Introduction
Sikh policemen were an indelible part of the landscape of Shanghai in the first decades of the twentieth century, and have attained iconic status in the ways in which this period of the city's past is remembered. Yet their history has never been told and historians of the period have, at best, simply referred to them in passing.Footnote 1 By accounting for their presence and their various roles in the governance and policing of the International Settlement, this paper demonstrates the importance of the Sikh branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police within the history of the city. It reveals an understudied site of Sikh migration, drawing on recent work on the Sikh diasporaFootnote 2 and developments in the sub-field of colonial policing, and enriches our understanding of the ways in which the British presence in China was influenced by Indian ‘sub-imperialism’:Footnote 3 on the streets of Shanghai, and not Shanghai alone, British power had an Indian face.
Anderson and Killingray, in their landmark volume, Policing the Empire, highlight the fact that colonial policemen were ‘the most visible public symbol of colonial rule, in daily contact with the population and enforcing the codes of law that upheld colonial authority’.Footnote 4 Anderson and Killingray were driving home the importance of the surprisingly understudied colonial police forces in general.Footnote 5 But in the case of Shanghai's Sikh police this can be taken further, as their emblematic status made them symbolically more significant than the other branches of the Shanghai Municipal Police, both to the community they policed and to those who have remembered them since. This paper argues that they were and remain symbols of empire in the unique environment of Shanghai's International Settlement, where Britain's formal and informal empires overlapped and intersected.
Sikhs have featured in numerous popular portrayals of Shanghai during the treaty-port era. One famous example of Shanghai's Sikh policemen in popular culture is Tintin's adventure in The Blue Lotus, set in 1931. Hergé shows a Sikh directing traffic—their primary role within the police force—but also depicts three bloodthirsty Sikhs who are ordered to give Tintin ‘a spot of corrective treatment’ in the municipal prison.Footnote 6 Kazuo Ishiguro uses a description of Sikh policemen stacking sandbags against the threat of Japanese aggression in 1937 to set the scene as a detective mulls over his case at the British Consulate building in Shanghai, in his novel When we were Orphans.Footnote 7 Bruce Lee attacks a Sikh guarding the entrance to the Shanghai Public Gardens for refusing him entry in the 1972 film Jing Wu Men (Fist of Fury). Memoirs and popular histories written by former ‘Shanghailanders’Footnote 8 reflect popular stereotypes of the Sikhs, such as that by former policeman Daniel Cormie who claims that ‘the mentality of these men is on a par with a child of ten, their disposition happy, carefree and entirely uninhibited’.Footnote 9 There is no shortage of derogatory references to Shanghai's Sikh policemen in the canon of popular culture in both east and west.
In China, negative portrayals of Sikhs carry political resonance. Shanghai's Sikh policemen are infamous for their role in shooting Chinese protestors in what became known as the May Thirtieth Incident of 1925. Paintings such as ‘Xueji’ (‘Blood Sacrifice’) by Ma Hongdao depict the event in such a way as to make it appear that Sikhs alone were shooting on the orders of Inspector Everson of the Shanghai Municipal Police, absolving Chinese members of the force of helping crush a demonstration which was a turning-point in the development of anti-imperialism, and marked the start of a major nationalist movement.Footnote 10 Sikhs are portrayed as the enemy, carrying out the dirty work of the imperial oppressors.
Chinese popular histories of Shanghai, of which there are many, invariably devote a paragraph to the Sikh policemen and their alleged cruelty.Footnote 11 Such publications usually include a reference to the slang term by which the Sikhs were known among Chinese, hongtou asan, which has been translated variously as ‘red-headed monkeys’, ‘red-headed rascals’, or ‘turbaned number threes’.Footnote 12 All reflect their status in Chinese eyes as the vicious lackeys of their British masters. Hongtou is a reference to the red turbans that formed part of the police uniform for the Sikhs, while asan is thought to derive from the Sikhs’ third-class social position in Shanghai, or from a transliteration of either the British exclamation ‘I say’ or ‘ah, sir’, as Shanghai's Chinese addressed the Sikhs.Footnote 13 Popular racist perceptions of Sikhs feed into a discourse which distinguished ‘black devils’ (heigui), the Indian troops of the British in nineteenth-century China, from the ‘white devils’ (baigui) who commanded them.Footnote 14 During disturbances in 1913 it was reported to the Chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Council that young Chinese ‘say that they will endure Chinese or foreigners to safeguard the district but they will resist the “Black slaves”’.Footnote 15 Frank Dikötter has demonstrated that racism was and remains as prevalent in China as in Europe and North America, and the prevailing hierarchical views of the late Qing and Republican periods counted people designated as ‘black’, including Sikhs and other Indians, as inferior even to the white imperialists.Footnote 16 It is a racist characterization of the Sikh policemen that helps ensure the popular resentment felt towards them continues to this day.
Visitors to the Shanghai History Museum are presented with waxwork figures of Sikh policemen, and a recent blog based on a magazine article on Shanghai's Sikh policemen and the comments which follow demonstrate the continued interest in and significance of these historical figures.Footnote 17 Sikhs thus feature widely in all media concerning treaty-port Shanghai. Why were they such ubiquitous figures in contemporary portrayals of the International Settlement, and why do they continue to carry such emblematic power today? Why, indeed, were Sikhs brought to police the Settlement at all? Robert Bickers has succinctly identified ‘a three-fold purpose’ for the branch: economy, defence and display.Footnote 18 This paper analyses these three co-existing functions of the Sikh branch, as well as their other roles in the Settlement, drawing out the influence of British India on practices in Shanghai. It then considers other ways in which Shanghai's ‘sub-imperial’ connections to India impacted the Sikh community there and explores the mobility of the Sikh diaspora but also the limits to that mobility. A consideration of the growing influence of Indian nationalism and the position of Sikh policemen in wartime Shanghai concludes the account of the Sikh Branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police.
By clarifying the role of this prominent element of the British presence in China, this paper demonstrates both how the formal and informal empire overlapped and interacted and the significance of the Sikhs as symbols of empire in maintaining the British position in Shanghai. Thomas Metcalf and Robert Blyth have convincingly made the case that India exercised ‘sub-imperial’ control over British interests throughout Asia and beyond.Footnote 19 As will be shown, colonial networks extending to India led to Sikhs policing outposts of empire from Shanghai to Ceylon, while the Government of India dictated the terms under which they were recruited. Yet perhaps more significantly the symbolic power of India in the imagining of the British empire, by the British and by other nationalities, has helped secure the position of Sikhs in the history of Shanghai.
The establishment of the Sikh branch: an economical decision
After Shanghai was opened as a treaty port in 1843, the infrastructure of the small and initially solely British-run settlement was overseen by a Committee of Roads and Jetties. In 1854 this was reformed as a Municipal Council, and in the same year for the first time a police force was established. Chinese were recruited to the force from 1864, and the idea of recruiting Sikhs was first seriously mooted by the Shanghai Municipal Council in 1883, as part of a major re-organization and increase to the size of the Shanghai Municipal Police.Footnote 20 One European constable for every two Chinese was considered the ideal ratio, but the cost of so many European salaries proved prohibitive. Instead, it was proposed to employ Sikhs who could be recruited at much lower wages, an idea supported by the new Captain Superintendent, J. P. McEuen, who had seen the Sikh Branch work well at his previous post as Deputy Superintendent in Hong Kong. The first Sikhs engaged by the Shanghai Municipal Police were recruited locally: Sikhs were already employed in Shanghai as private watchmen, as they would continue to be in increasing numbers throughout the existence of the foreign concessions, forming with the Sikh branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police a sizeable Sikh community. A bungalow on Carter Road was leased for the recruits from 1 September 1884, at first for just three months as it was not known if this experiment would succeed. Sikhs were to remain on the force for the next 60 years.
Recruitment directly from Punjab commenced in 1885, when the Sikh sergeant was directed ‘to arrange for twenty additional Sikhs to take the place of the eight foreign constables who are now short’ when he returned home on leave, reflecting the comparative value attached to foreign and Sikh policemen.Footnote 21 In those early years the main responsibility of the branch was the policing of Bubbling Well Road, in addition to some regulation of traffic. The policing of this area, external at the time to the International Settlement proper, was dependent on subscriptions (not always forthcoming) from the local residents, in contrast to the rest of the Shanghai Municipal Police's responsibilities which were funded from the general rates paid to the Council. With the extension of the Settlement to include so-called ‘external roads’ areas in 1893 and 1899, and the purchase of the Carter Road station in 1895, the Sikh branch had by this time become a permanent feature of the Shanghai Municipal Police.
The strict scales of pay applied to all municipal employees ensured that Sikh incomes were kept proportionately lower than those of foreign policemen, and higher than those of Chinese, throughout this period. This both maintained the racial hierarchy of the force and secured the status of Sikhs as an economical alternative to foreign constables. Table 1 details the size of the Sikh Branch in relation to the other branches of the Force from 1900 to 1940, showing that the Sikh Branch remained the second largest branch after the Chinese throughout the period.
TABLE 1 The Shanghai Municipal Police by Branch
Source: Shanghai Municipal Police, Annual Reports 1900–1940.
The Sikh branch as a defence force
Sikhs were first recruited to the Shanghai Municipal Police in order to provide more protection for the foreign community in the face of the swelling refugee population, as Chinese sought security within the Settlement from the turmoil in the surrounding areas due to the Sino-French War of 1884–1885. There was a precedent for the use of Indians in China in a defence role. Indian soldiers had been in Shanghai with the British since 1840 and the First Opium War, and Sikhs were used extensively, alongside other Indian troops, by the British in the Second Opium War (1856–1860) and especially in the 1900 Boxer War.Footnote 22 The model for recruiting Sikh policemen came, however, as did many changes to the Shanghai Municipal Police organization and structure, from Hong Kong. The British territory employed Sikhs in its police force as early as 1867. The Deputy Superintendent of the Hong Kong Police, C. V. Creagh, had been transferred from the Sind Police the year before as part of the new Governor's shake-up of the colony's ineffectual force, and he recommended ‘his trusty Sikh Policemen’ to improve its efficacy.Footnote 23 They impressed the official community with their dedication to duty; according to certain residents ‘there was never so fine a body of men landed in China’.Footnote 24 Little wonder that the practice of employing Sikhs as policemen travelled north to Shanghai, where the British community had imperial pretentions and was strongly influenced by the practices of empire. In this period, Sikhs were beginning to be employed in policing and military roles in many corners of Africa and Asia: evidence, as shown by Metcalf, of the way the British empire was ‘centred’ largely on India rather than Britain.Footnote 25
The men recruited to the Sikh branch were almost without exception ex-sepoys from rural families with limited resources. Migration was seen as an honourable solution to financial problems faced by such families as the fragmentation of land-holdings and rising land prices placed their position under threat.Footnote 26 Competitive pay (up to five times that offered in the Indian Army)Footnote 27 and conditions, including nine months’ leave on half pay with passage to India on the completion of a five-year term, made the Shanghai Municipal Police a tempting option for Sikhs looking for such work. The preferred method of recruitment was selecting men, or, from 1905, having men selected by Indian Army recruiting staff, directly from Punjab. This was an effort by the Government of India to exercise control over the spread of Indian subjects abroad, but as Indians continued to make their own way eastwards in search of work, the Shanghai Municipal Police, like forces in Malaya and elsewhere, also recruited locally.Footnote 28 Those who were not taken by the Shanghai Municipal Police generally found employment as watchmen for private firms, although there also existed a ‘floating population’ of destitute Indians, many of them Sikhs, which caused concern to the municipal authorities.Footnote 29
Members of the Shanghai Municipal Police were housed in barracks, trained in drill and musketry, dressed in khaki, and subject to the hierarchy and discipline of military life. This reflects the wider imperial notion that colonial police forces constituted the first line of defence against internal security threats, which has been explored by Georgina Sinclair and David Killingray.Footnote 30 Without the perception of the Shanghai Municipal Police as a force (alongside the Shanghai Volunteer Corps) for maintaining order against the same potential internal threats to security faced in the colonies, Sikhs would never have been recruited. The ‘Irish model’ of the Royal Irish Constabulary, though not the monolithic influence once claimed,Footnote 31 provided the precedent for this quasi-military style of policing so at odds with the traditions of the English constable.Footnote 32 It was then developed in India and rapidly became the colonial norm, applied wherever the threat of insurgency existed. The Royal Irish Constabulary which had been the primary influence on the Hong Kong Police, became, in turn, the model for the Shanghai Municipal Police.Footnote 33 Whenever there were difficulties with the Sikh branch, the Shanghai Municipal Council requested the temporary transfer of an Indian officer with expertise in managing Sikh sepoys to recommend improvements. Most notable amongst them was sometime Hampshire County cricket player Captain E. I. M. Barrett, who had commanded a Sikh regiment in the Indian Army prior to his appointment to head the Sikh Branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police and who went on to become Commissioner of Police.Footnote 34 The Indian Army provided the most significant model for Shanghai policing practice, not least in recruiting Sikhs: evidence that in this form Blyth's ‘empire of the Raj’ extended to China.
This exchange of ideas, practices and personnel in policing between different parts of the formal and informal empire illustrates a key aspect of colonial rule. The colonial lives of servants of the British Empire facilitated the spread of certain practices and values around the globe, as explored by David Lambert and Alan Lester.Footnote 35 Sites of colonial settlement were not only linked to the metropole in London, they were inextricably connected with each other in what John Darwin recently identified as the ‘British world-system’.Footnote 36 As he, alongside Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich, argues, this ‘British world’ embraced both the formal empire and spheres of informal colonial influence in South America and China.Footnote 37 It was a network of shared ideals about how society should function, which included ideas concerning policing and social and racial hierarchy, which are amply evident in the practice of employing Sikhs to police multiple sites of British settlement. Tony Ballantyne's helpful conception of the empire as ‘a complex conglomeration of overlapping webs’ develops this theme of horizontal interconnection, by emphasizing how ‘certain locations, individuals or institutions in the supposed periphery might in fact be the centre of intricate networks themselves’.Footnote 38 Thus India was at the centre of one web of empire, whilst Hong Kong and its police force were similarly at the centre of a further web that extended to the Chinese treaty ports such as Shanghai.
The structure of the Sikh Branch illustrates the importance of the influence of imperial practices, notably in India, on British communities in places like Shanghai, and the shared military model for colonial police forces. The most senior member of the Sikh Branch was the Jemadar, a term borrowed from the Indian Army where it denoted the lowest rank of Viceroy's Commissioned Officer at which level an Indian could command a platoon. He was considered crucial in maintaining order among the men, especially in the wake of disturbances such as those of 1906, when Jemadar Sardaga Singh was sent from the 47th Sikhs to help restore order and discipline to the Sikh branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police.Footnote 39 Below the Jemadar were Havildars and Naiks, equivalent to sergeants and corporals, followed by the constables. The use of Indian military ranks demonstrates both the influence of practice in India on that of the Shanghai Municipal Police, and the close relationship between policing and soldiery in the protection of the formal and informal empire.Footnote 40
Sikhs enjoyed a reputation as a ‘martial race’, alongside Gurkhas and Scottish Highlanders. This built on their self-perception as a warrior people, ordered by the Tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, to carry the kirpan dagger at all times and fight to preserve the faith.Footnote 41 Men from North-Western India, including Punjab, were also considered naturally tough due to the harsh conditions of the mountain states, in contrast to the inhabitants of the southern plains of Madras, not hardened by cold winters and difficult terrain.Footnote 42 During the Sikh Wars of the 1840s, British officers were impressed by their enemy's manliness and the advanced nature of the Sikh army, capable of inflicting heavy damage on the might of the Raj. The British spoke of their Sikh adversaries in language reminiscent of the public school playing-field, of worthy opponents who played up and played the game.Footnote 43 It was feared such good soldiers might rise again against the British if given arms, but in 1857 the majority of Sikhs proved their loyalty by helping crush the rebellion. The uptake of Sikh soldiers gradually increased, so in 1875 they made up 44 per cent of the Bengal Army,Footnote 44 and accelerated from the reorganization of the Indian Army in the 1880s. By 1900 Sikhs represented just one per cent of India's population, but 20 per cent of the army.Footnote 45 ‘The Sikh’ was described in recruiting handbooks for the Indian Army as the perfect soldier: ‘manly in his warlike creed, in his love of sports and in being a true son of the soil; a buffalo, not quick in understanding, but brave, strong and true’.Footnote 46 It was owing to this perception that Sikhs were favoured by the British in defence roles in India and beyond.
This perception of Sikhs as a ‘Martial Race’ had encouraged the Shanghai Municipal Police to follow Hong Kong's example and look to Punjab for cheaper alternatives to British constables. Sikhs were also employed by the British in Tientsin, Amoy, and Hankow, as well as further afield in Singapore, Malaya, Burma, Kenya and elsewhere.Footnote 47 The practice of policing by strangers has a long pedigree, back to the 1829 Metropolis Police Improvement Bill which instigated what is often described as the first modern police force.Footnote 48 Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne, the first commissioners of the London Metropolitan Police, favoured agricultural labourers for policing the urban working class, as they were thought to possess the necessary combination of attributes: physical strength and ‘stoicism and deference’Footnote 49—the same traits identified in Sikhs. By recruiting from outside the community to be policed, Rowan and Mayne hoped to obtain men ‘free from “improper connections” with local residents that might create cross-pressures and thus cause the men to be indecisive and unable to do their duty’.Footnote 50 It was believed crucial for ‘local residents to be allowed to become acquainted with bobbies only in their police role’, a belief that was exported throughout the British Empire. In Malaya, the Chinese were thought to take sides in disputes, exacerbating them, whereas Sikhs remained objective.Footnote 51 For similar reasons, in British Africa policemen were recruited from the border areas of the colony or from neighbouring colonies, as well as from Europe.Footnote 52
The Shanghai Municipal Council adopted the same principles in Shanghai. Chinese constables were principally recruited from northern areas, local men being seen as inferior, and British recruits were ideally brought directly from home as Europeans were believed to deteriorate once settled in the Far East. Norman Miners points out that the preference for aliens in policing was based on prejudice not evidence, officials in Hong Kong choosing to ignore the success of Chinese District Watchmen in their territory as well as in Shanghai, Singapore and Macau, while Chinese police constables were as reliable (or unreliable) as Europeans or Sikhs.Footnote 53 Nevertheless, faith in the principle of policing by aliens was strong. Sikhs, manifestly different with their turbans and beards, were the ultimate strangers to police Shanghai.
The Sikhs’ turbans, beards and dark complexions certainly made a strong impression on the Chinese of Shanghai, featuring in every description of these hated men. In 1917, one magazine published a mock folk song that opens: ‘Every year, the Sikh policeman's turban is red. Every year, the Sikh policeman's head is black’ and bemoaning how ‘completely foreign’ these men seemed in the Chinese city.Footnote 54 Images such as Figure 1, published in 1936, show Sikh policemen attacking Chinese on the street. A cartoon in the 1940 Chinese Art Association magazine (Figure 2) identifies a Sikh with a Scottish highlander and an English inspector as ‘famous things in Shanghai’, with a caption describing the Sikhs as having ‘faces covered with hair’. These examples are typical of the kind of images found in the contemporary popular Chinese media; stereotypical views remained fairly static throughout the period of Sikh employment in the Shanghai Municipal Police.
Figure 1. Cartoon of Sikh policeman hitting rickshaw puller.Footnote 57
Figure 2. A Sikh policeman, a Scottish highlander and an English inspector.Footnote 61
The Chinese term for the policemen of the foreign concessions and Hong Kong is ‘xunbu’, unrelated to ‘jingcha’ (‘policeman’). The origins of the term are unknown, but it bears the sense of a defence force, probably originating from the title of the Qing forces who guarded the nine gates of Beijing.Footnote 55 With this name the concession forces were never accepted by the Chinese as a regular police force, and the Sikhs exemplified the resentment felt towards all foreign xunbu.
The importance attached to the Sikh branch for the defence of foreign interests in Shanghai was demonstrated following riots in 1905, when the Council proposed to increase the number of Sikhs from 250 to 1,000.Footnote 56 At the Annual Meeting of Ratepayers where the decision was approved, ‘the Sikh’ was described as ‘not a very good detective’ but ‘the best person in a riot’.Footnote 58 Their role for defence rather than to police was clearly the driving factor behind the proposed increase. It was blocked, however, by the consulate because such an increase would be ‘in effect an armed British occupation of the Settlement, and objections would most probably be raised by the other foreign powers’.Footnote 59 Instead only 250 additional men were sent from India, on the understanding that they would be regular police and not a ‘standing army which does political work’ for Britain.Footnote 60 The Sikhs were thus a potential source of conflict between the British and the other nationalities living in the Settlement. A strike by the Sikh branch later in 1906 put paid to further increases in the short term,Footnote 62 but the fact that the ratepayers adopted the initial proposal shows that they saw the Sikhs primarily as a defence force.
Sikh constables were highly valued, with their physically impressive appearance, for riot policing. They earned a significant role in the Reserve Unit, created after the May Thirtieth protests of 1925 to provide a rapid response to street disorder. Devised by W. E. Fairbairn (who became Chief Inspector of the unit and later a Police Superintendent), its members were trained to approach demonstrators in ‘cavalcade’ formation: two lines of 12 Chinese carrying batons with Europeans on each flank followed by 12 Sikhs brandishing a four-foot lathi (a length of bamboo tipped with brass, also used by Reserves in the Indian Police).Footnote 63 This disciplined force was called out upon news of labour disputes and riots, but also to combat fires and to back up the regular police against armed robbers and in campaigns such as the 1929 crack-down on gambling.Footnote 64 The Sikhs thus performed their defence duties in a variety of ways and their presence reassured the Shanghailanders that their community had protection, performing the function of colonial police forces around the empire and borrowing practice from India.
Sikhs as symbols on display
Sikh constables gratified the Settlement's British elite by providing a reminder of the British Raj on every street corner. Sikhs on foot and on horseback provided escorts and took part in celebratory parades, boosting British prestige. The Shanghai Municipal Police's first horse was purchased in 1884,Footnote 65 the same year the first Sikhs joined the force. The new recruits, with their reputation as good horsemen,Footnote 66 soon augmented this section and mounted Sikhs became a fixture of the Settlement. They were paraded on special occasions,Footnote 67 lending celebrations and ceremonies an air of imperial dignity, much to the satisfaction of the British. The Settlement had long shared what Bryna Goodman calls a ‘British vogue for Jubilees’,Footnote 68 though this predilection was far from confined to the British community. Figure 3 shows the prominent position afforded the Sikhs at events such as the coronation of Edward VII. These occasions carried political significance: George V's Jubilee in 1935 was the perfect opportunity for the British community to use the Sikh branch to demonstrate British imperial authority in the changing political landscape of the mid-1930s, as American and particularly Japanese influence was in the ascendancy.
Figure 3. Parade celebrating the coronation of Edward VII in 1901, Sikhs in front.Footnote 69
Sikhs in the Indian Army had taken part in many of the Empire's military campaigns, making them perfect symbols of the might of imperial Britain for the benefit of both the Chinese and foreign communities in Shanghai. Throughout the period, the British used occasions like Empire Day, coronations and royal birthdays to strengthen their imperial identity, and Sikhs invariably featured in the festivities. All the nationalities of the Settlement sought to impress each other on such occasions: in the words of Robert Bickers, ‘showing off was de rigueur’.Footnote 70 But none could match the ubiquitous Sikhs as a symbol of international influence, directing traffic on every corner, thousands of miles from their British-owned homeland. In this way the Sikh branch was just as significant as a symbol of the ‘empire of the Raj’ as it was a useful element of the police force.
Policing the streets of Shanghai
Mark Finnane rightly stresses the point that colonial policing took many different forms according to local circumstances,Footnote 71 and even within the small space of Shanghai's International Settlement the police had a variety of functions. The Sikh branch may have been born out of a desire for greater defence and for the prevention of crime to be carried out more economically, and it may have been celebrated for its symbolic value, but the majority of the Sikhs’ daily working lives were spent executing the mundane duty of directing traffic. In line with its reputation as China's first modern city,Footnote 72 Shanghai's traffic was notoriously heavy and chaotic. In what has been characterized as its uncontrollable streets, modern trams and motor cars shared streets rarely wider than 40 feet with ‘such pre-historic vehicles as the Chinese wheelbarrow’. By 1916 there were 3,000 rickshaws per square mile in the Settlement,Footnote 73 the drivers of which often disregarded the rules of the road. The role of the Sikh police was to attempt to bring order to this urban space by directing the traffic, a far cry from the work for which their supposed martial nature was thought to fit them. As Metcalf makes clear, however, whatever work Sikh policemen were given in colonial settings, their primary purpose was in fact ‘to overawe and intimidate the local population, in part by their sheer physical size’.Footnote 74 Shanghai again adhered to the colonial pattern.
Conditions on point duty could be arduous—the men stood virtually motionless for shifts of up to 12 hours in the extremes of Shanghai's weather to direct traffic—and to make matters worse, their efforts were frequently ignored. In 1938 3,026 cases of ‘disregarding police signals or instructions’ were recorded: the most-committed traffic offence.Footnote 75 Sikh policemen were unable to command the respect of foreigners or Chinese. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that they occasionally employed their black and white signalling batons to hit recalcitrant Chinese road-users. The open hostility between Sikhs and Chinese, exacerbated by a significant language barrier, set the scene for low-level violence. Sikhs arrived in Shanghai with no knowledge of Chinese, and although skills in both Chinese and English were rewarded, the bonus paid for passing English examinations (up to $5 per month) exceeded that for demonstrating Chinese language ability (up to $2), demonstrating the different emphasis placed on each language.Footnote 76
In support of Metcalf's argument that Sikhs were intended to intimidate the local population, those in Shanghai were actually encouraged to employ corporal punishment against Chinese:
Years of experience have proved that these men [Chinese rickshaw and wheelbarrow pullers] obey police signals not so much from any respect for the law as from the fear of consequences to themselves if they do not. The traffic baton serves as an outward emblem of the physical force behind the law.Footnote 77
There were certainly many instances when Sikhs had to be punished for mistreatment of Chinese, but the same was true of the foreign constables, and brutality also characterized the relationship between Chinese policemen and rickshaw men in Beijing:Footnote 78 the enduring stereotype of the brutal Sikh policemen was undoubtedly an exaggeration. It was usual for alien police forces to be despised by those they helped the British to rule: the Shosa-speaking people of Southern Rhodesia called policemen from the Ngoni ‘Imbga dza vasungale’, ‘white men's dogs’.Footnote 79 Sikhs became a surrogate target for Chinese resentment of Euro-American imperialism, and the racist views noted above also contributed to the Chinese perception of Sikhs as violent. Yet this perception should not be dismissed lightly, with heartfelt anger expressed in 1903 at Sikh constables roughly searching the persons of examination candidates and widespread outrage over an alleged indecent assault committed by a Sikh policeman in 1919.Footnote 80 The resentment of the Sikhs has persisted in Shanghai to the present.
The Sikhs’ duties extended far beyond directing traffic. Accounts of Sikhs apprehending criminals and records of medals awarded for ‘conspicuous gallantry’ to Sikh members of the force demonstrate that their duties as policemen could entail all the elements of detection and danger experienced by other nationals within the Shanghai Municipal Police. Awards given by the Council reveal a high regard for at least some Sikh policemen: between 1926 and 1941 six were presented with Distinguished Conduct medals, while 1,631 were departmentally awarded. Several Sikhs were killed or wounded in the execution of their duty, suggesting that policing in Shanghai was not devoid of the risk to life and limb that they had faced in their earlier careers in the Indian Army. In 1921 a Sikh was shot dead as he attempted ‘to intercept an armed Chinese’.Footnote 81 In 1939 constable Mala Singh earned a Distinguished Conduct Medal for ‘great bravery and devotion to duty when attacked by a gang of armed assassins’ at the light standard at a busy intersection.Footnote 82 Directing traffic was evidently more eventful than might be assumed. Indeed, Captain Barrett justified arming points-men by pointing out that they were, ‘by virtue of the fact that fixed Traffic Posts are well known to residents, frequently the first to receive information regarding the committal of crime’.Footnote 83 This also demonstrates how conspicuous their position on the streets of the International Settlement was, enhancing their power as symbols of the ‘empire of the Raj’.
(Constrained) Mobility
Tony Ballantyne has explored the way that the annexation of Punjab in 1849 brought its population into interregional and global structures which afforded new opportunities for mobility.Footnote 84 As noted above, Sikhs were both recruited directly from Punjab to Shanghai and made their own way east, frequently arriving in Shanghai via other ports of call such as Hong Kong, and often making their way on elsewhere if they failed to find permanent employment in China.Footnote 85 The Sikhs employed in the Shanghai Municipal Police had successfully found employment overseas, but they became increasingly aware of their potential for further mobility across the ‘webs of empire’ and beyond. As migrants far from their homelands their local ties to Shanghai were comparatively weak, so when news reached them of better opportunities overseas they naturally wanted to seize them.
The first serious strike of the Sikh branch occurred when the Council refused a petition for increased pay submitted by the branch in September 1906.Footnote 86 The demand was occasioned by news of Sikhs in Siberia and Canada earning $60.00–$100.00 per month, many times the wages offered in China. Transnational networks of Sikhs informing each other of overseas opportunities constitute another example of the layered webs of connections described by Ballantyne. Policemen who were able to resign did so in order to leave Shanghai for the promised high salaries elsewhere, whilst colleagues who remained bound by their contracts sought dismissal for misconduct. Others presented false letters from home seeking termination of their contracts to attend urgent family business, but when they travelled north rather than taking passages to India their resignations were cancelled.Footnote 87 Unable to leave Shanghai, the men demanded a 50 per cent pay rise with a petition worded by a European lawyer. He met with severe censure in the North China Herald for supporting Sikh demands, but he responded that by ‘sending the letter to the Chairman of the Council I only followed the precedent established when the foreign members of the police petitioned for more pay, which was allowed’.Footnote 88 This demonstrates the double standards in operation: it was unacceptable for Sikhs to make demands but less of a threat when the lobbyists were European.
The strike ended with the arrest of eight alleged ring-leaders, but it was not until an inquiry was completed by Major Hall (sent on the Shanghai Municipal Council's request by the Government of India) that the matter could be laid to rest. Ten alleged agitators were deported and King's Regulations, as used in the British and Indian Armies, were brought onto the statute book so that in future emergencies the Captain Superintendent had a magistrate's power to inflict serious penalties for ill-discipline.Footnote 89 The strike highlighted the problem that no foreigner within the Shanghai Municipal Police could communicate with the Sikhs in their own language, relying instead on interpreters. An Assistant-Superintendent with a grasp of Urdu was therefore appointed: Captain Barrett.
It was anticipated that Barrett's appointment, combined with the new Jemadar and Gurdwara, would prevent future unrest. However, another strike seeking a pay rise in response to reports of high wages in other parts of the world occurred in 1910. Again, a petition was submitted with the aid of a European and an inquiry was held. Ten men were convicted under King's Regulations and dismissed.Footnote 90 The branch did not strike again. The response of the Shanghai Municipal Council to the Sikhs’ protests—calling in a Major of the Indian Army to conduct an inquiry; introducing and employing King's Regulations; employing a Captain of the Indian Army with Indian language abilities—demonstrate its close relationship to the Indian colonial authorities and the impact of sub-imperialism on the Shanghai Municipal Police. Moreover, the decisive action taken to prevent Sikhs bound by agreements from leaving the service to seek opportunities further afield reveals the limits to the mobility enjoyed by Sikhs and other colonial subjects within the ‘webs of empire’.
Indian Army influences on the preservation of Sikh religious tradition
The Sikh religion was viewed with favour by the British authorities, unlike the suspicion with which many non-Christian creeds—including Chinese and Hindu beliefs, seen as superstitious—were regarded.Footnote 91 David Omissi echoes claims made by contemporaries that it was at least partly due to the Indian Army that orthodox Sikhism was preserved and strengthened. Only Sikhs who had undergone the baptismal pahul ceremony could enlist,Footnote 92 and as soldiery offered reliable and honourable employment young men rapidly subscribed to orthodoxy: by 1900 young men were converting to Sikhism to increase their chances of being selected as soldiers.Footnote 93 Once in the army they were accompanied everywhere by the regiment's copy of the Granth, the Sikh holy book, and were obliged to observe the orthodoxy of the Khalsa. The British believed religion reinforced a strong esprit de corps, enhancing Sikh loyalty.
Although the Shanghai Municipal Police paid little attention to the religious needs of its early Sikh recruits, as their numbers grew the men successfully petitioned for a place of worship: a Gurdwara. In 1905 plans for the building were obtained from Hong Kong and subscriptions worth $8,000 were raised from the Sikh community (both Sikhs employed by the Shanghai Municipal Police and those employed privately as watchmen), demonstrating their desire for a place of worship. The Gurdwara opened in 1908 and became a place to meet as a community, to observe the rituals they were accustomed to practicing in Punjab, and, when one could be obtained, receive guidance from the Granthi, the religious leader (literally ‘reader of the Granth’).Footnote 94 The Council's hopes for the Gurdwara were less spiritually-minded. Its construction heralded an increasingly close adherence by the Shanghai Municipal Police to Indian Army practices in the management of Sikhs. Difficulties with the branch, in the form of strikes and Indian nationalism, resulted in the view that the only way to manage the men was to follow practice in India. Captain Alan Boisragon wrote that:
[the Gurdwara] will undoubtedly prove beneficial to the local Indians, in that it will provide a place of worship in proper conditions, will watch over their general conduct and ensure stricter adherence to the rules of their caste. It is an admitted fact that the further an Indian travels and settles the more easily and quickly does he deteriorate, morally and physically, and it is fully anticipated that by the establishment of this institution an effectual check will be placed on his general behaviour.Footnote 95
These hopes proved unfounded in subsequent years as troubles arose due to tensions between Sikh policemen and their counterparts outside the force, most of whom were watchmen, who reportedly insulted the police and failed to cooperate in running the Gurdwara through its committee. The insults may have been nationalist attacks on Sikhs serving the British, the imperialist rulers of India.
Tensions also existed within the Sikh Branch. In December 1912, Jemadar Dewa Singh was murdered by a Sikh constable in what was described as ‘one of the most serious blots upon the reputation of the Sikh community living in Shanghai which has ever occurred’.Footnote 96 The subsequent inquiry led to the conviction and execution of Narain Singh and the conclusion that the act was due to hostilities between two Sikh sects within the branch: the Jemadar, a Malwa, had been working to heal the rift between his group and the Majhas.Footnote 97 It was found necessary to open a separate Gurdwara solely for members of the Shanghai Municipal Police in 1916. This was done with much ceremony: Shanghai Municipal Council Chairman E. C. Pearce officially opened the building in the presence of the British Consul, Council members and other major figures of the Settlement.Footnote 98 Such ‘distinguished patronage’ demonstrates the significance attached to the religious well-being of the Sikh branch, in line with practice in the rest of India. Captain Superintendent Kenneth John McEuen (son of J. P. McEuen, who had overseen the introduction of Sikhs to the force) was happy to report that:
religious matters appear to be in a more healthy state among the Sikhs than has been the case during the last ten years. This is much more important than is apparent to the outside observer, as religion is a very strong factor in the everyday life of a Sikh.Footnote 99
In the following years both Gurdwaras were described as ‘flourishing’,Footnote 100 but they would again become a focus for political developments of serious concern to the Council as the problems in India flowed into Shanghai along the channels connecting the two.
Indian nationalism
Sikh loyalty was trusted wholeheartedly by the British at the outbreak of the First World War. More Sikhs than any other group of Indians fought in the conflict, and a 1916 letter from a Punjabi Inspector of Police to a Jemadar of the 6th Cavalry in France demonstrates why: ‘you are very fortunate in that you have got a chance to defend your country and serve the British Government’.Footnote 101 But as political opposition grew in India, the British feared Indian loyalty the world over would be eroded.
Shanghai was first affected in 1914 when the Kamogata Maru docked on its way to Vancouver in an abortive attempt to demand Sikh rights to Canadian citizenship.Footnote 102 This was the first major incident linked to the Ghadr movement,Footnote 103 based in San Francisco but spreading the message of self-determination around the world wherever there were Sikhs, including Shanghai. The Ghadr found some willing to listen: in 1916 a Lahore court found 106 men guilty of sedition, six of whom were former members of the Shanghai Municipal Police, dismissed at the time of the Kamogata Maru's docking in Shanghai.Footnote 104 Soon, with increased resentment of India's wartime sacrifices and post-war financial costs,Footnote 105 and the galvanizing 1919 Amritsar massacre, revolutionary nationalism took root. The Akali movement (1920–1925) became the first Sikh mass anti-government movement, but although Akali pressure on potential candidates not to enlist affected Shanghai Municipal Police recruitment,Footnote 106 disaffection was slow to reach Shanghai's Sikhs. McEuen reported:
The political situation in the Punjab has been extremely grave during 1922, but it was only towards the end of the year that the Sikhs in Shanghai realised the position of affairs in their own country. It is no exaggeration that the Sikh nation, from being the most loyal of all Indian nations, has for the time being become the most disaffected.Footnote 107
The Ghadr newspaper was distributed in China from 1914 and possession of seditious material became an offence punishable by dismissal from the Shanghai Municipal Police.Footnote 108 Papers depicting Indian nationalists in chains were found in Sikh police barracks in 1923, so from the following year Sikh constables were required to sign a promise to abstain from all ‘political controversy’.Footnote 109 They could not fail, however, to be affected by the local and regional growth in nationalism.
Fears of anti-British activism meant closer surveillance of Sikh activities, with the formation in 1927 of an Indian Section of the Criminal Investigation Department.Footnote 110 Sikhs were similarly used in surveillance in Malaya, owing to the higher degree of trust placed in them by the British compared with other nationalities.Footnote 111 The British shared intelligence about Indian nationalism across the imperial networks which spanned the empire. Sikhs were of invaluable assistance in intelligence work in Shanghai with their knowledge of the Indian community and its vernaculars, but for these men such surveillance of their fellow countrymen cannot have been easy. The danger they faced is demonstrated by the request of three men transferred from the Special Branch to retain their firearms for at least a month after returning to uniform as they feared for their safety following their surveillance activities.Footnote 112
By 1929 the Indian Section of Shanghai's Criminal Investigation Department held 2,000 photographs and 1,000 biographies of Indians in Shanghai, approximately two-thirds of the total Indian population, including 125 men suspected of ‘sedition’. Detailed records and the knowledge of Indian vernaculars of the Sikhs who worked in the Criminal Investigation Department enabled comprehensive intelligence of the Indian community outside the police, the entirety of which was viewed with suspicion. Indian nationalists were thought to be encouraged by Chinese nationalism, particularly the May Thirtieth movement, to promote their own anti-British cause. McEuen was convinced, however, that good conditions of employment and the influence of loyal older officers would ensure the branch's reliability. The following autumn the men justified his confidence with their efforts to control local hostilities, which ‘threw a good deal of extra work on the Branch. This however was carried out with the utmost cheerfulness, the Sikhs, as always, proving to be at their best when faced with a situation of this description’.Footnote 113 Yet British confidence in Sikhs which, since they had proved their loyalty in 1857, was a comfort to the British community in Shanghai, was becoming increasingly insecure as both Chinese and Indian nationalisms were growing in the 1920s.
Sikh policemen were again used for surveillance work when the Gurdwara became the focus of nationalist violence in April 1928. The Criminal Investigation Department Indian Section's duties expanded into attending Gurdwara meetings and the censorship of circulating literature, correspondence to and from Indian prisoners of Amoy Road Gaol, and Indian-language books in the prison library. Records were kept on Indians leaving Shanghai and detailed enquiries were made into the background of Indians applying to work for the Shanghai Municipal Police.Footnote 114 These duties gradually passed over to Special Branch Section Four, which also employed Sikh constables. This Section often acted on information and requests from the Delhi Criminal Investigation Department,Footnote 115 once more demonstrating the colonial network of which Shanghai was a part and, moreover, the ways in which ties between the informal and formal empire were strengthened in response to threats such as Indian nationalism.
Despite its usefulness for surveillance, concerns about the wisdom of contributing to the Indian population in Shanghai brought the existence of the Sikh branch into question. In 1930 eight members of the branch were arrested for possession of anti-British literature distributed by the Indian Youth League.Footnote 116 They were dismissed but remained in Shanghai, and anti-British activities continued. It was decided in 1930 that the Sikh branch, too great a liability, would ‘be gradually reduced with a view to its eventual abolition’.Footnote 117 Events thwarted such plans for a quiet end to Sikh duties.
War
The Second World War both tightened and severed the networks and connections which had grown up throughout the world over the preceding decades. Britain mobilized the forces of the empire for the war effort at the same time as links between different parts of the formal and informal empire were cut. In Shanghai, the Japanese occupation of the Chinese-administered areas of the city from 1937, and especially the occupation of the foreign settlements from December 1941, gave anti-British members of the Sikh Branch an opportunity to take significant action against their employers. After the war the British Government declared that the majority of the 3,000 Indians in China had remained loyal during the occupation, some assisting the Allies, and of those who aided the Japanese, many had little choice.Footnote 118 Some, however, actively opposed British interests before and during the Japanese occupation. Opposing the British in Shanghai became an act of Indian nationalism sanctioned by the new Provisional Government of Free India, but the long faith in the loyalty of Sikhs noted above made this particularly hard for the British to bear. American interrogation of three Sikh prisoners of war revealed that they had belonged to the Shanghai Municipal Police before being sent to Saigon by the Japanese in 1942, where they found their way into the Indian National Army and fought against the Allies.Footnote 119 Sikh transnational mobility was now a source of danger for the British.
The Axis powers recognized the potential of undermining British support among their Indian subjects early on. The Indian Army was important within the British armed forces and destabilizing it was of clear benefit to an enemy of Britain. Moreover, if the loyalty of the sub-continent were damaged, British attention would be diverted from the war in Europe, to German advantage. Propaganda was therefore targeted at Indians in China through pamphlets and radio broadcasts. The British responded, fighting the war of words with daily news bulletins—on paper and broadcast via radio—and public screenings of pro-British films in Gurmukhi and Urdu.Footnote 120 There had long been concern that the presence of so many ‘martial’ Sikhs and other Indians in non-British territory might give rise to a situation where British imperial subjects would fight for an enemy of Britain,Footnote 121 but for the first time this had become a real possibility and the British in Shanghai did their best to prevent it.
Japanese control of the Shanghai Municipal Council tightened until, in August 1943, the administration of the International Settlement was formally handed over to the Special Municipality in puppet Chinese hands. British and American civilians were interned, but Indians were not; indeed, some Sikh policemen became camp guards in positions of power over their former employers. A small minority abused this power, and following the Allied victory an investigation was held into alleged war crimes committed by Kartar Singh and Bhola Singh, both police constables, in 1943. They were accused of torturing Chief Inspector W. Hutton and fellow policeman J. M. Watson for attempting to communicate with groups outside the internment camp.Footnote 122 Beaten and imprisoned for ten days with no water and just an occasional bowl of rice to eat, Hutton died and Watson required hospitalization. The accused were released in April 1948 as the deadline for war crime convictions passed, producing an outcry in Shanghai and Hong Kong. In response the case was reopened and the two Sikhs were convicted and jailed in Hong Kong in December of that year.Footnote 123 It signified a difficult final chapter for the branch that had been an object of British pride for decades.
In the last months of the war, the services of the remaining Sikhs on the force were terminated and they were repatriated following the surrender of Japan in August 1945.Footnote 124 There were not enough ships to take them all to India immediately, and the cost of passage soared in response to the high demand: there was little desire to stay in Shanghai. The majority had left by mid-December, with aid from the Government of India.Footnote 125 This was an unhappy finale to the history of the Sikh branch. Coming to Shanghai to seize the opportunities afforded by the webs of empire emanating from India, they became caught in the politics of war. Following the war, the International Settlement which they had helped police for so long no longer existed and there was no role for Indian policemen on the streets of Shanghai. The Indian face of the British presence in Shanghai was dead, along with its imperial pretentions.
Conclusion
The Sikh policemen of Shanghai, an understudied site of Sikh migration, were powerful symbols of British imperial might in a city on the periphery of the empire. The history of the branch presented here illustrates the ways in which the informal empire of Shanghai's International Settlement overlapped with the formal British empire, and the extent of the influence of India's ‘sub-imperialism’ on colonial policing. The ‘webs of empire’ were evident in the networks of men like Captain Barrett who linked policing in Shanghai to the police and armed forces of British India, and in recruitment in cooperation with the Government of India. ‘Webs of empire’ were also evident in the consular networks which shared concern over events such as the proposed expansion of the branch in 1906, and intelligence networks united in their battle against Indian nationalism. They also extended to the networks of Sikhs themselves who communicated the pay that was obtainable in different corners of the British world and joined to varying degrees the growing tide of Indian nationalism. The Raj—the ‘jewel’ in the imperial Crown—and Britain's informal empire in China's treaty-ports, came together in the ubiquitous figure of the Sikh constable on point duty, dealing with rickshaws and cars in an attempt to bring order to the chaotic streets of Shanghai. Moreover, exploring the Sikh community reminds us of the variegated nature of the ‘British’ enterprise in China, which was always multi-racial. British-protected subjects in China included Sikh and other Indian nationals, as well as Straits Settlement Chinese and Eurasians.
This is not an exhaustive survey. It is confined to Sikh police in Shanghai rather than including those in other treaty ports in China, which would be a fruitful source of comparison if space permitted. Explicit Sikh voices are absent due to a lack of written records left by the men themselves and the fact that for long periods there was no one else in the police force who understood their language. It has been possible to convey some of their responses to their situation in China at certain times, such as when they went on strike, but this is an initial outline of the history of the Sikh branch and more work remains to be done. What has been achieved here is an exploration of the institutional rationale behind employing Sikhs to police Shanghai, and the ways in which they exemplify the way different parts of the formal and informal empire intersected, which has only just begun to be appreciated.
Employed to serve the three-fold purpose of economy, defence and display, Sikhs were found on every street corner ensuring the smooth-running of the Settlement traffic. Police constables in any society are among the primary representatives of the state to the ordinary individual. Thus the Sikhs of treaty-port Shanghai were symbols of the British community's power over the Chinese population and of British predominance within an international settlement, and have since assumed iconic status. Their importance in the history of Shanghai, due not least to their role in the shooting of 30 May 1925, guarantee them an enduring legacy. Racist characterizations of the Sikhs have proved long-lasting, and today in both Chinese public memory and foreign popular culture they are the most famous of treaty-port Shanghai's foreign communities, supplanting the British who brought them from India as the defining feature of foreign imperialism in China.
