Sir Henry Marion Durand was the one of the Lieutenant Governors of Punjab in undivided India under the rule of the British Empire. He was one of the foremost British colonial administrators and a soldier of British India. He was born in the year 1812 and received training at the Military Seminary of the British East India Company at Addiscombe from 1827 to 1828. Henry Durand went to British India from Britain in May 1830. Initially he served as the Second Lieutenant in the Bengal Engineers. Later Durand was promoted to the rank of Major General. He served in the First Afghan War, which was held from 1839 to 1842, and the Second Anglo Sikh War from 1848 to 1849.
Sir Henry Marion Durand also served as the Commissioner of Tenasserim from the year 1844 to 1846. Eventually he was appointed as the Political Agent of the princely state of Gwalior, as one of the foremost Residents of British India. He served in the position from 1849 to 1852. Durand also became the Acting Resident of Baroda from March 1852 to March 1854. During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, also known as the Great Revolt of 1857, he acted as a military commander in western Malwa. Henry Marion Durand was finally appointed as the Lieutenant Governor of British Punjab. He served in office from 1 June 1870 to 1 January 1871.
Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, his son, served in the British Indian Civil Service and later in the British diplomatic service. Henry Marion Durand died on 31 December 1871. He was killed by Abdul Ur Rahim while passing on an elephant under a gateway in the city of Tonk (now in Pakistan). He was buried in a Church in Dera Ismail Khan in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
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