reached him in his village. It was a very hot night. They were sitting
by the well, and when Wariam Singh heard that the ---- Punjabis were
going to Wilayat to fight for the Sircar against a different kind of
white man, he said that, come what might, he would never surrender. He
made a vow then and there, and, contrary to all regimental discipline,
held by it.
I can picture the scene--the stencilled shadows of the kikar in the
moonlight, the smell of baked flour and dying embers, the almost
motionless group in a ring like birds on the edge of a tank, and in the
background the screen of tall sugar-cane behind the dry thorn hedge. The
village kahne-wallah (recounter of tales) would be half chanting, half
intoning, with little tremulous grace-notes, the ballad about
"Wa-ar-button Sahib," or Jân Nikalsain, when the lumbardar from the next
village would appear by the well and portentously deliver the message.
The scene may have flickered before the eyes of Wariam Singh, lying
stricken beside his machine-gun, just as the cherry blossom of Kent is
said to appear to the Kentish soldier. The two English officers in his
trench had fallen; the Germans had taken the trenches to the left and
the right, and they were enfiladed up to the moment when the final
frontal wave broke in. The order came to retire, but Wariam Singh said,
"I cannot retire, I have sworn"; and he stood by his machine-gun.
"If he had retired no doubt he would have been slain. Remaining he was
slain, but he slew many," was Zorowar Singh's comment.
Afterwards the trench was taken back, and the body of Wariam Singh was
found under the gun. The corpses of the Germans lay all round "like
stones in a river bed."
The disciples of Govind comprise many classes other than the Jat, of
whom there are some thirty main clans. There are Sikhs of Brahman and
Rajput descent, and a number of tribes of humbler origin. The Jat stands
first in respect to honour and numbers; apart from him, it is the
humbler classes who have contributed most weight to the fighting arms of
the community. The Brahman-, Rajput-, and Khatri-descended Sikhs do not
enlist freely.
The 48th Pioneers are recruited almost entirely from Labanas, a tribe
whose history goes back to the beginning of time. There are Labanas, of
course, who are not Sikhs. The Raja of the community is a Hindu and
lives at Philibit, and there are Labana hillmen about Simla, farmers in
the Punjab, traders in the Deccan and Bombay, and owners of ships; but I
have no doubt that the pick of them are those that have enlisted in the
Khalsa. The Labanas were soldiers at least two thousand years before
Govind, and according to tradition formed the armed transport of the
Pandavas and brought in the fuel (labanke--a kind of brushwood, hence
the tribal name) for the heroes of the Mahabharata. I heard this story
from a Labana Sikh one night on the upper reaches of the Euphrates near
Khan Baghdadi, when we were miles ahead of our transport and had rounded
up a whole army of Turks. He told it me with such impressment that I
felt it must be true, though no doubt there are spoilers of romance who
would unweave the web.
Theoretically Sikhism acknowledges no caste; but in practice the Sikh of
Jat or Rajput descent will not eat or drink with Sikhs drawn from the
menial classes, though the lowest in the social scale have been tried
and proved on the field, and shown themselves possessed of military
qualities which, apart from caste prejudice, should admit them to an
equal place in the brotherhood of the faithful. The Mazbhis are a case
in point. The first of this despised sweeper class to attain distinction
were the three whom Guru Govind admitted into the Khalsa as a reward for
their fidelity and devotion when they rescued the body of Tegh Bahodur,
the murdered ninth Guru, from the fanatical Moslem mob at Delhi. When
Sikhism was fighting for its life, these outcasts were caught up in the
wave of chivalry and "gentled their condition;" but as soon as the
Khalsa were dominant in the Punjab the Mazbhis found that the equality
their religion promised them existed in theory rather than fact. They
occupied much the same position among the Jat- and Khattri-descended
Sikhs as their ancestors, the sweepers, enjoyed amongst the Hindus. They
were debarred from all privileges, and were at one time even excluded
from the army. It fell to the British to restore the status of the
Mazbhi, or rather to give him the opening by which he was able to
re-establish his honour and self-esteem. The occasion was in the Mutiny
of 1857, when we were in great need of trained sappers for the
siege-work at Delhi. A number of Mazbhis who were employed at the time
in the canal works at Madhopur were offered military service and
enlisted readily. On the march to Delhi these raw recruits fought like
veterans. They were attacked by the rebels, beat them off, and saved the
whole of the ammunition and treasure. During the siege Neville
Chamberlain wrote of them that "their courage amounted to utter
recklessness of life." Eight of them carried the powder-bags to blow up
the Kashmir Gate, under Home and Salkeld. Their names are inscribed on
the arch to-day and have become historical. John Lawrence wrote of the
deed as one of "deliberate and sustained courage, as noble as any that
ever graced the annals of war."
The Mazbhis are recruited for the Sikh Pioneer regiments, the 23rd,
32nd, and 34th, sister regiments of whom one, or more, has been engaged
in nearly every frontier campaign from Waziristan in 1860 to the Abor
expedition in 1911. It was the 32nd who carried the guns over the
Shandur Pass in the snow, in the march from Gilgit, and relieved the
British garrison in Chitral. The 34th were among the earliest Indian
regiments engaged in France, and the Mazbhis gained distinction in
October, 1914, when they were pushed up to relieve the French cavalry,
and the Sikh officers carried on the defence for a day and a night under
repeated attacks when their British officers had fallen. Great, too, was
the gallantry of the Indian officers of the regiment at Festubert
(November, 1914), and the spirit of the ranks. Yet the Mazbhis are still
excluded from most privileges by the Khalsa. They are not eligible for
the other Sikh class regiments. Nor are they acceptable in the cavalry
or in other arms, for the aristocratic Jat Sikh, as a rule, refuses to
serve with them. Yet you will find a sprinkling of Jat Sikhs in the
Mazbhi Pioneer regiments--quick-witted, ambitious men usually, who are
ready to make some sacrifice in the way of social prestige for the sake
of more rapid promotion. The solid old Mazbhis, with all their sterling
virtues, are not quick at picking up ideas. It is sometimes difficult to
find men among them with the initiative to make good officers. Thus in a
Mazbhi regiment the more subtle-minded Jat does not find it such a stiff
climb out of the ranks.
It would be a mistake to think that the Jat Sikh is necessarily a better
man in a scrap than the Mazbhi, though this is no doubt assumed as a
matter of course by officers whose acquaintance with the Sikh is
confined to the Jat. I shall never forget introducing a young captain in
a Mazbhi regiment to a very senior Colonel on the Staff. The colonel in
his early days had been a subaltern in the --th Sikhs, but had put in
most of his life's work in "Q" Branch up at Simla, and did not know a
great deal about the Sikh or any other sepoy. He turned to the young
leader of Mazbhis, who is quite the keenest regimental officer I know,
and said--
"Your men are Mazbhis, aren't they? But I suppose you have a stiffening
of Jats."
The youngster's eyes glinted rage and he breathed fire.
"STIFFENING, sir? Stiffening of JATS! Our men are Mazbhis."
Stiffening was an unhappy word, and it stuck in the boy's gorge for
weeks. To stiffen the Mazbhi;
"to gild refined gold,
To add another hue unto the rainbow,"
all come in the same catalogue of ridiculous excess. Stiffening! Why the
man is solid concrete. It would take a stream of molten lava to make him
budge. Or, as Atkins would say--
"He wants a crump on his blamed cokernut before he knows things is
beginning to get a bit 'ot, and then he ain't sure."
It was to stiffen his men a bit, as they were all jiwans and likely to
get a little flustered, that old Khattak Singh, Subadar of the 34th Sikh
Pioneers, called "Left, right; right, left," as the regiment tramped
into action at Dujaila; but the Mazbhi did not want stiffening. It is
rather his part to contribute the inflexible element when there is fear
of a bent or broken line. In the action at Jebel Hamrin, on March 25,
1917, when we tried to drive the Turks from a strong position in the
hills, where they outnumbered us, the Mazbhis showed us how stiff they
could be. They were divisional troops and for months they had been
employed in wiring our line at night,--a wearing business, standing
about for hours in the dark, under a blind but hot fire, casualties
every night and never a shot at the Turk. So tired were they of being
fired at without returning the enemy's fire that, when they got the
chance at Jebel Hamrin and were rolling over visible Turks, for a long
time they could not be induced to retire. The Turks were bringing off an
enveloping movement which threatened our right. The order had been given
for the retirement. But the Mazbhis did not, or would not, hear it.
Somebody, I forget whether it was a British officer, or if it was an
Indian officer after the British officers had all fallen, said that he
would not retire without a written order. Ninety of them out of one
hundred and fifty fell. Old Khattak Singh got back in the night, walked
six miles to the hospital with seven wounds, one in his shoulder and two
in his thigh, and said, "I had ninety rounds. I fired them all at the
Turks and killed a few. Now I am happy and may as well lie up for a
bit."
The Staff Colonel had a certain spice of humour, if little tact, and I
think he rather liked the boy for his outburst in defence of his dear
Mazbhis. To the outsider these little passages afford continual
amusement. One has to mix with different regiments a long time before
one can follow all the _nuances_, but it does not take long to realize
to what extent the British officer is a partisan. Insensibly he suffers
through his affections a kind of conversion. He comes to see many things
as his men see them, even to adopt their own estimate of themselves in
relation to other sepoys. And one would not have it otherwise. It speaks
well for the qualities of the Indian soldier, for the courage,
kindliness, loyalty, and faith with which he binds his British officer
to his own community. It may be very narrow and wrong, but an Indian
regiment is the better fighting unit for it. Better an enthusiasm that
is sometimes ridiculous than a lukewarm attachment. The officer who does
not think much of his jiwans will not go far with them. There are cases,
of course, where pride runs riot and verges on snobbishness. I remember
a subaltern who was shocked at the idea of his men playing hockey with a
regiment recruited from a lower caste. And I once knew a field officer
in a class regiment of Jat Sikhs who, I am sure, would have felt very
uncomfortable if he had been asked to sit down at table with an officer
who commanded Mazbhis. Yet, I am told, he was a fine soldier.
Fanatics of his kidney were happily rare. I use the past tense for they
have gone with the best, and I am speaking generally of a school that
has vanished. It may be resuscitated, but it will hardly be in our time.
Too many of the old campaigners, transmitters of tradition, splendid
fellows who lived for the regiment and swore by it, are dead or
crippled, and the pick of the Indian Army Reserve has been reaped by the
same scythe. The gaps have had to be filled so fast and from a material
so unready that one meets officers now who know nothing about their
sepoys, who do not understand their language and who are not even
interested in them, youngsters intended for other walks of life who will
never be impressed by the Indian soldier until they have first learnt to
impress him.
THE PUNJABI MUSSALMAN
The "P. M.", or Punjabi Mussalman, is a difficult type to describe. Next
to the Sikh, he makes up the greater part of the Indian Army. Yet,
outside camps and messes, one hears little of him. The reason is that in
appearance there is nothing very distinctive about him; in character he
combines the traits of the various stocks from which he is sprung, and
these are legion; also, as there are no P. M. class regiments, he is
never collectively in the public eye.
Yet the P. M. has played a conspicuous part in nearly every action the
Indian Army has fought in the war, and in every frontier campaign for
generations; in gallantry, coolness, endurance, dependability, he is
every bit as good as the best.
"Why don't you write about the P. M.?" a friend in the Nth asked me
once. He was a major in a Punjabi regiment, and had grown grey in
service with them.
We were standing on the platform of a flanking trench screened by
sandbags from Turkish snipers, looking out over the marsh at Sannaiyat.
Nothing had happened to write home about for six months, not since we
delivered our third and bloodiest attack on the position on the 22nd
April. The water had receded nearly a thousand yards since then. Our
wire fences stood out high and dry on the alkaline soil. The blue lake
seemed to stretch away into the interstices of the hills which in the
haze looked a bare dozen miles away.
Two days before our last attack in April the water was clean across our
front six inches deep, with another six inches of mud; on the 21st it
was subsiding; on the 22nd the flooded ground was heavy, but it was
decided that there was just a chance. So the assault was delivered. The
Turkish front line was flooded; there was no one in it, and it was not
until we had passed it that we were really in difficulties. The second
line of trenches was neck deep in water; behind it there was a network
of dug-outs and pits into which we floundered blindly. Beyond this,
between the Turkish second and third lines, the mud was knee deep. The
Highlanders, a composite battalion of the Black Watch and Seaforths, and
the 92nd Punjabis, as they struggled grimly through, came under a
terrific fire. It was here that their splendid gallantry was mocked by
one of those circumstances which make one look darkly for the hand of
God in war.
[Illustration: THE PUNJABI MUSSALMAN.]
The breeches of their rifles had become choked and jammed with mud. The
Jocks were tearing at them with their teeth, panting and sobbing, and
choking for breath. They were almost at grips with the Turk, but could
not return his fire.
The last action we fought for Kut was unsuccessful, but the gallantry of
the men who poured into that narrow front through the marsh will become
historic. The Highlanders hardly need praise. The constancy of these
battalions has come to be regarded as a natural law. "The Jocks were
magnificent," my friend said, "as they always are. So were the Indians."
And amongst the Indians were the P. Ms. There were other classes of
sepoy who may have done as well, but the remnants of the three Indian
battalions in this fight were mostly Punjabi Mussalmans. And here, as at
Nasiriyeh, Ctesiphon and Kut-el-Amara, in Egypt and France, at Ypres,
Festubert and Serapeum, the P. M. covered himself with glory. The Jock,
that sparing critic of men, had nothing but good words for him.
"Yes! Why don't you write about the P. M.?" the Major asked. One of the
reasons why I had not written about the P. M. is that he is a very
difficult person to write about. There is nothing very salient or
characteristic about him; or rather, he has the characteristics of most
other sepoys. To write about the P. M. is to write about the Indian
Army. And that is why, to my friend's intense annoyance, the man in the
street, who speaks glibly of Gurkha, Sikh, and Pathan, has never heard
of him.
"Here's the old P. M. sweating blood," he said, "all through the show,
slogging away, sticking it out like a good 'un, and as modest as you
make 'em. Never bukhs; never comes up after a show and tells you what he
has done. You don't know unless you see him. Old Shere Khan, our bomb
havildar, was hit through both jaws on the 22nd. He got two bullets in
the arm. Then he was shot in the lungs. But it was only when he got his
fifth wound in the leg that he ceased to lead his men and limped back to
the first-aid post. All our B. O.'s were down, but a doctor man with the
Highlanders happened to see the whole thing. So Shere Khan was
promoted."
The Major was bound to his P. Ms. with hoops of steel. It was the rifles
with fixed bayonets slung from pegs between the sandbags that recalled
Polonius' metaphor. It seemed more apt at Sannaiyat.
He introduced me to the Jemadar, Ghulam Ali, a man with a mouth like a
rat-trap and remarkable for a kind of dour smartness. The end of his
pagri was drawn out into a jaunty little tuft by the side of his kula.
His long hair, oiled, but uncurled, fell down to the nape of his neck.
Ghulam Ali, though shot through the forearm himself, had built up a
screen of earth round his Sahib when he was severely wounded at the
Wadi, stayed with him till dusk, helped him back to better cover, and
then returned to the firing line to bring in a lance-naik on his
shoulders.
There were very few of the old crowd left in the trenches. "These
youngsters are mostly recruits," the Major explained, "but they are a
good lot. I wish you could have seen Subadar ----," and he mentioned a
man who had practically run a district in East Africa all on his own
when there was no white man by. A tremendous character. "And
Subadar-Major Farman Ali Bahadar. He got the D.S.M. when he was with us
in Egypt, led a handful of his men across the open at Touffoum, and
turned the Turkish flank very neatly. He got an I.O.M. at Sheikh Saad.
And he led the regiment back at Sannaiyat when all the British officers
were down. He was a Khoreshi, by the way."
A Khoreshi is a member of the tribe of the Prophet. A good Khoreshi is a
man to be sought for and honoured, for his influence is great; but a bad
Khoreshi among the P. Ms. is as big a nuisance as a Mir among Pathans.
"A kind of ecclesiastical dignitary," the Major explained, "a sort of
Rural Dean. You will find men who funk him for reasons which have
nothing to do with discipline; and if he pulls the wrong way it is the
very devil."
The P. Ms. in the trenches were varied in type. There was nothing
distinctive or showy about them, only they all looked workman-like;
Sikh, Jat, and Punjabi Mussalman are mostly of common stock, and they
assimilate so much in feature that it is sometimes difficult to
distinguish between them. The P. Ms. ancestry may be Rajput, Jat, Gujar,
Arab or Mogul. There are more than 400 tribes which he can derive from,
and these are broken up into innumerable sects and sub-divisions. He
does not pride himself on his class, but on his clan. The generic
"izzat" of the P. M. is merged in the specific "izzat" of the Gakkar,
Tiwana, Awan, or whatever he may be. "Punjabi Mussalman" is a purely
official designation. And that is why the general public hears so little
of him.
As a class he is a kind of Indian Everyman and comprises all. You will
find among the P. Ms. every variety of type, from the big-boned Awan,
stalwart of the Salt Range, to the thin-bearded little hillman of
Poonch; from the Tiwanas, bloods of the Thai country who give us the
pick of our cavalry and will not serve on foot, to the wiry Baluchi, who
has forgotten the language and observances of his kinsmen over the
border. You will find descendants of all the Muhammadan invaders of
India, from the time of Mahmud of Ghazni in A.D. 1001, and of
pre-Islamic invaders centuries before that, and of the converts of every
considerable Moslem freebooter since. The recruiting officer encourages
pride of race, which is generally accompanied with a soldierly bearing
and pride in arms, though the oldest stock is not always the best. You
will find among the P. Ms. Khoreshis and Sayads of the tribes of the
Prophet and of Ali, Gakkars who will only give their daughters to
Sayads, Ketwals who descended from Alexander the Great. The Bhatti are
Pliny's Baternae. The Awans claim descent from the iconoclast Mahmud. At
Sannaiyat I saw a Jungua of the Jhelum district who might have stood for
a portrait of Disraeli. The true, or spurious, seed of the Moguls are
scattered all over the Punjab, and there are scions of ancient Rajput
stock like the Ghorewahas, who preserve their bards and are still half
Hindus, and the Manj, who are too blue-blooded to follow the plough. But
as a rule the P. M. has less frills than the Hindu of the same stock; he
will lend a hand at any honest work, and falls easily into disciplinary
ways.
What is it then that differentiates the Punjabi Mussalman? I put the
case to my friend.
"Your P. M. comes from all stocks, has the same ancestor as the Jat, the
Sikh, the Rajput, or the Pathan. Can you tell me exactly what being a P.
M. does for him?"
The Major was unable to enlighten me fully. He told me what I had heard
officers say of other classes of sepoy; only he left out all their
faults.
"Personally, I think the P. M. is more human," he said. "He is not so
proud as the ----, or so ambitious as the ----, or so mean as the ----,
or so stupid as the ----. He is a cheery soul, and when he gets money he
doesn't mind spending it. He is the most natural and direct of men, and
there is no damned humbug about him. I remember old Fazal Khan pulling
up a jiwan (youth) we had up, and who was being cross-examined in an
inquiry about some lost ammunition. The youngster hedged, corrected
himself, modified his statements, and generally betrayed his reluctance
to come to the point. Fazal Khan's rebuke was characteristic. 'Judging
distance ka mafik gawahi mut do!' he said ('Don't give your evidence as
if you were judging distance at the range!'). He had a wholesome
contempt for civilian ways. The regiment was giving a tamasha in the
lines--an anniversary show--and one of our subalterns suggested putting
up a row of flags all the way from the gate to the marquee. But Fazal
Khan was not for it. 'No, sahib!' he said gravely, 'too civil ka mafik,'
'the sort of thing a civilian would do.' The old fellow is a soldier all
through."
The Major's story gave me a glimmering of what it was that being a P. M.
did for Fazal Khan and his brood. "There is no damned humbug about
them,"--which was his way of saying that his friends neglect the arts of
insinuation.
"There is something downright about the P. M. Even when he is
mishandled, he is not mulish, only dispirited. And he'll do anything for
the right kind of Sahib. Besides, look how he rolls up, recruiting is
now better than ever--he is the backbone of the Indian Army."
A good "certifkit" and I think in the main true, though necessarily
partial. But the Major was not literally accurate in saying that the
P. M. is the backbone of the Indian Army. The Sikhs would have something
to say to that, for 214 companies of infantry, including the class
regiments, and forty squadrons of cavalry, are recruited entirely from
the Khalsa, besides a large proportion of sappers and miners, and half
the mountain batteries. The Gurkhas contribute twenty battalions of
foot, but they serve only in the infantry. Taking infantry, cavalry,
artillery and sappers, the P. M. in point of numbers is an easy second
to the Sikh.[6]
There are, of course, Mussalman sepoys and sowars recruited from other
provinces than the Punjab. Those from the United Provinces fall under
the official designation of "Hindustani Mussalman," and need not be
differentiated from the Muhammadans east of the Jumna. The same
qualities may be discovered in any clan; the difference is only in
degree; it is among the Punjabi Mussalmans that you will find the pick
of Islam in the Indian Army.
Of quality it is difficult to speak. He is a bold man who would
generalise upon the Indian Army, more especially upon the Punjab
fighting stocks. The truth is that, if you pick the best of them and
give them the same officers, there is nothing to choose between Sikh,
Jat, and Punjabi Mussalman. Only you must be careful to choose your men
from districts where they inherit the land and are not alien and
browbeaten, but carry their heads high.