Punjab Province (British India)
The Punjab Province, officially the Province of the Punjab, was a province of British India, with its capital in Lahore and summer capitals in Murree and Simla. At its greatest extent, it stretched from the Khyber Pass to Delhi; and from the Babusar Pass and the borders of Tibet to the borders of Sind. Established in 1849 following [|Punjab's annexation], the province was partitioned in 1947 into West and East Punjab; and incorporated into Pakistan and India, respectively.
Most of the Punjab region was annexed by the East India Company on 29 March 1849 following the company's victory against the Sikh Empire's army at the battle of Gujrat in northern Punjab, a month prior. The Punjab was the last major region of the Indian subcontinent to fall to British imperialism.
Immediately following its annexation, the Punjab was annexed into the Bengal Presidency and administered separately by a [|board of administration] led by the head of province. After 1853, the board was replaced by a chief commissioner as the Punjab was separated from the Bengal Presidency and established as a Chief Commissioner's Province. In 1858, the Punjab, along with the rest of British India, came under the rule of the British crown. Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Punjab became a lieutenant-governor's province under the Bengal Presidency. After the Government of India Act 1919, Punjab was turned into a governor's province. It had a land area of 358,355 square kilometers.
The province comprised four natural geographic regions – Indo-Gangetic Plain West, Himalayan, Sub-Himalayan, and the North-West Dry Area – along with five administrative divisions – Delhi, Jullundur, Lahore, Multan, and Rawalpindi – and a number of princely states. In 1947, the Partition of India led to the province's division into East Punjab and West Punjab, in the newly independent dominions of the Indian Union and Pakistan respectively.
During the colonial-period, the appellation "province" was used somewhat indiscriminately but usually referred to lieutenant-governor provinces but also to chief-commissioner provinces.
Etymology
The region was originally called the Sapta Sindhu Rivers, the Vedic land of the seven rivers, originally: Saraswati, Indus, Sutlej, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, and Beas. The Sanskrit name for the region, as mentioned in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, for example, was Pañcanada, which means literally "Five Waters", and was translated from Sanskrit to Farsi as Panj-Âb after the Islamic conquests. The later name Punjab is thus a compound of two Farsi words Panj and āb and was introduced to the region by the Turko-Persian conquerors of India and more formally popularised during the Mughal Empire. Punjab literally means " Five Waters" referring to the rivers: Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas. All are tributaries of the Indus River, the Chenab being the largest.Geography
Geographically, the province was a triangular tract of country of which the Indus River and its tributary the Sutlej formed the two sides up to their confluence, the base of the triangle in the north being the Lower Himalayan Range between those two rivers. Moreover, the province as constituted under British rule also included a large tract outside these boundaries. Along the northern border, Himalayan ranges divided it from Kashmir and Tibet. On the west it was separated from the North-West Frontier Province by the Indus, until it reached the border of Dera Ghazi Khan District, which was divided from Baluchistan by the Sulaiman Range. To the south lay Sindh and Rajputana, while on the east the rivers Jumna and Tons separated it from the United Provinces. In total Punjab had an area of approximately 357 000 km square about the same size as modern day Germany, being one of the largest provinces of the British Raj.It encompassed the present day Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, and some parts of Himachal Pradesh which were merged with Punjab by the British for administrative purposes and the Pakistani regions of the Punjab, Islamabad Capital Territory and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
In 1901 the frontier districts beyond the Indus were separated from Punjab and made into a new province: the North-West Frontier Province. Subsequently, Punjab was divided into four natural geographical divisions by colonial officials on the decadal census data:
- Indo-Gangetic Plain West geographical division ;
- Himalayan geographical division ;
- Sub-Himalayan geographical division.
Administrative divisions
| Division | Districts |
| Cis-Sutlej Division | Ambala • Ludhiana • Firozpur • Thanesar • Shimla |
| Trans-Sutlej Division | Kangra • Hoshiarpur • Jalandhar |
| Lahore Division | Lahore • Amritsar • Sialkot • Gujranwala • Gurdaspur |
| Jhelum Division | Rawalpindi • Shahpur • Jhelum • Gujrat |
| Multan Division | Multan • Gogera • Jhang |
| Leia Division | Layyah • Khangarh • Dera Ismail Khan • Dera Ghazi Khan |
| Peshwar Division | Peshawar • Hazara • Kohat |
| Total British Territory | 81,625.24 square miles & 12,717,821 persons |
| Cis-Satluj Principlites | Patiala • Nabha • Faridkot • Jind • Malerkotla • Kalsia |
| Simla-Hill states | Hill states |
| Trans-Sutlej Principlites | Kapurthala • Hill states |
| Bahawalpur | Bahawalpur |
| Kashmir & Jammu | Gulab singh Territories |
| Total Native States | 102,884.95 square miles & 6,750,606 persons |
| Total Punjab Province | 184,510.19 square miles & 19,468,627 persons |
| Division | Districts in British Territory / Princely States |
| Rawalpindi Division | |
| Lahore Division | |
| Multan Division | |
| Jullundur Division | |
| Delhi Division | |
| Total British Territory | 97,209 square miles |
| Native States | |
| Total Native States | 36,532 square miles |
| Total Punjab Province | 133,741 square miles |
History
Company rule
and the areas of Gurgaon, Hisar, and Karnal districts were conquered by the British in 1803. On 30 December 1803, the Daulat Scindia signed the Treaty of Surji-Anjangaon with the British after the Battle of Assaye and Battle of Laswari and ceded to the British, Hisar, Panipat, Rohtak, Rewari, Gurgaon, Ganges-Jumna Doab, the Delhi-Agra region, parts of Bundelkhand, Broach, some districts of Gujarat and the fort of Ahmmadnagar. The area of Shimla district was obtained by the British in 1815.After the conclusion of the First Anglo-Sikh War of 1845–46, the areas of the following districts were annexed by the British: Ambala, Firozpur, Hoshiyarpur, Jalandhar, Kangra, Ludhiana districts. After the Second Anglo-Sikh War of 1848–49, the areas of the following districts were annexed by the Britishers: Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Bannu, Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Ismail Khan, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Hazara, Jhang, Jhelum, Kohat, Lahore, Montgomerty, Multan, Muzaffargarh, Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Shahpur, and Sialkot districts.
On 21February 1849, the East India Company decisively defeated the Sikh Empire at the Battle of Gujrat bringing to an end the Second Anglo-Sikh War. Following the victory, the East India Company announced the annexation of the conquered territory through a durbar proclamation on 30 March 1849 and annexed the Punjab on 2April 1849 and incorporated it within British India. The deposed child-monarch Duleep Singh was given a pension and forced to live outside Punjab.
For the task of organization of the conquered region, Henry Lawrence was the prime candidate to take up the task, yet Dalhousie did not agree with Lawrence's views fully. Thus, the compromise was the establishment of a three-member board of government/administration to administer the new territory. The province whilst nominally under the control of the Bengal Presidency was administratively independent. Lord Dalhousie constituted the Board of Administration by inducting into it the most experienced and seasoned British officers. The Board was led by Sir Henry Lawrence, who had previously worked as British Resident at the Lahore Durbar and also consisted of his younger brother John Lawrence and Charles Grenville Mansel. Below the Board, a group of acclaimed officers collectively known as Henry Lawrence's "Young Men" assisted in the administration of the newly acquired province. The Board was abolished by Lord Dalhousie in 1853; Sir Henry was assigned to the Rajputana Agency, and his brother John Lawrence succeeded as the first Chief Commissioner. Thus, Punjab became administered by a chief commissioner.
Recognising the cultural diversity of the Punjab, the Board maintained a strict policy of non-interference in regard to religious and cultural matters. Sikh aristocrats were given patronage and pensions and groups in control of historical places of worship were allowed to remain in control.
During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Punjab remained relatively peaceful, apart from rebellion led by Ahmad Khan Kharral. In May, John Lawrence took swift action to disarm potentially mutinous sepoys and redeploy most European troops to the Delhi ridge. Finally he recruited new regiments of Punjabis to replace the depleted force, and was provided with manpower and support from surrounding princely states such as Jind, Patiala, Nabha and Kapurthala and tribal chiefs on the borderlands with Afghanistan. By 1858, an estimated 70,000 extra men had been recruited for the army and militarised police from within the Punjab.