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Skinner's Horse

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This is a short novel around the military career and exploits of the legendary James Skinner (1778-1841) who lived in the last decades of East India Company rule. As the illegitimate son of a Scottish soldier and his Rajput "wife" (sometimes called a princess), he was disqualified from a regular army commission. It was his "half-caste" (mixed ancestry) status, or as then described "country-born" status, which prevented Skinner from a full career in the Indian army of the East India Company. Despite this, lack of financial resources, and many other problems and barriers, he created the regiment known as Skinner's Horse (1st Bengal Lancers) which was distinguished firstly by the loyalty shown by its virtually all-Indian membership to the commander, known as Sikander Sahib, and secondly by the fact that it never lost a battle. Skinner, or Sikander Sahib, lived like a native, in that he had reputedly 14 wives and several children by all of them. Today, his descendants are either Moslems or Christians, and none in the male line live in India. But at least one male-line descendant distinguished himself in the Second World War.

The story is however not about Skinner's family circumstances, about which very little is known. The important tragedies in his life are lightly sketched - his mother's suicide when he was 12 (to protest the fact that her daughters were being raised in English missionary schools, to marry Englishmen), his brother's suicide after a double murder (of one of his Indian wives and her alleged lover), and the many setbacks and humiliations inflicted on Skinner by insensitive Company officials, the British government at home, not to mention the odd soldier who was technically senior to him.

I want to strongly recommend this book, after having discussed THE FAR PAVILIONS (set in the late 1870s, with a British officer raised in India as the hero) and Allan Mallison's THE HONOURABLE COMPANY (which focuses on another British officer, coming from England) with some others. This novel takes a spare but unsentimental look at the life faced by young British officers in India, as well as the fate of their "country-born" sons. Before the influx of "memsahibs" (British women who came out to India with their husbands, or to catch a husband), "country-born" daughters could at least hope to marry an Englishman, and thus eventually integrate into pre-Victorian British society when they went to the "home country." Until the 1857 Mutiny changed British colonial policies in India (in favoring and promoting the descendants of such unions to middle ranks in the police, army, and so forth), no such way out was open for "country-born" sons of British officers. They could not pursue the careers of their fathers; they were limited in their commercial ventures as well. I have been searching for a book that discusses the fate of the "country-born" or Anglo-Indians, as they are now known in India, during this period 1775-1830. So far I have not found any books on the subject, but SKINNER'S HORSE remains the best (and only) fictional treatment I have read of "Anglo-Indians" before the onset of the British Raj. [The Raj, as understood both in Indian history and in British colonial studies, refers to the British direct rule of India since 1858. The previous period 1757-1857 is referred to as Company rule].

For persons who want to know about more of Skinner's private life or his attitudes towards women in general (or his female relatives and his many wives), this book will be disappointing. That is because it is based largely on his own autobiography and on contemporary sources - none of which discuss his private life at length - and because the book sets out to focus on the military career that made his name famous. For a historical novel or a work of historical fiction, it speculates very little. I have the strong suspicion that the author used the events of Skinner's life and created conversations relating to the military aspects, but deliberately chose to avoid any part of his personal life. A pity in some ways, because this might have enticed more readers.

But read this, in preference to other books that speak about the experience of the British officers in India, or at the very least, read it. That is, if you want to get a better understanding of the problems underlying both Company rule and the Raj, and to understand how a small group of men managed to conquer and rule lands many times the size of their own country.

[....].

Very Highly Recommended.