Three Plays by Gurcharan Das

Author:Gurcharan Das [Das, Gurcharan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184756258
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-01-03T16:00:00+00:00

Afterword

The major characters in this play existed. Its action is based on events in the Punjab in 1846-7, and was reconstructed from documents and letters exchanged by the principal characters. The historically curious may be interested to know what subsequently became of these characters.

Henry Lawrence was transferred to Rajasthan from the Punjab: a demotion in the eyes of his contemporaries. His younger brother, John Lawrence (mentioned in Act I), succeeded him in the Punjab and rose brilliantly to become the famous Lord Lawrence, the Governor-General and Viceroy of India. Henry Lawrence flickered once more briefly into history when he died defending the Residency in Lucknow in the 1857 Mutiny. Much was made at the time of his heroism; some even said that he had saved the British Empire.

That he saved the British Empire was in a sense true, though not in the way most people believed. The British won the 1857 war mainly through the support of the Punjab troops. The loyalty of the Punjab had been won ten years before by Henry Lawrence through his ‘rule’ of justice and generosity. Even today people talk about him in many villages of the Punjab.

Rani Jindan escaped from the Sheikhupura jail. She was seized and banished from the Punjab to a fortress in Benares. Once again she escaped, this time to Nepal where the king gave her asylum. She was never allowed to return to India nor to see her son, till the very end of her life—after sixteen years—in May 1863. She died three months later. Dalip scattered her ashes from the banks of the river in Nasik because he was not allowed to enter the Punjab. She had wished them thrown into the Ravi, near Lahore.

Sher Singh, true to his word, returned to throw out the Angrez from the Punjab. He rallied a sizeable force and launched such a successful attack on the British that the frightened establishment in Calcutta had to call in British troops from all over India to fight essentially one man in what historically came to be called the Second Sikh War. Sher Singh fought gallantly, but it was an unequal contest. With his defeat the spirit of Ranjit Singh finally died in the Punjab and the British formally annexed it in 1849. However, for the Punjabis, Sher Singh had salvaged the honour they had lost in Sobraon; and they were thankful to him.

Dalip was converted to Christianity and sent to England as a young boy where the British Government gave him an annual pension and the Elvedon Estate in Sussex. He grew up a dandy—mildly ostentations, favouring black velvet jackets (he was affectionately called the ‘Black Prince’)—and was rumoured to be a great favourite of Queen Victoria for many years. He married a German Ethiopian girl, Bamba Muller, who gave him two sons and three daughters. But he lived far beyond his means and ran up large debts.

In his later years, he realized he had been cheated by the British and, reverting to Sikhism, made a ludicrous effort to enlist the help of European powers and Indian Princes to win back his kingdom.

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