A jinxed life: Duleep Singh, Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s youngest son yearned for an “authentic existence”.

Tejwant Singh Gill

THESE days, the film, The Black Prince, is being hailed a lot.  The offspring of Muslim migrants to Pakistan, Hindus and Sikh refugees from there and Sikh families settled abroad, speak highly of the film that tells the pathetic the tale of Duleep Singh. He was the youngest son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Ill-luck, beset with false reward, chased him till his death. Marred by ill-health, he felt like the sailor of a sinking ship. On the throne under the supervision of his all-caring mother, Rani Jindan, he felt somewhat confident.  After she was put behind bars, he  felt a royal beggar and became a plaything in the hands of the colonialists managing the affairs of his kingdom. He was dethroned, made to forsake his native faith and embrace an alien religion. To add to it, he was taken to faraway England.  The comforts, benevolently promised but malevolently provided, enabled him to spend life in extravagant ways. Afterward, this life too ceased to interest him and a disconsolate state got the better of his being.  He disclaimed all comforts, went into exile and like a wounded bird flapped his wings to win back his kingdom. Rebuffed both by the Russian Dragon and the landed gentry of his erstwhile kingdom, he died in Paris with a concierge by his side. His death was of a martyr glorified in Sikhism and penitence hailed in   Christianity.     The film has generated wide interest. Was it because the he was impelled to luxuriate in a delusion of grandeur? Even those who believe that the past never repeats itself, cannot avoid it.  Helpful in pondering over the thematic content, this attitude is marked by several consonances and dissonances. The reason for this could be traced to the nature of the sources at hand for preparing the script. Mainly, they were of the polemical sort. In the first instance, Duleep Singh’s letters to the Viceroy, edited by Ganda Singh, the eminent historian, carried the impress of Duleep Singh’s wayward attitude towards life.  In the second instance, two or three historicist studies, with focus on his milieu, paid only lip-service to his impulses and feelings. To fill this lag, literary works, jangnamas, composed then and plays written after a century should have been used as source material. Sadly enough, they have played no role. The former depicted momentous events that happened in the wider world, with brief glances into the minds of the rivals. After the demise of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, things had begun to fall apart. In his memorable work, Jangnama Singhan te Frangian, later named Jangnama Hind te Punjab, Shah Mohammad had believed that during the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Punjabis had a shared culture. After his death, it began to vanish fast without hope of return. Strangely enough, Shah Mohammad, a devout Muslim, was 80 years old when he composed this jangnama. This commonly shared culture rose above the constraints of religious segregations. With the crumbling of this dream, half-realised during the reign of Ranjit Singh, Punjab ended up as a kite without strings, sure to be torn into shreds.After his death, the polity lost no time in realising its nefarious design. Again a devout Muslim, Matak, composed his own jangnama, of less literary merit but more bitter in tone and tenor. He dared to blame Lal Singh, the prime minister and Teja Singh, the commander, for the debacle. Laloo di lali gai/ teju da gia tej.  It was not the polity only that split into fragments, society too was bereft of coherence. Failing Shah Mohammad’s noble intention, it had only a semblance of cohesion that too was fast eroding. Some sort of a converging parallelism had come to prevail between Ranjit Singh’s bodily senility and his weakening authority. In his heart of hearts, its foreboding inclined him to feel that English suzerainty was sure to overwhelm Punjab. All this was poignantly portrayed by Sant Singh Sekhon in the two plays he wrote in the 1950s of the previous century. These plays drew their titles from the Gurbani, Bera bandh na Sakio (The fleet could not be anchored) from Sheikh Farid and Moian Saar na Kai (the dead weren’t aware) from Guru Nanak. They were both apostles of unity, equality and fraternity. The first play portrayed how blind animosity pervaded every nook and corner of the court, with one successor after another getting killed without any care and concern. Though nij bal, as Guru Gobind Singh had stressed, brought freedom but at this stage, there was no nij bal favouring this truth. The second play portrayed Duleep Singh from the time he arrived in England to his pathetic death in Paris. His enchantment with life in England, discontent with inauthentic living, adoption of Sikhism  turning it into the authentic mode, the futile effort to get back the kingdom, were all portrayed with rare insight. While he lay on death-bed, his second wife revealed that she married not to own his wealth but to launch him on the path of winning his right. It was left to his son Victor to explain how this could be possible by launching a struggle consonant with the spirit of the age. Consonant with the spirit of the age were democratic and republican forms of political struggle. The correct path for Duleep Singh was what Ghadarites strove to achieve quarter of a century later. No wonder, Duleep Singh could strive to win in the battle-field what his mother exhorted him to achieve posthumously from the death-bed.  Satinder Sartaj and Shabana Azmi, enact their roles creditably enough. Their union of wills enacted through roles is so consonant. Dissonance sets in as Punjab’s liberation is replaced by India’s war of freedom. Thereby, a shadow falls between illusion and reality. The film was to trudge in polyphonic domain but it proceeds only in a monophonic way.    The writer, the former Chairperson, Department of English, GNDU, Amritsar, is at present the Editor of “museindia” —an Internet journal.