New Delhi: Alumni of Delhi’s University’s Hindu College have initiated plans to restore the nearly 200-year-old derelict Skinner’s Haveli at Kashmere Gate, to where their alma mater had shifted in 1908, until moving permanently to its present campus location 48 years later.

The renovation of this once-grand mansion built by James Skinner, the British East India Company (EIC)’s swashbuckling Anglo-Indian cavalryman, musketeer and adventurer, is being undertaken by the Hindu College Old Students Association (HOSA) in tandem with the Aga Khan Foundation to mark the college’s 125th anniversary.

According to the Hindustan Times, the Haveli’s refurbishment will include erecting a cafe, a public library, an exhibition gallery and a landscaped courtyard, amongst other sundry additions to the near-dilapidated structure.

In its April 19 report, the newspaper quoted Bhawana Dandona, the architect tasked with the refit, and HOSA office bearers involved in the project, as saying that the undertaking’s principal aim was to “carve out a corner of calm and cultural engagement” that “re-connects with the city’s history while remaining relevant to the present”.

However, few in Delhi, even in the old city, an area abounding in medieval history and where Kashmere Gate is located adjoining the Inter-State Bus Terminus, have scant knowledge of either Skinner or the majestic colonnaded Haveli with massive arches and pavilions that he built on a five-acre plot, adjoining St James’s Church, one of the capital’s oldest and which is still in active service.

Modelled on the majestic St Paul’s Cathedral in London, the Anglican St James’s Church was constructed by Skinner as a gesture of gratitude for surviving a musket ball injury to his chest in the Battle of Malpura near Alwar between Marathas and Rajputs in 1800.

Then fighting for Scindia, the Maratha ruler, Skinner was left for dead on the battlefield and lay wounded for several days, during which he vowed to build a church in thankfulness if he survived.

He vindicated his pledge years later in 1836 and was eventually buried on his directive beside the church’s altar five years later, in 1841.

He did this so that people could trample over him and help him atone for his sins, particularly his involvement in a lifetime of mercenary activity, incessant warring and unremitting violence.

The front of the St James’s Church in Delhi. Photo: Amanraj04/Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Skinner’s burial spot also serves as a poignant reminder of his complex, flamboyant and fascinating legacy that survives to this day in the Indian Army in the form of 1 Horse – or Skinner’s Horse – a distinguished cavalry regiment, bloodied in numerous battles like the Sikh and Afghan Wars and the 1899-1901 Boxer rebellion in China.

Thereafter, armed with Stuart tanks, it was part of the Allied North Africa campaign during World War II and after India’s independence, 1 Horse acquitted itself ably in conflicts with Pakistan, much like Skinners original horse cavalry.

Skinner and his younger brother Robert were the sons of Lieutenant Colonel Hercules Skinner from Aberdeen in Scotland and Jeany, a Rajput noblewoman who, in all likelihood, was part of the Scotsman’s ‘war loot’ from an EIC campaign.

The siblings were raised at army camps across India, as the Company steadily expanded its hegemonic footprint across the country, and at a young age became skilled riders, swordsmen and archers and adept at wielding lances and muskets.

James was initially apprenticed to a printer in Calcutta, but found the work unappealing and ran away after just three days to take up odd jobs in the local bazaar, before being found and brought back home. He then worked in a law office, copying legal documents, but remained dissatisfied with these clerical roles, as his prime ambition was to become a soldier or sailor.

Along with his brother, James then applied to join the EIC army, but both were rejected on grounds of being Eurasian – or mixed parentage – and hence untrustworthy.

Peeved by narrow British attitudes, the two brothers joined Scindia’s ascendant Maratha army headquartered at Gwalior as ensigns to pursue their military aspirations.

At the time Scindia, warring furiously and successfully with the EIC over territorial control of central and northern India, employed a host of accomplished French mercenaries like Count Benoit de Boigne and General Pierre Cuillier-Perron, seeking their fortunes in distant and turbulent lands like Hindustan.

These illustrious soldiers-of-fortune had successfully organised their Maratha chieftain’s forces along disciplined European army lines, and the two Skinner brothers, especially James, with their small, swift and well-knit band of committed cavalrymen, fitted in perfectly with this arrangement and, over the years, prevailed frequently over numerically superior EIC forces.

After fighting innumerable major and minor battles during this hugely disturbed period of Indian history in the late 18th century, the Marathas, by now plagued by internecine rivalries, were convincingly defeated by Viscount General Gerard Lake, whose campaigns were central to the EIC’s territorial expansion and consolidation.

Thereafter, Skinner found himself out of work, essentially a soldier without a cause or patron, but with an awesome reputation as James Sikandar or Warrior.

Fate, however, intervened and recognising Skinner’s fabled soldierly talent, leadership and familiarity with both Indian and European military systems, Lake personally invited the mercenary adventurer brothers and their ‘irregular’ cavalry to join the EIC army.

Men of the Skinner’s Horse cavalry. Photo: John Reynolds Gwatkin/Wikimedia Commons.

They agreed, but James laid down two conditions: first, that they never be asked to fight their former employer Scindia or his descendants as they had ‘eaten Maratha salt’, and second, that they be permitted to choose their leader.

Because of the Skinners’ awesome reputation, Lake agreed and the men unanimously chose Burra Sikandar – the older James – as their chief.

The EIC then accorded him some 200 villages around Hansi, near Hisar in modern-day Haryana, as part of a scheme mirroring the 16th-century Mughal mansabdari system, under which noblemen and officials were assigned jagirs (land rights) to collect revenue and pay for cavalrymen or infantrymen, or both, recruited to fight for their patrons.

Consequently Skinner, with income from his Hansi land endowments, subsidised ‘irregular’ cavalry units which then victoriously served the EIC in numerous wars.

And, while choosing his regimental uniform, Skinner was inspired by his mother’s Rajput heritage, whereby a prince riding out into battle vowed to return victorious or die fighting.

His formidable sowars would anoint their faces with saffron, the colour of martyrdom, and don yellow robes over their armour, which was tied with a yellow sash. Skinner chose yellow tunics as the regimental colour and every horseman recruited swore never to return from battle unless triumphant.

Through numerous campaigns, Skinner’s ‘Yellow Devils’, as they came to be known, lived up to their fierce reputation and were the dreaded scourge of the battlefield with their war cry of ‘Himmat-i-mardan, madad-i-khuda [God helps those who have the courage]’.

Till the early 1840s, Skinner – fluent in Persian, Hindustani and English and deeply immersed in both European and Indian traditions and lifestyles – was also the head of a group of aristocratic Eurasians living in great style and opulence in Delhi.

He built his Church and adjoining Haveli in classic style with high columns and colonnades, entertained lavishly and maintained an impressive harem, according to numerous historical accounts.

Amusingly, he is also credited with mentoring the hugely popular and quaint practice of hookah smoking at bacchanalian soirees in his Haveli.

During Skinner’s time, smoking hookahs was a trendy status symbol not only amongst Indian nabobs but also Britons, who sponsored numerous ‘Hook-Clubs’ across north India.

Having a personal hookah-burdar (servant who prepared the hookah) for a nobleman, zamindar or soldier like Skinner was a sign of high prestige.

Beyond his military endeavours, Skinner was also a patron of the arts and commissioned numerous artworks, including portraits of Hindu deities, and supported various religious institutions, reflecting his commitment to preserving and promoting Indian culture.

 

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He also built Sikandar Hall, a baronial mansion in Mussoorie, which is no longer in the family’s possession.

And interestingly one of Skinner’s direct descendants, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Skinner, who died in Surrey in the UK in 1999, commanded Skinner’s Horse between 1960-63.

Sixteen years after Skinner died at Hansi, his Haveli suffered damage from canon and musket fire during the 1857 rebellion or First War Of Indian Independence, as well as from looting by rebels. At the time, Kashmere Gate was one of the seven gates leading to Delhi’s walled city and the Red Fort, the symbolic heart of the rebellion, and witnessed bitter street-to-street fighting. The Gate also housed a vital British armoury, which the rebels first targeted, causing Skinner’s Haveli extensive damage.

In the late 19th century, this Haveli was acquired by Rai Bahadur Sultan Singh, the treasurer of the Imperial Bank of India, from Skinner’s family and he executed numerous modifications to it to suit his needs and those of his business. Subsequently, in 1908, the haveli became the location of Hindu College, founded nine years earlier in Chandni Chowk’s Kinnari bazaar by Krishna Dass Gurwale, but gradually fell into disrepair and became a victim of patchwork restoration and repair work.

Over time, much of the original structure was lost due to neglect and unauthorised constructions and presently only stray fragments remain of the original architecture.

But the imminent restoration of Colonel Skinner’s Haveli’s will, doubtlessly, remind Delhiites of this soldier of mixed Anglo-Indian descent who with unmatched grit carved his name into history with steel and saddle, founding a cavalry that outlived empires and still deploys under the Indian flag.