INDIA - THE PUNJAB

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Maharajah Duleep Singh and the Government. A Narrative. First and only edition, privately issued, of this controversial presentation of the maharajah's grievances against the British Government's claims to the Punjab. Decidedly uncommon, around 14 copies traced institutionally, just a couple at auction. An excellent copy of a fragile, fugitive, and highly desirable work, here in a variant binding to the black skiver usually encountered.The child king Duleep Singh, (1838-1893), Maharajah of Lahore,was carried into exile following defeat in the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-9), converting to Christianity in 1854, obtaining a royal audience and becoming "an immediate success" with the Queen, and eventually settling in Elveden, Suffolk with Bamba Müller, his "part-Ethiopian, part-German" (ODNB) wife, who he had met in Cairo when returning from his mother's funeral in India; "Duleep Singh loved Elveden and rebuilt the church, cottages, and the school. His fame as a shooter of game was revived in the grounds of the great estate". However, "amid European glamour, the spirit that had tasted sovereignty was hibernating somewhere in the mind of Duleep Singh. Prompted initially by his mother, then by his cousin Thakur Singh Sandhanwalia, and finally by the supposed prophecies of the tenth Sikh guru, Duleep Singh began a battle with the British government asserting the illegality of the annexation of the Punjab, and demanded to be reinstated as maharajah. In 1886 he tried to return to

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