The portrait of James Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquis of Dalhousie, better known simply as the Earl of Dalhousie, which currently hangs at the National Portrait Gallery in London, is an exquisite piece of art. Particularly appealing to the historian, it affords an opportunity to examine the man in the image and say something about the kind of person he may have been. As he essentially directed British policy towards Nepal for almost a decade, operating out of Fort William, Calcutta—during a period that marked the advent of Rana rule in Nepal—an analysis of Dalhousie is more than relevant. 

Interest in the Earl of Dalhousie further arises out of a simple deduction: the dates of his Governor-Generalship in India spanned from 1848 to 1856, thus marking him as the Viceroy, whose association with the remarkable Nepali Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana extended over the longest stretch of time, namely some eight years. Jung Bahadur’s premiership lasted from 1846 to 1877, during which time a staggering 13 Viceroys assumed office in India, encompassing such distinct personalities as Sir Henry Harding, Sir Robert Napier, the Earl of Mayo, the Lord Napier and Lord Lytton, among others, all of whom dealt with Nepal and Jung Bahadur in that official capacity anywhere from a period of one to a maximum of four years. Dalhousie was an exception. 

A study in person

The artist of the portrait of Dalhousie was a Scotsman by the name of John Watson-Gordon, formerly a president of the Royal Scottish Academy and no doubt an extremely accomplished portraitist, having executed dozens of portraits of distinguished Englishmen during his long career. The one of Dalhousie, painted in 1847, presumably before he went out to India, shows a man with aquiline features whose pose is utterly elegant and who may be described as worldly, pensive, and fastidious, both in attire and body language. 

Yet, another conclusion may be drawn from the portrait, which is that Dalhousie was quite possibly a very lonely person: this is betrayed by the artist in the form of a sliver of window to the right within which appears a dusky, melancholy landscape. We can readily imagine that Dalhousie often took in that view alone while contemplating his life and the vagaries of existence. In fact, and especially after the death of his wife left him devastated, he is known to have remarked that, “his only confidant in India was a mouse which frequented his room at Government House and to which he would throw crumbs.” 

Certainly he had good reason to be this way: after all, he had seen and experienced much already by the age of thirty-five when he was appointed Governor-General of India. His early years were spent in Canada where his father George Ramsay had been Governor General as well as Governor of Nova Scotia,  while his education took him to Harrow, then private tutoring by a Reverend in a ‘quiet’ parish in Staffordshire, and finally to Oxford. By the age of twenty he had lost his only surviving brother to ‘protracted illness’, and six and seven years later, would go on to mourn the deaths of his father and mother, respectively. Before assuming Governor Generalship, Dalhousie had already mounted two campaigns for the House of Commons and also held the position of President of the Board of Trade in 1845, having been preceded in that role by the renowned William Gladstone, four-time Prime Minister of Britain.

Report from ‘Khatmandoo’

Against this backdrop, it becomes greatly intriguing to ponder on the particular question of how Dalhousie must have reacted when he went through a report of several pages handed over to him by GR Edwardstone, who was then the Secretary of the Government of India (Foreign Department), at Fort William in Calcutta. The report was rendered in perfectly beautiful cursive handwriting and dated August 5, 1854. It had come all the way from ‘Khatmandoo’ and was written by the British Resident there, a gentleman by the name of Major G Ramsay. 

Sitting in his massive office at the colossal Fort William with these papers in his hands, Dalhousie had by then built up a reputation for his aggressive policy of annexation, the notion that “where his predecessors had preferred to leave as much territory as possible in the hands of friendly Indian rulers, his idea was a centralised India governed directly by British administrators” (both the Punjab and Lower Burma, for example, had been annexed within four short years of his arrival in India). It is into the hands of such a man that fell these papers reporting some unusual activity emanating from ‘Nipal’ and involving an individual he had most likely met in person in London just four years earlier in 1850 and who was then referred to as ‘General Jung Bahadoor’.

Major Ramsay began his report by stating, “Sir, I do myself the honour to report for the information of the most Honorable The Governor General in Council, that on the 31st ultimo, General Jung Bahadoor paid me a visit, and we had a long conversation regarding the military preparations lately as being made in this quarter; for which His Excellency proposed fully to account, for communication to the Supreme Government.” A close reading of the report reveals that Ramsay was in fact at a loss as to what exactly was happening in Kathmandu at the time. One of the few definitive statements he was able to make in this particular report was that, “the roads in the direction of the Thibet frontier are undoubtedly being put into repair, and that a large number of show boots are being manufactured in the arsenal, which would be utterly useful for an expedition in a northern direction.” 

Major Ramsay was attempting to ascertain what ‘Jung Bahadoor’ was up to: were his preparations geared towards an attack on the “rich temples and lamaseries of Thibet”, a mission to subdue Sikkim or a descent into British Provinces “on account of our war with Russia [Crimean War], and the belief prevailing here, that THAT power is more than a match for us, and that we dread an attack from her upon our Indian frontiers”? At times, Ramsay comes across in his report as being outright confused and therefore exasperated even after elaborate ‘intelligence gathering’ in Kathmandu and even after extended meetings with the Prime Minister himself. For example, he writes, “Jung Bahadoor has little if any regard for the truth. I have never met a native Sardar of rank so apparently devoid of it. He seems to think that departure from it is not only excusable, but that it is a sign of superior intelligence. I have more than once been obliged to remind him that what he was telling me was at variance with something he had said before, or some message he had sent me on a former occasion, when he has coolly replied that he was perfectly aware of it.”

Preparing for conflict

Ramsay eventually came to understand that what was afoot concerned extremely active planning on the part of Prime Minister Jung Bahadur to advance on Tibet, ostensibly to retaliate against the maltreatment of Nepali traders at Lhasa. Very likely intentionally, the timing of such a design coincided with major upheavals in China in the form of the Tai’ping rebellion, such that, as the Berkeley political scientist Leo Rose observed, “never before had circumstances seemed so favorable or the dangers so minimal for the pressing of Nepali objectives in an unprotected Tibet.” At this time, Ramsay sought repeatedly to obtain guidance from Dalhousie at Fort William as to how he should present the official British position under the circumstances.

Being a man long experienced in the great vicissitudes of life and thus not one to be easily frazzled, Governor General Dalhousie sent the following dispatch to Nepal: “if the sentiments of this government should be asked by the Minister, respecting the design of Nipal on Thibet, you will state that the Governor General in Council, regrets to hear that causes of difference have arisen between Nepal and the authorities in Thibet, and trusts that a timely adjustment of them may still avert the evils of war.” 

Koirala is Director of the Nepal Institute of International and Strategic Studies

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