In the beautiful Lahore Fort’s Shish Mahal quadrangle, the powerful inner circle of the Lahore Darbar of Maharajah Ranjit Singh sat on cushions in a circle. Here the strategic future of his kingdom was discussed, especially the long-term strategic plans.

In the history of the Punjab, the common perception is that Maharajah Ranjit Singh managed to conquer Lahore, and the Punjab, by defeating the Afghans under Zaman Khan. This perception is cemented by the incident where the heavy guns (cannons) of Zaman Khan fell in the river Sutlej, and Ranjit rescued them and, ironically, returned them to the Afghan, except the Zamzama, which these days stands opposite the Lahore Museum.

The facts are not completely to the contrary but are very different. It depends on how one interprets them. The real fight against all foreign invaders of the Punjab started with Banda Singh Bahadar, who under the influence of the teaching of Guru Nanak became a revolutionary fighter. Banda captured vast areas of the Punjab, ultimately to be captured and tortured by the Mughal forces in 1716. The killing of Banda was the spark that set off the military spirit of the Khalsa.

Once the Afghan invader Ahmed Shah Abdali made his final looting raid on the Punjab and beyond in 1767, it got the Sikh Misls to raid the Afghans when they passed through their territory on their way home with their loot. But till then each ‘misl’ operated on its own and there was no co-ordination between them. This worked in favour of the invaders.

Then came a time when the ‘misls’ would deliberately let the Afghans proceed towards Delhi, but on their way back they looted the looters and made as much of a profit as they could. To overcome this the Afghans set about to co-operate with the Patiala nawab, on whom Ahmed Shah bestowed the title of ‘maharajah’, a title which that family still carries forward.

Also, the Afghans began to collect in the Jullundur Doab and made the Rajput chief of Katotch as his deputy in the area. This meant that when Ahmed Shah returned to Kabul with his loot, he had an additional 12,000 men on his side to protect him from the ‘misl’ raiders. But on the way defections took place and the Sukerchakias under the grandfather of Ranjit Singh ransacked the Afghan looters.

The Bhangi ‘misl’ under Hari Singh Bhangi took Rawalpindi, and so we have this ‘misl’ having influence from Lahore to Rawalpindi, apart from the Gujrat and Gujranwala areas which the Sukerchukias ruled. By the time Ranjit Singh came to power as head of the Sukerchakia Misl at the age of 18 on the death of his father, it was among the minor ‘misls’.

However, with the marriage of Ranjit Singh to a Kanhaiya princess saw these two ‘misls’ working together. On the other hand, the Bhangi clan had managed to take control over Lahore, and a triumvirate of Sikh chieftains of Bhangi and Kanhaiya misls divided up the city. This was a setback for Ahmed Shah on the one hand, as well as for the ambitions of Ranjit Singh. It is at this stage where we see the diplomatic skill of the young Ranjit at work.

But before we proceed to explain this, it is important to remember that the Sikhs as a people hated Ahmed Shah Abdali who in 1762 on the killing of his governor Khawaja Ubaid Khan, by the Sikhs massacred nearly 30,000 Sikhs, and loaded their heads on 50 cartloads and brought them to Lahore, with the threat that anyone who challenges Afghan rule will meet the same fate.

In the following year, he continued to show his rage and blew up the Harmander Sahib and filled its pool with dead cows. In a way these extreme actions led the Sikhs to form their own ‘misls’ and decided that the best way was to have fast-moving horsemen who would strike and withdraw within a few minutes. These guerilla tactics in the long run made the Sikhs, taken as a whole, a formidable force in the Punjab.

By the time Ranjit Singh was leading his ‘misl’, he after discussion with his sages reached the conclusion that three objectives need to be addressed. Firstly, to the east the British were expanding, but they feared that the French under the expanding Napoleonic forces with Turkish backing and Persian Afghan co-operation had by 1799 started to prepare to invade India.

So, Ranjit Singh first wanted to capture Lahore as the capital of his future empire. Here he secretly discussed his Sukerchukia Misl co-operation in allowing future assistance to Ahmed Shah, and so it was that Ahmed Shah Abdali declared Ranjit Singh as the new ruler of Lahore, even though he had not captured it yet. So, in ‘official’ terms he was the ruler.

Here we see the Mian family of agriculturists of Baghbanpura assisting to open the doors of the walled city to the waiting forces of Ranjit Singh in 1799, and the Sukerchukias Misl took the city within two hours. One assumes that the Mian family had an understanding with Ahmed Shah.

The stage was set for Ranjit Singh to discuss with the British his co-operation against a possible French invasion. His team of scholars included the famed Fakir family who remained his trusted diplomats till the end.

In what surely remains a diplomatic masterpiece we see the British agree to recognise Ranjit Singh as the rightful ruler of the Lahore Darbar, further recognising him as a maharajah, and getting the assurance that his forces would keep the Afghans at bay, and this agreement is clear in the Treaty of Amritsar of 1809 once Ranjit had consolidated his hold.

So, with the British contained in the east and the Afghans on the west, the new ‘maharajah’ set about uniting all the Sikh misls. With a few it came about peacefully, with other it was a battle. When the new Afghan rulers tried to return from the west, we have Hari Singh Nalwa beating them into submission, both in Multan and Peshawar.

When Ranjit Singh tried to expand to the south, the British quickly moved into Sindh and contained him. Yet to the north he moved fast and captured Kashmir and beyond. When we read history we have got to realise that more than muscle and killings, the real progress comes about when agreement and talking and constant communication is in place.

How does this influence the situation we are in today? The fact remains that we are stuck in a situation where force, not reason and facts, prevail. Will this lead to uncontrollable strife? History tells us it surely will. In a country based on communal foundations, this promises to be not very pleasant … to put it mildly.

Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2023