Prince Ramachandra Balaji in Russia
One of the first organized rumblings against the British
EIC’s tyranny in India was the much written about Sepoy mutiny in 1857. The
British had previously retaliated against early stirrings by hanging Mangal
Pandey, but as the unrest spread to Agra, Allahabad, Ambala and Merrut, some
British soldiers were lynched at Delhi while Bahadur Shah, proclaimed as
India’s emperor, looked on. After the British arrested Bahadur Shah, things
took a turn for the worse and the siege of Kanpur and the flight of the British
resulted in the death of a few British with Nana Saheb being held responsible for
the events that occurred.
For the uninitiated, Nana Govind Dhondu Pant, a.k.a Nana Sahib
was the adopted son of the deposed Maratha Baji Rao II, exiled at Bithoor near
Kanpur by the British. Recalling from my article on Manu, Nana Sahib's
childhood associates included Tatya Tope, Azimullah Khan and Manu who later
became famous as Rani Lakshmibai.
Nana Sahib was the legal heir to the throne and eligible for
the annual pension from the East India Company. However, after the death of
Baji Rao II, the EIC declined to pay the pension on the grounds that the Nana was
adopted and that the Maratha kingdom no longer existed. The Nana, as you can
imagine was quite offended by all this and sent an envoy (Azimullah Khan) to
England in 1853 to fight his case with the British. However, Azimullah Khan failed
returning home in 1855. Matters dragged on with Nana remaining cordial with the
English. The British expected Nana Sahib to support them when the rebellion
spread to Kanpur, however Nana joined up with the rebels and decided to fight
them instead.
The English military reached Kanpur in July and defeated
Nana’s forces who in turn retreated to Bithoor. General Havelock went after Nana,
but Nana Sahib had already escaped, never to be caught by the British. By 1859,
Sahib was reported to have fled to Nepal with his family. Sahib's ultimate fate
was never known. The British wrote a number of books and articles about Nana
and the mutineers, painting a picture of those who revolted as the vilest scum
on earth, for they had the temerity to maim and kill a few British men and
women. Many anti British nations like the French projected Nana as a hero for
standing up to the British. Jules Verne based the famous character of Prince
Dakkar or Captain Nemo on Nana Saheb. Nana’s stories of valor grew and grew in
the Indian mind.
But then again, let me remind you, this is not an article
about Nana or his heroics. It is about another person, a very strange character
and not yet known to many an Indian reader. In the year 1878, a scruffy Indian
arrived in St Petersburg armed with letters of introduction from Iskandar Khan,
grandson of Dost Mohammed, the Emir of Afghanistan. He, this shabby looking but
proud man, was according to his own words, the nephew of the famous Nana Saheb
who fought the British.
That certainly interested many top level Russians of the
region. Why so? A little knowledge of the political scene post 1850’s is
required. As you will see, the ‘great game’ was already afoot. Like most people
who become insecure after acquiring riches, a beautiful woman or a great jewel,
the British were worried about the loss of India, their great possession and
source of all kinds of raw material, riches and semi-finished goods with little
effort and great profit. Many others were eyeing the jewel from both the west
and the North. While the British worried about the French on the western
borders, the Russians were breathing down heavily from beyond the Northern
Mountains. The only buffer was the northwest frontier provinces. Earlier in the
19th century, Napoleon (who had even planned to team up with the
Russians to invade India) had been defeated and the French advances had been
held up near Egypt and Syria.
To put it simply, Russia was fearful of British commercial
and military inroads into Central Asia, and Britain was fearful of Russia adding
"the jewel in the crown", India, to the vast empire that Russia was
building in Asia. This resulted in an atmosphere of distrust and the constant
threat of war between the two empires. If Russia were to gain control of the
Emirate of Afghanistan, it might then be used as a staging post for a Russian
invasion of India. Starting in 1830, the game moved like a well-crafted game of
chess, with both parties trading pieces, only they were much bigger. In October
1838 Auckland issued the Simla Manifesto, a piece of propaganda designed to
blacken the reputation of Dost Mohammad Khan (Emir of Afghanistan) and to
ensure British influence was extended into Afghanistan for it to become a
buffer state. In December 1838, the British marched into Afghanistan and arrested
Dost Mohammad, and sent him into exile in India, replacing him with the
unpopular Shah Shuja. By 1842, the Afghans were in a rebellious state and the
British withdrew. By 1846 however the British had captured Sindh and defeated
the Sikhs and later in 1857, the Persians. The Crimean War had ended in 1856
with Russia's defeat by an alliance of Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire.
The new and wary Czar Alexander II of Russia waited some years so as not to
antagonize the British, then Russia expanded into Central Asia in two
campaigns.
In India the EIC, after the 1857 rebellion, finally
relinquished possession of the states and regions it held passing them on
formally to the British crown. Now that domestic strife was contained, it was
time for the British to go back to the troubled Northern borders. The Second
Anglo Afghan War was fought between the British Raj and the Emirate of
Afghanistan from 1878 to 1880, when the latter was ruled by Sher Ali Khan, son
of former Emir Dost Mohammad Khan. The war ended after the British emerged
victorious. The Afghan tribes were permitted to maintain internal rule and
local customs but they had to cede control of the area's foreign relations to
the British, who, in turn, guaranteed the area's freedom from foreign military
domination. This was aimed to thwart expansion by the Russian Empire into India.
It was during these events that the troubled Russians
heralded the arrival of a smooth talking Ramachandr Baladzhi or Rama Chandra
Balaji, so called nephew of Nana Saheb, the peshwa who made the British tremble
in Kanpur. The events that transpired between this one man representative of
the Indians against the British, or so it was as he put it, and the Russians in
St Petersburg was for me, very interesting. I must admit that my sources were
few and with little corroboration, I have to depend on just one fine article by
TN Zagarodnikova and bits from the doctoral thesis of Alexander Graham
Marshall.
Alexander the liberator had become a reformist Romanov Czar
after the emancipation of serfs in
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| Alexander II |
Balaji arrived in Russia around the end of the Russo Turkish
war, where the Russians were victorious as the Ottoman Sultan sued for peace;
and the Treaty of San Stefano was signed by Russia and Turkey. Balaji was at
that time in Turkey and came across an acquaintance, a Japanese officer whom he
knew from his days in Berlin. The Japanese officer introduced him to the
Russians who invited him to Russia. So that presents the first piece of a
growing puzzle. What exactly was Balaji doing in Berlin or Turkey?
Balaji of course was effusive in providing details of his
background, which when analyzed seriously proved to be full of holes. But let’s
see what he said. According to his testimony, he was born in 1850. As the
British soldiers arrived in Bithoor, he fell out of the window and broke his
cheekbone. A childless English officer took the boy first with him to Calcutta
and thence to London, where he found the climate less than salubrious. So he
grew up in Italy, but as an Englishman, visiting London often, until he was
sent to Switzerland in 1859 for continued education. He went on to learn
Sanskrit from somebody who had come to London with Duleep Singh (remember the
Kohinoor story?) and later owing to the benevolence of the Rajah of Kolhapur
who died in Florence, got enough funds to make a trip to India and back to
Switzerland (he was forced to go back by the British). In 1870, he entered the
Berlin University for higher studies (curious that he did not go back to
Britain), struck up an acquaintance with Prof Weber an eminent Sanskritologist,
and KA Kossovich, the pioneer Russian Sanskritologist. It was while vacationing in Britain that
Balaji met Iskandar Khan, who invited him to Persia.
Iskandar Khan the grandson of Dost Mohammed had been trying
to get back the Afghan throne for himself, but failing to get support from at
first Russia and later the British, left in 1877 for Turkey and finally settled
in Persia.
Balaji was not interested with that invitation then and went
back to Berlin. Warned however by his friends that the British, wary of his
friendship with Iskandar, were planning to send him off to the Jamaica, Balaji
abandoned his studies and went to Tehran. From there he tried to go back to
India, but after getting robbed by Afghan tribals, returned to Tehran.
Interestingly his next venture was to launch an agitation favoring the Persian
Japanese treaty to import green tea directly to Persia instead of Bombay,
thereby damaging British commercial interests.
I checked this aspect of the story and it appears that a
Japanese team did come to Tehran to discuss a trade treaty. Though the members
of the mission held trading fairs in Bušehr and Tehran in order to exhibit
Japanese products, they did not draw much interest from the Iranians. The
treaty talk never took place, because Japan wished to be treated on a
most-favored-nation basis by Iran and obtain the same extraterritorial rights
that the European countries enjoyed, which Iran did not agree to.
The connection between Iran’s Nāṣer-al-Din Shah and iskander
Khan is quite real, but the involvement of Balaji in these matters is somewhat
circumspect what with his lack of experience in trade matters. It is also clear
that balaji never mentioned any connections with Nana Saheb while in Tehran.
As the story runs through its course, Balaji next found
himself in Istanbul where the San Stephano treaty was being negotiated. From
there he found his way to St Petersburg, and it is felt by the Russians who
studied him later that he had a singular plan. The English were not too pleased
with the treaty signed between the British and the Turks and the Russians felt
another war was in the offing. To avoid it, it was better to pose a threat to the
British at the Indian frontiers and get them busy. Balaji (maybe induced to do
so by Iskandar Khan) wanted to persuade the Russians to attack India coming
down through Afghanistan, and liberate India from the British yoke. The real question
is who would believe an unkempt Indian refuge with such a major idea. Well,
that is the interesting part, for within months he had built up a social circle,
though hardly making his own ends meet. His circle included VV Grigoriev, the
famous orientalist, Baron Jomini and Von der Osten Saken top officials in the foreign
affairs department, Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich, Semenov Tyan Shansky,
MN Katkov the editor of ‘Moscow Vedomosty’, and other personnel in the Japanese
and Persian embassies.
It was also an opportune moment for Balaji to scout out a
potential route to India, for the Grand duke was heading an exploratory trip to
Turkestan in Central Asia. The intention of the trip was to check the potential
in restoration of the Amu Darya’s flow, obtain cooperation of the Khivans and
Bukharans, the acquisition of riches, and the opening of a new water route from
the Caspian through the Amu Darya to India. Balaji proved to be very useful and
accompanied the Duke. Balaji and Afghan Mirdali Khan apparently testified to the
existence of ancient river beds and tributaries. Balaji was soon heralded in
social circles and was to be seen in many parties and it is mentioned that many
a Russian lady found him quite romantic. Articles about Balaji and his exploits
appeared in Moscow newspapers and journals.
In India, Madame Blavatsky was livid and saw through Balaji’s
caper. She wrote to newspapers that this fellow Balaji was an imposter, for she
herself had been involved in resurrecting the Nana legacy in India and knew
that Nana Sahib had no such nephews. She wrote to the editor of Indu Prakash
“Ever since my arrival here, in
February, with a hospitality and persistence worthy of a better cause, I have
been hailed by every class of society as a secret emissary of the Russian
government—a ‘spy,’ to call things by their proper names. And yet, so poorly
informed am I by the authorities of my native country of the ways and doings of
the Russian police, that, in my ardent curiosity, I have now to apply to you for
help. Will you kindly put your head together with mine to try and ‘guess’ who
may possibly be a certain mysterious individual who has recently appeared in
Russia? He calls himself a ‘prince of India,’ and provoking the greatest curiosity
in the general public is, at the same time, received as an honoured guest by
the St. Petersburg ‘court’ —though, as I am informed, secretly. This is what
one of the numerous papers I received says of him, mentioning his arrival. I
translate verbatim: . . . ‘A few days ago, arrived at Moscow, on his way from
Petersburg to Samara, the Hindustani Prince Ramchander Balajee of Bhottor.
Colonel and Aide de Camp on the general staff the Count N. Y. Rostovtzeff has
been placed at the orders of the prince, and now forms a part of his numerous
suite.’ Who is this prince? He evidently belongs to the native place, if he is
not actually of kin to the famous Nana Sahib, of course. Though news for your
readers, this piece of information will be stale for the omniscient police of
India, who, for instance, have discovered in a twinkling of the eye that I was a
dangerous Russian spy. They must certainly know all about this mirific prince.
How provoking, then, that they will not tell!”
Interestingly, the Russians also had similar doubts. Col LN
Sobolev had investigated Balaji and submitted a report with the result that
suspicions of Balaji being a British spy were rife. His connection with the
circumspect Iskander khan was another reason. Zinoviev the Russian ambassador
in Tehran reported that Balaji never mentioned any connections with Nana Saheb
while in Tehran and was actually selling medicines (herbal?). It is also
mentioned that Balaji was finally recalled from the Grand Duke's party due to suspicions
in higher quarters about his character and his 'bad influence' on the Grand
Duke. But Balaji continued his meager existence till 1880, providing tuitions for
children of the richer families or taking handouts and loans from his many friends.
Proponents for his cause such as Col Korolkov maintained that
he was definitely not a British spy and that his plans to access India through the
dangerous Samarkand route would not have been approved by the English. While
there, Balaji had met the Sikhs living there headed by Guru Charan Singh (who
promised support with some 300,000 people for a future attack against the
British). He also published an article in 1880 – My visit to Abdurahman Khan in Tashkent, in a newspaper where he
outlined the difficulties faced by Indians living in Central Asia without their
families and the handful who had their wives and daughters, but were fearful
for their safety in these khanates.
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| Gen Skobolev |
The Russians must have decided that their suspicions were
unfounded for we find next that Balaji obtained a Czar’s decree accrediting him
to the Asiatic department and he is seconded to Gen Skobelev with an ample
allowance of 400 rubles.
The nature of his duties were never clarified, and the questions
were if he was to be a liaison for the various Indian envoys (of Indian princes
and rajas such as the maharajah of Kashmir) who came to Russia for support, if
it were to coordinate with new forays involving Iskandar khan in Afghanistan or
if he was to coordinate the selection and facilitation of Indian born agents
into the Russian forces. He was certainly knowledgeable and provided original
opinion. He understood the various polemics played out in the region and the complicated
geopolitics at play. His knowledge of the geography and history of the Central
Asian khanates was more than adequate. But he also came up with wild ideas such
as Indians being potentially encouraged to move to fertile Afghanistan from the
crowded plains, plotting a revolt against the British through the Maharajas of
Kashmir, Patiala and Gwalior and so on. His duty was to start work in Turkestan
in right earnest and hoping for active Russian support, he soldiered on.
It was summer 1880 that Ramachandra suddenly requested permission
to go to Tehran to attend to some urgent personal matters. Marshall believed another
motive - Unhappy at the lack of positive commitments
from his interviews with Russian War and Foreign Ministry officials however,
Baladzhi left for Persia. The Russians provided him the necessary papers
and money. Surely I believe they suspected something was afoot and wanted to check
his movements,
Mme Blavatsky
continued to air her suspicions wondering why Balaji was considered important
"From Simla I wrote an article for the
Novoe Vremya, ‘The Truth about the Nephew of Nana Sahib’. I have gathered the
most elaborate information about this scamp. Golos constantly prints letters
written by this liar, as if to incite England to make war on Russia. And Novoe
Vremya disdained to print my note. For what reason? Besides being true, it is
written as a free contribution. One would think they might have believed in the
good intention of a countrywoman of theirs, of a Russian who is at the very
source of the information about this self-proclaimed and false ally of Russia
-- this Prince Ramchandra. His biography -- perfectly false -- has appeared in
the June number of the Russian Herald, 1889. And his letters from Bagdad and
Cabul, printed in Golos, amuse and needlessly irritate everyone here who knows
the truth of the matter….
She continued her tirade in another letter-
Nikolay Mihaylovich Prjevalsky (or Przhevalsky) (1839-88) was a famous military
man, traveller, explorer and geographer. From 1864 to 1866 he taught geography
at the military school at Warsaw, having graduated from the Academy of the
General Staff. In 1867 he was sent to Irkutsk where he explored the highlands
on the banks of the Usuri until 1869. In 1870, accompanied by only three men,
he crossed the Gobi Desert, reached Peking, explored the upper the difficulties
of the Bagh-o-Bahar and Baital Pachisi in the land of Wasudew Bulwant Phadke,
or translating the exercise from Hindi into Russian in the “legitimate
heir-loom” of the “Prince Ramchandra,” the hapless hero of the Russian Golos—in
the North-Western Provinces! Will you kindly inform us whether Mr. Walter T.
Lyall’s advice is to be immediately carried out, or must we wait till the Kali
Yuga is over?
Balaji proved to be very erratic after that, for he first
wrote from Baghdad that he no longer wanted to be part of the Turkestan project,
but a month later wrote from Shiraz that he was trying to find business for the
Japanese in Persia. Next he wrote to Gen Skobelev that he was willing to rejoin
service. Skobolev was livid and recorded that he wanted no part of Balaji, who
he believed to be mentally ill.
But strangely Balaji was very much part of the Skobolev camp
during the Geok tepe conflict with the Czar’s express support, who insisted
that Balaji be included, but be supervised strictly. Things did not go well and
Skobelev complained about Balaji again to his HQ as being an evil person. Balaji,
not waiting to see what the reply was, escaped, headed for India. But he was
captured in Ashkhabad enroute to Herat and was sent back to St Petersburg with
a police escort.
It is not clear if he was kept under house arrest or
imprisoned, but a few months later in March 1881 was released and moved out to
Moscow where of course he had neither the contacts nor means for his daily
sustenance. He went back to St Petersburg and wrote to the Czar asking for an
allowance of 1000 rubles to travel out and abroad. The Czar himself replied
with his handwritten order on the side of the petition, that Balaji was not to
be provided any further allowance and that he be escorted and released at the
border.
We have to conclude that he left Russia after this three
year troubled stay. But what happened to him? Nobody knows for his trail just
went cold and he vanished……
Questions remain, who was Balaji and what were his motives?
Why was he so important and how did he cultivate such a group of influential friends?
Was he really a British spy whom the Russians toyed with during the great game?
Was he just another Indian nationalist?
Some clues exist for the reasons why Balaji fell out of
favor with the Russians, that Balaji was quite rude and short tempered, kept
only to high society and upper class Russians, and that he simply could not get
along with Gen Skobelev. It is possible that he had a falling out with the brutal
General and that was the reason why he eventually tried to escape. Let’s see
what happened in Geok Tepe where Balaji was an eyewitness riding shotgun (not
exactly - he was consigned to the transport column) with Gen Skobelev.
In January, 1881, General Mikhail
Skobelev, the hero of Plevna, with 7000 men, stormed the Tekke fortress at Geok
Tepe, where were assembled 35,000 men, women, and children, with 10,000
horsemen. Nearly 20,000 persons were slain in the fort and during the pursuit,
while the Russians lost barely 1000 men. This butchery broke, or rather
annihilated, the Turkoman power, and, strange as it may seem, the survivors of
the massacre have become loyal subjects of the tsar. The victory of Geok Tepe brought
Russia to the borders of Khurasan.
Skobolev remarked once that he would
not like to be a commander in an Indian invasion plan with a large army of 150,000
troops but at the same time mentioned, ‘It will be in the end our duty to organize
masses of Asian cavalry and hurl them into India as a vanguard, under the banner
of blood and rapine, thereby reviving the times of Tamerlane’.
Perhaps Balaji wanted no part of such a campaign. In 1881, the
Czar Alexander II was eventually assassinated after many aborted attempts. Did
Balaji go back to working with Khan in Tehran (We know that Khan was active in
Mashad during 1887) or did he retire to England or India? We do not know. There
is a glimmer of a possibility. In 1894, a two volume work was published in
London anonymously with the title “Russia’s march towards India’ by an Indian
officer. Was Balaji the author? Just a wild guess. In any case, it is clear
that he had nothing to do with Nana Saheb, but was indeed a capable character
at various forms of bluster and intrigue.
General Mikhail Skobelev died in the Hotel Dussaud in Moscow
on July 7, 1882 under very strange circumstances. It was generally felt that
his death was linked to a heart disease. Rumor had it however that he was
actually poisoned by foreign agents and, lastly, his death was also linked to a
female presence. More than a century after, the mystery still lingers (Sputniknews)
The great game continued and the Russians continued to irk
the British, prophesying Iskandar khan who remarked to some of his London interlocutors
years earlier- Our rocky country serves
as a protecting bastion to English dominion in India. We are well placed by
Nature in our stronghold, and we are warlike in a high degree. But we are much
divided among ourselves as tribes, and by blood feuds. If once the Russians
should succeed in lodging themselves there, it will be utterly impossible to
dislodge them again."
On September 10, 1885 the Delimitation Protocol between
Great Britain and Russia was signed in London. The protocol defined the
boundary from the Oxus to the Harirud and was later followed by many additional
protocols providing detail. In 1895, it was agreed that the Amu Darya River
would form the border between Afghanistan and the Russian empire. The Russians gained
all of the lands North of the Amu Darya which included the land claimed by the
Khanate of Khiva, including the approaches to Herat, and all of the land
claimed by the Khanate of Khoqand, including the Pamir plateau. To ensure a
complete separation, this new Afghan state was given an odd eastern appendage
known as the Wakhan Corridor. As William C Rowe concluded, "In setting
these boundaries, the final act of the tense game played out by the British and
Russian governments came to a close”
References
Nana Sahib’s Nephew in Russia – TN Zagorodnikova (Indian history
a Russian viewpoint, ICHR MS8 – Ed. Eugenia Vanina)
The Origins of Conflict in Afghanistan - Jeffery J. Roberts
The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1860-1917 - Alex
Marshall
Dar Al-Harb: the Russian general staff and the Asiatic
frontier, 1860-1917 - Marshall, Alexander Graham (2001)
The History of Nations, Volume 5 edited by Henry Cabot Lodge
Indians Abroad - Sarva Daman Singh
Notes
It is mentioned that a number of sources relating to Balaji
still exist in the former USSR Moscow and Tashkent archives. Many of the
documents are in French, the formal language of Czarist Russia, others in
German. In case anybody has additional information on this story, please comment
in detail.
Turkestan, literally means "Land of the Turks" in
Persian. It refers to an area in Central Asia between Siberia to the north and
Tibet, India and Afghanistan to the south, the Caspian Sea to the west and
Mongolia and the Gobi Destert to the east.
Additional
information 10/31/16 – MI Salonikes article, British newspapers
- Balaji stayed at the Porsche pension while studying at Lausanne Switzerland paying 100CHF per month. He learnt and spoke French, German, Italian and English. At Switzerland he gave English and music lessons
- During his yearly and obligatory summer visits to Britain, he learnt that his parents were alive and living in Nepal. He learnt that he had a brother named Sridhar(?)
- In 1868, he met the Kolhapur prince at Florence and this man gifted him £2000 on his death bed. Using this money he went to Nepal where he met his parents and brother. The British learnt of his visit and sent him back to Britain in 1869 fearing that he might be persuaded to go against them.
- He joined the Berlin University with British permission, and was a volunteer in the army hospital when the Franco Prussian war broke.
- During the next attempt to go to India he got robbed and came back. Then he went to Turkey hoping to get their help in his plans to topple the British in India. Later he met the Russian staff officers and landed up in St Petersburg.
- While in Russia he lived in the house of the Persian Consul Jabbar Ali. Help came from Yamamoto and Nissi of the Japanese embassy. Prof Kossovich from Berlin had given him letters of introduction.
- Following the Amu Darya expedition, Balaji requested support from the Russians to infiltrate Russia and start a rebellion, but no help was forthcoming.
- Following this he went to Tehran in 1880 and started the discussions with the Japanese on the tea imports. This is documented in a London Times report.
- On his own, he went and joined up with Gen Skobelev as it was a war affecting negatively the interests of the British. He was distraught after seeing the violence and suffering and had a fall out with Gen Skobelev after mentioning this.
- War minister Dimitri Milutin sent him off to Moscow and facing a terrible isolation there, Balaji wrote to the Czar, who in exasperation, expelled him.
His departure to Tehran in 1880 suddenly is explained in anxious British press reports as an intrigue to support the accession of Abdur Rahman, the new Emir of Afghanistan. The British press describe this as Prince Rama Chunder’s second missive to Afghanistan. They also confirm that Balaji was responsible for the arrival of Japanese trading ships at the Iranian port. We note that these are picked up as Balaji’s own reporting on the Golos newspaper.
The pall mall budget reporting of Balaji’s visit
to Kabul scoffs at Balaji and his ‘idle tales’ – Ram Chunder would to-day have no more influence (sic. in Cabul) than a
New Zealand chief
In the end we can see that it was his objections
to Gen Skobolev’s actions at Geok Tepe got him into serious trouble. But was he a double agent, a Russian agent or a one man army, an Indian Patriot?
