Sikh Empire- Culture and Thought (An Old and Rare Book)

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The extreme ignorance which appears to prevail in this country regarding a State which has lately acquired a high degree of interest in the eyes of Englishmen, has led to the preparation of the following pages. The Author might have established a claim to originality, by laying nothing before the public that was not exclusively the result of his own obsevations during a nine years' residence among the Sikhs; but he has preferred to give, in a concentrated form, the fullest information available to those who choose to seek for it, and therefore limits his pretensions to those of the careful compiler. The authorities chiefly consulted-where the notes of the Author himself were scanty, or his recollections imperfect-have been Prinsep, Von Hugel, Murray, Sir John Malcolm, and Edward Thornton; the latter of whom not long since published A Gazetteer of all the Countries West of the Indus, replete with the results of diligent research.

The Author and Compiler of the following work does not profess to be alive to the intentions of the British Government in respect to the Punjab, but he thinks the annexation of that extensive and fertile territory to the provinces of British India so necessary and unavoidable a result (sooner or later) of its present state of disruption, and of the warfare that has commenced, that he regards it as a duty to give his countrymen the clearest notion of the Sikh state it is in his power to convey.

In connection with the death of Nau Nihal Singh by the fall of a portion of the structure of a covered gateway, Cunningham writes, "It is not positively known that the Rajas of Jammu thus designed to remove Nau Nihat Singh; but it is difficult to acquit them of the crime, and it is certain that they were capable of committing it. Self defence is the only palliation for it is equally certain that the prince was compassing their degradation, and perhaps, their destruction." Gough and Innes have observed, "Nau Nihal Singh became Maharajah, but on the day of his accession he met with a fatal accident which the Jammu Brothers were very strongly suspected of having deliberately designed." It has also been mentioned by these authors, "Nau Nihal considered that the power of the Jammu Brothers was too great, and was bent on breaking it."

Steinbach regarded the occurrence of the gate-crash as the most extra-ordinary event of which history presents a record. He observed, "The incident is generally supposed to have been pre-meditated, and not the effect of accident, as stated by the Government; but the whole affair was so enveloped in mystery, that even to the present day it has been found impossible to attach suspicion to any party." If as mentioned by Cuuningham, Gough & Innes, there were a very strong suspicion about the perpetration of this singular catastrophe by the Jammu Brothers, Steinbach would definitely have indicated it. According to Steinbach, Nau Nihal Singh was a youth of considerable ability and the only person capable of controlling the power of the Rajah Dhyan Singh and his brothers. Rajah Dhyan Singh found himself egregiously mistaken in his fancied control over the actions of Nau Nihal Singh. The Rajah's influence waned gradually and for a time the minister, so long accustomed the sweets of power, was scarcely permitted to take any share whatever in state affairs. Through the medium of his son, the Rajah Heera Singh, between whom and Prince Nau Nihal Singh an intimacy had sprung up, and which Dhyan Singh encouraged by every means in his power, he succeeded in re-establishing his position in the council, but never to the extent he had enjoyed under Runjeet Singh, or even under Kurruck Singh. The court of Lahore under it's new ruler, Prince Nau Nihal Singh, now became the seat of debauchery and intrigue.

Secret and even pecuniary overtures were made by Nau Nihal Singh to the Courts of Nepaul, Caubul, and almost every other native power, to induce them to rise against the British from all quarters simultaneously. Upon one occasion he become so excited, when speaking of the British Government, in reply to some malicious representation made to him, as to draw his sword in open darbar (the leves), and proclaim his intention never to sheath it until he had measure himself with the English. This ridiculous vapouring earned for him the soubriquet of the Hotspur of the Sikhs; but notwithstanding the disregard of his bravadoes by the British government, it is tolerably certain that, had he lived, a war with the Punjab and Naipaul would have been inevitable and Afghanistan would have taken part in the quarrel.

Nau Nihal Singh's antipathy towards the British is thus manifest and even Cunningham has admitted the power and firmness of the Prince in the following words: "He promised to be an able and vigorous ruler; and had his life been spared (he was killed in his twentieth year) and had not English policy partly forestalled him, he would have found an ample field for his ambition in Sind, in Afghanistan, and beyond the Hindu Kush and he might, perhaps, at last have boasted that the inroads of Mahmud and of Taimur had been fully avenged by the aroused peasants of India".