HARDINGE: Read then, Currie. Read.
CURRIE: What, sir?
HARDINGE: The document, of course.
CURRIE: (Produces a parchment and begins to read.) ‘Whereas on this ninth day of March in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty-six, The Honourable East India Company …’
HARDINGE: Just sum it up. Currie.
CURRIE: (Clears throat, slightly flustered.) Ahem!
(Pause.)
HARDINGE: Come on.
CURRIE: By the Treaty of Lahore, the Sikh Kingdom surrenders, in full, sovereignty of the territory, hill and plain, lying between the Sutlej and Beas rivers.
(Hardinge beams triumphantly.)
Two, agrees to pay one and a half crores of rupees indemnity as expenses of the war.
LAWRENCE: (Whistles in astonishment.) Whew! They’ll never be able to pay that! Their soldiers haven’t been paid for six months.
CURRIE: Mr Lawrence, you have been asked to listen to the treaty and not comment on the Governor-General’s political policy.
(Bland smile.)
May I continue?
HARDINGE: Go on, Currie.
CURRIE: (Reading.) Three, reduction of the Sikh army to 20,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry; four, surrender of 36 guns apart from those captured in the campaign; five, control of the rivers Beas and Sutlej to the confluence of the Indus at Mithankot.
LAWRENCE: Unthinkable! They could never keep these terms.
HARDINGE: Why not?
LAWRENCE: These’re much too harsh.
HARDINGE: Quite. Now let’s not get unpleasant, Lawrence. Quite.
Have a drink. Here’s to the Punjab!
(All—except for Lawrence—drink a toast.)
Splendid.
(Pause.)
Tell us, Lawrence, when did the old boy pop off?
LAWRENCE: ‘Old boy?’
HARDINGE: What do they call him? The two-eyed Lion?
LAWRENCE: The One-eyed Lion. You mean the late Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Punjab.
HARDINGE: Quite, quite.
LAWRENCE: He died in 1839, sir.
HARDINGE: Quite, that’s seven years ago.
LAWRENCE: (Smiling.) Quite.
HARDINGE: What, what. Quite, quite, quite. What sort of a chap was he?
LAWRENCE: (Smiling.) ‘The old boy?’
HARDINGE: Yes.
LAWRENCE: He was the greatest ruler Hindustan has known.
CURRIE: Apart from the British of course.
(Lawrence smiles back.)
CURRIE: (Contemptuously.) It would appear that Mr Lawrence’s romantic admiration for the late ruler of the Punjab makes him lose perspective.
LAWRENCE: On the contrary.
CURRIE: (Taunting.) Perhaps he will accord some of that admiration to the military record of the East India Company in India.
LAWRENCE: I have the highest admiration for the Company’s record. There’s a difference, however, between greatness and military records.
HARDINGE: (Bursting out.) Touché, what!
CURRIE: (Triumphantly.) Tell us then, Mr Lawrence, why the ‘mighty’ kingdom of the ‘great’ Maharaja fell three weeks ago?
HARDINGE: Yes, yes, Lawrence. That’s a bit of puzzle to us. I, for one, never dreamt we’d be in the Punjab so quickly.
LAWRENCE: I don’t think it has fallen.
ELLIOT: But they’ve signed the peace treaty.
LAWRENCE: (Coldly.) Treaties are meant to be broken. They are not a beaten people yet.
(Softly.)
When their army is betrayed by their own leaders, it is hardly a feather in our cap.
CURRIE: Neither is it a cause for regret.
LAWRENCE: Nor a cause for joy—for a fairly fought battle would have resulted differently.
HARDINGE: Elliot, how many men did we lose?
ELLIOT: Final figures are not yet in, sir.
HARDINGE: Quite. But why has the Punjab kingdom come to this end?
CURRIE: Very simple, sir. It’s clearly a matter of racial superiority. Every pagan power, no matter how formidable in appearance, must succumb to the civilizing mission of the white races.
HARDINGE: Lawrence?
(Pause. Lawrence doesn’t seem to have heard. He appears lost in his own thoughts.)
Come on, man.
LAWRENCE: (Realizing.) Sir?
HARDINGE: What do you have to say?
LAWRENCE: (Matter-of-factly.) I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Ranjit Singh died seven years ago. Since his death there’s been chaos everywhere and a fierce struggle for succession. The Sardars have been quarrelling like dogs. And Understandably, sir. For he not only created the Punjab from a mass of petty states—in fact his personality united the kingdom. He established no institutions which could live after him. When he died, the Punjab died.
CURRIE: Mr Lawrence seems to have become a true Oriental: he argues through the method of contradiction.
LAWRENCE: I don’t contradict myself. Ranjit Singh is not dead.
CURRIE: Perhaps he’s been on a holiday? (Bland smile.)
LAWRENCE: He still lives in the hearts of the people. It only needs a leader to conjure his memory and rally the people round him. That’s why, sir, I think such punitive terms should not be imposed and the dignity of this land should be preserved.
CURRIE: I find no dignity among people who eat with their hands.
LAWRENCE: (Continuing.) A strongly independent Punjab will be our best buffer against the loose, unruly hordes of Central Asia. Our treaty terms deny the possibility of any stable native government. Who will rule the Darbar under these conditions?
HARDINGE: (Smugly.) The British Government doesn’t wish to interfere in the internal affairs of the Lahore Darbar.
LAWRENCE: But that’s exactly what we’re doing, sir.
HARDINGE: Damn it, all right; but we do not intend the Punjab to be an independent state. The young Prince must be under our protection, and do our bidding.
LAWRENCE: What about his mother, sir?
HARDINGE: That tart!
LAWRENCE: I beg your pardon?
HARDINGE: She … she’s your headache. Mind you, Lawrence, she’s spirited as no other woman I’ve seen. You’ll have to watch her closely. If there’s trouble in the Punjab, she’s bound to be behind it.
LAWRENCE: I watch her, sir?
HARDINGE: Yes, Lawrence.
(Gets up. Lawrence follows; Hardinge looks for the orders and hands them over to Lawrence ceremoniously.)
In consideration of your generous services in the Punjab, in view of your knowledge of the North-West territories, I, Henry Hardinge, the Right Honourable Governor-General of India and her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council hereby appoint you Agent of the Honourable East India Company to the Government of His Highness Dalip Singh, the son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
(Pause. Looks at Lawrence whose head is lowered.)
Come man, show some sign of life. You’re promoted to the Residentship … the destiny of the entire North-West is now in your hands.
LAWRENCE: About the one and a half crores, they can’t pay it.
HARDINGE: Good God! I know they can’t.
LAWRENCE: Then why …
HARDINGE: Because if
