35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

‘I LIKE TOO MUCH THE PHFIT-PHFIT’
after this, and the memories of them are still cherished, although
they can hardly claim to have won two of them. The first was with
the Sikhs, the second with the British. The great Sikh Maharaja
Ranjit Singh conquered the city of Peshawar in 1823, and raised an
alien flag that flapped over its minarets and ancient bazaars until
1947, when the Union Jack was finally lowered for the last time in
front of Government House. The Pathans enjoy the challenge of
rising from defeat to fight on only marginally less than they enjoy
winning conclusively. So neither the Sikhs nor the British could
ever claim a total victory.
Fanning out north-west from Amritsar, the Sikhs advanced first
on Peshawar. Ostensibly they intended to cajole the ‘gift’ of a prize
thoroughbred horse from the city’s Afghan governor. But they
stayed on to waste the surrounding countryside and terrorise its
inhabitants most cruelly and barbarically. These Sikh armies were
oddly cosmopolitan in composition, including a Frenchman named
Ventura; an Italian, Avitable; and the American Josiah Harlan. But
it is Hari Singh, the most noted and brutal of Sikh generals, who
the Pathans remember, still prompting their children to behave with
the threat that ‘Hari will get you.’
The Sikhs ceded their control of the area to the British in 1849.
The Pathans seem to have preferred them as their successors, because
the latter went out of their way to understand the Pukhtunwali, or
tribal law, to facilitate their administration of the territories, and
were prepared to compromise when the situation called for it.
During the first half of 1857, the notoriously untamable Zakka
Khel Afridis raided several areas around Peshawar that were under
British jurisdiction. The agreement signed with the Afridis to end
this trouble is dated August 24, 1857, and is in the India Office
archives in London. Article 5 reads: ‘Reparation is not to be made in
the event of any person of the tribe abducting the wife or daughter
of a resident of British territory, but if he should have brought off
any property also, that shall be returned.’
One reason for this apparent indulgence of the Pathans’ eccentric
obsession with women may be evinced from the document’s date.
In August 1857, the Sepoy Rebellion – the so-called Mutiny –
rumbled on unchecked, with Delhi in the hands of rebel forces.
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