The Butcher of Sobraon

Blurb Butcher of Sobraon 951 words ‘The Butcher of Sobraon’ – Challenging the Myths of the British in India The history of the British colonisation of the Punjab is a disturbing story of the most appalling atrocities, the most obscene contraventions of fundamental human rights and the theft and pillaging of a great nation. Under the auspices of spreading the word of God and the fake premise of helping to educate an ignorant, backwards nation, British aristocrats committed the kind of sins which fit uncomfortably in the same bracket as Hitler, as Ivan the Terrible, as Pol Pot, Stalin or Saddam Hussein. In this rampagjng work, Gavin Singh tells it as it was. There is none of the romanticism of costume dramas glorifying the Raj; none of the false nobility of white suited British Gentlemen defeating ignorance and the climate to make the Punjab a sunnier Britain. Improving the world before taking tiffin is as much as a myth as the idea that the Punjab was a backwards nation. Singh describes a State rich in wealth and resources, self sufficient and led by an inclusive Maharaja years ahead of his time. He explains how that Maharaja, Ranjit Singh, the Lion of the Punjab, led his nation to a period of Camelot. How he overcame the war lords of neighbouring Afghanistan to bring peace and power to his nation. How he was helped by the great warrior queen, Rani Sada Kaur and how, as his reign ended his nation fell into chaos. Indeed, it is not just the imperialists who have the light of truth shone upon them. Singh shows how the great Sada Kaur turned when she saw her legacy begin to crumble; how the Maharaja Ranjit Singh was driven by short termism – how even while the Punjab was enjoying the greatest period of its history, turbulence was growing beneath the bejewelled surface of the nation. He demonstrates how the British were allowed to enter the Punjab, using the three turncoats Lal Singh, Tej Singh and Gulab Singh. The first two, Hindus at heart, betrayed their country and cost millions of their kin their lives by acting for the British while supposedly leading the great Sikh army in the first Anglo-Sikh war. He shows how that war was fake; pre-arranged and the result decided in the favour of the imperialists when victory for the Sikhs would have cast the colonizing British out the whole of India. He shows how close to victory the Sikh army came, despite their leaders doing everything they could to prevent that from happening. We also discover how one British officer, Joseph Davey Cunningham sees the truth and writes it down in a history of the Punjab. What happens to him as a result should be a shock…but probably is not. Singh introduces the Regent, Rani Jind Kaur, who tried against all odds to hold the throne for her son, still a minor, and how the trickery of the British, the complicity of the Sikh Government and her own uncertain ambitions combined to ensure that last Maharaja of the Sikh nation was lost to the Punjab. Complicity is a theme to which Singh returns frequently. It is only through the complicity of a people who place short term coping above long term freedom that the British manage to rape and pillage their kingdom. And that the imperialists do. Most symbolically through stealing the Koh-i-Noor, the world’s biggest and most precious diamond, the icon of the Sikh nation. We discover how the plan is formulated at the highest level – Queen Victoria covets, and her acolytes – the Iron Duke of Wellington and Robert Peel – conspire to have that brilliant jewel stolen and delivered to her. We learn how they employ Lord Dalhousie, the abhorrent epitome of all that is worst about such Victorian cancers as greed and duplicity. How he steals not only the Koh-i-Noor but the young Maharaja himself. Duleep Singh is still a child when he is abducted from his mother and ultimately sailed across the oceans back to England. Once there, he is ensconced in Elveden near Thetford, a play thing for Victoria and her aristocratic subservients to show off like some exhibit in a freak show or new animal in a zoo. Then eventually, when the rich lose interest, to be discarded as wantonly as a used handkerchief or a country of the Empire. We learn about what happens to the Koh-i-Noor, how it is savaged and shaved and still lies unreturned to this day, neither to its home in the Punjab nor even to Elveden. Yet, we discover, the diamond has power, and Karma is visited upon those who abuse it. We learn through Singh’s stories of the Sepoy Mutiny; we touch on other great leaders to compare to those of the Punjab – the Afghanistan Emperor Akbar Khan and John F Kennedy. Singh even offers us a fictional look of what might have contributed to the building of the atrocities placed upon the Sikhs by the imperialist locusts. Our view of the British Raj is one that has become softened, rose tinted by the current tendency to see Victorian Britain as some kind of panacea in which Britain ruled and the world thanked. In ‘Butcher of Sobraon’ (the scene of the decisive battle of the Fake War) Gavin Singh rips through the jingoism and xenophobia which the modern view of Victoria promotes, and tells the truth about the torment and the treachery which followed the British colonisation of the Punjab. Buy ‘The Butcher of Sobraon’ now, and learn the truth about the abhorrent acts of the British imperialists in Punjab – atrocities for which the Sikh people of the Punjab are still paying today.