Showing posts with label Francis Younghusband. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Francis Younghusband. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Sir Percy Sykes: Explorer Spy Diplomat Persia and the Great Game

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


Persia in the Great Game: Sir Percy Sykes Explorer Soldier Spy

Anthony Wynn

Sir Percy Molesworth Sykes was a personality straight from the pages of a Rudyard Kipling novel. He combined the life of adventure for which T E Lawrence is famous for and a love for adventure which made Sir Richard Burton the cynosure of Victorian society. He traveled widely in Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia and as he traveled he explored the terrain  and sent detailed maps of the region to the Indian Army Intelligence Headquarters at Shimla. He lived and worked in dangerous times. Persia, an unstable patchwork of tribes and sectarian associations, was stirring intellectually to a new kind of political awakening. A movement aimed at transforming Persia into a Constitutional State was gathering momentum and by the first decade of the twentieth century had virtually rendered the Qajar Dynasty both powerless and seriously undermined. Percy Sykes was the Consul posted at Mashhad at a critical juncture and his long standing friendship with the Crown Prince made him a valuable source of political information for the English.

Percy Sykes was born in 1867 in Yorkshire and died in 1945. Educated in the well known Rugby School, Sykes joined the Sandhurst Military Academy and was posted in India. He was based in Sialkot with the 16th Lancers. Along with Francis Younghusband, Syskes too was seconded to the Indian Army and its Intelligence wing. And in this, Sykes was eminently successful as he was able to explore little known mountain passes, traverse the inhospitable Lut Desert, explore the migratory routes of Turkoman nomads as they crossed from Central Asia into Afghanistan and thence into Persia. As he wrote in his History of Exploration his guides in his exploration were the accounts of Alexander's conquests, particularly that of Arrian and the travels of Marco Polo. Sykes was a protégé of Sir Mortimer Durand whose biography he wrote in which he expressed admiration for the tireless manner in which he pursued British interests in Afghanistan which till today is institutionalised in the form of the Durand Line, the boundary between Afghanistan and India, now of course, the line dividing Pakistan from the Pashtun heartland of Afghanistan. Percy Sykes was well trained in Persian and so was able to acquire impressive intelligence.

Persia in the late nineteenth century was the target of two powerful and expansionist Empires: Britain and Russia. The Great Game as Rudyard Kipling called it was played out from the Pamirs, across the Taklamakan Desert, the snow capped peaks of the Hindu Kush to Tehran and Shriaz. An the Consul in Mashhad  and Kerman, Sykes kept a close watch on Russia. The construction of the Trans Caspian Railway had made it easier for the Russians to move its military rapidly and the tribes inhabiting the border areas were constantly in a state of what Ibn haldun called fitna, a state of political unrest. negotiations with tribal leaders on behalf of the Indian Government meant also dealing with the regime in Persia whose writ barely extended as far east as the Baluchi border. The increasing old of Russia over Tashkent meant that Indian trading interests suffered.

During his years of service, Sykes explored 3000 miles in the Himalayas and discovered no less than 40 passes that had strategic value. His detailed Reports which he submitted to the Legation in Tehran eventually found their way from the Foreign Office to the Royal Geographical Society. The task of communication was still filled with difficulties as the engineers sent to man the British Persian Telegraph Company were killed sometimes within days of reaching their posts.

Sir Percy Sykes was a keen observer of the landscape he surveyed. He noticed that the qanats that supplied water to the fields on the border between Baluchistan and Persia had been destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century and agriculture had not quite recovered since. He also was intrigued by the spectacular structures he saw in the region adjoining Persia and Baluchistan. 
The windmills that harnessed the violent desert winds were described vividly by Sykes and they were still functioning when he wrote about them. Huge parallel wall made of mud capture the wind and funnels it towards giant sails that drive timber shafts to which are attached grinding stones. Some of these structures are still extant and are now recognised as UNESCO world heritage sites.

The discovery of Oil in Persia and the transition from coal burning engines to oil powered ships in the Royal Navy added another element in the tense relationship between Persia and the British. With Germany beginning to take an interest in the region in order to use political Islam as an ideology to motivate anti British feeling among Muslims all over Asia men like Sykes had their hands full. At Kashgar Sykes helped Sir Aurel Stein smuggle 146 cartons and boxes of antiquities into India and till this day the Chinese have neither forgotten nor forgiven this vandalism of their cultural heritage.

This book is well written and is based o the personal papers correspondence and Reports of Percy Sykes. In 1915 he was knighted for his services, receiving the KCIE. He died in 1945. 

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

New Light on India's Relations with Tibet: Weapons supplied to the Tibetans in the years after Independence in 1947

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

The Indian Government has always pretended to follow a "principled" policy towards Tibet. One the one hand it recognizes the fact that  Tibet is an integral part of China and on the other provided space for the Dalai Lama to indulge his fancy for high decibel diplomacy and publicity and China rightly objects to this dual policy. Based on perfidy and exercised through duplicity   this policy has stood in the way of realizing the full potential of Indo-Chinese relations. The two form the very heart of Asian civilizations and there is at least 2,550 years of peaceful history behind the civilizational ties between India and China. Unfortunately, successive Congress regimes have built their foreign policy on instinctive hostility toward China, rather than exploring the threads that bind these two giant neighbors together. And in following this policy, the Government of India starting with the first Prime Minister, Jawarhar Lal Nehru were essentially following the colonial policy enunciated by the British Government in order to keep China under constant threat. The greatest failure of Nehru lies in his wooden headed pursuit of an aggressive China policy without taking into consideration the alternatives. Today as we survey the landscape, we find China standing at the very doorstep of economic powerhouse and India is facing a bleak future because of the inherent stasis created by a corrupt political class and corruption.

Documents recently discovered in the National Archives of India clearly prove that in the 1940;s even as the country was facing the massive onslaught of the Japanese Empire, the then British Government was instrumental in supplying arms and ammunition to the Dalai Lama and his followers in China.The 11 year old "Dalai  Lama" neither had the wit nor the education to understand what the English secret services were up to and after Independence Jawahar Lal Nehru continued the same policy while publicly proclaiming the homilies of "panch sheel". The Revolutionary Government of China obviously saw through this grand pantomime. Therefore the prime responsibility for the border conflict in 1962 rests with the Government of India and its misguided policies and perspectives.

The Political Officer looking after Tibet and Sikkhim in the waning years of the Raj, Mr A J Hopkinson put up a note to his superiors asking for funds to equip a brigade level force in Tibetr with 2 and 3 inch mortars, sten guns, machinme guns and Bren machine pistols. The Memorandum of MAY 29, 1947 WHICH IS FOUND IN THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF iNDIA (FRONTLINE AUGUST 23, 2013) contains a reproduction of this important document. The officials were certain that this policy of sending arms will be vigourously contested by the Chinese Government and even Chiak Kai Shek did not acquiesce in this wrong and anti Chinese policy.The programme of arming the "peace loving" monks of Tibet began soon after the Francis Younghusband expedition to Tibet and picked up momentum after the Revolution of 1911.

Even after Independence when the departure of the British should have induced fresh thinking, the policy of arming the Tibetans continued. In October 1947, Sam Manekshaw, then a Lt Col. approved the transfer of weapons and 1,484,000 rounds of aminutions to Tibet. it is likely that Britain wanted a foothold in Tibet in order to exert pressure on China both with regards to Kowloon and Hong Kong.

Independent Indfa did not have any such strategic objective and why was Jawarlal Nehru so utterly foolish and shortsighted.