had ever been better treated. Finally in 1882, after first raising the matter behind the scenes in 1878 the Maharaja decided to go public with a letter to the Times.

Unfortunately for him the trouble was that he had too good a case and it was suicidal to have gone public with it. There were unaccounted for sums of money and private property, the annexation was suspect, some at least of what Dalhousie had written on the subject was of questionable accuracy, other heads of state who had come into conflict with the British government appeared to have been treated much more leniently ( Dalip referred to Cetewayo, the Khedive of Egypt, the Transvaal Government and the return of Corfu to the Greeks). But to have conceded any merit to Dalip Singh’s case the Government of India would first have had to acquiesce to the principal of interference in their affairs by the Home Government and the Crown, something they had always opposed. It would have strengthened Dalip Singh’s moral position as a Indian spokesman on Indian affairs with some kind of claim to partnership in the government of India Secondly if the annexation were suspect so too was the whole Doctrine of Lapse and Dalhousie’s policy. Such an admission would not only have opened the path to other claims, but in fact attacked the whole intellectual justification for British rule. If Dalhousie had acted incorrectly over the deposition of Dalip Singh and by implication all his other annexations, then the Mutiny could no longer be presented as a benighted and fanatical resistance to greased cartridges but as a direct consequence of Dalhousie’s own policies. The British could no longer be seen as the bringers of a higher moral order and justice to India. In the face of such determined resistance by the India Office and the increasing note of challenge to the official version by the Maharaja the Queen had no option but to distance herself. There was simply no authority that could force the India Office to a public accounting.

Almost as explosively, and hand in hand with his increasing anger over past injustices he began to realise how far he had been misled over the teachings of Guru Nanak, as these were progressively revealed to him by his relatives and by a Bhai (or well instructed Sikh) brought over from India. He began to think of reconverting.

His mother had reminded him, and he could hardly have been unaware of the rumours that had circulated amongst Sikhs, that he had some special role to play in their history and that he had been mentioned in prophecies by Guru Gobind. Many such rumours of a returning saviour were circulating among the defeated and demoralised Sikhs in the Punjab and for example played a very large part in the formation of the Namdhari (or Kuka ) movement.This markedly anti-British movement and the extreme brutality used in its suppression incidentally invalidates the picture of a peaceful and loyal Punjab filled with Sikhs reconciled to British rule. At around this time about 40 Namdharis were blown from the mouths of cannon by a British officer at Maler Kotla. By chance this illegalexecution was seen by the Russian artist Vereschagin and forms the subject of one of his most powerful paintings. The Namdhari leaders, Baba Budh Singh and Baba Ram Singh had been imprisoned in Burma where they had died and the Namdharis were waiting for Ram Singh’s miraculous return.

At times throughout the 1880s the Maharaja was described by his English friends as mad, but there is no evidence for this. Even the Queen writing in private was to say of her former favourite he really is loyal to his Empress, only very much vexed and disappointed. But it would not be surprising if at times he was close to breakdown; he was not allowed to have a public career; he was not allowed the money to lead a quiet life in the country; money which everyone except the India office felt should be forthcoming; he was not trusted to return to India where he could live more cheaply, he was slowly being forced to surrender his illusions about the justice of English society and his place within it, and there were those who were feeding him their own dreams, to whom he was the lost leader, the potential saviour of his people and their religion.

Finally in 1886 he made up his mind. He would return to India and place himself as the prophesied moral head of the Sikh people, revitalising the religion and purifying it of Hindu influences especially caste. His cousin Thakur Singh was already deeply involved in this task. He published a public message in the papers to that effect and set sail. Even now it was not clear that he was acting illegally in seeking to return to India or that the Government of India were authorised to prevent him. He was after all an English subject, not convicted of any crime wishing to return to his religion and follow a religious career, to return home and live more cheaply. Yet he represented a political time-bomb and once in India the consequences would have been unforeseeable.

At Aden,where the authority of the government of India began Dalip was stopped. He was accused of issuing a disloyal proclamation and difficulties were put in the way of his receiving Pahul or re-initiation into Sikhism. Dalip challenged the viceroy, Dufferin, to bring him to court and make the charge of disloyalty stick. But the Viceroy’s government, knowing that they had no legal justification for their actions refused, being keen to keep the matter out of court. They did however allow the Pahul to go ahead and Dalip once more became a Sikh.

Here in Aden Dalip was a man with nowhere to go. He couldn’t even get himself arrested. He could not proceed to India, the Government of Egypt would not have him in his wife’s country. Although he had sent his family back to Elveden to be out of harm’s way he couldn’t bear the humiliation of returning himself.

So he went to Paris, still hoping that with time some sort of deal could be worked out. In a final gesture he wrote back stating that he would be content with his private estates in the Punjab, a peerage and a an honorary seat on the Council of India in London and Calcutta appointed to ‘enquire into and amend the petty grievances of the natives of India, which believe me are like thousands of little fires ready to be blown into a great conflagration at any moment by the merest accident, and I shall be more than content to serve England loyally and undertake to establish Her Empire on the sure foundation of justice’No one (though I say it myself) knows so well as I do both the English and the Indians by the particular circumstances of my life’. There was of course no way that this could happen.

Once in Paris he then was contacted by other dissidents. His own agents,Thakur Singh Sandhanwalia and others had contacted and gained the support of many of his relatives amongst the Punjab ( or Manjha ) Sikhs. Thakur Singh was a founder member of the Amritsar branch of the Singh Sabha, the major Sikh movement of reform. It was believed that the senior leader of the Cis-Sutlej Sikhs, Hira Singh, raja of Nabha was ready to join. Thakur Singh set himself up in the French Indian town of Pondicherry where the British Secret service reported that many soldiers on leave from Sikh regiments swore allegiance to the Maharaja on behalf of their comrades. Some 40,000 Sikh and Rajput soldiers had apparently sworn in this way. The Namdharis or Kukas believed that their leader Baba Ram Das would rise from the dead from his prison at Mergui in Burma and would join Dalip Singh in Moscow. Some of his supporters lead by Benarsi Das Faquir, who had been agitating on Dalip’s behalf in Calcutta were caught while attacking the police station in Meerut. In other words the Maharaja did still after 32 years have genuine support amongst sections of the Sikh community and did pose a real threat to the Indian government, or would have done if he had had found any way of getting back to India.

Dalip was contacted first by Patrick Casey of the Fenians. Through him and travelling on his passport he went to St. Petersburg and Moscow. On the way, at Berlin railway station a British agent picked his pocket and he lost all his money. In Russia he was supported by the leader of the anti-English party and newspaper editor Katkoff. Here he really entered the shadowy world of conspiracy and intrigue. It has recently been suggested that one of Katkoff’s agents working on Dalip Singh’s behalf was Mme. Blavatsky, the founder of the theosophical Movement, and that her mysterious Indian Masters were in fact Thakur Singh and other dissident leaders. There in Russia Dalip met Jemal al Din al Afghani, a professional anti-British agent who had worked for the Amir of Afghanistan, gone to Cairo and Istanbul, and generally had a finger in every pie and another more shadowy figure called Abdul Rasul who became his private secretary. Abdul Rasul was a Kashmiri shawl merchant from Amritsar by origin who had gone to Egypt and had intrigued with the Mahdi of the Sudan. The Maharaja was thus at a centre of a web that included Sikhs, Irish republicans, French Canadians, Russian,Afghani, and Egyptian agents. With them he created a masterplan which involved a Russian invasion of Afghanistan, to be joined by the Afghans which would proceed to India. Once they arrived in India the Sikh regiments would revolt to be joined by the surviving Cis Sutlej Sikh rajas and mutinies amongst Irish regiments. Meanwhile Egyptian nationalists led by Zubeir Pasha would cut the Suez Canal, and Bengalis would subvert the railway system.

The Maharaja’s plans were well enough known for Kipling to base one short story, the Mutiny of the Mavericks around the possibility of a mutiny by an Irish regiment in India to join with the Sikhs and a Russian invasion. Generally of course it forms a backgound to Kim, and another of his short stories On the Wall.

The Maharaja had spent some time thinking of what an independent Indian state might be like, and it appears from his proclamations that he envisaged a federation of the Indian princes, with a plebiscite i n provinces directly ruled by the British to see what form of government they would prefer; either a reinstatement of other deposed rulers for example in Awadh or becoming a republic for Bengal.

However it seems that the Tsarist government was more interested in using Dalip as an anti-British pawn to persuade the British government to pressure anti-Russian dissidents in London than any such grandiose geo-political adventure. In any case the web soon came unravelled, his principal Russian backer Katkoff died, Thakur Singh too died (with a suggestion of poison) in Pondicherry, Arur Singh (the Sikh who had acted as Dalip’s messenger to Thakur Singh) was arrested, Dalip’s secret correspondence with Indian rulers was traced.

>From then on it was all downhill for the poor Maharaja. With hardly any money of his own, deserted by his Russian backers, with his Indian organisation broken he had no political influence left. Meanwhile back in England Princess Bamba died and the Maharaja’s family was in trouble. The Maharaja had returned to Paris and remarried an English girl called Ada Wetherill. He had met Ada Wetherill on his arrival in Paris from Aden and she had journeyed with him to Russia. He had had two children by her and was now free to marry her. There in Paris the Maharaja suffered a massive stroke and while ill was visited by his eldest son Prince Victor. He was visited too by his those of his English friends who had remained faithful to him, and taken care of his children. Indeed arrangements were made for him to travel quietly to Folkestone and meet his children. After this, once more in France, while the queen was holidaying unofficially in Nice his friends arranged for the Queen to have one last informal meeting with the Maharaja. According to the queen it was a highly emotional meeting in which the obviously very sick Maharaja broke down and asked her forgiveness. The Maharaja lived just long enough after this meeting to learn of the death of his son Edward from T. B. He was buried at Elveden in 1893, amongst the wreaths were one from Queen Victoria and from the Prince of Wales. What can we make of his life? The Maharaja had created a very real personal friendship with the Royal family, representing the Indians of India throughout the terrible time of the Mutiny. He had built up a circle of very loyal friends who stood by him and his family, feeling that he had suffered injustice even when he was an enemy agent. Gradually some sections of the British elite had come to realise that all was not perfect in the government of India. Despite political differences, despite cultural and religious differences friendship, respect and loyalty were possible, in large part due to the Maharaja’s charm and extraordinary generosity of spirit. His English friends could only understand his attempts to become a fighter for independence and a revitalisation of Sikhism by madness. However convenient a diagnosis for them, it is hardly one that stands up in hindsight.

His, or rather Thakur Singh’s organisation in India was not all fantasy, and the intelligence services of the British Government in India certainly took the threat seriously. He was perhaps the first Indian nationalist to attempt to create a pan-Indian movement with an attempt to find a structure to reconcile the different interests of the princes and non Princely India and of Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus. His attempt to build up a grand alliance at least showed an awareness of the need to organise internationally. He had only come to this point after finally realising that all other avenues were closed to him.

Certainly he was over reliant on foreign backers and naive in thinking that the Russians had any serious interest in his cause. His essentially trusting and open nature did not suit him to become a skilled conspirator but this does not make him either deranged or a buffoon. One must ask could anyone have really have been more successful in his situation ?

In fact one could say that the true madness was not his at all but lay in the resolution of the India Office to deny any partnership in the real government of India to even the most loyal, most modern and most anglicised Indian, to never admit to any official mistake and to insist as Dalhousie had written that any Indian, no matter how well received in London would have to leave his slippers outside the door of the Viceroy’s office in India.