John Nicholson

John Nicholson was born in Dublin on 11 December 1822 (the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism gives 1821) and died of wounds at Delhi on 23 September 1857. He got a cadetship in the Bengal Infantry in 1839. In Punjab he served the Company as it ended the Sikh state, and the Sikhs called him "Nichol Singh" (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism). He was one of the young officers around Henry Lawrence, known as Lawrence's "Young Men" (Wikipedia).

• 1844: political assistant at Firozpur, where he was accused of intrigues against the Sikh state, and Lord Hardinge considered removing him from the frontier.
• 1846 to 1848: after the First Anglo-Sikh War he served under Henry Lawrence at Lahore, settled the Sind Sagar Doab, and in 1848 inquired into the Hazara revolt led by Chattar Singh Attariwala.
• 1848 to 1849: in the Second Anglo-Sikh War he fought at Ramnagar and Chillianwala. He served as political officer with Lord Gough's force and was wounded in an attack on a tower in the Margalla Pass (Britannica, 1911).
• After the annexation of Punjab he became deputy commissioner of Bannu, where, Britannica says, he brought a turbulent district under firm control and won a name for strict but fair justice. Local people revered him as a god under the name Nikalsain.
• 1857: he helped disarm doubtful regiments at Peshawar and Phillaur, commanded the Punjab Movable Column, and in July destroyed the Sialkot mutineers on the Ravi near Gurdaspur. He helped win the battle of Najafgarh, led an attacking column into Delhi on 14 September, and was shot from behind while urging on his hesitating troops. He died nine days later.

Sir John Lawrence wrote that "without John Nicholson Delhi could not have fallen" (Britannica, 1911). That is the Company's view of him. Wikipedia reports that forty mutineers were blown from guns after the pursuit of the 55th Native Infantry, that he called for harsh punishment of mutineers, and that modern historians including William Dalrymple and Stuart Flinders have criticised his brutality and racism.

He is remembered in Britain as the "Hero of Delhi", and on the frontier by the Nikalsain cult, whose members, Wikipedia says, he reportedly disliked and whipped when they worshipped him in his presence. In Punjab history he stands for the young political officers who enforced British rule after the fall of the Sikh Raj, and who in 1857 led Punjab's Movable Column to the retaking of Delhi.