Acts of ‘revenge’

On an afternoon in early June 1895, a British working party of coolies and sepoys were constructing a road at Dhana Sir about 38 miles from the Punjab frontier. At about 4.30 pm, six young men from a neighbouring village armed with swords and country guns appeared at the working site. They entered into a conversation with the sepoys on duty and, catching them off guard, suddenly shot them down. The armed men then went to the tent of Lieutenant Home, the chief engineer, and called him out, ‘Sahib’. Not receiving any response, they went to the working compound where they caught and killed five of the fleeing workers. As the officer in charge was nowhere to be found, the assailants began to ransack and burn his tents.Footnote ²¹ The assailants were not done as yet.

Knowing that the regular route to access the work site in this rugged region was the small Khwarin pass, they hid in its vicinity and waited for the British official. Lieutenant Home’s servant was the first to arrive, riding a camel. He was shot at and killed along with his camel. Next to reach the entrance of the pass was Home himself, accompanied by a butler (sowar). The attackers fired a volley from close range and killed him on the spot. When the British officer was dead, two of the ‘discontented’ men began to cut him up. At this, the Pathan sowar, who had been spared, objected, ‘he is dead, why should they hack him with their swords?’. The angry assailants replied, ‘some time ago, you do not know about it, these English have taken our woman’.Footnote ²²

Two of the said attackers returned to their village and announced what they had done. More bloodshed followed that same night when another construction site for a British bungalow was targeted. This time, four workers were murdered in their sleep, and five others were wounded by the villagers.Footnote ²³ The attackers were not unknown to their victims. They were Shirani tribesmen from the British-occupied Zhob region in Baluchistan. However, attacks on British parties by the Shiranis were neither new nor unusual in this region.

From the time of the British annexation of Punjab, which brought them closer to the Shiranis’ highlands on their borders in 1849, to the formal occupation of north Baluchistan in 1891, this relationship was marked by violent events.Footnote ²⁴ Although the Punjab government refrained from extending its borders into the highlands of the Shiranis, it conducted frequent punitive military raids in response to Shiranis raiding British territory and sheltering outlaws and criminals.Footnote ²⁵ In contrast to this restraint, a more proactive colonial venture in the Shirani highlands began in Baluchistan from the 1870s onwards. This colonial initiative was intended to explore and survey the region for military purposes and to integrate the local tribes into the imperial objective by seeking their assistance in securing strategic passes. In particular, from 1872, Shirani men were co-opted into the frontier militia, and monetary emoluments, as inams, were offered to local chiefs to gain their loyalty.Footnote ²⁶ Although this policy did not fully materialize, fresh energy was infused into it after the Second Anglo-Afghan War, when the government issued orders to urgently reduce the Afghan kingdom’s political influence on border tribes so as to maintain them as a buffer against any potential Russian threat.Footnote ²⁷ However, despite the allure of the inams, not all Shirani sections became part of the British design. In 1883, for instance, when a military expedition was sent with surveyors to explore the Takht-I-Suleiman, the Khidderzai Shiranis refused to ‘give hostage for quiet behaviour’. The Shiranis remained loosely connected to the imperial fabric until the end of this decade.Footnote ²⁸

This situation partially changed in 1889 when the viceroy granted Robert Sandeman the licence to occupy north Baluchistan through a military expedition and to ‘open Gomal Pass by making arrangements with Shirani and Wazir tribes’.Footnote ²⁹ Before his arrival in Zhob, Sandeman had successfully experimented with indirect rule through local Maliks in the Punjab border tribes of Dera Ghazi Khan and similarly intervened in other regions of Baluchistan nominally under the Khanate of Kalat.Footnote ³⁰ However, unlike his previous engagements, his tenure in Zhob was short and violent.Footnote ³¹ Before famously dying in 1892 in Las Bela, he undertook two military expeditions with George White in the Zhob region, the latter specifically targeting the Khidderzai section of Shiranis and officially named as such.Footnote ³² As a result of these expeditions, the highlanders or Bargha Shiranis were coerced into becoming British subjects and paying one-sixth revenue to the sarkar. The Bargha Shiranis were to be managed by the Baluchistan Agency.Footnote ³³ However, the lowlanders or Largha, which included the Khidderzai section, could not be persuaded to do the same. This unincorporated part of the Takht-I- Suleiman’s lower slopes, inhabited by the yaghi people, was to remain under the political influence of the Punjab government.Footnote ³⁴ By the 1891 agreement with the Largha tribes, a policy of non-interference was established. According to this agreement, Punjab officials could visit the territory and the tribes had to ensure the safety of trade routes and the surrender of ‘offenders’. Cases against the tribes were to be decided with the assistance of the jirgas (councils of village elders).Footnote ³⁵ This administrative division of the Shirani lands into two differently conceptualized state controls rendered British governance paradoxical and conflicting. It made their position ambiguous in the long-duration imperial frontier policy, vacillating between the Closed Border and Forward Policy.Footnote ³⁶

How the murder of the British engineer, described at the beginning of this section, was connected to the conflict between different notions of state intervention, I will show later. Suffice here to state that while British officers were attacked in Shirani lands on many occasions, this was the first time that the Shiranis had targeted a British officer for ‘taking away their woman’ and dishonouring them.

The inquiries into Lieutenant Home and his assistants’ killings began soon after the murders. As the murder plots began to unfold, it became clear that the cause of the violence on Dhana Sir Road was a woman. When Jan Gul, a young Shirani man was called to explain the assault on the British party, he plainly stated that ‘the offenders have committed the outrages in question on account of no redress having been made to them in the case of the abduction of Mussammat Lohani, the wife of Bahawal, my cousin’.Footnote ³⁷ Who was Lohani? Who abducted her? And how were the killed British representatives implicated in her abduction and questions of community honour? To address these questions, it is crucial to examine, first, the events that led to the act of ‘abduction’ and, second, the responses from both the British authorities and the claimants of Lohani to this act of ‘abduction’. This will be done in the following two sections.

Acts of ‘abductions’

The act of rescuing from oblivion the agency and actions of colonized people is not easy. But it is doubly difficult to recover the stories of womenFootnote ³⁸ as they are consistently invisiblized in the archives of the empire.Footnote ³⁹ Available sources throw a very dim light on the identity of Mussammat Lohani. They are limited to recording the names of all her male progenitors and their whereabouts. Lohani’s voice is absent, even though the entire case revolves around her. Some of her agency can only be retrieved through her actions, which are publicly discussed and judged by village elders and British authorities. However, we hear the voices of other Shirani women who were called to testify in the case. We will see later why the British chose to summon women and record their statements and what impact women’s testimonies had on Lohani’s case.

But as far as the question of Lohani’s identity is concerned, what we know from our sources is this: Lohani was a young woman who lived in Loara, a small village on the uplands of the Takht-I-Suleiman mountain range in British-administered Baluchistan. She belonged to the Shirani tribe, many clans of which were spread across the lower slopes of the Takht beyond British control. If we were to collate her identity in the same way as her male relatives were recorded in the colonial archive, she would appear as a Chuhar Khel Sulimanzai Barakzai/Kundanzai of Bargha Shirani. Bharga represents the geographical unit in the local dialect, meaning ‘uplands’, Khel represents the clan, and the following details indicate the sections and subsections of the clan.Footnote ⁴⁰ Lohani’s father had died when she was a child. Her mother raised her under the guardianship of several men related to either her paternal or maternal side. She was married to an elderly man who was, in fact, her uncle.Footnote ⁴¹

The other details of importance that appear in the official sources are these. We read that one day, sometime in late June 1894, Lohani stepped out of her house and did not return. She walked nearly three miles outside her village, where she met her lover and the two eloped.Footnote ⁴² Lohani’s elopement was not a secret act. Her mother and brother connived in her disappearance as they believed that Lohani’s relationship with the man she ran away with was licit.Footnote ⁴³

We better understand the reasons for Lohani’s elopement only when we come across a complaint filed in 1892 in the Zhob Agency by a man for the violation of his marriage contract to a Shirani girl. This girl was Mussammat Lohani, and the complainant was Batai Khidderzai.Footnote ⁴⁴ Batai was a Shirani man of Uba Khels from the lowlands who had betrothed Lohani with the permission of her mother and her immediate male agnates. However, this betrothal was challenged by Lohani’s grand uncle, who forcefully took Lohani away, claiming himself to be the girl’s chief guardian and thus having the sole right to choose her suitor.Footnote ⁴⁵

Batai’s complaint about the violation of his marriage contract was taken up by the political agent in Zhob where the British had recently built Fort Sandeman to exercise power.Footnote ⁴⁶ Here, the British officials convened a public meeting (open darbar) of village elders (jirga) to address the conflict. However, at this meeting of September 1892, Batai’s marriage contract to Lohani was nullified.Footnote ⁴⁷ According to Batai’s account, he was forced to throw three stones at Lohani—an act of divorce as per the local custom. He was also ‘forced’ to accept monetary compensation.Footnote ⁴⁸ This case thus seemed to have rested, allowing Bahawal to marry his young niece Lohani at the behest of the grand uncle Hindkai, who finally seemed to have recovered his lost patrilineal right over women.

However, as records indicate, 18 months after this marital accord, Lohani met her ex-suitor Batai again. This time, three miles away from her village, she was escorted by her mother. The couple escaped to Batai’s village in the lowland Shirani region, beyond the pale of regular British law and government. On hearing of Lohani’s ‘disappearance’, her grand uncle, who elsewhere in the document is recorded as a village headman, was so ‘enraged’ that he pursued the runaway couple with a lashkar (armed men) of about 60 men. This armed party came down to the Khidderzai village in search of the elusive couple. But they were unable to trace the two fugitives. At this point, they entered Batai’s brother’s house and ‘carried off’ a young woman as a hostage. This woman was Mussammat Ghanai, Batai’s sister-in-law, whose unweaned infant was left behind in the act of ‘abduction’.Footnote ⁴⁹ This retaliatory act over women brought the two clans of the Shiranis—Chuhar Khels and Khidderzais—into open war with each other.

Acts of ‘honour’

Disputes on the frontier regarding marital relations were of particular interest to the British authorities since they concerned Pathan sexuality. One way to subordinate the ‘unruly’ Pathan was to control his sexuality. Ben Hopkins suggests that the British attempted to do this by directly intervening in cases of adultery, bringing them to colonial courts.Footnote ⁵⁰ In contrast to this suggestion, I demonstrate that such cases primarily involved controlling Pathan women’s sexuality. By default, this focus on women’s bodies granted the British power over entire communities, as women’s bodies were/are associated with the honour of a larger collective. Figuratively and literally, Pathan women carried the veil of honour on their bodies. This association of honour with women’s bodies features in a critical way in the historiography of Partition in South Asia.Footnote ⁵¹ It continues to be affirmed in contemporary works in Pakistan.Footnote ⁵²

The colonial intervention on Lohani’s person and body was performed publicly. The political agents oversaw her divorce in an open durbar, facilitating her uncle’s marriage to her. However, by eloping with her lover, Lohani had shown a complete defiance of British authority and their public ruling. While local communities’ honour was at stake because they were losing their women, the British, too, had their honour to uphold.

Partly as a result of this implication and partly in their role as state sovereigns, the British responded to Lohani’s escape and the consequent ‘abduction’ of Ghanai discussed in the previous section by resorting to punitive measures characteristic of the frontier region.Footnote ⁵³ First, they imprisoned Shirani men for abducting Mussammat Ghanai and taking her hostage. Second, they imposed monetary sanctions on the villagers to avert any future violence.Footnote ⁵⁴ But, perhaps in an unprecedented move, the British authorities took away the ‘hostage’ woman Ghanai from her abductors and placed her under their custody. Captain C. Archer, the political agent in Zhob, Baluchistan, sent Ghanai to Fort Sandeman, declaring that she was in pardah, prohibiting anyone from meeting her until the settlement of the case or the return of Lohani.Footnote ⁵⁵

The Baluch sarkar thus became the new captors of the ‘abducted’ woman while her ‘hostage’ status was maintained. In this process, they redefined the role of the state as a participant in the community conflict. The political agent had all the powers and means to return the young woman to her community. Her case was compelling because she had an unattended infant whose life was at risk without the mother’s milk. The British authorities in Baluchistan, however, chose to hold the woman against her will and keep her captive at Fort Sandeman. But by withholding the return of the ‘hostage’ woman, the British authorities became part of the same game that the vengeful tribal communities were playing against each other in the name of honour. As I will show, through this involvement, the British, willingly or unwillingly, took upon themselves the burden of salvaging community honour.

While Ghanai remained confined within the walls of Sandeman, the British assembled jirgas, deliberated on their opinions, and attempted to restrain Shirani men from defying colonial authority, a process that continued for over six months. However, in December 1894, there was a fresh turn of events. Ghanai escaped from the British fort. She not only fled British captivity but also managed to reunite with her relatives across the Baluch border in the yaghi lands.Footnote ⁵⁶ This escape triggered great outrage among the Chuhar Khels, who had been expecting the return of their woman, Lohani, from the Khidderzais due to Ghanai. They now found themselves cheated and disgraced before their equals. This outrage and anger eventually manifested a few months later in the killings of the British officer and his working party discussed earlier.

The Baluch authorities, however, were initially reluctant to accept any link between Lieutenant Home’s murder and Lohani’s case.Footnote ⁵⁷ There was no apparent connection between the two. That the British official and his co-workers were killed to redeem lost community honour became fully clear when Lohani’s relatives and other Chuhar Khel villagers were questioned. Since the British authorities were unable to catch any of the aggressors involved in the killings, they relied on the testimonies of villagers to validate the identity of the attackers, determine their whereabouts, and ascertain the motives for the ‘crimes’.

When Mussammat Saidawar, Lohani’s mother-in-law, was called to testify, she categorically stated that the murders were committed due to the government’s failure to restore Lohani to the tribe. She reasoned that since the time of Mussammat Ghanai’s escape,

Why did Hindkai and his relatives finally choose not to wait for the government’s decision and instead take matters into their own hands? There seem to be two possible reasons for this. First, the remarkable escape of Ghanai from British custody resulted in a complete breach of faith between the Baluch sarkar and its new subjects. This incident led the Chuhar Khels to believe that the sarkar was not a trustworthy accomplice or collaborator in matters concerning women. It was this change in the Chuhar Khels’ perception of the British authorities that shifted the focus of vengeance from their opponents, the Khidderzais, to the British. The second reason for the Chuhar Khels’ desperation was that the tribesmen saw their honour repeatedly challenged in public by their opponents, who mocked them for losing their woman. This social berating and humiliation seem to have affected Hindkai and his kinsmen, who now believed that ‘their claim was against the Sirkar and no longer against the Khiderzais’.Footnote ⁵⁹ Their agony and desperation to redeem themselves were reflected in the accounts of local villagers.

For instance, when Sandura, a Chuhar Khel woman, was called to testify, she claimed that on the day of Id al-Zuhah, that is two weeks before the murders, Hindkai disparaged his son by telling him that ‘he was good for nothing’ and that ‘if had died, Hindkai would have slain an ox in token of rejoicing’.Footnote ⁶⁰ Hindkai’s instigation of Shikari, the ‘chief murderer’, to act violently in the name of honour was also confirmed when Jabbar, Shikari’s maternal uncle, was called to testify. He alluded to his conversation with Lohani’s mother-in-law and recalled that

The role of Hindkai and Shikari in the attacks against the British was firmly established through various sources. However, several other men had joined Shikari in the ‘acts of honour’. The British ascertained their participation by questioning women from their households.

The qazi made inquiries from three other Chuhar Khel women: Mussammat Babo, Mussammat Bagicha, and Mussammat Jalo, as all of them were close relatives of the men accused of murder. Babo said that she found it difficult to locate her son Tajak’s movements. She stated that her son often visited Jan Gul’s wife, Mussammat Bange, as he was in love with her and that she relied on Bange to know his whereabouts. On the day of the reported killings, when she went to fetch water, it was Bange who informed her that ‘Tajak had taken his arms and gone off with Shikari. The same day, she heard of the murders at Manikwah.’ The day after the murders, Mussammat Sarkai, the stepmother of Mozhak (another accused), informed Babo that Tajak had taken away a matchlock and a sword from her house.Footnote ⁶²

Mussammat Bagicha, the mother of Tarak, an accomplice in the murders, was called to identify the arms left by the attackers at the site of the killings. Although Bagicha recognized the country gun as that of her son, she spoke disapprovingly of the violent acts. She complained that Shikari, by taking her son along, had ruined the whole tribe.Footnote ⁶³ Mussammat Jalo, whose brother Pohak had joined the attackers, also spoke of the attackers sceptically and claimed that ‘she was not aware of their intentions, otherwise she would have dissuaded them’.Footnote ⁶⁴

The last two testimonies suggest that Pathan women abstained from violent participation in the precept of Badal or revenge. Whether this was the case in general requires further research; however, a similar conclusion was drawn by Benedicte Grima in her anthropological study of the Pathan communities in the 1980s.Footnote ⁶⁵ For instance, Grima concluded that women did Pashto/Badal differently from men, as theirs was based on non-violent practices such as strengthening social relationships through gift exchange and visits during gham-xadi (happy and sorrowful occasions). However, she restricts women’s agency to the domestic and social spheres.Footnote ⁶⁶

Most notably, for the British, these testimonies revealed how men, as comrades, were complicit in the execution of violence against them. They reinforced primitive ideas of collective violence and collective responsibility. They further affirmed the warlike nature of the frontier as an exceptional space. Mark Condos, in his fine study, shows how the implementation of the Murderous and Outrages Act allowed the state to assert sovereignty in frontier spaces of exception, where it assumed a warlike character by summarily executing ‘fanatics’ accused of murdering British subjects.Footnote ⁶⁷ However, summary trials still required ascertaining the objectives for murder, identifying assassins, and, most importantly, arresting them. My example demonstrates that ground trials were far from brief, and offenders were far from being apprehended. Three years after Home’s murder, only one of the seven accused had been caught; the others remained beyond the British reach.Footnote ⁶⁸ Due to the urgency surrounding cases of European murders, such testimonies were of great importance to the British.

The other point of note is that while the status of women’s testimony remained contested in cases of hadd (murder, theft, adultery, among others) in the Islamic world,Footnote ⁶⁹ their words certainly carried weight for the British, who used them as evidence to prosecute ‘absconding’ men. For the fleeing men, however, the consequences of their violent acts were secondary because they believed they were engaged in a legitimate war against their tormentors. By killing the British officer and his associates in broad daylight, the Chuhar Khels had shown absolute contempt for the sarkar’s sovereign status; they showed no fear of the state’s brutal laws or its military power. Indirectly, this was also a response to their yaghi opponents who used to berate Chuhar Khels by calling them ‘woman’ for submitting to British rule. After the murders, Hindkai was reported to have said to the qazi assisting the British ‘… what’s done is done. Now do what you like with me.’Footnote ⁷⁰ Hindkai’s assertion shows that Chuhar Khels believed in their right to punish the sarkar. By breaching the trust of their subjects, the sarkar, in a way, became their equal who could be punished likewise.

However, there is one notable absence from the violent episodes that began with Ghanai’s abduction and ended with the killings of the British working party. It is the conspicuous and consistent invisibility of Bahawal, Lohani’s husband.Footnote ⁷¹ One might have thought that, being legally married to Lohani, he was the most direct bearer of the insult brought upon him by his wife’s elopement. By this logic, he should have been the primary agent in the fight to regain his lost honour. But instead, what we notice is that this battle for honour is led and fought by other male members of his family and community. Through this participation, we may say they were performing badal (i.e. revenge in response to the community insult), a key tenet of the Pakhtunwali code of behaviour to which ideas of shame and honour were central.Footnote ⁷² While this helps us understand the communal nature of disputes about women, it does not explain Bahawal’s absence. Bahawal’s abstention is understood when we come across a small piece of information recorded only once in the lengthy deliberations of the local council of adjudicators. He was ‘crippled’ in one of his legs.Footnote ⁷³ While this detail is insignificant to the British, it helps us understand why Lohani’s husband could not join his brothers either in pursuing his wife or in attacking the British. But Bahawal’s male relatives covered up for his absence and physical incapacity by taking upon themselves the responsibility of redeeming his honour.Footnote ⁷⁴ They felt collectively obliged to do so. This again shows that cases about women, in these borderlands, were not about individuals but about community.

An intra-tribal or an intra-colonial war

Lohani’s case appears in the Punjab frontier proceedings for the first time in August 1892. However, references to her case appear intermittently throughout this last decade of the century. In March 1895, an official was to state that ‘It is almost reducing the business of Administration, Local Governments and the Government of India to a farce to write so much about such a case.’Footnote ⁷⁵ But what caused the continued deliberation and delayed resolution of Lohani’s case? An examination of the voluminous correspondence in the last decade of the nineteenth century between the colonial authorities of Punjab, Baluchistan, and the government of India offers possible answers.

On close reading, it becomes clear that an intra-tribal and cross-border dispute was, at its core, an intra-imperial conflict between competing colonial understandings of how frontier societies should be governed, co-opted, and punished. Although the stakes for the British authorities and local communities differed, in the colonial project, they overlapped on issues of honour and women’s sexuality, which were rearticulated through the local conflict.

The case of Lohani became the medium through which the conflicting impulses within colonial designs were fully revealed, that is, ‘the will to preserve versus the will to transform indigenous custom and tradition’.Footnote ⁷⁶ These impulses were rooted in the philosophical debates of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and punctuated British state policy throughout colonial rule.Footnote ⁷⁷ It can be said that the Punjab government exemplified the former impulse. They attempted to maintain their political influence over the unoccupied lands of Shiranis through the mediation of Maliks and traditional institutions —the ‘indirect model’. However, their approach remained coloured by the conservative spirit of Burkean restraint. The Baluch side, on the other hand, exemplified a more interventionist approach with a utilitarian undercurrent also within the framework of ‘indirect rule’. They attempted to impose order by rolling out the carpet of reform through settlement and taxation, and were willing to modify local traditions if they did not align with their imperial project.

These various frameworks of governmentality shaped the approaches of the two frontier governments towards the unoccupied lands of Shiranis, which were sandwiched between them. Since the administrative division of Shirani lands in 1891, the Baluch officials repeatedly argued for an extension of British rule in their yaghi neighbourhoods. In the official correspondence, the rationale for intervention was largely based on the idea that people who committed ‘crimes’ in British territory escaped punishment by fleeing to this in-between zone, and that such subversive acts greatly undermined British authority in the eyes of its own subjects.

Collapsing the anxiety produced by Lohani’s case with other forms of state subversion, the political agent in Zhob claimed that the Largha country had become ‘an Alsatia where women dissatisfied with their husbands, tribesmen at odds with their Maliks, and malefactors of all kinds may bid defiance to the law in security’.Footnote ⁷⁸ Alsatia referred to the late seventeenth-century sanctuary in Whitefriars, London, where lawbreakers and debtors took refuge.Footnote ⁷⁹ The allusion to this past disorder in their mother country signified that the British continued to grapple with the anxieties of dealing with stateless and lawless people. It was as if the yaghis of the Largha reminded them of their unwanted past. The Baluch authorities’ failure to ‘capture’ and ‘claim’ for its people a runaway woman to the Alsatian lands of Largha amplified these fears of non-governance. In this sense, the figure of Lohani became the embodiment of the Alsatian anxiety. In the context of the escape zone, the words ‘security’, ‘shelter’, and ‘refuge’ all carried subversive meanings for the Baluch state, even though in local practice, they were the basic precepts of honourable Pathan behaviour.Footnote ⁸⁰

It concerned the Baluch sarkar that the inhabitants of the yaghi lands, who tilled land in British territory, could escape paying revenues. Furthermore, they alleged that the lowlands (Largha) sheltered all kinds of ‘criminals, malcontents, asylum seekers and refugees’ from British territory.Footnote ⁸¹ Sanawal Khan, a Largharwal accused of murdering three men in Bargha, was a case in point. Khan repeatedly ignored British summonses between 1892 and 1895 to appear for trial in British territory. During this time, the Baluch authorities sent repeated reminders to the Punjab officers to ‘deliver him’.Footnote ⁸² The Punjab officers, however, remained uncommitted to the use of force against ‘offenders’ in Largha, arguing that the transfer of their trial to a ‘foreign jurisdiction’ would cause resentment among the tribes.Footnote ⁸³ Surely, the coercion of yaghi tribes militarily was a financial question, as elsewhere on the frontier, but in the case of Punjab, it appeared to also be a question of state discretion based on what Frederick Whelan refers to as a ‘prudent recognition of circumstantial constraints on ideal policy’.Footnote ⁸⁴ This was the Burkean idea that the ‘government … ought to conform to the exigencies of the time and the temper and character of the people with whom it is concerned’.Footnote ⁸⁵ Burke’s reflections on state-people relations figure in the position of Punjab chiefly through the voice of Lieutenant Governor Dennis Fitzpatrick. Burke’s legacy and ideas held a venerable status in Ireland by the late nineteenth century due to the appeal they held for the Home Rule movement.Footnote ⁸⁶ Fitzpatrick, an Irishman himself, appeared to be in sync with Burkean ideas.

Fitzpatrick had made a name for himself due to his conflicts with border officers, the army, and the government of India regarding the issue of state intervention in matters affecting frontier communities.Footnote ⁸⁷ He seemed concerned that the impact of British practices fostered hostility between the people and their rulers.Footnote ⁸⁸ In his guidance to Punjab border officers about frontier policy, Fitzpatrick had emphatically stated that they should be ‘mindful’ of interference in disputes involving women because people ‘dislike’ British ideas imposed on them in such matters.Footnote ⁸⁹ This statement reflected the broader framework of Punjab government policy, which was shaped by the people’s desires and consent that legitimized it.

This principle of practical governance was once again employed by the lieutenant governor to withhold the forceful transfer of Largha offenders to Baluchistan for trial. In 1897, the political agent in Zhob listed unresolved cross-border disputes where disputants could not be brought to trial without coercion from the Punjab side.Footnote ⁹⁰ Fitzpatrick dismissed this by stating that uncivilized border tribes were incapable of understanding the conventions of exchange suited to civilized neighbours. The lieutenant governor warned that the British should take control of borderlands ‘cautiously’ and ‘gradually’.Footnote ⁹¹

Lohani’s case caused significant stress along the fault lines that pre-existed at both the ideological and practical levels between Punjab and Baluchistan regarding questions of governance. In addressing the grievances of their respective subject communities, the two sides clung fiercely to their statecraft, deepening these cracks and allowing the tension to manifest fully. This was exemplified in the communication between the two governments regarding the abducted women.

The Baluch authorities, represented by the agent to the governor-general and the political agent in Zhob, consistently and vociferously appealed to Punjab to send Lohani back to her husband. To accomplish this return, they withheld the release of the ‘captured’ woman Mussammat Ghanai and kept her as a bargaining counter. The Punjab government, led by the lieutenant governor and his subordinates, the district commissioners, retained Lohani by maintaining her refugee status in the Largha territory, where she was sheltered and veiled. This compulsion to retain possession of the woman by both sides was a means to assert their rights over local women. Simultaneously, by doing so, the British officers attempted to address their governance anxiety. The framework of this contest was shaped mainly by the tribal communities, who exerted enormous pressure on their respective sarkars in an attempt to recover their lost women.

The official correspondence is revealing of this stress. Both sides claimed that ‘feelings were running high’ and ‘danger of bloodshed was imminent’.Footnote ⁹² Several curt telegrams were exchanged. Gee writes to the political agent in Zhob: ‘will you release Ghanai, wife of Dalai, to suckle her baby?’,Footnote ⁹³ to which the response was ‘… unless Lohani can be sent back simultaneously, it would be better for both women to stay where they are pending settlement, otherwise it will be difficult to prevent further complications’.Footnote ⁹⁴ Again, the Punjab official writes one week later: ‘Release of Ghanai urgently required to prevent the possible death of her baby’.Footnote ⁹⁵ To this, the Zhob official bluntly asks: ‘Cannot other woman undertake the baby’.Footnote ⁹⁶

The women on both sides appeared to have become both tribal and colonial possessions, embodying their honour and proprietorship at the same time. Consequently, it was occasionally difficult to distinguish between the feelings of the tribes and their colonial representatives. This is evident from the Punjab authorities’ emphatic endorsement of Khidderzai Maliks’ reasoning for the release of Ghanai and the protection of Lohani from her claimants.

The Khidderzai Maliks unanimously submitted to the Punjab authorities that ‘they had been put to much disgrace’ by the abduction of Ghanai from their country and if her baby was to die of hunger, the dispute would end in bloodshed.Footnote ⁹⁷ The Maliks also argued that Lohani eloped with the consent of her mother with the man she ‘liked’ and therefore the abduction of Ghanai in response to a consenting act was disgraceful. They ended their submission with a veiled threat, stating that ‘the case may be decided within ten days … or they may be allowed to set the matters themselves’.Footnote ⁹⁸ The sentiments of the Maliks were forcefully advocated and put forward by R. I. Bruce and H. W. Gee, the district commissioners of Derajat and Dera Ismail Khan. In his letter of December 1894, Bruce stated that in the unoccupied Shirani lands, it was against the custom to force a woman to return to her husband against her will and that therefore to force Lohani to return would put her ‘in great personal danger’.Footnote ⁹⁹ Gee, too, speaking the language of the Maliks, stated that Ghanai’s case was different from that of Lohani, as she ‘was only carried off by the raiders by way of reprisals and hence there did not appear to be any danger of complications in telling her to go back’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ For Punjab, it was the Khidderzais who were more seriously aggrieved than their counterpart whose woman had chosen to elope with her paramour.

Punjab and Baluchistan held onto their ‘abducted’ women at the risk of violence. This obstinacy prevented any progress in Lohani’s case for nearly six months. However, it was Ghanai who altered the status quo of Lohani’s case by escaping from British captivity in December 1895. After Lohani, yet another woman escaped from British territory. This was doubly embarrassing for the Baluch sarkar since this escape occurred from the seat of colonial power, Fort Sandeman, and highlighted the practical limitations of the Baluch sarkar’s policing. Ghanai’s escape evidently caused the Baluch authorities great distress. Alarmed by Ghanai’s liberation, the agent to the governor-general in Baluchistan implored the Punjab authorities to ‘urgently surrender Lohani … or induce Khidderzais to give two girls in marriage to Chuhar Khels … the feelings among Chuhar Khels in consequence is so high that unless Bruce can carry out either of these suggestions almost immediately bloodshed and serious complications amongst the Shiranis would appear inevitable’.Footnote ¹⁰¹ He further warned the Punjab authorities that Larghas/Khidderzais should not be allowed to win this battle of honour because it would reinforce the idea that revenue-paying subjects deserved to be treated less favourably by the government than the yaghi tribes.Footnote ¹⁰² This sense of injustice to their subjects was echoed by Archer who reasoned that Bharga’s acceptance of colonial rule had made them effeminate in the eyes of Larghas who mocked them and called them ‘woman’ for being submissive to the British.Footnote ¹⁰³

As the chief administrator in Zhob Valley, Archer had been closely involved in ground inquiries in Lohani’s case. His predecessor, Captain McIvor, had personally supervised Lohani’s public divorce to check her relationship with her lover. By eloping with him, Lohani had humiliated both her relatives and the British officials. Archer’s ardent support for the Chuhar Khels seemed to stem partly from this shared humiliation inflicted upon them first by Lohani and then by Ghanai. In his correspondence with Punjab, Archer not only provided a strong justification for Ghanai’s abduction but also sought to absolve the Chuhar Khels of the killings of British subjects.

Replicating Chuhar Khels’ sentiments, Archer argued that the abduction of Ghanai was ‘in accordance with the ideas of the country’ as it was in response to the loss of Lohani. In Archer’s vocabulary, Ghanai was ‘an indemnity for their humiliation’ and ‘a solatium to their honour’. While this ‘solatium’ was lost due to Ghanai’s escape, Lohani continued to live in adultery. According to Archer, this injustice weighed on the Chuhar Khels, who were punished and repressed by the government while their opponents continued to mock them.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ He tried to hammer the point home by stating, ‘it is little wonder then that many of them should at last have given up hope of redress, and that the more fiery spirits should have broken through all bonds of restraint’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ ‘They had according to their ideas vindicated their honour and spirit, and had taken the edge off their desire for slaughter.’Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Undoubtedly, by suggesting that Chuhar Khels were prone to slaughter, Archer was reproducing the British trope of barbarism for Pathan communities.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ However, by explicitly stating that they resorted to killings only because the British offered them no remedy, Archer makes the British complicit in the community’s ‘barbaric’ acts. It is likely rare for a British officer to present a justification for the crimes committed by the local community against itself. Nevertheless, this was a way to convey to Punjab and the government of India that this violence resulted from unresolved local disputes rooted in unoccupied Shirani lands.

It appears that Ghanai’s escape, along with the ensuing embarrassment and protests from Baluch officials, did alter their counterpart’s position, albeit only partially. Nearly three weeks after the escape, the Punjab government sought to offer a solution. The lieutenant governor indicated that he was willing to use force against the Khidderzais for the surrender of Lohani and her lover. However, he insisted that once the couple had surrendered, he would not hand them over to Baluchistan for punishment. Instead, they would be imprisoned in Punjab.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The agent to the governor-general objected to this proposal, again articulating the concerns of their subjects. The official stated that ‘chuhar khels would be very unwilling to accept proposed settlement …’ unless the punishment inflicted upon Khiddarzais was not only real and substantial but carried out in a Baluchistan jail. He maintained that the Chuhar Khels would not believe in its reality unless they saw with their own eyes the punishment being carried out.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

At this point, the layers of conflict and the difference of opinion between the two sides seemed to have piled up to such an extent that the lieutenant governor of Punjab proposed to the Baluchistan authorities to seek the government of India’s intervention as the final arbitrator.Footnote ¹¹⁰ After seven months of disputation over lost women, the inability of the two colonial sides to agree simply shows that while by the end of the nineteenth century the colonial state in India was colossal, it was not monolithic. Such conflicts fractured its discourse, wherein British representatives competed with one another to gain legitimacy in the eyes of their subjects. Though the government of India was invited to be the final adjudicator, another group of referees mediated and rendered judgments in Lohani’s case. These were the councils of village elders (jirgas), whose deliberations ran parallel to the official exchanges and often aligned with the intra-colonial conflict. It is critical to examine the proceedings of the jirgas in Lohani’s case to understand how the British relied on them to seek validity for their actions and assertions.

Jirga proceedings

The local council of village elders, or the jirga, was the most pervasive method of settling local disputes along the Baluch and Punjab borderlands by the last decade of the nineteenth century. For instance, between 1891 and 1895, jirgas were convened 293 times in the Shirani lowlands alone.Footnote ¹¹¹ The colonial rulers did not invent the jirga system, but they began to control its functioning and constitution. The British co-opted this mechanism for intervention in their rule for administrative and ideological purposes.Footnote ¹¹² This meant that jirgas were convened on the orders of the British, and its members were chosen by them. As admitted by the lieutenant governor of Punjab, this collective was unlike the popular or indigenous jirga ‘which sat simply by the consent of the tribe’.Footnote ¹¹³ The jirga was a critical instrument of ‘indirect rule’ as it allowed the British to access the social-political world of the people, which was otherwise difficult to reach. As the final decision-makers in local disputes, the British were free to accept or override the deliberations of local adjudicators. This system of intervention was legalized by the last decade of the nineteenth century through the promulgation of the Frontier Crimes Regulations, ‘a culturally conditioned’ colonial response to the problem of unruly ‘savage’ Pashtun tribesmen.Footnote ¹¹⁴

In the case of Lohani, jirgas were held twice. These were constituted in such a way that their members represented the demands of tribal communities from both sides, supported by their respective governments. In the process of adjudication over Lohani, the aspirations of the local disputants and the political will of their state overlapped. Thus, the deliberations of the jirgas outlined the contours of the community conflict while simultaneously bringing to the surface the tension between the intent to preserve the custom and the attempts to transform it.

When we observe the process of assembling a jirga in Lohani’s case, it becomes clear that there was much more to the process than the British simply choosing its council members. From the outset, the process of constituting the jirga was fraught with conflict. Initially, the British attempted to appoint Maliks from outside the Shirani tribe to attain an ‘impartial’ ruling.Footnote ¹¹⁵ The Shiranis on both sides repeatedly refused to consent to such a composition. Amid strong protests from the communities and continued delays, the Punjab and Baluch officials eventually gave up on their nominees. The administrators ultimately relented to constitute a jirga where the two warring sides were almost equally represented by Maliks from their community.Footnote ¹¹⁶ In this way, the frontier governments were compelled to acknowledge the people’s choices in the reconstitution of the jirga. Considering that the two colonial governments had to secure the approval of their respective tribes for the composition of the local assembly, agree on the date and place of deliberations, and ensure the disputants’ acceptance to appear for trial was nothing short of an administrative feat. However, the ongoing correspondence over the jirga composition and its eventual assembly cost the two sides a significant four months. In October 1894, when a collective jirga was constituted, it was unusually large. This assembly had 22 members,Footnote ¹¹⁷ which may indicate the significance of the two women to their community.

In due course, when the jirga concluded its inquiries, a strong disagreement emerged among the members over the principal question of whether Lohani should be ‘restored’ to her husband. The British had earlier insisted that the Maliks address this question by the custom prevailing among Shiranis. However, what constituted customary practices in disputes over women remained the focus of deliberations in Lohani’s case. This context becomes clear when we examine the arguments put forward by the jirga members both against and in favour of Lohani’s ‘restoration’.

Nine out of 11 members of the Punjab frontier jirga, whom the British later referred to as the ‘minority jirga’, argued that according to ‘time-honoured tribal custom’, in cases of elopement, a woman cannot be forced to return to her husband.Footnote ¹¹⁸ They insisted that the husband of an adulterous woman had the right to kill her and cut off the right foot of his wife’s seducer. This was the practice in ‘thousands of previous such cases’.Footnote ¹¹⁹ ‘If, however, the complainant was poor, or the accused an influential man, or if the accused took refuge with a powerful neighbour and it was impossible to cut his foot off or kill the woman, then Rs 700 nandrami (monetary compensation) were paid as damages.’Footnote ¹²⁰ Notably, in Lohani’s case, the minority jirga explicitly acknowledged her agency and complicity in the act of elopement. The jirga suggested that Lohani went to meet Batai three miles away from her village and consented to go with her lover. For them, this was not a case of ‘abduction’ or the forceful carrying off of a woman, but rather a situation where a woman willingly went away with another man. Thus, to force Lohani to return to her husband against her wishes would put her life in danger, and this would be contrary to the established custom in such cases. The minority jirga concluded that Batai Khidderzai should pay monetary compensation to Lohani’s husband in return for divorcing her to settle the case. The jirga demanded the immediate return of the hostage woman Mussammat Ghanai and announced a fine of Rs 350 to be paid by Lohani’s grand uncle Hindkai for abducting the Khidderzai woman and lowering their prestige.Footnote ¹²¹

In the minority jirga deliberation, it is worth noting that the conception of a woman’s consent differed from the way consent was debated in the last decade of the nineteenth century in colonial India. In the ‘age of consent’ debate, the focus was on women’s sexuality and their bodies. Tanika Sarkar discusses the paradox of the word ‘consent’ in the opinions of nationalists, reformists, and medical and legal bodies. She points out that in these discourses, ‘the question of self-choice or compatibility did not seem to inflect the notion of consent anywhere’. The collective concern was to ascertain if a woman’s body was ready for legitimate sex. The body itself, through its biological clock—puberty and menstruation—could signify sexual maturity and thus consent. This consent depended on the reading of the body, rather than the woman’s will.Footnote ¹²² In comparison to this understanding, in the customs of lowland Shiranis, sexuality was only one implicit constituent of the ‘consent’. The focus was not limited to Lohani’s body; rather, ‘consent’ acknowledged her choice, her will, her actions, and her personhood. Therefore, her running away, the manner of her escape, and its implications were discussed and established. This was a broader framing of ‘consent’ than the colonial framing of consent in the ‘age of consent’ debate, which focused primarily on the female body.

In contrast to the deliberations of the minority jirga, the conclusions of the majority jirga used local participants’ experiences of British rule to establish precedent. Lohani’s grand uncle Hindkai was called in open durbar as part of the jirga proceedings. The jirga informed him that nine Shirani Maliks had deposed that he could not get the woman back. In protest at this announcement, Hindkai detailed two recent cases in the British-occupied Shirani lands where women had been restored to their husbands by the jirgas convened by the British authorities.

The 13-member majority jirga found the weight of the two above-quoted examples sufficient to rule in favour of Lohani’s return. Alluding to these cases, the Maliks argued that in the Shirani lands occupied by the British, the custom was to return women. This further implied that since the arrival of the British, the earlier practice of not returning adulterous women to their husbands had ceased. The main contention of their award was that the women on both sides had to be restored to their respective clans, making the issue of the consent or wishes of the eloping or abducted woman completely irrelevant.Footnote ¹²⁴ This judgment was in sync with the broader British legal order in the Indian empire. Throughout the late nineteenth century, the forceful restoration of women to their husbands in ‘restitution of conjugal rights’ cases remained the norm, visible more glaringly in the much-debated cases of Munshee Bulzoor Ruheem versus Shummsoonnissa Begum and Rukhmabai versus Dadaji Bhikaji.Footnote ¹²⁵ In these cases, the concern for the injured husband’s rights was a worry of enormous proportions. It emerged from the crisis of masculinity in India and England, allowing both ‘native’ and English masculinity to align and further the same agenda, that is, to protect and secure the patriarchal male order.Footnote ¹²⁶ The majority jirga’s judgment to ‘restore’ Lohani to her husband was a rearticulation of this same agenda in a local context.

However, the British-convened jirga awards were not always acceptable to the people, who could at times openly defy their judgment. In the case quoted above by Hindkai, Khan Gul remained free to disregard the jirga award even though he relinquished his claim over Jhangi’s wife. When Lohani’s lover, Batai, was called in open durbar by the Maliks and asked, ‘if he was willing to return the woman?’, he replied plainly, ‘I would not return her in any case since the woman wished to live with me.’Footnote ¹²⁷

This is how things stood at the end of October 1894. An almost evenly divided jirga judgment existed between the Baluch and Punjab frontier Maliks concerning the question of Lohani’s return. As mentioned earlier, the frontier authorities on both sides continued to debate the merits of the jirga awards long after the conclusion of the jirga proceedings. The difference of opinion between the two frontier governments largely stemmed from the arguments presented by their respective tribal Maliks, which aligned with conflicting conceptions of state intervention. Both governments attempted to show their subjects that the tribe’s will mattered in their governance. The Maliks also seemed to understand that there was no uniform colonial policy in the governance of Shirani lands, large parts of which remained beyond the regular control of the British. This ambiguity allowed them to assert their position regarding customs related to women.

Notwithstanding the failure of the first jirga to reach a clear consensus on Lohani, the frontier officials made one last attempt to secure a definitive decision by reconvening a collective jirga. The two sides convened a fresh council of eight members in March 1895.Footnote ¹²⁸ But on this occasion as well, the opinions of the jirga Maliks remained irreconcilable. Both the majority and minority sections of the jirga reinforced their earlier positions by presenting more nuanced arguments. The debate shifted primarily to the question of whether Shariat laws could prevail over the customs practised among Shiranis. The six-member majority, for instance, expressed the opinion that based on their inquiry from mullas and their knowledge of Shariat, Lohani should be ‘restored’ to her husband Bahawal, for the following reasons:

The majority section thus concluded that the eloping couple had violated the principles of Shariat—Lohani by cohabiting with a man who was not her husband and Batai by ‘possessing the wife of a man who was still alive’.Footnote ¹³⁰ Batai was, therefore, liable to pay damages to Hindkai, and in the same way, the latter was legally responsible for paying damages to Batai’s brother, whose wife he ‘carried off’. Lastly, the jirga demanded the ‘immediate restoration of Musammat Lohani to her actual husband’ and until that time she would be kept under the protection of the British authorities, and that a heavy security be taken from Batai so that he would not abscond or have any further connection with Lohani.Footnote ¹³¹

In this deliberation, the opinions of the mullas were ostensibly used to strengthen the case for Shariat-based decisions. However, in much of the Pakhtun-dominated areas, as Sana Haroon points out, the mullas, acting as custodians of the Pathan code of honour, primarily adjudicated on the basis of tribal customs ‘as long as they were not expressly forbidden in Quran or hadith’.Footnote ¹³² Even in non-peripheral regions, as Julia Stephens has shown, the debates on conjugality among Muslim legal scholars who relied on Shariat were not entirely settled. Until the latter half of the nineteenth century, how conjugal rights could be enforced remained ill-defined in Muslim law. However, by the last decade of the nineteenth century, the British were able to eliminate the fluid interpretation of religious law and impose a more ‘fixed’ reading of it.Footnote ¹³³ In this interpretation, the wife was obliged to fulfil her conjugal duties, the failure of which risked punishment. The judgment of the majority jirga on Lohani reinforced this rendition of patriarchy.

The two-member minority section of the jirga strongly opposed the Shariat-based award. They argued that Lohani was originally the wife of Batai, who married her with the consent of her mother and other maternal relatives. Batai was forced to divorce Lohani ‘under fear of imprisonment’ by British officials. This proved that the divorce was obtained under compulsion and was invalid. They reiterated that Lohani’s willingness to live with Batai was an important factor in the case. More importantly, they argued that:

Haroon has pointed out that in the 1880s, the amir of the Afghan kingdom was unsuccessful in imposing his hukumat in the yaghi lands because local Pakhtuns opposed the imposition of a uniform Shariat-based legal system.Footnote ¹³⁵ The minority jirga’s outright rejection of Shariat and an acknowledgement of a runaway woman’s will reconfirmed the continued importance of customary practices in Shirani lands. Elsewhere in Punjab, as Neeladri Bhattacharya shows, conflicting customary practices during the process of codification were systematically overlooked, suppressed, or tweaked to align with the colonial project.Footnote ¹³⁶ In the case of Lohani, however, the customs of yaghi shiranis found a sympathetic supporter in the Punjab sarkar. This alignment of local tradition with the political spirit of the Punjab government acted as a barrier against suppression and reform.

As the two colonial sides stood firm in their positions, each supporting their jirga Maliks, they awaited the resolution of the case through the government of India as the final arbiter. The lieutenant governor of Punjab received this much-anticipated correspondence on 28 May 1895.Footnote ¹³⁷ This letter stated that the government of India favoured implementing the majority jirga award. This implied the surrender of Lohani by the Khidderzais and her forceful return to her husband Bahawal, a situation the Punjab authorities had repeatedly objected to. Furthermore, this meant that, ultimately, the government of India chose to favour its revenue-paying subjects in Baluchistan over independent frontier tribes. In this sense, it aimed to prepare the ground for reform in the yaghi lands of Shiranis. The Baluchistan authorities would have been vindicated by the announcement of this award. However, before this decision could be conveyed to the Baluchistan authorities, news of the murder of Lieutenant Home and his associates was received. We will see in our final section how the murder of the British engineer impacted the outcome of this case.

Final decision

The government of India’s letter to forcefully send Lohani back to her husband Bahawal was sent to the Punjab authorities on 28 May 1895. This is an important date to mark. However, this announcement was not made simultaneously to the Baluchistan officials. Instead, this correspondence was forwarded by the Foreign Department to the agent to the governor-general in Baluchistan only ten days later, on 7 June.Footnote ¹³⁸ But why is this small time lag in communication relevant to the outcome of Lohani’s case? The significance of this trivial detail becomes evident when we connect it to Home’s murder. In the official explanation of the British engineer’s murder, the entire responsibility for the violence rested squarely on the shoulders of the Bargha Shiranis. It was proven beyond doubt that the Bhargas had killed Home and his associates due to the sarkar’s failure to restore Lohani. However, the Shirani men committed these murders on 6 June without knowing that the government had already decided to return their woman. It does not seem implausible to suggest that the violent events of 6 June could have been averted had the news of Lohani’s return reached the Baluchistan authorities on the same day as it reached the Punjab government. Lieutenant Home and his co-workers had no connection to the disputes related to Lohani. They had merely found themselves present in a context where redemption-seeking villagers were looking to target representatives of the government. In hindsight, this accidental presence at the site of the cross-border conflict proved to be the cause of their fatalities.

The question then is: why did the government of India choose to send its verdict on Lohani to Punjab first while delaying the news for Baluchistan? One possible explanation is that, since Lohani was sheltered in lands under the political influence of the Punjab government, her arrest and forceful handover could only be initiated from the Punjab side. In addition, the government of India was unsure if the Punjab officials would agree to Lohani’s return without any objection and thus expected to have their accord first. Therefore, the phrasing and tenor of this final award were not imposing but suggestive.Footnote ¹³⁹ However, no objection was raised by the Punjab authorities against this decision. Eventually, after ten days, this decision was endorsed by the Foreign Department and forwarded to the Baluchistan authorities on 7 June, without any knowledge of the violence that had erupted in connection to Lohani the previous day. Upon scrutiny of the official communication, it becomes evident that these violent events of 6 June led to a sharp turn in Lohani’s case.

Since the news of Home’s killing and the government of India’s approval of Lohani’s return reached Baluchistan on the same day—7 June—this coincidence led the Baluchistan authorities to conclude that their announcement of the government’s endorsement would lead the tribe to believe that ‘this concession’ was ‘extorted by fears’. As a result, they deferred the announcement of Lohani’s return until the murderers of Home were caught and punished.Footnote ¹⁴⁰

When we examine the correspondence of the Punjab government with its frontier officials between 28 May and 7 June, it becomes clear that, despite their disagreement with the government of India’s decision, they were planning to implement it. The commissioners of frontier districts were calculating the best possible method to arrest Lohani. For them, it was evident that the Shiranis would not surrender the woman unless military force or other punitive measures were used against the tribe.Footnote ¹⁴¹ To this end, they were seeking the Military Department’s opinion.Footnote ¹⁴² Undoubtedly, this was far from ideal for the Punjab government. They suddenly had to coerce into submission those tribal Maliks whom they had unfailingly supported during the lengthy negotiations of Lohani’s case. However, the killings of Home and his co-workers and the abstention by Baluchistan officials from announcing Lohani’s return gave the Punjab government the licence to renegotiate the terms of Lohani’s case with the government of India.

Nearly two weeks after Home’s murder, the lieutenant governor of Punjab strongly argued against Lohani’s forceful restoration in a detailed note to the government of India. In this correspondence, the question of Lohani’s consent re-emerged and was decisively used by the lieutenant governor to keep her in Punjab. Notably, Fitzpatrick deviated from the earlier discussions on the jirga deliberations. Instead, he outlined the limitations of the punitive reach of the colonial hand in the frontier region in an almost Burkean manner, informing the government that, on the ground, few things were impossible to implement.Footnote ¹⁴³ The core of Fitzpatrick’s arguments rested on the difference in the notion of justice concerning conjugal rights in England and the frontier regions of Punjab. Fitzpatrick contended that in England, failing to return the wife to her husband leads to the imprisonment of those having control over her. Justice is done when the wife is returned to the husband. While in England, the courts ensured the protection of conjugal rights by issuing a decree, in frontier regions, the award of the British-convened jirga did not possess the same coercive power. Furthermore, Fitzpatrick pointed out that Lohani’s case was not a simple matter of ‘restitution of conjugal rights’, where imprisoning her lover and his community would lead to Lohani’s return. It was a situation where ‘Lohani … would herself resist to the utmost being made over to her husband…’.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Moreover, she would have to be bodily made over through the political agent in Zhob. For the lieutenant governor, the task of forcibly delivering Lohani to her husband was ‘practically impossible’ and something that the British could ‘never perform’.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Additionally, the Punjab government believed that the threat of violence was inadequate to compel the Shiranis to surrender Lohani.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ This was a plain acknowledgement of the state’s limited reach in yaghi lands. In retrospect, it also underscored the communal nature of conflicts related to women. In frontier regions, justice was not solely about the husband; it involved the entire community, which sheltered and protected women at the risk of violence.

As pointed out earlier, in large parts of ‘main-land’ India, the courts were ordering resisting women to return to their husbands. Paradoxically, Fitzpatrick’s last illustration to persuade the government of India not to ‘restore’ Lohani came from a non-peripheral region. The lieutenant governor used Rukhmabai’s example to argue that there should be room for exceptions within the general Punjab frontier policy of forcefully restoring women to their husbands.Footnote ¹⁴⁷

In the 1880s, Rukhmabai was involved in a lengthy legal battle with her husband to dissolve their marriage. Married in her childhood, she did not wish to consummate the marriage upon reaching maturity and declined to live with her husband. However, British jurists continued to rule against her, while colonial officials continued to contest each other over the question of reforming the restitution decree. Additionally, there was a strong current of opposition from the orthodox Hindu nationalist faction which argued that allowing Rukhmabai to dissolve her marriage would contradict the sacred scriptures outlining a married woman’s conjugal obligations.Footnote ¹⁴⁸

Fitzpatrick drew attention not to the outcome of Rukhmabai’s legal battle but to her wishes and victimhood. He stated that given Rukhmabai’s ‘bona fide repugnance’ to the consummation of her marriage, it was for her ‘one of the most painful positions conceivable upon this earth’.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ The lieutenant governor asserted that Rukhmabai’s case had proved that ‘in the rarest of the rare cases, women cannot be forced to suffer at the hands of her husband with whom she does not wish to live’.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Putting Lohani’s case in the same ‘rare’ category as Rukhmabai, Fitzpatrick warned that forcing a resisting woman to be bodily handed over to her husband was something to be avoided by the government of India.Footnote ¹⁵¹ He declared the need to show the Bhargha Shiranis that they could not pressurize the government into favouring them by killing Lieutenant Home and his people.Footnote ¹⁵² As the final solution, he suggested punishing Lohani and her lover in Punjab with a simple sentence of imprisonment. The lieutenant governor warned that in announcing the punishment for the adulterous couple, no suggestion of Lohani’s restoration be made, for that would diminish any chance of the surrender of the couple in hiding.Footnote ¹⁵³

The impact of this letter from Punjab was such that, in a fresh order dated 13 September 1895, the government of India, in complete abandonment of its earlier award, agreed not to return Lohani to her husband. Instead, the government announced the imprisonment of Lohani and Batai on charges of adultery. A copy of this letter was sent to Baluchistan on the same day.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ A month-and-a-half after this judgment, the Khidderzai Maliks were coerced by the threat of a military expedition and a halt to their monetary allowance to surrender the couple in hiding.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ Mussammat Lohani and her lover Batai Khidderzai were sent to a jail in Punjab in January 1896, to serve nine and 15 months respectively,Footnote ¹⁵⁶ while her divorce from her legal husband, Bahawal, was officially arranged by the Baluch side.Footnote ¹⁵⁷

In declaring Lohani an adulterous woman, the government of India confirmed and legitimized the shared a priori understanding of the two frontier governments. This was a notable exception to the ongoing conflict and disagreement between Punjab and Baluchistan. Both sides agreed that if Lohani’s consent in running away with her lover were proven, it would constitute a case of adultery.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ In proven cases of adultery, Frontier Crime Regulations could be employed to punish the adulterers.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ The minority jirga indeed acknowledged Lohani’s consent as her defence. It served as a positive affirmation of her will. It absolved her lover of the crime of abduction. In contrast, the British governments chose to use Lohani’s consent against her. In the late nineteenth century, this perception of consent was somewhat unique, as women’s consent remained immaterial in matters of conjugal sex in India and England.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ However, in Lohani’s case, consent held significance as it became the key to ending an interminable conflict—a way out of the crisis of the legal order. Lohani’s consent, unlike the understanding of local adjudicators, was detached from her personhood, social life, and actions. It was reduced to her body and to her sexuality. The charge of adultery against Lohani explicitly constituted a charge of unlawful sex.

The currents of sexuality, as Durba Mitra has shown, ran very deep in the colonial discourse of governance and civilization. Throughout the colonial period and beyond, controlling and surveilling women’s sexuality was central to the notions of progress from a primitive and barbaric society to civilization.Footnote ¹⁶¹ Any behaviour that did not fall within the bounds of religious propriety and Victorian notions of morality was deemed sexually deviant. This conduct was to be reformed, corrected, and punished. Lower classes and Muslim women, in particular, were placed outside the bounds of propriety.Footnote ¹⁶² In fact, the British had ascertained that nearly all women, irrespective of their religion, caste, or class, had the potential to be sexually deviant.Footnote ¹⁶³ Mussammat Lohani, in these many different ways, was a deviant: woman, Muslim, barbaric. Furthermore, in the extension of this prevalent understanding, Lohani’s marriage was a guise for her promiscuity; her breaking the marriage contract and her elopement served as proof of the primitiveness of her society.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ She had only demonstrated what she had always been: a sexually deviant woman. Additionally, she faced the charge of publicly defying state authority.

In punishing Lohani, the sexually deviant, the state fulfilled its moral obligation as a sovereign-civilizer; in fact, it became one because of it. By terminating Lohani’s case and jailing a runaway couple, the British introduced a novel punitive measure in the yaghi lands. In a somewhat discursive manner, British law made its way into the remote, legally anomalous enclave through Lohani. The law itself was, in this sense, a mark of sovereignty in a land that was otherwise not easily accessible to the British. Since the military operations of 1891, the Punjab government had never arrested a man in the lowlands, let alone imprisoned anyone, until Lohani’s case. However, the announcement and implementation of this punitive measure was the great paradox of colonial ruling. The intention of this punishment was not simply reform (of a deviant behaviour) but restraint in tinkering with the customs regarding runaway women.