ਐਂਗਲੋ-ਸਿੱਖ ਜੰਗ ਯਾਦਗਾਰ, ਫਿਰੋਜ਼ਸ਼ਾਹਐਂਗਲੋ-ਸਿੱਖ ਜੰਗ ਯਾਦਗਾਰ, ਫਿਰੋਜ਼ਸ਼ਾਹ

What is the Anglo-Sikh War Memorial at Ferozeshah?

The Anglo-Sikh War Memorial is a war museum at Ferozeshah in Ferozepur district, raised by the Punjab government on one of the battlefields of the Anglo-Sikh wars. The three-storey memorial, unveiled in April 1976, honours the soldiers who fell fighting the British at Mudki on 18 December 1845, at Ferozeshah on 21 and 22 December 1845, at Sabhraon on 10 February 1846 and at Chillianwala on 13 January 1849, the battles that between them ended the Sikh Empire. Inside, some of the largest history paintings ever made in India carry the story across its walls.

Four battles that ended an empire

The First Anglo-Sikh War opened at Mudki on 18 December 1845, where the discipline and gallantry of the Sikh army won the admiration even of its enemies. Three days later came Ferozeshah, the hardest fight of the war: the British commander-in-chief Sir Hugh Gough, with Governor-General Lord Hardinge at the field, lost 748 men killed, among them 54 officers, and 1,625 wounded, losses that caused a furore in England. At Sabhraon on 10 February 1846 the Sikh position on the Sutlej collapsed amid the failures of its commanders, though general Sham Singh Attariwala died in a last stand that Punjab still sings about. The Second War closed at Chillianwala on 13 January 1849, among the bloodiest battles the East India Company ever fought, weeks before Punjab was annexed.

Ferozeshah's second act is the stuff of regimental legend. After the first day's assaults stalled among the Sikh guns, the British army spent the night of 21 December bivouacked inside the captured entrenchment, among the dead of both sides, short of water and ammunition and expecting a counter-attack at dawn. When morning came the Sikh army, its own command failing it, drew off, and the field was British, at a price that shocked London. Period prints of that night bivouac, the campfires inside the enemy's works, remain among the most reproduced images of the war.

Building the memorial

The memorial was the project of M. S. Randhawa, who chaired the Ferozeshah Memorial Committee set up by the Punjab government. Work began in 1972; the senior architect of Punjab Agricultural University, H. S. Chopra, designed the three-storey building, with landscaping by Hari Singh Sandhu, and Chief Minister Giani Zail Singh laid the foundation on 11 February 1973. It stands on a plot of about two hectares of the Ferozeshah battlefield itself, off the Moga road near the Sirhind Feeder and the Rajasthan Canal, its ground floor raised two metres above the surrounding fields. The memorial was unveiled in April 1976 before senior Indian military officers.

Inside the museum

The heart of the memorial is art. The painter Kirpal Singh spent three years on eleven works for the building, including battle canvases of Mudki, Ferozeshah, Sabraon and Chillianwala measuring ten feet by twenty, among the largest paintings in India, alongside portraits of Gough, Sham Singh Attariwala and Tej Singh; murals by Jaswant Singh share the walls. Bronze panels carry passages on the wars from Cunningham's history of the Sikhs and from Shah Mohammad's Jangnama, the great Punjabi war poem of the same conflict. Galleries display Anglo-Sikh war weapons sent from the Patiala Museum, so that the visitor moves between the painted battle and the real steel that fought it.

The wider field and visiting

Ferozeshah's museum is the centre of a whole landscape of memory in Ferozepur district: the older battlefield obelisks at Mudki, whose stone still carries the date 18th December 1845, at Mishriwala and at Sabhraon are state-protected monuments (a status recorded for the Mudki, Sabhraon, Ferozeshah and Mishriwala monuments in Parliament in 2006), and the district also holds the Saragarhi Memorial and Hussainiwala. Reports in recent years have flagged neglect at the memorial, a shame for a building of this ambition. It pairs naturally with the cantonment memorials in Ferozepur town: arrive by the Moga road, give the paintings the slow hour they deserve, and read the four battle dates on the wall as what they are, the calendar of an empire's fall. The nearest railhead is Ferozepur Cantonment, and the memorial makes the natural first stop on a battlefield circuit that runs on to Mudki and Sabhraon.