Did Lal Singh, Tej Singh and Gulab Singh betray the Khalsa army in 1845 and 1846?

The claim: Doubters of the betrayal story point to the following. The Dictionary of National Biography notes that when Cunningham's 1849 History of the Sikhs said Lal Singh and Tej Singh were bought, Lord Hardinge and Henry Lawrence both asserted there had been no private negotiations with any Sikh leader. The National Army Museum says it is still debated whether the bridge at Sobraon failed from too much traffic or Tej Singh cut it loose, and that his defenders say he did so to delay the British. Hardinge defended Gulab Singh by asking whether the British were to "treat with indifference the only man who had not lifted up his arm against us", and said "the charge of treason could not be substantiated". Bawa Satinder Singh (Modern Asian Studies, 1971) adds that pro-Dogra historians credit Gulab Singh with preventing complete annexation in 1846, and that both that view and the traitor verdict were "often made without sufficient historical data".

The sourced facts:

• Lal Singh. At Mudki on 18 December, Cunningham writes, he "headed the attack, but, in accordance with his original design, he involved his followers in an engagement, and then left them to fight" (pp. 293 to 294). The Encyclopaedia says he was "in treasonable communication" with Captain Peter Nicholson and was told not to attack Ferozepur; Khushwant Singh quotes his note on crossing the Sutlej: "I have crossed with the Sikh army. You know my friendship to the British. Tell me what to do." A footnote in Cunningham, citing the Calcutta Review, says that on 19 December his agent went to Major Broadfoot and was "dismissed with a rebuke", and that on 7 February 1846 he was understood to have sent a plan of Sobraon to Colonel Lawrence (the Encyclopaedia calls the map "alleged"). The letters Khushwant Singh quotes in full are later and concern Kashmir: orders to Shaikh Imam ud-Din to thwart Gulab Singh, for which a Court of Inquiry found Lal Singh guilty.
• Tej Singh. At Ferozeshah on 22 December, Cunningham says, he "rather skirmished and made feints than led his men to a resolute attack" and "precipitately fled" when English ammunition had failed (p. 296). At Sobraon "the traitor, Tej Singh" "fled on the first assault, and, either accidentally or by design, sank a boat in the middle of the bridge of communication" (p. 314). A bracketed note by the 1918 editor cites a "reliable tradition" that he found his artillery ammunition "tampered with". After the war he offered Hardinge Rs 25 lakh for an independent kingdom.
• Gulab Singh. Before the war he passed intelligence to Brigadier Wheeler at Ludhiana, and "the British rewarded him obviously for his secret help" (Encyclopaedia). Cunningham says Sobraon was fought amid "discreet policy and shameless treason", under an understanding that the Sikh army "should be attacked by the English, and that when beaten it should be openly abandoned by its own government" (p. 309); his footnote ties this to Gulab Singh. By the treaty of 16 March 1846 Gulab Singh received Jammu and Kashmir for 75 lakh Nanakshahi rupees and acknowledged British supremacy. Lord Ellenborough called it a reward for treachery.

The Panthic answer: Sikh sources hold that the Khalsa was betrayed from above. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says Lal Singh "proved disloyal to the Sikh Darbar" and acted on "secret instructions received from the British officials", and that Tej Singh "established secret liaison with the British and desired their victory rather than that of the army he led". Khushwant Singh writes that there is "enough evidence to prove" that Lal Singh, Tej Singh and later Gulab Singh "were in communication with enemy agents". The soldiers drew the same conclusion: the National Army Museum says many "believed they had been betrayed rather than defeated", and Shah Muhammad's verse, in Khushwant Singh's rendering, ends "We won the battles but lost the fight". Bhai Ajmer Singh argues that the raj was lost through betrayals when it could not have been lost otherwise, and everyone knew it; he names the manner of its going as the second and worse blow of 1849.