Book Review

Sir William Napier, The History of General Sir Charles Napier’s Conquest of Scinde First published 1845. This edition. (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 361. Price Rs. 695/-.

It is September 2001 and the world waits with bated breath for the repercussions of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on the 11th day of this month. If the United States launches a war on Afghanistan what would be its fallout? Let us, therefore, look at the fallout of the British attack on Afghanistan a long time back. More than a century and a half ago, in 1842, the greatest superpower of the nineteenth century, Great Britain, had just been beaten out of Afghanistan. In a curious parallel to what is happening today, Lord Auckland, the British Viceroy in India, had wanted a ‘friendly’ ruler in Afghanistan. Thus, Dost Mohammad, the ruler, was replaced by Shah Shuja. But the policy failed and its fallout was the conquest of Sindh! As Sindh had helped the British this colonial adventure was censured in Britain. This book, written by the brother of the conqueror and himself a general, is less of an authentic historical narrative than an effort at whitewashing a brother’s reputation.

William Napier, the author, begins by praising his brother’s reputation as a general and an administrator. He then goes on to offer the theory that ‘barbarian power continually menaces British India, and peace cannot be till all is won’ (p.15). In short, he is a believer in Kipling’s ‘White Man’s Burden’ theory---that it is the ‘white man’s’ moral duty to civilize the ‘lesser’ races. This mission cannot be accomplished except by conquest hence ‘peace’ cannot come till all non-European powers are not completely dominated. With this justification William explains his brother Charles’s eventual conquest of Sindh.

Hamida Khuhro, the famous Pakistani historian, makes it clear in her introduction that Charles Napier was not as innocent as his brother made him out to be. He was appointed to the command of troops in Sindh by Lord Ellenborough who believed in subjugating the native princes as a way of avenging the British defeat in Afghanistan. Major Outram, who is painted as a pusillanimous blunderer in William’s book, is represented to be a restraining influence on Charles Napier by Hamida Khuhro. While William contends that the Amirs of Sindh were treacherous, there is Napier’s remark from his diary: ‘We have no right to seize Scinde, yet we shall do so, and a very advantageous and human piece of rascality it will be’ (p. xiii). With this end in view, it may be conjectured, Napier marched provocatively in 1843 towards Hyderabad. The Amir’s troops gave him a chance by attacking the British residency in Hyderabad---exactly why they did this is not clear in either Williams’ or any other account. William says it was because they wanted to drive the British out contrary to their treaties while Hamida Khuhro contends that they had been provoked so much that they were driven to this desperate act. Anyway, since they did so, Charles Napier got his excuse to fight the Amirs. On 17th February he defeated the army of the Amirs at Miani. However, Mir Sher Mohammad of Mirpur, called the Lion by Charles, remained at large. Napier pursued him and on 26 March defeated ‘The Lion’ too at Dubbo. Then he sent the Amirs to Bombay and started ruling Sindh. Williams wrote another book to prove that he was a very just ruler but in this book he merely asserts that Charles and his officers never misbehaved with the ladies of the Amirs as had been rumoured by the journalists of Bombay.

William is at pains to prove the innocence of his brother so much that he cannot mention his critics without fuming at the mouth and accusing them of base motives. He dwells again and again on the moral weaknesses of the Amirs---their penchant for women, hunting, intoxicants and other decadent practices. He tells us how the Amirs would beat women and callously kill their illegitimate children and so on. If at all he praises any Asiatic it is the Baluch soldier who, he admits, fought heroically. But the Baluchi too is called a ‘barbarian’ like everybody else. The ultimate message is that it was in the interest of the advance of civilization to conquer Sindh. This, after all, is a ‘colonial’ text---the kind of text Edward said wrote about.

While this rhetoric about civilizing missions is obviously a device to rationalize conquest, the fact remains that the Amirs of Sindh governed despotically. They did not have even the semblance of a rule of law nor did they establish ports, printing houses, railways, hospitals and modern institutions of learning though they did endow madrassas. The British did all these things and these were beneficial for the people. However, the British did not end the arbitrary nature of feudal rule in Sindh at all levels. At the highest level they brought in their own colonial, authoritarian system but even this was so powerful as to take on the trappings of feudal rule by the district officers. At other levels the British allowed the Sindhi feudal lords (waderas) to play havoc with the lives of ordinary people because it suited them to keep their grip over Sindh through the feudal lords. In short, the feudal despotism of the Amirs lingered on in practice at the lower level for the Sindhi masses.

In short, all the claims of the book are not to be taken at face value. The book, however, is useful in understanding how policies are rationalized and how the greatest of crimes are covered over and whitewashed. It is also useful for giving us useful insights into the lives of nineteenth century military minds, logistics, tactics and warfare. It is also an important source of the life of Sir Charles Napier and one version of the conquest of Sindh. For all these reasons the Oxford University Press should be congratulated for having rescued this book from the shelves of old libraries and making it available for the historian and the general reader.