nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47Akbar Khan’s feats employing the same poetic metre as the Shah Nama. 43
Today Afghan historians still portray Dost Muhammad Khan as one of
Afghanistan’s greatest rulers, while the Afghan capital’s diplomatic quarter
bears the name of Wazir Akbar Khan.
In Britain, politicians who had promoted and supported the invasion
now had to face the consequences of their flawed policies. Peel’s recently
elected Tory government did all it could to play down the shambles, for
while in Opposition they had supported the invasion. The Whigs, who
were now sitting on the Opposition benches, were also reluctant to use the
issue against the government for it had been their prime minister who had
taken Britain into the war. As such ‘both parties had more to bury than to
flourish’. 44 Inevitably, the British political and military establishment closed
ranks and sought scapegoats to save their own careers. Palmerston, now
in Opposition, adopted his usual policy of stonewalling, refusing to admit
his government’s Indus policy had been a disaster and stoutly defending
the decision to go to war. Disraeli, from the Tory back benches, tried to
blame Hobhouse, President of the Board of Control, accusing him of ‘pure
trickery and fraud’ for omitting or suppressing sections of the dispatches
from Afghanistan. 45 Hobhouse, however, refused to be the whipping boy
and mounted such a spirited defence of his position in Parliament that he
won the day.
Auckland came in for the most bitter criticism, despite the fact that he
had resigned as Governor General before the disaster in Kabul. However,
as he was still at sea on his way back to England when the massacre took
place, he was in no position to answer his critics. It was only after he
landed that he heard of the destruction of the Kabul garrison and dis -
covered that the press, politicians, the Governor General’s Council as well
as the Board of Control were trying to pin the blame on him. The Board
of Control even wrote to London claiming that Auckland had kept them
in the dark over the situation in Afghanistan. As for Ellenborough, who
replaced Auckland as Governor General and whose Indus policy had led
to the Afghan intervention in the first place, he publicly repudiated the
actions of his predecessor. This unpleasant denunciation created such
bitterness that the long-standing friendship between the Law and Eden
families ended abruptly.
Remarkably, no heads rolled either in London or Calcutta and indeed
the political careers of those chiefly responsible for the Indus policy and
the Afghan debacle continued uninterrupted. After losing the 1841 election,
Melbourne faded from political life but in 1843 Auckland became First
Lord of the Admiralty; Ellenborough was appointed as the new Governor