Sada Kaur’s military support and tactical advice proved pivotal as her young son-in-law went about creating an empire. But they fell out eventually.
The year was 1796. Punjab was fragmented among the 12 sovereign clans of the Sikh Confederacy called misl and two Pathan fiefdoms. Across the Indus on Punjab’s western border, Shah Zaman was threatening to invade again. After acquiring the Afghan throne, he had vowed to regain the lost empire of his grandfather, Ahmad Shah Abdali. In two previous incursions into the region, Zaman had captured several cities from the Sikh chieftains without much resistance, only to lose them as soon as he returned to Kabul, his capital. These cities were far in the west, though. This time, Zaman was threatening to march deep into Punjab, and possibly onto Delhi.
The colonial state not only bribed Punjab’s former aristocrats but created a religious divide among soldiers to quell the mutiny.
The war of 1857 had caught the colonial officers in Punjab by surprise. John Lawrence, the chief commissioner of Punjab, had heard about the sepoys’ disgruntlement in North India and Bengal but without giving it much thought, he left for Rawalpindi from Lahore, on his way to the hill station of Murree. He believed that Punjab was far away from Bengal and would not be impacted by the war. Like several other British officers, he had severely miscalculated the situation. A couple of days later, news of the sepoys reaching Delhi and setting European homes on fire reached him in Rawalpindi, spurring him into action.
A border drawn across the map severed centuries of bonds forged between the two cities. But memories of the past linger in the air.
Amritsar was born in Lahore. It was born inside the walled city, in a small house in its narrow and winding streets. It was the month of Assu, corresponding to the months of September and October in the Gregorian calendar. It was a month when the monsoon rains, having unleashed their fury, had finally taken mercy and receded. The demons of the summer had been defeated, while the tyrant winter was still imprisoned. It was that time of the year when there was perfect harmony, when nights were balanced by day, heat by cold. It was the time of the year so uncharacteristic of the extremities of Punjab that it seemed out of sync, an anomaly, to its vagaries.
