The Great Game all Over Again: Durand Line and India's Diplomacy

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The disgraceful exit of USA from its 20 year involvement in Afghanistan, has presented India with an unenviable plight. Having backed the Northern Alliance and having spent 3 billion US dollars in various social and economic projects for the improvement of the Afghan people, India stares at two distinct  possibilities. First, the possibility of increased militancy in Kashmir is something that the Indian Security Establishment will have to consider. Second, the rise of Taliban as the ruling political hegemon in Afghanistan raises the possibility of a revival of the internal strife, the Stasis, as Thucydides termed it. Given the complex ethnic mosaic of Afghanistan the civil war may lead to certain unforeseen outcomes. The disintegration of Afghanistan as a Nation State with the Tajik and Uzbeg territories joining their ethnic cohorts across the border. More likely the Durand Line will once more become the bone of contention between the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the state of Afghanistan.

Sir Mortimer Durand 

Lord George Curzon who had a deep and profound insight into the strategic requirements of the Indian frontier maintained that the Durand Line came close to being a "scientific frontier" for the Indian Empire. The Treaty of Gandamak, 1879 had established British control over the hyber Pass and the Amir of Afghanistan surrendered the right to conduct an independent foreign policy making the kingdom a satellite in the orbit of the British Indian Empire. As can be imagined this Treaty was highly umpopular with the Aghans and Sir Louis Cavagnari who was appointed Minister was assassinated in Kabul by an exited mob.

The response of the British was swift and ruthless. Three Armies were fielded against Afghanistan. General Roberts was to lead a force to Kabul, General Stewart was to occupy Kandahar and General Bright was to march to Jalalabad.  The forces of Amir Abdul Rehman were defeated and Afghanistan was forced to accept British demands and make territorial concessions. 

In November 1893 the Amir appended his signature to a one page document in English and he did not sign the accompanying map. Sir Mortimer Durand and his compatriot Sir Salter Sykes had succeeded in making the Amir sign away more than half the Pashtun territories of his Kingdom. Chitral, Bajour, Swat and Waziristan were essentially annexed and became the North West Frontier Province and till this day form part of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Kafiristan, an indigenous non Islamic territory was handed over to the Amir as concession and he promptly set about Islamizing the area. 

The Duran Line introduced a highly volatile element in the relationship between Afghanistan and the British Empire in India and after the War in 1919 Afghanistan was forced to accept the Durand Line as the border. The present Taliban rulers of Afghanistan have already said that they do not accept the Durand Line a nd have laid claim to the entire Pashtun speaking areas of Pakistan and this would also include Peshawar. The establishment of a unified Pashtun Homeland by combining the territories on both sides of the Durand Line is a possibility that India may have to confront. Iran has already stated that they do not recognize the Taliban and have asked it to gain democratic legitimacy. Herat, Kandahar, Mazar i Sharif and Kabul have all been part of Safavid territories before Ahmed Shah Abdali seized these cities. It is quite likely that Iran may seek to gain territory at the expense of a faltering and failing Afghan state.

India has to deal with this situation.  What will India do? It is time to enter the Great Game and the stakes are high. If played well India can achieve its long cherished goal of reclaiming the parts of Kashmir that are now occupied by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. And of of course Gilgit and Baltistan can also be regained. There are opportunities for India if the game is played well And dangers if  India does not seize the opportunities.

  

Charles Umpherston Aitchison Administrator, Diplomat Historian (1832-1896)

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The Victorian Age was replete with monumental historical projects like the History of the Parliament, Calendar of State Papers, Victoria History of the Counties of England and witnessed prodigious publication of Historical records. Stubbs and Maitland were keen investigators of Anglo Saxon political institutions, particularly in the two centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066 AD. In India too the British adopted a similar policy either to fends off challenges to their regime in the post Mutiny era when India was taken over by the Crown or as a intervention in preservation of Historical Documents and this project is associated with Charles Umpherston Aitchison. He was the Foreign Secretary of India, the first "President" of the Public Service Commission, the precurson of the UPSC and he was appointed to the Covenanted Civil Service soon after the Compettitive examinations were introduced and so was a pioneering competition wallah. Apart from these disctinctions, he was also the Lt. Governor of the Punjab and was closely associated with Sir John Lawrence.

C U Aitchisons

Charles Umperston Aitchison was born in Scotland in 1832 and was educated in the University of Edinburgh like the others we have studied in this series: William Roxburgh. He graduated with a Masters' degree in what was then quaintly described as Moral Philosophy and he was the only candidate selected from Scotland for appointment in the Covenenated Civil Srvice in India. His first appointment was inHissar in May 1857 but was providentially transferred to the Punjab and hence escaped the massacre that followed the Mutiny in May 1857, He was in Lahore when the Mutiny began. After the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, Aitchison was sent to Calcutta where he worked as an Under Secretary in the "Political Department".

The Mutiny was a turning point in Indian History in that it represented a significant movement towards national aspiration, although in an incohate fashion. For the English it was a moment of reckoning in that the violence that they had seen expereinced at the hands of their beloved "natives" was on a scale that shook the foundations of the political order that bound India to England or Great Britain as it styled itself then. And it is here that the work of C U Aitchison is reembered.

Historians have seen the rise of the East India Company to politcal and military power as a consequence of the decline of the Mughal Empire. The Treaty of Allahabad signed in 1765 merely ratified an pre existing reality. But in the "Narrative" part of his XIII volume Treaties, Sanads and Engagemets, a different and more sophisticated understanding of the process of territorial conquest of India is developed. We can call that process: Conquest by Treaty. Nearly 2500 individual documents are found over the XIII volumes that for some strange reason continued to be published under the editorship of C U Aitchison even after his death. The conflict between Paramountcy and So vereignty  lay at  the heart of this gigantic venture. Was the status of the East India Company in India until its takeover by the Crown in 1858 that of a Sovereign or the Paramount Power. The East India Company like any corporate body derived its charter to trade from the English Parliament but by the middle of the eighteenth century had transformed itself into a major political and military power largely on the strength of its huge land army and deft diplomacy. And the net result were Treaties which were signed by the Company with major political powers of the indigenous people like the Nizam, the State of Mysore, the states of Rajputana, the states of Central India etc. In most of these cases the Subsidiary Alliance from the time of Warren Hastings meant the accptance of a "Resident" and a detachment of Company forces which were o be maintined by the states in hih they were deployed.  Sannads were of a different order. They were documents issued by the Paramount Power in reply to or in response to an existing situation or dispute on the ground. The right of succession to the Gaddi was usually recognized through the grant of a sannad bearing the seal and signature of the Company. Engagments is a dubious category. Salt manufature, fishing and custom duties, forest grazing rights, native customs and practices were all governemed by the term Engagement. The English Administration both during the reign of the Company and the Viceroys communicated with "Native Chiefs" through the Political Department and it raises the question whether the Administartion then considered Natice chiefs to be "sovereign" entities. This question also has bearing on the later political history of India in that when the Transfer of Power took place in 1947 all the 616 entities that constituted the fabric of India became at one fell stroke "Independent"'.

C U Aitchison collected the documents which were widely dispersed in various territories and offices of the then regime and published them in order to demonstrate the legal validity of English authority to govern. The English Administration was particular that they nested and varying degrees of Sovereignty did not clash with the authority to governern India. And the Administration was based on consent in the strictly political sense in that it rested on the Treaty signed between the Native States and Princely States. The latter was a category that emerged only after the 1911 Durbar.

In the late nineteenth century, a major shift took place in the strategic thought that influenced the British policy in India. The security of India resided not only in the capability of defence on land but also the ability to intervene in the wide maritime worls stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Straits of Mlacca, a vision most eloquently articulated in Lord Curzon's celebated Address to the Royal Geographical Society, London and a vision whose wisdom in only now being understood after 70 years of neglect. Hence the Engagments with the Sultans of the decaying Ottoman Empire on the Gulf were brought into the imperial horizon: Muscat, Aden, Zanzibar and host og Arab sultans signed agreements including the Emir of Kuwait, a document they used to demonstrate their Independence when Saddam Hussein invaded the territory.

C U Aitchison was appointed President f the Public Service Commission in 1886 and he reccomended the establishment of the Imperial Civil Service, the nomenclature of which was changed to the IndianCivil Service. He also took interest in establishing educational insitutions in the Punab and the Aitchison College in Lahore is a good example. Upon his return to England he was created Knight Commander of the Star of India and he died in 1896.

Indian diplomats who have to answer challenges from a vaiety of different sources have to dpend heavily on Sir Aitchison's monumnetal work including the challege over Sir Creek.