Tempo:
18. Across the Himalayas to Tibet
Tension with the British
0
n the surface, the relations between the Durbar and the English continued to be friendly. But an undercurrent of hostility had begun to run down the Hooghly and the Ravi. In Calcutta, the feeling had come to prevail that the Punjab would have to be annexed sooner or later and the Punjabis should therefore not be allowed to become inconveniently strong. The Amirs of Sindh had been talked (and some of them coerced) into signing treaties: now the Afghans were approached with similar proposals. An appearance of friendship with the Maharajah was to be kept up, but the Punjab was to be hemmed in from all sides and, when feasible, strangled in the embrace of friendship. Raajit Singh was too shrewd to be taken in by empty gestures ofgoodwill, and Punjabi expansionism was still explosive enough to react violently to external restrictions. The Durbar's countermoves were to encourage the Amirs in their resistance to British demands. If the Punjabis had been reticent, their diplomacy might have been more successfuJ. But the Maharajah continued to talk aggressively about taking Shikarpur, which was like the thin end of a wedge piercing the heart of Sindh. The Sindhians naturally mistrusted the Punjabis and were only too willing to play them off against the British. On the Afghan front, the Durbar encouraged Shah Shuja to make another attempt to recover his
Tension with the British
0
n the surface, the relations between the Durbar and the English continued to be friendly. But an undercurrent of hostility had begun to run down the Hooghly and the Ravi. In Calcutta, the feeling had come to prevail that the Punjab would have to be annexed sooner or later and the Punjabis should therefore not be allowed to become inconveniently strong. The Amirs of Sindh had been talked (and some of them coerced) into signing treaties: now the Afghans were approached with similar proposals. An appearance of friendship with the Maharajah was to be kept up, but the Punjab was to be hemmed in from all sides and, when feasible, strangled in the embrace of friendship. Raajit Singh was too shrewd to be taken in by empty gestures ofgoodwill, and Punjabi expansionism was still explosive enough to react violently to external restrictions. The Durbar's countermoves were to encourage the Amirs in their resistance to British demands. If the Punjabis had been reticent, their diplomacy might have been more successfuJ. But the Maharajah continued to talk aggressively about taking Shikarpur, which was like the thin end of a wedge piercing the heart of Sindh. The Sindhians naturally mistrusted the Punjabis and were only too willing to play them off against the British. On the Afghan front, the Durbar encouraged Shah Shuja to make another attempt to recover his
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