ences necessarily attendant on the observance of the usages of caste in a strange country, Hindoo troops have been in all ages reluctant to pass the stream of the Indus, which their superstition is taught to regard as the fated boundary of their country, as it unquestionably is the natural boundary of Indian rule; and the events of the late campaign have fatally confirmed the propriety of the titleHindoo-Koosh, or Hindoo - Killer— which the vast mountain ranges about Cabul had long since acquired by the destruction of the armies sent by the emperors Akbar and Shaligehan among their snowy defiles. The operation of these causes, combined with the tragical fate of their comrades at Cabul, is said to have materially affected the spirit of the regiments on the north-west frontier, that "whole squads were going over to the Sikhs, us that this celebrated defile has been carried in a style which goes far to retrieve the faded lustre of our arms. But during the time thus lost, the citadel of Ghazni, the first and most glorious trophy of our Affghan campaigns, had been wrested from us: the governor, Colonel Palmer, who had only one sepoy regiment, (the 27th Bengal infantry,) under his orders, having been forced to capitulate by the want of provisions and water; so that Jellalabad and Candahar, separated from each other by the whole extent of the country from east to west, are the only points now remaining in our possession: and an attempt by General England to victual and relieve the latter fortress, has been frustrated by the determined resistance of the Affghans at the Kojuck Pass. Such is the state of affairs at present; but though an advance from Jellalabad upon Cabul and Ghazni is confidently talked of, it is obvious that some considerable time must elapse before any such movement can even be attempted, since it is admitted that the success of General Pollock at the Khyber was owing to his being "almost entirely unencumbered with baggage or stores ;" and without vast trains of camels and munitions of war, it will be manifestly impossible to penetrate, in the face of an active enemy, into a rugged and mountainous country, where facilities do not exist for procuring supplies of any description. We can scarcely, therefore, be said to be in a condition to assume the offensive at all, and the forthcoming campaign is as yet wholly a matter of speculation. There appears to be no doubt, however, that the present determination of the Indian cabinet is to employ all the means at their disposal for the subjugation of the Affghans; and the recent embarkation of ten thousand British troops for India, affords a hope that in future the sepoys will be spared the brunt of a warfare for which, notwithstanding their exemplary patience and bravery, their habits and constitution utterly unfit them. addition to the manifold inconveni In and among these many old soldiers and men who, up to that period, had been regarded as good and true Neemukwallahs (adherents to their salt)." But the annals of few armies, of equal numerical amount, present so unvaried a picture of loyalty, subordination, and gallantry, as has been displayed by our sepoys while serving under a standard to which, it must be remembered, they owe no natural allegiance; and they have an undeniable claim for consideration to be shown both to their national and religious prejudices, and to their constitutional inability to support a climate so different from that of their native country. Before we dismiss this part of the subject, it will be necessary to make some allusion to the political arrangements which are rumoured to have taken place among the Affghans themselves since the insurrection at Cabul, as upon these must in some degree depend the measures to be taken for the future settlement of the country, in the event of its again falling into our power. But notwithstanding the length of time since the revolt, the accounts which have been received on this point are so confused, and so much at variance one with The written orders of General Elphinstone, extorted by the Affghans at the capitulation of Cabul, are alleged by Colonel Palmer in extenuation: similar orders were sent to Jellalabad and Candahar, but discharged by the gallant officers there in command. another, that scarcely any thing can be ascertained with certainty. In the consternation of the first surprise, Shah-Shoojah was almost universally denounced as the prime mover and instigator of the massacre of the allies who had placed him on the throne; and his continuing to reside unharmed in the Bala-Hissar during the siege and after the capitulation, would certainly appear to afford strong primá facie evidence of his complicity with the conspirators. But other statements seem to prove that his apparent subservience to the insurgents was prompted only by a regard for his own safety; and the Calcutta papers mention that he had even contrived to forward a letter to the Governorgeneral, exculpating himself from the charge of treachery, and bitterly inveighing against the late envoy as having brought on the catastrophe by his in judicious conduct. It does not appear very clearly in whom the actual authority of Cabul is at present vested. Akhbar Khan's authority seems to be limited to the military command; and though the names of various chiefs are mentioned as assuming the temporary direction of affairs, no one appears to have acquired a sufficiently decided predominance to justify his being regarded as the supreme leader.* Nor do we conceive that the death of ShahShoojah (if the report of his assassination by the Ghazis should prove to be well founded) will materially lessen the diplomatic difficulties of our situation; for if, on the one hand, it saves us the trouble of punishing him should the charge of foul play be brought home to him, it deprives us, on the other, (according to any but Asiatic rules of equity,) of our only colourable pretext for continuing to interfere in the affairs of the country: since, had our ex-ally not existed in 1839, it is difficult to conjecture what grounds we could have put forward to justify our aggression. Hitherto we have considered the subject of the late reverses only in its military point of view, and with reference to our future proceedings in Affghanistan itself. But severe as is the amount of actual loss which has been sustained, and grievous as are the sacrifices by which it may be neces sary to retrieve it, the political results of these disasters are to be looked for, not so much on the further side of the Indus, as in the train of feeling which may be kindled by this event among the native population of India. "The people of Central Asia," to quote the language of an eloquent writer in the Edinburgh Review, (Oct. 1841, article on Warren Hastings,) "had always been to the inhabitants of India, what the warriors of the German forests were to the subjects of the decaying monarchy of Rome. During the last ten centuries, a succession of invaders descended from the west on Hindostan—and it had always been the practice of the emperors to recruit their army from the hardy and valiant race from which their own illustrious house sprung." Affghanistan, in fact, may be regarded as the fatherland of the Moslems of India, a great proportion of whom, at this day, including all the Patans and Rohillas, are of nearly pure Affghan blood, and pride themselves on tracing their de scent from the warlike and independent tribes beyond the Indus; towards whom, since the fall of the House of Timur, they have more than once turned their eyes for aid to support the waning ascendency of Islam. When the Mahrattas under the Bhow occupied Delhi in 1760, and openly * Nawab Jubbar Khan, eldest brother of Dost Mohammed, is said to be the only person who can maintain order and concord among those fiery chiefs, all of whom respect his single-hearted and venerable character; but he takes no part in the direction of affairs. This aged chief "arrived at Ghazni, during its occupation by the British, with offers of submission from Dost Mohammed to Shah-Shoojah, expressive of his willingness to cede to him all right to the city of Cabul, on condition that he should not be compelled to remain in a British province under surveillance, maintaining at the same time his indefeasible right to the office of vizier, as head of the Barukzyes. It being impossible to entertain such a proposition, the old man, in his bluntness, expressed great indignation at the rejection of what he considered as but just and righteous." (Sir K. Jackson's Views in Affghanistan.) We must confess ourselves far from disinclined to coincide in the view of the subject as taken by the honest old Affghan. avowed their intention of terminating the Moslem rule in India by proclaiming the son of the Peishwa as emperor, the Mohammedan chiefs invoked in their extremity the aid of Ahmed Shah, the founder of the Doorauni dynasty, whose power had been manifested to them by the sack of Delhi a few years previously and the decisive victory of Paniput, where near 200,000 Mahrattas fell in the battle and the pursuit, proved that their reliance on Affghan powers was wellfounded. More than thirty years later, the same spirit was again strong ly shown during the fruitless attempts of Shah-Zemaun (elder brother of Shah-Shoojah,) to regain the influence in Hindostan which had been held by his grandfather Ahmed. In the words of Mountstuart Elphinstone, (than whom no man ever better knew the sentiments of the natives of India,) "every Mussulman, even to the remotest regions of the Dekkan, waited in anxious expectation for the advance of the champion of Islam”. and our newly acquired empire would have been seriously endangered, if he had gained a footing beyond the Sutlej so as to rally round his standards the Moslems of the Upper Provinces, while Tippoo-Sultan, with whom he was in active communication, made head against us in the south. His efforts, it is true, were constantly frustrated by the distracted state of his own dominions; but the peril was still considered sufficient to justify the sending a mission to Persia in 1799, "the principal object of which was," by creating a diversion, "to secure a three years' suspension of the threatened attack of Shah-Zemaun." southern provinces of the Calcutta presidency, which would not rise in instant revolt in the event of our military force being so weakened as to become inadequate for their coercion : and had any such reverse as the disaster of Cabul occurred within the boundaries of India, the words of Bishop Heber (to which we referred in January 1839) would have been at once fulfilled by the universal insurrection of every man who possessed a sword and a horse. The disaffection of the Mahratta and Rajpoot States, indeed, arises simply from the desire of shaking off our supremacy at any rate; but the sympathy of the Moslems is more directly enlisted in favour of the Affghans by community of blood and faith, and has been, all along, unequivocally manifested. No sooner was the rupture declared between the chiefs of Cabul and the British government, than the native Mohammedan press teemed with invectives against the latter, couched in terms which in Europe would be held as treasonable, and with direct appeals to our soldiery to desert their colours in the approaching contest. In November 1838, the Jami-Jehan-Numah, a journal in the Persian language, extensively circulated among the natives in Central India, announced to its readers" that fully four lakhis" (400,000!)" of Cabul Affghans had assembled under the standard of the Prophet, resolved to combat to the utmost in behalf of the faith against the infidels who were preparing to invade their territory;" following up this veracious intelligence by an exhortation, addressed to the Moslem sepoys, "if it should be their destiny It cannot, therefore, reasonably be to be brought in contact with them, expected that the recent events in Aff. to pay no regard to the Feringhi salt ghanistan should be viewed with in- which they had eaten, but to join the difference by any class of our Indian glorious warriors of Islam in the day subjects, and least of all by the Mos- of battle!" Another periodical of the lem part of the population. It is same class, (the Ain-Iskender, printed worse than idle to allege, as is too in Calcutta,) is said to have had, some much the fashion among newspaper years ago, a large sale in Persia, and politicians of the present day, that the to have been mainly instrumental, by long continuance of our sway, with its inflammatory tirades, in filling the the equity of our internal administra- head of the Shah with the wild schemes tion, has extinguished these aspirations of Indian conquest, which the repulse for religious and national indepen- before Herat so effectually extinguishdence, and reconciled the natives of ed. Even while the Persian army lay India to the yoke of the stranger. So before that fortress, its columns confar is this favourite delusion from hav- tinued to be filled with triumphant ing any foundation in fact, that there predictions of their speedy advance is not a single district of our immense upon the Punjab and Delhi; while the territory, except perhaps some of the impunity with which these attacks were suffered to pass, was viewed by the natives as conclusive evidence of the weakness and trepidation of the government. The natural consequence was a whole cluster of abortive conspiracies, by Hindoos as well as Moslems, in Poonah and various parts of the Dekkan, besides the grand plot which led to the dethronement of the Rajah of Sattarah, whose scheme was to effect a diversion, by means of 15,000 Portuguese from Goa, (!) in favour of the great combined invasion of Russians, Persians, and Affghans, which he confidently expected was about to burst on the north-west frontier. Such has been our reward for communicating to our Indian subjects the art of printing; and our efforts to instruct them in English literature (it may be remarked par parenthèse) have been equally well repaid; the intercepted despatches at Cabul having been translated to the Affghans by runaway students from the Delhi College! This constantly smouldering spirit of disaffection in the Moslems, has hitherto attracted comparatively little notice from writers on India; though such a feeling in this class of our subjects, from their natural tendency to seek support among their co-religionists throughout Asia, is far more dangerous than it would be among the Hindoos, whose faith and sympathies are all confined within the boundaries of their own country. The little attention which this important point has met with, is probably owing to the fact of our final contests for universal empire in India having been with the Mahrattas and other Hindoo powers, and not with the Mohammedan princes, whose subjugation was apparently completed by the fall of their great champion Tippoo-Sultan; it is to the Bengal provinces, moreover, where the evil is less apparent than in the southern presidencies, that the speculations of English authors and travellers have been principally directed. In Northern India, which is almost entirely under our direct dominion, there are no points of reunion for the Moslem interest, except the utterly helpless pageant courts of Lucknow and Delhi; "the sul tanut" (to use their own words) "has departed from the Faithful," and their national existence may be considered as annihilated. But even here the spark, on more than one occasion, has been nearly kindled into flame; and the furious outbreak of the Rohillas in 1816, occasioned by the misconduct of a local officer at Bareilly, is yet far from forgotten in the upper provinces. The green flag of the Prophet was hoisted-the moollahs preached the holy war-and the zeal and determination with which this warlike race obeyed the call, showed them to have degenerated in neither point from their fathers, who, under the leadership of Hafiz-Remut Khan, opposed the mercenary battalions of Hastings, and the armies of his ally the Nawab- Vizier, on the bloody field of Rampoor. By prompt military interference, and at the expense of considerable bloodshed, the insurrectionary movement was indeed crushed in the outset, and prevented from spreading through the surrounding districts; but it was abundantly shown how easily the martial fanaticism of the Moslems might yet be raised against the hated yoke of the Kafirs! But the focus of Mohammedan turbulence in the present day, should any commotion arise, would more probably be found in the Dekkan and the Hyderabad territories, where the Moslems have in all ages been distinguished by intolerance and bigotry, and where they enjoy a greater share of political freedom than their brethren in Northern India. The Nizam (as the sovereign of Hyderabad is popularly denominated, from the name of his great ancestor Nizam-al-Mulk) is the oldest ally of the British power in India; and he and his predecessors have all along maintained exemplary good faith in their relations with our government. His independence, however, has of late years become little more than nominal; he is bound by treaty to maintain a large subsidiary force, which, though raised in his name, and paid from his revenues, is officered and disciplined by Europeans, and forms in effect part of the Company's army; while the measures of his civil government are virtually under the control of the resident at Hyderabad. During the reign of the present Nizam, who is an indolent and voluptuous prince, and pays little attention to affairs of state, this interference in the internal administration has been carried (as it is said) to a vexatious and unnecessary extent, so as to excite great discontent among the haughty nobles of the court, and the petty nawabs who hold their states as vassals of the Hyderabad monarchy. Most of these chiefs, in addition to their native followers, have in their service considerable numbers of foreign armed retainers, sometimes Patans and Rohillas from Northern India, but more frequently Arabs from the Muscat territories, who, from their ferocious bravery, are held in the highest estimation throughout India as mercenaries, and receive pay and allowances far higher than those assigned to the native soldiery. Not fewer than 15,000 of these fierce condottieri were entertained, when the Affghan war broke out, in the Hyderabad state and its dependencies; and many of these professed the tenets of the Wahhabis, or Moslem puritans, whose sect was nearly suppressed in Arabia, some twenty years since, by the sword of the pasha of Egypt. The introduction of these novel doctrines, which had hitherto been unknown in India, added to the ferment of the public mind; even in the city of Madras, the uncompromising tenets of these fierce enthusiasts found numerous followers; and the government deemed it necessary to deport to Calcutta some of the most active of their dais, or teachers, who were detected in the attempt to seduce from their allegiance the Moslem sepoys in the Madras regiments. But in the semiindependent states of the Nizam the evil was less easily checked; the passions of the Moslems were stimulated by the diffusion of seditious papers, upbraiding them with their degenerate submission to Feringhi ascendency;* and fresh converts were daily attracted by the vehement harangues of the new sectaries, who avowed their aim of restoring Islam to its ancient purity and pre-eminence. The movement party at length found a leader in the Nawab Mubariz-ed-dowlah, (brother of the reigning Nizam,) a prince of remarkable personal advantages and high popularity, who openly embraced the Wahhabi creed, and made his palace in Hyderabad the headquarters of their faction; while at the same time it became known that vast quantities of artillery and military stores were being collected by the Nawab of Kurnool, a petty Patan ruler, whose country adjoined that of the Nizam. The British government now felt itself compelled to interfere. In June 1839, Mubariz-ed-dowlah was arrested in pursuance of a requisition from the resident, and conveyed as a state prisoner to the fort of Golconda, where he still remains; and in October of the same year, the Nawab of Kurnool was mediatized, (to borrow a phrase from the Germanic empire,) and his district absorbed in the dominions of the Company.† The discoveries made at the occupation of this place were sufficiently calculated to open the eyes of the government to the nature and extent of the plot which had been concocted. An enormous number of newly-cast guns, piles of shot, shells, and missiles of extraordinary and novel fashions, were found concealed in every part of the palace, gardens, and town, in such profusion as could scarcely be explained except by supposing it to be the central depôt of some widely-ramified conspiracy; and though it does not appear that any * Some idea may be formed of the terms and spirit of these proclamations from the following extracts, taken from a paper seized at the capture of Kurnool, in October 1839. "The sinз of him who dies for the faith are remitted by God, and he enters Paradise pure and spotless. If a single Moslem opposes ten infidels in battle, and is victorious, he becomes a Ghazi, (champion of the faith :)-should he be slain, he is a shahhid, (martyr,) and will enter into glory. By the death of one man, the glorified shahhid Tippoo-Sultan, the Moslems fell into their present state of degradation and subjection to the infidels; and you, of the present day, though you are the heirs of the prophets and the sons of the men who fought for Islam, have deserted your religion, and obey the infidel Nazarenes! But you will speedily hear the cry of Deen! Deen! (the faith)—then shake off all negligence and fear from your hearts; repeat the Kulma and the Fatah, (Mohammedan formula of faith,) and join the army of the true believers who have come for the battle!" He was murdered (June 1840) at Trichinopoly, whither he had been sent under surveillance, by one of his own Moslem attendants, who had conceived, from his master's familiar intercourse with the English residents, that he meditated embracing Christianity! |