Punjab and the War of Independence 1857- 1858: From Collaboration to Resistance-SHORT REVIEW

1. Punjab and the War of Independence 1857-
1858: From Collaboration to Resistance
by Turab ul Hassan Sargana (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Punjab-War-
Independence-1857-1858-
Collaboration/dp/0190701846/ref=pd_rhf_pe_p_img
_6?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=MAE98GFT
16MWERM9R2TK
Product details
• Publisher : Oxford University Press
(December 29, 2020)
• Language: : English
• Paperback : 308 pages
• ISBN-10 : 0190701846
• ISBN-13 : 978-0190701840
• Item Weight : 9.9 ounces
• Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Best Sellers Rank: #3,649,702 in Books (See
Top 100 in Books)
o #535 in Pakistan History
o #4,534 in India History

2. o #124,419 in World History (Books)
• Customer Reviews:
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Punjab and the War of Independence 1857- 1858: From Collaboration to Resistance-
SHORT REVIEW
• December 2020
• DOI:
• 10.13140/RG.2.2.25233.66405
• Project:
• How History Moves
• Agha H Amin
Top review from the United States
Agha H Amin

3. 1.0 out of 5 stars highly exaggerated and fallacious
account
Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2021
Punjabs role as most solid British East India
Company region is well established.
This book highly exaggerates Punjabs role in 1857
as far as resistance against British East India
Company was concerned.
Two minor puny insurrections at Gugera and Murree
in Punjab made absolutely no impact on British East
India Companys main effort against Delhi,the
principal battleground of the 1857 rebellion.
The writer equates siege of Delhi where the
company suffered more casualties percentage wise
than siege of Sevastopol the bloodiest british siege
which is unfair.
Extract from my book below:--
Punjab Loyalty
This is a much debated affair. The debate has

4. degenerated in a very ugly manner into an irrational
defence of Punjab loyalty by ardent modern Punjabi
nationalists and misinterpreted in a very adverse
manner by historians and thinkers with an anti
Punjabi attitude. The job of the historian is not to
defend or to condemn an action which was beyond
the control of a nation or a leader at a particular time
in history. The Punjabis were as much the prisoners
of circumstances as the Madrasi or the Bengali or
the Mahratta or the Rajput. The history of Punjab in
the period 1707 to 1857 was actually more complex
than the history of other parts of India. Leadership as
far as the Muslims are concerned did not develop in
Punjab because the Punjabi Muslim did not fit
anywhere in the political expediency considerations
of the Mughals. The Mughals preferred to recruit
Muslims of Persian, Turk or Afghan descent.
Among the non Muslims their first choice was the
Hindu Rajput, particularly those from Rajputana
proper since the Rajputs were the most dominant
class in Hindu society. Later on, after 1689546 the
emphasis shifted to the Mahrattas who were
ennobled in large numbers by Aurangzeb as a
political bribe to defeat Sivaji’s phenomenal
rebellion.

5. Mughal historical record illustrate that the Punjabis
by and large were very peaceful people. The region
was prosperous and the weather and climate and
fertility of soil contributed in making the inhabitants
peace loving and easy to administer like most plain
areas of India including the Gangetic plains etc. But
the Mughals went wrong at one place and
underestimated the resilience and moral force of a
new religion which originated from Punjab in
sixteenth century. Jahangir imprisoned the fifth Sikh
Guru Arjun who died while being tortured under
detention in 1606547. Aurangzeb the mild Stalin of
India had the ninth Guru Tegh Bahdur executed in
1675548. Symbolically speaking this excess proved
to be a major reason for the burning Sikh desire to
destroy Delhi in 1857. But then it is an irony of
history that Delhi has been burnt destroyed and
looted by Muslims from Afghanistan, Iran and
Rohailkhand much more by any non Muslim army
except in 1857. Keeping in view the Mughal policy;
the Sikh excesses at Delhi were a normal reaction of
an aggrieved community. Till 1605 the Sikhs
remained a peaceful religious group. But Arjun’s
death while in prison turned a basically peaceful

6. religious group into more serious dissidents. Thus
Guru Har Govind adopted a more active policy
unlike the previous Sikh Gurus. Thus the Sikhs
brought into Punjab’s history a healthy tradition of
manly and righteous resistance which had been
missing in the region since Porus last opposed
Alexander on the Hydaspes! Har Govind correctly
assessed that without recourse to the option of
militant resistance the Sikhs would be destroyed by
the Mughals. Har Govind militarised the Sikhs and
started a series of military actions which
subsequently assumed the shape of a low intensity
conflict or a guerrilla war against the Mughals. This
low intensity war continued till Har Govind’s death
in 1645. The Sikh resistance assumed more serious
proportions once their Guru (Religions head) Tegh
Bahadur was executed by Aurangzeb at Delhi in
1675. This execution proved to be a watershed in
Sikh-Muslim relations and Sikhs from 1675 became
vehemently anti Mughal and anti Muslim since they
identified Mughals with Islam. The Mughals on the
other hand were doing little more than manipulating
religion for rationalising oppression as all kings of
the world of that time did. There is no human
passion as powerful as revenge in driving a man!

7. Guru Govind Singh the son of Tegh Bahadur rightly
decided to avenge his father’s death. Thus the Sikhs
became a truly militarised sect under Govind. It is
not our intention to discuss much more of Sikh
history. But some background of this remarkable
religious group is necessary for the layman.
The Sikhs were the toughest opponents of the British
in battles fought on abs the population of the area
they ruled in Ranjit Singh’s time. But being a totally
militarised religious group largely composed of the
Jat caste of Punjab they were more integrated than
the majority Muslims and Pathans of their empire.
The Muslims were firstly divided into two distinct
races the “Pathans and the Punjabis”. The Pathans
although of a better fibre were further sub divided
into a watertight tribal society of various tribes. The
Punjabi Muslims till 1849 had a negligible role in
the elite power groups which controlled Punjab. The
Mughals who were ruling Punjab from 1526 to 1748
kept their own hand-picked governors, mostly of
Turkish, Persian or Pathan descent. Merely being
Muslim did not qualify the Punjabi for a respectable
place in the Mughal hierarchy. There was no
religious oppression since the Punjabis were

8. Muslims by majority, but consequently the Mughals
saw no need to cultivate the Punjabis by ennobling
them. This was a strange paradox which is common
in world history. Without oppression there is little
resistance and since there was no “challenge” which
the Punjabi Muslim faced unlike his Punjabi Sikh
counterpart, there was no “response”. Thus we see
two simultaneous trends. Racially the “Punjabi
Muslim” and the “Punjabi Sikh” were the same
people. The Sikhs belonging to one of the farming
caste the “Jats” to which many “Punjabi Muslims”
belonged. But their faith united them more closely
than the “Punjabi Muslim” since the “Punjabi
Muslim” suffered from no religious oppression.
Thus the Sikhs who were as plainly Punjabi as the
Punjabi Muslims became remarkably militant, while
the Punjabi Muslim remained placidly submerged in
his Lassi and routine life, without any religious
cohesion or fervour that the vacuum which was left
following the decline of the Mughal Empire in the
Punjab was filled not by the majority Punjabi
Muslim or the Pathan Muslim or the Martial Afghan
but by the smaller but more effective Sikh, who was
a Punjabi Jat by chance and a Sikh by choice.

9. Thus by 1799 the Sikhs were masters of Punjab and
by 1823 they had driven the Afghans to where they
belonged i.e. out of Peshawar. It may be noted that
racially the Afghans and East of Khyber Pathans are
one race but there are certain subtle but marked
differences in the two as far as culture and history
are concerned. The Sikhs were doing exactly what
Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan were doing in Mysore.
Mysore was a Hindu majority area ruled by Hyder
Ali and his son Tipu Sultan. They challenged the
EEIC for more than thirty years and effectively led a
Hindu majority area from 1769 to 1799 defying all
theories and notions about Hindu Muslim
differences and rivalry. These two rulers were able
to inspire a Hindu majority area into a willing
participation in a series of wars which constituted a
succession of most serious challenges to the
existence of the EEIC in South India. It is an irony
of Indo Muslim history that the toughest Muslim
challenge to the EEIC came not from any Muslim
majority region but from Mysore a predominantly
Hindu area! Even the regions between Delhi and
Benares which were the heartland of various Muslim
Empires in India played no part in resisting the
British after the militarily small battle of Buxar in

10. 1764!
The Sikhs could not annihilate the Muslims since it
was physically impossible but they did suppress
them. This does not mean that there was absolutely
no Muslim participation in the government or
administration of the country. There were many
Muslim governors and subsidiary Chiefs but mostly
in barren unproductive areas of Khushab Kalabagh
etc. There was the Muslim Fakir family of Lahore
who provided many ministers to Ranjit Singhs
government. But the Multani Pathans or the
Chahttas or the Bhattis who had resisted the Sikhs
were persona non grata. Many Muslim mosques
were turned into powder magazines and stables.
Today many Pakistanis do not know this and in the
process of murder of history in Pakistan in order to
prove outmoded obscurantist theories about our past
history the Mughals are glorified. But few people
know that in actual fact the Mughals were not equal
opportunity employers and in this regard the Sikh
attitude towards the Punjabi Muslims in connection
with distribution of power and patronage was
nothing new. The sore point about Sikh rule in
Punjab was religious oppression. The Punjabi and

11. the Pathan Muslim for the first time suffered
religious oppression during the Sikh time from
roughly 1780 to 1849. It is interesting to note that
the highly pragmatic and opportunist Muslim
Tiwana and Noon Rajputs managed to win Ranjit
Singh by sophisticated sycophancy and served him
loyally at a time when Muslim mosques were used
as stables and magazines! I am convinced that had
the Russians captured Pakistan following
Afghanistan in 1979 these feudals would have joined
the Russian Army also!
The EEIC defeated the Sikhs in two wars i.e. the
First Sikh War (1845-46) and Second Sikh War
(1848-49) and annexed Punjab in 1849. During the
First and Second Sikh war both the Punjabi Muslim
and the Pathan Muslim actively helped the EEIC
since they viewed the Sikhs as oppressors and the
EEIC as their liberator. This is a crucial and decisive
aspect about the EEIC annexation of Punjab. The
annexation was welcomed by the majority of the
population since they viewed the EEIC as a liberator
who deposed the unjust and tyrannical Sikhs. Hence,
the Punjabi and the Pathan Muslim loyalty of 1857
to the EEIC during the near fatal period of the siege

12. of Delhi. On the contrary the annexation of Oudh in
1856 was viewed by the Muslim elite and the Hindu
majority population of Oudh as an act of injustice,
because in Oudh there was no religious oppression.
The Shia Muslim dynasty was benevolent and liberal
with its majority Hindu subjects. Oudh had never
been invaded unlike Punjab or Frontier or Delhi by
any hostile army since 1550. Thus the people of
Oudh were in real terms a free people unlike most
parts of India of the period 1607-1857.
The annexation of Punjab in 1849 introduced a very
stable and efficient government in Punjab after ten
years of absolute anarchy which had followed the
death of Ranjit Singh. The EEIC administrators were
very fair and effective and the province which had
witnessed tremendous anarchy and bloodshed for a
continuous decade became the most tranquil and
prosperous province of India. The Sikhs were
chivalrously and benevolently rehabilitated. The
disbanded soldiers of the Sikh army were re
employed, existing canals were improved and new
canals were excavated. The whole country was
systematically disarmed and all fortifications
dismantled. The various Muslim mosques used as

13. powder magazines and stables were restored to the
Muslims. Most significant of these being the famous
Badshahi Mosque of Lahore which was restored to
the Muslims of Lahore after considerable efforts by
John Lawrence the Chief Commissioner of Punjab in
1856.
The estates of many Muslims confiscated by the
Sikhs were restored. The Muslims were recruited in
the army, police and civil administration which were
previously inaccessible to the Muslims. Many
Muslims who had switched to the EEIC side were
elevated to the status of feudal lords! It may be noted
that Sikhs employed loyal Muslims mostly in the
artillery only.
Thus when the rebellion broke out in 1857 the
populace of the Punjab by and large felt little
justification to participate in it. They correctly
viewed the EEIC as a liberator as far as the Muslims
were concerned and a just neutral party as far as the
Sikhs were concerned. What sympathy could the
Muslims have with the Mughal eighty two year old
Emperor in Delhi whose ancestors had failed to
protect the majority Muslim population of Punjab

14. and trans Indus frontier from the depredations and
excesses committed by plundering hordes of Persia,
Afghanistan and the Sikhs from 1739 to 1849? The
Sikhs on the other hand got a golden opportunity to
destroy the accursed city of Delhi!
Every region of the Indo Pak subcontinent in 1857
was different. Leaders of one region were viewed as
oppressors in another region. The EEIC was viewed
as an oppressor in Oudh, Jhansi and in the Bengal,
but as liberator in Punjab, Frontier and Rajputana.
The India of 1857 was not organised on communal
lines as much as the India of 1947 and merely being
Muslim or Hindu could not make anyone a traitor by
virtue of fighting on the EEIC side. If that was so the
Bengal Sepoy was also a traitor for the hundred
years before 1857. The word “traitor” does not suit
the Indo Pak region because the region consists of
various nations and religious groups. A more correct
word for the natives fighting on EEIC is “subsidiary
Collaborator”. A subsidiary collaborator fought for
the EEIC for economic necessity. Speaking in
nationalistic terms what “nationalism” could, the
Hindustani fighting for the EEIC in the First Sikh
war feel for the Sikh. What similarity was there to

15. make the average Punjabi of 1857 identify with the
Hindustani soldier of Bengal Army. Nationalism or
“Pan Islamism” or any other “issues” came into
existence in Indo Pak society once the people of
Indo Pak subcontinent read Rosseau and Voltaire in
the British created colleges and universities in the
late nineteenth century. Even today what is similar
between the Punjabi Rangers sepoy or policeman
and the common man in Sindh or Karachi?
We may conclude that there was nothing abnormal
in Punjab loyalty of 1857. The Punjabis were
prisoners of their time and it was a twist of fate
which placed the EEIC in the role of saviour of
Punjabi and Frontier Muslim; and a chivalrous and
religiously unbiased and liberal friend of the
minority Punjabi Sikh. The Hariana Hindu Jat or
Hindu Rajput was more politically aware since he
had known more stability by virtue of EEIC rule
since 1803. It is but a human characteristic that when
man’s basic needs are satisfied, he wants higher
things like sovereignty and independence. The
Hariana and North West Provinces had know
stability and peace since the EEIC annexed them in
1801 and 1803. They also in 1801 and 1803

16. welcomed the EEIC just like the Punjabi’s
welcomed the EEIC in 1849. Because the EEIC in
1801 and 1803 had liberated the North West
provinces and the Delhi area from the oppressive
and predatory Mahrattas, Jats, Gujars, Mewatis and
Rohillas. But that was 1803. In 1857 the people of
North West provinces aspired for more. The Bengal
Army sowar of 3rd Light Cavalry by resorting to the
short cut of armed insurrection then was consciously
fulfilling the aspirations of the people South of
Ambala. The current of history in 1857 dictated that
people of Indo Pak had to wait for nine more
decades. There was nothing abnormal in the failure
of the rebellion of 1857. The Indo Pak people failed
where European subject nations like the brave Boers
and the sturdy Irish had also failed. The
commendable fact remains that a rebellion was
attempted in 1857. On the other side the Punjab
loyalty of 1857 had also its reasons. It can be best
approached by being understood as it was rather than
being despised or defended. The Punjabis squarely
speaking cannot be blamed for their attitude in 1857.
However, they also must not condemn the
Hindustanis both Hindus and Muslims for having
rebelled in 1857; as many Punjabis are doing today.

17. Both the groups had different historical experiences
and both behaved in an understandable and
predictable manner.
The reader may feel that an out proportion attention
has been given to the background of the Punjab
loyalty of 1857. But this aspect of 1857 is relevant
for us even today. We have to understand and digest
this fact that belonging to the same religion cannot
overcome the differences created by virtue of
different perceptions produced due to different
historical experiences or because of cultural and
ethnic differences. The Muslim leaders of post 1940
Indo Pak sub continent managed to temporarily
galvanise the Muslims in 1946 into sinking regional
and cultural differences and establish a multi ethnic
state but mere rhetoric and euphoria cannot make
various ethnic groups a nation unless the political
system is based on equality and mutual respect
rather than mutual distrust and political
manipulation based on ulterior designs. The result
then is nothing but “Bangladesh! And perhaps many
more “Deshes” “tans” and “lands” if the Neo
Mughals of Delhi and Islamabad do not learn from
history.

18. SHORT REVIEW BY MAJOR AGHA H AMIN
(RETIRED)
Punjab and the War of Independence 1857-
1858: From Collaboration to Resistance
https://csio-ops.com/blogs/news/punjab-and-
the-war-of-independence-1857-1858-from-
collaboration-to-resistance