Pakistan is locked in conflict with Afghanistan, even as India has reestablished its embassy in Kabul following the visit of Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. The irony is hard to miss. In a span of 42 years — from 1979 to 2021 — Afghans defeated two superpowers, the US and the USSR, with Pakistan’s support. Islamabad had envisioned a subservient Afghanistan to create ‘strategic depth’ and as a tool to pursue its national security strategy against its arch-enemy, India.
However, Pakistan failed to understand the fiercely independent psyche of the Afghans and the enduring force of Pashtun nationalism, which has dominated Afghan politics since the country’s emergence in 1747. Britain had artificially divided the ‘Pashtun nation’ with the ‘blood-soaked’ Durand Line in 1893, a boundary Afghanistan has never recognised.
India-Afghanistan relations — a turbulent history
All invasions of India either originated in or passed through the present-day Afghanistan. A year after Ahmad Shah Durrani (also known as Ahmad Shah Abdali) established Afghanistan as a nation-state, he invaded India in 1748. Durrani had served under Nadir Shah during his 1739 invasion of India and was aware of the subcontinent’s riches and the weaknesses of the waning Mughal Empire.
What followed over the next 50 years was one of the most turbulent and bloodiest periods in the history of Punjab. Afghans, Sikhs, Marathas, and the remnants of the Mughal Empire clashed to rule, or simply to plunder and collect revenue without assuming administrative responsibility. Both the Afghans and the Marathas operated far from their bases and, despite being the most powerful, failed to establish a lasting empire. They were content to extract revenue through local governors. Only the Sikhs persevered, using a combination of guerrilla warfare and pitched battles.
Durrani invaded India eight times over 19 years, and his successors continued the raids until the rise of the Sikh Empire in 1799, which extended up to the borders of present-day Afghanistan, even holding a foothold across the Khyber Pass at Jalalabad. The Punjabi culture of extravagance and indulgence beyond means originated during this period. The saying, “Khadha peeta lahe da, baki Ahmad Shahe da” (Whatever you can eat and drink is yours, the rest belongs to Ahmad Shah), aptly captures the flavour of those times.
The British inherited the Khalsa Empire and, for a century, fought both the Afghans and their Pashtun brethren east of the Durand Line. Despite the bloodshed, a unique cultural and realpolitik bond developed between Afghans and Indians after Independence. Except for the six years of the first Taliban rule, from 1995 to 2001, India-Afghanistan relations have continued to flourish to this day.
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My connection
I live on my ancestral land, one kilometre east of the majestic Gurudwara Sri Fatehgarh Sahib, which stands on the exact spot where the impregnable Sirhind fort was once built by Feroz Shah Tughlaq in 1360.
About four kilometres southeast of the farmhouse is Manupur village — the site where Durrani suffered his only comprehensive defeat in India, in 1748, interestingly at the hands of the Mughals. Sirhind was also the location of three battles fought by the Sikhs in 1758, 1762, and 1764, not only against the Afghan governor but against the city itself. Sirhind was razed to the ground, brick by brick, for being the accursed site where Guru Gobind Singh’s young sons, aged seven and nine, were killed by the Mughal governor Wazir Khan in 1705.
Five hundred metres north of Gurudwara Fatehgarh Sahib stands the 400-year-old tomb of Ahmad al-Fārūqī al-Sirhindī (1564-1624), also known as Mujaddid Alf saāni — the ‘Reviver of the Second Millennium’. Curiously, despite the Mujaddid’s antagonism for Sikhs, the tomb was destroyed. Within its premises are the graves of an Afghan king and queen.
Ahmad Shah Durrani’s only defeat
Sirhind’s history can be traced back to the BCE era, but its golden age stretched from 1000 CE to 1764 CE, when the city was finally destroyed by the Sikhs. During the Mughal period, the Sirhind Sarkar — an administrative division — ruled over 28 parganas. It covered the Yamuna-Sutlej Doab. The town was a thriving centre of trade, education, and commerce, spanning a diameter of about three kos (roughly 10 kilometres). After Lahore, it was Punjab’s most important city — the gateway to Delhi. Every invader seeking to capture Delhi first took Sirhind. Conversely, Delhi’s rulers used it as a bulwark to repel invasions.
It was at Sirhind that Humayun defeated Ibrahim Shah Suri in 1555, restoring the Mughal Empire after losing to Sher Shah Suri in 1540. Nearly 200 years later, in 1748, another battle for India was fought at Sirhind. The Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah “Rangeela”(1719-1748), who had surrendered his people and Delhi’s treasury to Nadir Shah in 1739, displayed remarkable courage and organisation in defeating Durrani.
Durrani commenced his invasion from Peshawar in mid-December 1747 with 1,80,000 troops. Lahore was captured on 12 January 1748. After consolidating his control, he advanced toward Sirhind, which had been abandoned by its Mughal governor, and occupied the fort on 2 March 1748. Durani garrisoned his forces in and around Sirhind, preparing for the Mughal counterattack.
The lethargic Mughal army, led by Wazir (Prime Minister) Qamar-Ud-Din and Prince Ahmad Shah (later Emperor Ahmad Shah Bahadur), lumbered out of Delhi and failed to preempt the capture of Sirhind. It laid siege to Sirhind from 4-10 March, trying to starve out the Afghans, but failed as the garrison was well supplied. On 11 March, battle lines were drawn at Manupur village, on the outskirts of Sirhind.
The Afghan Army of 12,000 was outnumbered by 60,000 Mughal troops. A bloody battle ensued. Qamar-Ud-Din was killed by cannon fire, but the Mughal commanders held steadfast, using their superior artillery to good effect. Durrani went on the offensive, attacking at the Mughal centre and flanks. The Mughals held their ground, though the left flank crumpled, forcing them to launch a last-ditch counterattack. Eventually, the numbers prevailed, and the Afghan army pulled away from the battlefield, retreating first to Lahore and then to Afghanistan. Thus ended Durani’s first invasion of India.
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The razing of Sirhind
The first attempt by the Sikhs to fulfil their vow to raze Sirhind was made in 1710 by Banda Singh Bahadur. He, along with 25 Sikhs, marched from Nanded with a firman from Guru Gobind Singh in 1708. From there, he moved southwest of Delhi and entered present-day Haryana, where he raised a peasant army. Progressively, he captured several forts to the south and north of Ambala. Finally, he defeated the Nawab of Sirhind at Chappar Chiri, in present-day Mohali, on 10 May 1710, and captured Sirhind two days later, renaming it Fatehgarh. The city was plundered and anyone associated with the Mughals was slaughtered, but its razing was abandoned due to the arrival of the imperial army from Delhi.
Banda retreated to the hills but was eventually defeated, captured in 1716, and tortured to death in Delhi. For the next 30 years, the Sikhs waged a grim struggle and, despite brutal persecution by the Mughals, persevered to become masters of guerrilla warfare. Whenever the Mughals or, later, the Afghans mustered large armies, the Sikhs melted into the hills, only to return and reclaim territory once the invaders withdrew. By the time Durani began his invasions, they had organised themselves into misls — confederate entities spread between the Chenab and the Yamuna.
During his fourth invasion (1756-57), Durrani captured and looted Delhi but chose to govern Punjab indirectly through his Afghan governors at Sirhind and Lahore. After his departure, the Marathas forayed into Punjab and, in 1758, joined hands with the Dal Khalsa, (the combined army of the Sikh misls) and Adina Beg, the mercurial Mughal governor of Bist (Beas-Sutlej) Doab. The Afghan governor, Abdus Samad Khan, was defeated, and Sirhind was captured on 21 March 1758. The city was looted, but spared destruction as the victors rushed to capture Lahore. This was the brief period of Maratha rule in Punjab, with outposts on the Indus, which was never consolidated. The focus was on revenue collection through local governors.
Durrani returned in October 1759 to wreak vengeance, finally dealing the coup de grâce on the Marathas at Panipat on 14 January 1761. Once Durrani returned to Lahore, the Khalsa army recaptured Sirhind from the Afghan governor Zain Khan on 10 April 1762. However, due to the threat from Durrani, it was once again vacated in exchange for a bounty of Rs 50,000.
Finally, in January 1764, the combined Khalsa army under Jassa Sigh Ahluwalia captured Sirhind once more, as Afghan power gradually faded. The city was divided among several Sikh misls for systematic destruction. Once spread across a 10-kilometre diameter, Sirhind was reduced to rubble. Today, about a hundred surviving structures, mostly tombs, still pockmark the countryside.
The royal graves
Zaman Shah Durrani, the grandson of Durrani, ruled Afghanistan for eight years, from 1793 to 1801, and led the last Afghan attempt to invade India. He was deposed, blinded and imprisoned by his step-brother Mahmud Shah, only to be rescued two years later by another brother, Shujah Shah Durrani. Shujah, also known as Shujah-ul-Mulk, ruled until 1809, only to be deposed, once again, by Mahmud Shah Durrani.
In a twist of fate, both the blind Zaman Shah and Shujah Shah Durrani sought refuge with Maharaja Ranjit Singh in Lahore. Shujah had to pay the price for his asylum, surrendering the fabled Kohinoor diamond, which his grandfather, Ahmad Shah Durrani, had seized after Nadir Shah’s death. Eventually, both became British pensioners in Ludhiana.
Wafa Begum, the enterprising wife of Shujah, convinced the British to assist her husband in reclaiming the throne of Afghanistan. Only too eager to indulge in the “Great Game”, the British obliged and launched the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1839, reinstalling Shujah back on the throne. They succeeded only to end in abject defeat three years later in 1842. Wafa Begum, the brain behind the invasion, did not live to see the brief glory or the tragedy, as she died in 1838 before the invasion.
Wafa Begum was buried in the premises of the tomb of Mujaddid Sirhindi, whom the Afghan royalty revered. The blind Zaman Shah continued to live at Ludhiana and died in 1844. He was also buried at Sirhind alongside his sister-in-law Wafa Begum.
Given this 272-year history of India-Afghanistan relations, the present-day play of realpolitik should come as no surprise.
Lt Gen H S Panag PVSM, AVSM (R) served in the Indian Army for 40 years. He was GOC in C Northern Command and Central Command. Post retirement, he was Member of Armed Forces Tribunal. Views are personal.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)