February 23, 2002

Harold Lee recounts the closing period of John Lawrence’s rule as the chief commissioner of Punjab in 1857 before he returned as the viceroy of India in 1859

In December 1857, John began the first leg of what would constitute a tour of the Punjab by escorting Harriette and the babies to Multan, from where they would take a steamer to Karachi, and thence sail home to England. “My husband,” Lady Lawrence wrote, “looked very ill and worn after the long strain of anxiety. But his work never relaxed, nor did he give himself any rest. My health was also bad, and feeling that matters were so unsettled in India, he told me that he would feel relieved if he knew that I were safe at home, in England. This was a most terrible trial to us both, but I knew ... that it would only worry him, if I did not agree to the plan.”

On the morning of their departure on January 6, they read, as usual, a portion of Psalm 27 together, and Harriette was, she said, “weak and foolish enough, even then, to beg my husband to let me stay, and so made the parting harder for him”. He refused, and took her down to the steamer. “As I write,” she concluded, “I can almost see his figure as he rode along the bank of the river, first keeping up with the steamer, and then watching it as long as he could.”

In January 1858, John visited most of the places where there had been uprisings. Almost all the leaders of the revolts in the Punjab had by now surrendered, and even the border was quiet. The Guides, the first to be sent to Delhi from the Punjab, had reached Rawalpindi on their way back to Peshawar, and had been played into the cantonment by the band of Her Majesty’s 24th Regiment. In the Delhi Territory, now firmly under the direction of Imperial Punjab, the Nawab of Jhujjur and the Rajah of Bullubghur had been hanged, and were soon to be followed by the Nawab of Furucknuggur.

Writing to George Lawrence in November 1857 to congratulate him on his son’s survival at Lucknow, John had noted that he had planned to go home in April 1858 on sick leave on account of his eyes, but had decided not to go. “I feel bound to stay for another year,” he observed, “until all be restored to order.” Early in 1858, in correspondence with Canning and others, he felt that he could at last fix his departure time with some confidence at February 1859.

The country was truly becoming tranquil again, and John could turn his thoughts towards the state of the province at his departure, consult with Canning on matters of succession, receive the honours that began to shower upon him, and consider the prospect of life after the Punjab. His thoughts were already on home in May 1858, as he wrote to his sister Letty, who had been ill. Harriette wrote to him regularly of her life in England, he remarked, and of the consolatory pleasure of being reunited with all seven children. “I hope to leave India next February,” he told Letty, “and to stay at home among you for the rest of my life.”

Accompanied by Temple, once again his secretary, John left his summer quarters at Murree in September to make a final visit to Peshawar and the Frontier as part of his process of closing up shop in the Punjab. He conferred on various matters with Generals Sidney Cotton, Neville Chamberlain, and Herbert Edwardes, who was himself going home in November and would begin writing a life of Henry, a project much encouraged by John.

At Peshawar the garrison was paraded so that he could read to them the Queen’s proclamation of her direct rule over India. From Peshawar they rode with an escort through the Kohat Pass, and finished with an inspection of defensive posts along the Eusufzye border, and a hawking expedition with Harry Lumsden and some of the Guides.

From the Frontier John moved on to Sialkot, and thence to Jammu for a state visit to Maharajah Runbeer Singh, Gulab Singh’s heir to Kashmir. Rumours had been circulating that the young Maharajah had been part of a three-way correspondence that included Dost Mohammed, now down in Jellalabad and annoyed that his subsidy had ended, and Jung Bahadur, the Minister of Nepal, who watched over the Rani Jind Kaur in Kathmandu. After several public appearances together and a private night-time interview, John concluded that there was no threatening alliance between the three correspondents, and returned to Lahore shortly before Christmas of 1858.

He was pleased in general at the tranquillity of the province, observing to Canning that ‘the whole country from end to end is as quiet as possible’. When Canning assented to a gradual reduction in the number of Punjabi troops, John’s last major anxiety seems to have been allayed, and he was able to contemplate with considerable pleasure departure from India projected for January 1859.

However, in spite of his earlier remark to Letty about staying in England, he had not forsaken the possibility of returning to the Punjab. His official request was for fifteen months leave, which left open the option to resume a post much sweetened by its elevation to a lieutenant-governorship. But, responding to Canning’s request for his preference as a successor, he had urged Montgomery’s appointment, and offered to renounce any further claim on the post if Montgomery refused it as a temporary post until John’s return. ‘I told the governor-general’, he also wrote to Montgomery, that, in order to facilitate your coming here, I would, if necessary, engage not to return. This I had no wish, otherwise, to do. For it is just possible that circumstances might happen which would induce me to come back; particularly if the Home Government desired it. Still I would run this risk for your sake.

There had already been rumours of a possible appointment for John to the governor-generalship of India, so his thoughts of coming back might well have included this attractive possibility. In the event, Montgomery, whether or not influenced by John’s offer, accepted the position. However, he was unable to leave his present post in Oudh until late February, requiring John, against the advice of his doctors, to carry on until the 25th of that month. His delay at least allowed him the opportunity to turn the first sod of the Punjab railway, projected to connect Amritsar and Lahore with Multan.

On the eve of his departure, a farewell address signed by 282 civilians, 474 military and naval officers, 15 clergymen and 83 gentlemen not in the government, was presented to him. On the morning of February 26 he left Lahore, sailed down the Indus first to Hyderabad, then to Karachi and Bombay (now Mumbai), and finally home to England.

The cumulative impact of John’s towering presence in the Punjab throughout the years of annexation and the dark days of the uprising is most simply encapsulated in the remark of a native mail cart driver to Arthur Brandreth when the subject of John’s departure arose on the day before he left. “Won’t something happen when he goes?” he asked apprehensively.

Excerpts from
Brothers in the Raj: the lives of John and Henry Lawrence
By Harold Lee
Oxford University Press, 5 Bangalore Town, Sharae Faisal, Karachi-75350
Tel: 021-4529025. 
Email: ouppak@theoffice.net
ISBN 0-19-579415-X
437pp. Rs595

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