Empire of the Sikhs by Patwant Singh Page A

the
misl
together for seven years through a form of regency which included Diwan Lakhpat Rai and Dal Singh, who was Mahan Singh’s maternal uncle and Chief of Akalgarh. But her regency was the cause of strife between the two power camps around Ranjit Singh, with Raj Kaur and Diwan Lakhpat Rai being opposed with increasing bitterness by Sada Kaur and Dal Singh, each trying to bring young Ranjit Singh under its influence.
    In this face-off Sada Kaur and Dal Singh, the more aggressive of the protagonists, were determined not only to undermine Raj Kaur’s effectiveness as an administrator but to tarnish her personal reputation as well. Aside from an ongoing smear campaign against her over her relationship with Lakhpat Rai, many intrigues well beyond the bounds of decency were hatched to destroy her in the public’s esteem. In 1797 her seventeen-year-old son took over the
misl
’s affairs because, according to some reports, he had grown impatient with her control of things.
    The death of Raj Kaur was a mysterious and controversialepisode. The most vicious rumours soon circulated suggesting that Ranjit Singh had a hand in the killing of his mother and were believed by many. One British army officer, writing nearly half a century later, gives a distinctly novelettish version of events. Ranjit Singh, his story goes, entered his mother’s chamber early one morning and, finding a man there, quietly left, summoned some followers, took up a sword and returned to his mother’s room where he now found her alone. In an increasingly heated argument Raj Kaur is said to have upbraided her son for casting a slur on her moral character and Ranjit, ‘stung to madness by her reproaches’, to have dispatched her ‘as she was sitting up on her bed half naked and with dishevelled hair’. 11
    The historian Hari Ram Gupta, a specialist in the period, comments as follows:
    Some writers accuse Ranjit Singh of having killed his mother with his own hands … Kushwaqt Rae, Sohan Lal, Amar Nath and Bute Shah [writers and chroniclers of distinction whose judgments are based on first-hand observation or on a serious study of events of the period] do not mention this event. Kushwaqt Rae wrote his book in 1811, and he was not in Ranjit Singh’s service. Bute Shah was an employee of the British Government at Ludhiana. He says that Ranjit Singh took charge of his
misl
in consultation with his mother … N.K. Sinha says the story is based on ‘mere gossip’. Sita Ram Kohli considers the charge entirely false and baseless. In our view, by any stretch of imagination, Ranjit Singh cannot be called a matricide. The story is purely malicious and absolutely unfair and unjust. 12
    There would seem to be no justification for the charge of matricide against a man whose patent decency throughout his life is especially striking seen in a historical context so replete with themost extreme examples of cruelty and bloodthirstiness on the part of rulers not only towards persons defeated by them but even towards the innocent. A British historian comments: ‘Ranjit Singh was not cruel or bloodthirsty. After a victory or the capture of a fortress he treated the vanquished with leniency and kindness, however stout their resistance might have been, and there were at his court many chiefs despoiled of their estates but to whom he had given suitable employ.’ 13
    Eventually it came to be accepted that Raj Kaur had been poisoned at the instigation of her adversaries.

    Sada Kaur was on an altogether grander scale of ambition than Ranjit Singh’s mother Raj Kaur and possessed of both courage and ability in abundance. On several occasions she proved herself a valuable ally to her son-in-law. Lepel Griffin describes her as ‘a widow of great ability and unscrupulousness [who] took command of the confederacy and held her own against her son-in-law successfully till 1820’. 14 After Raj Kaur’s death Diwan