Lord William Bentinck

About The Book : Generalship of Lord William Bentinck was essentially peaceful, and its main interest centred in domestic and administrative reforms, it must not be supposed that external affairs presented no features of importance, or that during his tenure of power the foreign policy of India became practically a dead letter. If there was no foreign war, and if tranquillity was maintained on the frontiers, there were still negotiations that exercised a considerable influence on the policy of India and her neighbours in future years, and during the whole of his stay in the country the course of events west of the Indus was carefully watched, and what the best policy would be in certain eventualities formed a subject of constant discussion in official circles. It may seem strange, but it is none the less a fact, that Anglo-Indians were then divided into schools of forward and stationary policies quite as much as now, and that the possibility of a Russian invasion of India was discussed as freely as it has been since. While some ardent spirits advocated the annexation of the Punjab and Sind, and wished to have commercial agents at Kabul, Herat, and even Bokhara, others deprecated any advance beyond the Sutlej, and would have left the custody of the Indus (which Akbar called the ditch of Delhi) to the Sikhs. The important Minute with which this chapter is closed shows that Lord William Bentinck was deeply interested in all these questions, and that he had a definite opinion as to how they should be treated. The most important branch of the foreign policy of the Government of India in Lord William Bentinck's time was unquestionably the relations to be maintained with Ranjit Singh.