Duar War

The Duar War (1864-1865), also known as the Anglo-Bhutanese War or the Bhutan War, was a five-month armed conflict between the Kingdom of Bhutan and British India. It was the only full-scale war ever fought between the two states. The conflict centred on the Bengal Duars and the Assam Duars, the narrow belt of fertile lowland between the Himalayan foothills and the plains of Bengal and Assam, which Bhutan had administered for centuries and from which it drew significant revenue.

The war was triggered by the humiliation of the Ashley Eden diplomatic mission at Punakha in early 1864 and by long-standing British dissatisfaction with cross-border raids, slave-taking, and the unresolved status of the Duars. The Government of India formally proclaimed the annexation of the Bengal Duars and declared war on 12 November 1864. After initial British advances, a Bhutanese counter-offensive recaptured the fort of Dewangiri in January 1865, seizing two British howitzers in one of the few tactical successes Bhutanese arms achieved during the campaign. A reinforced British column under Brigadier-General Sir Henry Tombs retook Dewangiri in April 1865, after which Bhutanese resistance collapsed.

The war ended with the Treaty of Sinchula, signed on 11 November 1865. Bhutan ceded the Bengal Duars, the Assam Duars and the territory of Dewangiri — together amounting to roughly one-fifth of its land area and including its most productive lowland — in exchange for an annual subsidy of fifty thousand rupees and a guarantee that future disputes would be referred to British arbitration. The treaty severed Bhutan from the plains trade, consolidated the authority of the Trongsa Penlop Jigme Namgyal, and set in motion the political realignment that culminated in the founding of the Wangchuck monarchy in 1907.

Background

The Duars (from duar, "door" or "gateway") were the eighteen passes through which the Bhutanese highlands connected to the Bengal and Assam plains. They formed a chain of subtropical lowlands roughly fifteen to thirty kilometres deep along the southern foot of the Himalayas. The Bengal Duars lay west of the Manas river, in what is now northern West Bengal; the Assam Duars lay east of it, in present-day Assam. Bhutanese penlops had long collected revenue from these lowlands, sending agents during the dry season and withdrawing to the hills before the monsoon and its malarial fevers.

British contact with Bhutan dated to the mission of George Bogle in 1774, which followed the brief Bhutanese-British conflict over Cooch Behar and the resulting Treaty of 1774 mediated by the Panchen Lama. Relations were cordial but distant for half a century. The picture changed after the Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-1826, when the British acquired Assam under the Treaty of Yandabo and inherited a long, unsettled border with Bhutan. Disputes over the Assam Duars led to a punitive British occupation in 1841, when the Government of India annexed the seven Assam Duars outright, agreeing to pay Bhutan an annual compensation that was withheld whenever relations soured.^[1]

Through the 1840s and 1850s, the Pemberton mission (1838) and a succession of frontier officials reported continuing raids by Bhutanese parties into British-administered territory, including the carrying off of captives. The Bhutanese state at this period was deeply fragmented: nominal authority rested with the Druk Desi and the Je Khenpo, but real power had shifted to the regional governors, particularly the Trongsa Penlop in the east and the Paro Penlop in the west. Civil conflict between these factions made centralised diplomacy almost impossible. By 1862, when Bhutanese parties raided into Cooch Behar and Sikkim, the Government of India had concluded that a formal mission to Bhutan was needed to resolve outstanding grievances and the status of the remaining Bengal Duars.^[2]

The Ashley Eden mission, 1863-1864

In late 1863 the Government of India dispatched a mission under Ashley Eden, Secretary to the Government of Bengal, with instructions to secure the release of British subjects held in Bhutan, settle the question of the Duars, and obtain a treaty regulating trade and frontier conduct. The mission left Darjeeling in January 1864, crossed into Bhutan through Sikkim, and reached Punakha — then the seat of the Druk Desi — on 15 March 1864.

The reception was openly hostile. According to Eden's own dispatches, on 17 March his party was kept standing in the open in the heat of the day while a crowd jeered. He was lodged in conditions he considered insulting and denied a formal audience. The dominant figure at the Bhutanese court was Jigme Namgyal, the Trongsa Penlop, whose forces had recently overawed the Druk Desi and who was using the mission to reinforce his own authority. Over the following days, Bhutanese officials demanded the return of certain Assam Duars and rejected the British draft treaty. On 28 March, after several days of pressure, Eden was presented with a Bhutanese-drafted document and told he must seal it. He signed under protest, writing the words "under compulsion" beneath his signature — a phrase the Bhutanese negotiators, who could not read English, did not recognise.^[1]

Eden's reports to Calcutta described a sustained campaign of humiliation. The most widely repeated version of the incident — that Eden's face was rubbed with wet dough or with chewed betel by a Bhutanese official — appears in nineteenth-century British accounts and was elaborated in Surgeon David Field Rennie's eyewitness narrative Bhotan and the Story of the Dooar War (1866). Modern Bhutanese historians, including Karma Phuntsho in The History of Bhutan (2013), treat the more theatrical versions of the humiliation with caution, noting that British accounts had a clear interest in justifying war and that Bhutanese sources do not corroborate the specific details. What is not in dispute is that Eden was held in Punakha for nearly two weeks, was forced to sign a document he had no authority to sign, and returned to India recommending the "permanent or temporary occupation of the country and the destruction of all Bhutanese forts."^[3]

Declaration of war

The Government of India under Lord Elgin repudiated the Punakha document on the grounds that it had been extorted under duress. Elgin died in November 1863 and the decision to proceed against Bhutan was carried forward under his successor Sir John Lawrence. The British issued an ultimatum demanding the return of captives, the cession of the Bengal Duars, and a formal apology. When no satisfactory reply was received, the Government of India issued a proclamation on 12 November 1864 annexing the Bengal Duars to British India and declaring war on Bhutan. Parliamentary authorisation in London followed.

The British had calculated that the campaign would be brief. Bhutanese forces were known to be small, dispersed, lightly armed and politically divided. The terrain — dense subtropical jungle giving way abruptly to steep Himalayan slopes — was the more serious obstacle, and the timing of the campaign was set to begin in the cool, dry winter months when malaria in the foothills receded.

The campaign

The expeditionary force, designated the Duar Field Force, was organised into four columns under the overall command of Major-General Sir Henry Tombs. Each column was assigned a different sector of the frontier:

• The western column advanced on Dalingkot (Dalimkot) and the Tista valley.
• The Buxa column moved against Buxa Duar and its fort.
• The central column advanced on Bishensingh and the Bengal Duars proper.
• The eastern column, drawn largely from the Assam Light Infantry, marched on Dewangiri (Deothang) at the eastern edge of the frontier.

The columns included British line regiments, Bengal Native Infantry units, and Gurkha battalions of the 3rd and 8th Gurkha Rifles. Mountain artillery and elephant transport accompanied the larger columns.^[4]

The advance opened in late November 1864 and met little organised resistance in the lowlands. By mid-December the frontier forts at Dalingkot, Buxa, Bishensingh and Dewangiri were in British hands. Three companies of the Assam Light Infantry took Dewangiri on 10 December 1864. Bhutanese forces had withdrawn to the hills above the passes, husbanding their strength.

The Bhutanese counter-offensive and the loss of Dewangiri

In late January 1865 Bhutanese forces, coordinated by regional penlops loyal to Jigme Namgyal, mounted a vigorous counter-attack along the eastern frontier. On the night of 29 January, a Bhutanese force surprised the small British garrison at Dewangiri, overwhelmed it with sword and matchlock fire, and forced a hurried retreat. Two mountain howitzers were abandoned and captured by the Bhutanese — the most concrete tactical success of the war from the Bhutanese side and one that became a source of lasting national memory. Several other forward positions were also retaken in this period.^[1]

The reverse caused alarm in Calcutta. Reinforcements were rushed forward and the eastern column was placed under the personal command of Brigadier-General Sir Henry Tombs, a veteran of the 1857 rebellion who had been awarded the Victoria Cross at Delhi. Tombs assembled a force built around the 55th Regiment of Foot under Colonel Robert Humes and the 44th (Sylhet) Regiment of Bengal Native Light Infantry, supported by mountain guns. In early April 1865 this force advanced on Dewangiri and stormed the fort. The recaptured howitzers were retaken. A sepoy of the 44th, Bakhat Singh Rai, was decorated with the Indian Order of Merit for being among the first to enter the stockade.^[4]

After the loss of Dewangiri, organised Bhutanese resistance collapsed. The decentralised character of the Bhutanese state, the disparity in firearms and artillery, and the inability of the rival penlops to act in concert all told against any prolonged campaign. By midsummer 1865 the Bhutanese government was seeking terms.

Treaty of Sinchula, 11 November 1865

Negotiations were conducted at Sinchula, a hill on the southern frontier between Buxa and the Bhutanese foothills. The Treaty of Sinchula was signed on 11 November 1865 between the British political officer and the representatives of the Druk Desi and the Trongsa Penlop. Its principal terms were:

• Bhutan ceded to British India in perpetuity the whole of the Bengal Duars and the Assam Duars, together with the territory at Dewangiri in southeastern Bhutan (about 83 square kilometres) and a strip of mountain country on the left bank of the Tista, later known as the Kalimpong subdivision.
• The British Government agreed to pay Bhutan an annual subsidy of fifty thousand rupees so long as Bhutan observed the treaty.
• Bhutan undertook to release all British subjects held captive and to refrain from raids into British territory.
• Both governments agreed to refer future disputes to the British Government for arbitration — a clause which in practice acknowledged British paramountcy over Bhutanese external relations.
• Free trade between the two territories was to be permitted, and extradition of criminals provided for.

The territorial cession amounted to roughly twenty per cent of Bhutan's land area and stripped the kingdom of its principal source of agricultural revenue and its winter pasture lands. The annual subsidy did not approach the value of the lost revenue, but it became a stable feature of Bhutanese state finance. The subsidy was raised from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand rupees in 1910 under the Treaty of Punakha.^[5]

Consequences for Bhutan

The loss of the Duars permanently altered Bhutan's economic geography. The lowland belt had supplied the bulk of the kingdom's marketable rice, cotton, oranges, and timber and had been the principal corridor for trade with Bengal. Without it, Bhutan turned inward and became dependent on the British subsidy and on remittances from cross-border traders.

The political consequences were as significant as the territorial ones. The war had been fought, on the Bhutanese side, largely under the direction of Jigme Namgyal, the Trongsa Penlop. His command of the eastern campaign — including the temporary recapture of Dewangiri — confirmed his standing as the dominant figure in the kingdom. Within a few years he had effectively unified the office of Druk Desi with that of Trongsa Penlop in his own person and had begun the consolidation of central authority that his son Ugyen Wangchuck would complete. The path from the Duar War, through the Battle of Changlimithang in 1885, to the founding of the Wangchuck dynasty in 1907 runs in a more or less direct line, and Bhutanese historians have often described the Duar War as the indirect making of the monarchy.^[6]

Consequences for British India

For British India the war secured the southern frontier of the eastern Himalayas and added to the empire a strip of fertile lowland that would shortly become tea country. The Bengal Duars and the adjoining Kalimpong subdivision were rapidly opened to tea cultivation in the 1870s and 1880s, and the Duars planters' association became one of the most influential commercial bodies in eastern India by the end of the century. The pattern of "guided sovereignty" established by the Treaty of Sinchula — a formally independent Himalayan state whose foreign relations were managed from Calcutta in exchange for a subsidy — was extended and codified in the Treaty of Punakha of 1910 and survived, with modifications, into the India-Bhutan relationship after 1947.

Historiography

The most detailed contemporary account of the war is David Field Rennie's Bhotan and the Story of the Dooar War (London: John Murray, 1866). Rennie served as a surgeon attached to the British force and his narrative — sympathetic to the British cause but observant about Bhutanese society — remains the principal eyewitness source. The British official record was set out in W. W. Hunter's A Statistical Account of Bengal and in successive editions of the Imperial Gazetteer of India.^[3]

Modern scholarly accounts include Leo Rose's The Politics of Bhutan (Cornell University Press, 1977), which placed the war in the context of nineteenth-century Himalayan diplomacy; Michael Aris's Bhutan: The Early History of a Himalayan Kingdom (1979); and most recently Karma Phuntsho's The History of Bhutan (2013), which is the standard Bhutanese-authored account. John Ardussi's papers on the political history of nineteenth-century Bhutan have refined the understanding of the role played by Jigme Namgyal and the Trongsa Penlops in the conflict.

Bhutanese and British historiography differ in emphasis. British accounts have tended to present the war as a regrettable but necessary policing action provoked by Bhutanese intransigence. Bhutanese accounts emphasise the asymmetry of force, the loss of vital territory, and the courage of the defenders, particularly in the Dewangiri episode. The captured howitzers, displayed for many years in Bhutan, became an emblem of resistance. Both traditions agree that the war marked the end of one phase of Bhutanese history and the beginning of another.

See also

• Treaty of Sinchula
• Treaty of 1774
• Treaty of Punakha (1910)
• Jigme Namgyal
• Trongsa Penlop
• Ugyen Wangchuck
• Wangchuck dynasty
• Battle of Changlimithang
• India-Bhutan relations
• George Bogle mission (1774)

References

1. "Duar War" — Wikipedia
2. "Anglo-Bhutanese War: History, Causes and Impact" — StudyIQ
3. Rennie, David Field, Bhotan and the Story of the Dooar War (London: John Murray, 1866) — Library of Congress
4. "Gurkha Soldiers and the Anglo-Bhutan War of 1864-65" — The Gurkha Museum, Winchester
5. "Treaty of Punakha" — Wikipedia
6. "History of Bhutan" — Wikipedia
7. "Duar War" — Families in British India Society (FIBIwiki)
8. "Bhutan Campaign, 1864" — National Army Museum, London