Baiting the British Jang Bahadur possessed an uncanny ability for strategy and tactics and always kept an ace up his sleeve JUN 28 - December 22, 1848 was a cold and foggy morning in Kathmandu. The thick mist even obstructed the view of the Bagmati as Prime Minister Jang Bahadur Rana stood by the window, gazing into the distance from his Thapathali Durbar. In one hand, he held a hookah pipe; the slender fingers of his other gently stroking his goatee. Jang Bahadur was in a pensive state and absolutely alone in his chambers. He was a severe and introverted man who trusted no one, not even his nearest kin, but he seemed to possess an uncanny ability for strategy and tactics that kept everyone on their toes, even the mighty British who were then consolidating their position across India. Jang Bahadur was about to embark on a rather ostentatious and seemingly incomprehensible journey to the Tarai with King Surendra literally in tow. The new king had just succeeded his father Rajendra, virtually on Jang Bahadur’s orders. The latter had outmaneuvered Rajendra and his youngest queen, Lakshmi Devi, and had become the undisputed leader of Nepal. The status of the new king was without any significance, save for a purely (but necessary) ceremonial role. It is in such a circumstance that Jang Bahadur mounted his well-adorned horse in Thapathali that morning, dressed impeccably in military fatigues at the head of an extraordinary contingent consisting of some “32,000 soldiers, 52 guns, 300 cavalry, 250 horse artillery, 2,000 camp followers and 700 ration officers.” In May of that same year, Jang Bahadur had been closeted in meetings for days with his military officers and intelligence officials: they had been closely following events in India related to the recurrence of hostilities between the Sikhs and the British. They had also not forgotten that only six years earlier, in 1842, the Qing dispensation in China was compelled to sign the Treaty of Nanking due to reverses they suffered against the British in the First Opium War. The treaty left China considerably weaker than before: she had to pay an indemnity to Britain, acquiesce to extra-territorial rights for English merchants, open four ports to British commerce and was forced to cede Xianggang, or Hong Kong, to Queen Victoria. In other words, Jang Bahadur was looking askance at the steady accretion of British power all over the region. He had only recently tightened his grip on power in Nepal while the political situation in China was far from tranquil, yet Jang Bahadur was astute and perhaps wise enough to continue with the dispatch that year of the 12th five-yearly (quinquennial) Nepali mission, successful chiefly in one important regard, namely securing the Qing Emperor Tao Kwang’s official recognition of the new King Surendra, a critical achievement because the British had not yet arrived at such an endorsement and therefore, the Prime Minister’s objective had been met. It is perhaps on account of all these varied factors that Jang Bahadur set out for the Tarai in such a demonstrative fashion that December morning. The proximate cause for this heavy and even provocative movement south by Jang Bahadur may have been as described, but the more immediate reason was rather specific: the British had recently declined an offer by the Nepali government for eight regiments of Nepali troops, under the personal command of the Prime Minister himself, in the event that there was a renewal of conflict between the British and the Sikhs. Memory of the outcome of the First Anglo-Sikh War had not been lost on Jang Bahadur—it had rendered the Sikh Kingdom, with its capital in Lahore, to a considerably diminished state. The key features of the Treaty of Lahore (1846), not unlike the Treaty of Nanking as described above, consisted of the surrender of valuable lands between the Beas and Sutlej Rivers, indemnity payments and some form of extra-territoriality. Was Jang Bahadur apprehensive of eventual British advances into Nepal? Was the Prime Minister’s offer of eight regiments to the British as well as the subsequent trip to the Tarai meant in some way to preempt such a British strategy? Most likely. Because Jang Bahadur’s seemingly defiant trip to the Tarai seemed to “immediately give rise to the suspicion that by making such a display of force on the frontier of India he intended to compel the Indian Government to detach from their Punjab Expeditionary Force a considerable number of troops to watch their northern border” and as a result, risk being outnumbered against the Sikhs on a distantly separated second front. Whether such a detachment of Indian Government troops actually occurred is not yet clear but it may be assumed that some form of negotiations took place at the time between Nepali and British authorities concerning this particular matter. This seems especially probable because a year later, in 1850, the British Government had already consented to Jang Bahadur’s visit to England, which amazingly was to be the first by any South Asian ruler or sovereign, and during which time, an extraordinary reception was given in his honor by Queen Victoria herself. All these were significant achievements for the Prime Minister. But Jang Bahadur always seemed to be prepared for the worst and kept an ace up his sleeve. For example, in the spring of 1849, before his trip to England but after his expedition to the Tarai, Jang Bahadur accorded political asylum in Thapathali itself to Maharani Chanda Kunwar, the wife of the Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh, otherwise known as the “Sher-e-Punjab” or Lion of the Punjab. Koirala is Director of the Nepal Institute of International and Strategic Studies. Views expressed are his own. bhaskar.koirala@gmail Posted on: 2013-06-28 08:20
Posted on: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 06:18:12 +0000
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