Later Mughals v2.c14.s5.4

v2.c14.s5.4

The fact of Ajit Singh's murder by his son, Bakht Singh, is not denied by any one; but a divergence of opinion exists as to the incentives to the deed. Tod's informants told him that Bakht Singh acted at the instigation of his elder brother, Abhai Singh,† then at Dihli and in the power of the Emperor. The murderer's reward was to be the appanage of Nagor and its five hundred and sixty-five townships. To account for Abhai Singh's unholy desire we are told that his ambition had been stirred by the Machiavellian Sayyids, eager to wreak vengeance upon Ajit Singh for his opposition to their dethronement of Farrukh-siyar. Now let us apply some of the simplest critical tests. Can the offered reward be looked on as sufficient to impel Bakht Singh to an act of parricide? He may not have been a very clever man, but he was hardly such a simpleton as to incur the infamy of such an act (1) for the benefit not of himself but of a brother and (2) for the grant of an appange which, by universal Rajput practice, would have been his as a matter of course whenever his father died a natural death. But coming finally to external tests, what is there left of the story? We find that its very foundation vanishes. The assassination of Ajit Singh took place in June 1724; one Sayyid had been assassinated on the 8th October, 1720, and the other, after being defeated in battle and made a prisoner on the 14th November 1720, died in prison on the 11th October, 1722. Obviously, they could not have been in 1724 the instigators of Abhai Singh. Further, it is impossible, after even the most elementary study of the period, to ignore the fact that Ajit Singh, instead of opposing, helped the Sayyids to the utmost in getting rid of Farrukh-siyar. Tod's story is thus a mere legend, which falls to pieces directly it is examined; nor, as he admits, does his usual resource, the rhyming chronicles of the bards, afford him here any countenance. And Tod himself (ii. 113) confesses that "but for that one damning crime, Bakht Singh would have been handed down to posterity as one of the noblest Princes Rajwara ever knew." Conceding the truth of even a part only of this glowing eulogy, is it not more unlikely than ever that such a paladin could have become the miserable tool of an ambitious brother with no greater incentive than the offer of an appanage already his by family custom? Is it not rather to be believed that the father did something which the son felt was an attack on his personal honour?