People's Democracy

The Battle For Delhi: Myths Of The ‘Mutiny’ And The Construction Of The Raj

Madhu Prasad

ON the morning of May 11, 1857, the rebellious sepoys and sawars from Meerut entered the city of Delhi and were joined by their counterparts in the city. One of the early targets of the rebels was the Delhi College located in the Residency buildings. The rebels sacked the library of the college and killed its British principal. Their anger was said to have been fuelled by the fact that the college provided European learning and promoted the study and use of English. Widely reported in the local press and in British reports, this incident epitomised British portrayal of the ‘mutiny’ as a fight between ruthless, unlettered natives and a civilising British power.

However, in this as in many other instances, conditions in Delhi, and most of northern India, during and after the Revolt of 1857 tell quite a different story. Reports by British officials, and accounts by Indians who supported their growing power, provide enough evidence to conclude that facts were neither as simple as the constructs of the victors, nor were they particularly flattering to the British.

In the first place, the college was a unique institution where both oriental learning and European sciences had been enthusiastically studied for three decades as they were taught in the vernacular Urdu medium. Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit were studied and English was also taught. James Thomason, Visitor to the Delhi and Agra Colleges and later Lt Governor of the North-Western Provinces, recognised that the Delhi College occupied “a prominent part in the eyes of a large and influential section of the native community, whom it is most important to convince of our liberality and sincerity.” He complained about changes in the official educational policy, implemented after Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 but already articulated in an 1830 despatch of the company’s Directors, of downgrading and discouraging the study of the classical languages, literature and sciences of the east by withdrawing student stipends and, in the case of the Delhi College, of trying to promote an ‘education in English’ by fraudulently siphoning off funds from the oriental institution’s large private endowment. Secondly, although it was stated at the end of June that “English books” from the sacked library “are lying in the streets still” [Annals of the Indian Rebellion, p216], it was equally significant that “many of the Oriental works were recovered after the outbreak was quelled”. [Punjab Gazetter, Delhi District 1884, p152]. Finally, many students and teachers of the college supported the rebels and were sympathetic to their cause. Consequently, the college was shut and ultimately closed down by British authorities. During the weeks of terror that followed the defeat of the revolt, many students and prominent scholars were either exiled or killed by British forces, including the renowned Persian scholar Imam Baksh Sehbai who was shot along with his two sons in the infamous Kucha Chellan incident in which fourteen hundred persons lost their lives. [Zahir Dehlavi’s Dastan-e-Ghadar in S N Sen: Eighteen Fifty-Seven. Publications Division, Govt of India. New Delhi, 1959. p116]

DUAL PURPOSE IN TARGETING THE COLLEGE

The rebels had targeted the college not because they were unlettered but because it was part of the Company’s complex of public buildings in the Kashmiri Gate area that one of the first columns to enter the city was required to disable. The rebels were, of course, opposed to British domination and the promotion of English as an instrument in that policy of domination. It served the dual purpose of rendering the learned elite redundant, while at the same time aimed at creating a class of lower level native functionaries to occupy the subordinate posts open to them in the British administration. In fact, the rebel attitude towards Christians also requires to be understood within this complex framework and not simplistically interpreted as evidence of ‘fanaticism’. “Christians were allowed not only to preach but to found religious establishments in India and Persia, before their faith became a formidable political power in the hands of alien and usurping races from the west.” [W H Russell: My Diary in India in the year 1858-59, Vol 2, p269]. The Mughal state comprised a reliable and professional imperial elite at the center, and co-operating regional aristocracies elsewhere. The Mughals observed a ruling ethos that led to the emergence of a cross-communal service class. Akbar’s descendants continued with his legacy of drawing upon differentiated symbols of legitimacy. Standards were aristocratic rather than communal. Among the elite, communalism was regarded as bad manners. [Henny Sender: “Kashmiri Pandits and the Culture of Delhi” in Delhi Through the Ages: Essays in Urban History, Culture and Society. Ed R E Frykenberg, p322.] Consequently, there was a tradition of well-informed debate about non-Islamic religion and culture among the learned elite and this had a significant effect on the socio-political environment of the city.

This was much in evidence during the period when the rebels held the city. “Though the great majority of the parties (27 of the leading officers of the rebels at Delhi) were Hindoos, it is worthy of remark that they style the King of Delhi as their ‘spiritual as well as secular’ leader.” The King and the leaders of the rebellion consciously nurtured this unity. The celebrated incident when the Emperor banned the sacrifice of cattle at eid on August 1st, and the troops and administrators were able to enforce it totally, was the source of great de-moralisation for the British camp on the Ridge. In an apparent move to dampen the over-zealous ardour of a section of extremists, “some of the 3rd Cavalry made the fanatics in the Jama Masjid take part in the fight today. Many were killed and wounded.” [Translation of Delhi News. Futteh Mohumed. September 12, 1857]. Renowned mathematician and early Christian covert, Professor Ramchandra of the Delhi College, bore witness to this unity, contrasting it with British racism, in his complaint to the military authority after the city was taken by British forces: “there is hardly any comfort remaining, when a native Christian is in danger from Christian officers themselves merely because he was not born in England and had not a white skin. This was not the case even among the rebels in Delhie who were professors of false religion. A Mahomedan or a Hindoo was received as a brother among them”.

UNPARALLELED DEVASTATION

Even the myth of rebel ‘excesses’ pales in comparison with the unparalleled murder, plunder and loot with which British forces, who occupied Delhi on September 20, 1857, devastated a city that had rivalled Baghdad as a centre of intellectual and cultural life.

A communication from one ‘Sunt Nana’, dated MHOW, November 21, 1857, refers to “a letter from my father (which) gives an insight into the miserable and wretched condition the inhabitants of Delhi have been put to.- . . . . A general plunder of the town seems to have followed a general bombardment, and the news formerly received were that the whole townspeople were allowed one rough night to escape barely with life . . . . families scattered over the face of the country – mothers separated from children, husbands from wives and so on. . . . .no one ever thought the capture of Delhi by Englishmen would be attended with more cruelty than that by a Nadir (Shah).”

Ghalib bemoaned the fate of Delhi. “When the raging lion-hearts set foot in the city, they held it lawful to slaughter the helpless and burn the houses, and indeed, in every territory taken by force of arms these are the sufferings that people must endure. At the naked spectacle of this vengeful wrath and malevolent hatred the colour fled from men’s faces, and a vast concourse of men and women, past all computing, owning much or owning nothing, took to precipitate flight through these three gates (the Ajmeri, the Turcoman and the Delhi gates which were still held by the rebels).” [Quoted in Ralph Russell and Khurshid ul Islam. Three Moghul Poets, p 67-8]

“In the city no man’s life was safe”, said Moinuddin Khan, “all able-bodied men who were seen were. . .shot.” [Sir T Metcalfe: Two Native Narratives of the Seige of Delhi from Outbreak at Meerut to the Capture of Delhi] The Delhi Commisioner’s wife, Mrs Saunders, corroborates this in a letter dated October 25, 1857 [Saunders Papers]: “For several days after the assault every native that could be found was killed by the soldiers; women and children were spared.” However, C J Griffiths writes that Clifford, Asst. Collector at Gurgaon, personally informed him that at the fall of Delhi “he had put to death all he had come across, not excepting women and children.”

Professor Ramchandra, who had refused the post of native headmaster at Thomason College, Roorkee, several months before the rebellion because of a “constant and sincere wish to remain in Delhie”, now gratefully accepted the opportunity to escape from the city, as “there is no power in Delhie and natives of every description are suffering and are in danger every moment.”

The people of Delhi had expiated many times over, the ‘crimes’ of the rebels. “Tens of thousands of men, women and children were wandering, for no crime, homeless over the country. What they had left behind was lost to them forever; for the soldiers going from house to house and from street to street, ferreted out every article of value, and smashed to pieces whatever they could not carry away. A Military Governor had been appointed; but he could do little to restrain the passions of those who surrounded him. Natives were brought forward in batches to be tried by a Military Commission or by Special Commissioners, each one of whom had been invested by the Supreme Government with full powers of life and death. These judges were in no mood to show mercy. Almost all who were tried were condemned; and almost all who were condemned were sentenced to death. A four-square gallows was erected in a conspicuous place in the city; and five or six culprits were hanged every day. English officers used to sit by, puffing at their cigars, and look on at the convulsive struggles of the victims.” [T Rice Holmes, A History of the Indian Mutiny and of the disturbances which accompanied it among the civil population, p397-8]

William Russell, an early war correspondent who arrived in India in January 1858 on a year’s assignment for The Times, made the following entry in his Diary on June 5, 1858, “I found myself in the ruined streets of a deserted city, in which every house bore the marks of cannon or musket shot, or the traces of the hand of the spoiler. . . . I could scarcely believe that I was in a city which is described by an old traveler as being ‘of the bigness of London, Paris and Amsterdam together, and of an incomparable greater population and riches’.” [W H Russell. 1860. Vol 2, p53] Returning from a picnic to the Qutab Minar four days later, Russell saw “in the full glare of the morning the miserable sheds, in which the outcast population of the city, forbidden to return to their homes, are now forced to live, . . .For miles they stretch along the roadside. More squalid and vile nought can be, save the wretched creatures who haunt them – once perhaps rich bunneahs, merchants and shopkeepers.” [ibid. p77]

When they were allowed back, it was “decided that every citizen who desired to return should pay a fine, but there should be a discrimination in the rate on a communal basis. While the Muslim had to pay a fine equivalent to 25 per cent of the value of his real property, the Hindu was required to pay 15 per cent less.”

The Prize Agents held that the whole city had by conquest become the property of the Army and hence legitimate ‘prize’. This extraordinary doctrine, despite some feeble protests and appeals for limitation, held for three full months! Suggestions that “no parties be employed by them, without consent of Col. Burn (Military Governor of Delhi) and that such parties should be furnished with a license by that officer” serve only to emphasize the impunity with which the city was being ransacked. Burn himself complained to General N Penny, commanding the Delhi Field Force, that “. . .several parties under European Commissioned officers have, during the last few days, been searching for plunder within the city. . . .Even the Sabbath brings no rest to either plunderer or plundered.” On October 24, 1857 Burn reports that “loss of property from plunder by our soldiers or from its wanton destruction is estimated at the large sum of two crores of rupees”, yet even by January 15, 1858, “not more than 15 lakhs have been, or will be realized by the Prize Agents”. Penny, in a telegram dated November 25, 1857 to John Lawerence in the Punjab, reports that “prolonged search (for treasure) by digging is continued to the danger of houses”. On December 12, Lawrence enquires from Delhi Commissioner, Saunders: “Is private plundering still allowed? Do officers still go about shooting natives?” [Saunders Papers].

INCREDIBLE PLUNDER

The myth that plunder was the work of native troops doesn’t stand up to evidence. Even the property of Englishmen, retrieved from rebels and local bad characters, was not spared and thousands of rupees were said to have been pilfered from the government treasury by English soldiers of the 60th and 61st Rifles while on guard duty. “Had you seen their wives come to Church, dressed in the most gorgeous of silks. . .with French bonnets you would have known they never bought them out of their husbands pay.” [Statement of Capt. Tytler. An English Woman in India: Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828-1858. Ed Anthony Sattin, p171.] “That many of the private soldiers of my regiment succeeded in acquiring a great quantity of valuable plunder was fully demonstrated soon after our arrival in England. An unusual number of non-commissioned officers and men bought their discharge, having during three years kept possession of the plunder acquired at Delhi awaiting a favourable opportunity for the sale of the articles. Many jewellers shops in the town we were quartered exposed for sale in the windows ornaments and trinkets of unmistakeable Eastern workmanship. …

The plunder daily being found in the city. . .is almost incredible. I fancy every officer present at the siege might be able to retire at once.” [Report of an Asst. Surgeon. Sir William Muir: Records of the Intelligence Department, Govt. of North-Western Provinces of India during the Mutiny of 1857, ed. Coldstream. Vol.1. p239]. British officers also used their servants to acquire and transport plunder of value. Russell sardonically comments that “this is better than the way in which another officer is said to have got some precious stones. . .as a result of a sharp fight with one of our own Sikhs.” [W H Russell. 1860.Vol.2 p39]

Among the prize were manuscripts, rare and valuable manuscripts that any power with claims to a ‘civilizing mission’ should have been careful to exempt from prize property in order to protect and preserve them. Instead, the following advertisement appeared in the newspapers on July 29, 1858:

“By Order of the Prize Agents, Delhi Field Force will be sold by auction at Delhi on the 1st September, 1858, 17,000 volumes in Vernacular, many of them illuminated. Comprising works on Theology, Medicine and General Literature. The above have been carefully assorted and catalogued and may be viewed any day prior to the sale at the house of BHAWANEE SUNKER, Chandney Chooke. J H KERR INNES, Prize Agent.” Lieut. W N Lees, Secretary to the Board of Examiners at Calcutta, drew the attention of the Governor General to the advertisement, stating that it “adverts to the very great value set upon oriental manuscripts by the European nations, England being the sole exception, and begs that the Governor General maybe moved to purchase for the state any manuscript of value which the above collection may contain or the whole.” “Some 4,700 MSS” were eventually acquired. The services of a good scholar were required to classify and catalogue them. As always, “the cheapest and most expeditious means of accomplishing the task. . .(was) to direct the Arabic Librarian of the (Calcutta) Mohamedan College, with the assistance of 2 of the senior students, to attend at the College for 3 to 4 hours. . .(for) six months.” Approval for a “trifling and reasonable” payment, covering only palki fare both ways for the librarian and one way for the students, did not fail to carry the warning that Lees should personally ensure that none of the manuscripts were stolen in the course of the cataloguing!

Lees was apparently one of that small but rapidly diminishing group of administrators, somewhat derisively termed the ‘orientalists’, who did not always go along with the then prevalent official denigration of an ancient and still vibrant culture. The early ‘orientalist’ strategy adopted by the Company in the late 18th century when the Calcutta Madrasa for instruction in Arabic and Persian was established by Warren Hastings in 1781, and the Benaras Sanskrit College by Jonathan Duncan in 1791, reflected the fragile base of British presence in India. Hastings had preferred to rely on an elite corps of acculturated British officials, who through their knowledge and sympathetic understanding of Indian institutions, laws and customs, would exercise power in the manner of traditional rulers. “The early servants of the East India Company perfectly understood their position; and when they first took over the Provinces, they left the Muhammadan administration absolutely undisturbed. They retained the Mughal code as the law of the land and appointed Muhammadan law officers to carry it out, and in the smallest matter, as in the greatest, acted merely in the name of the Mughal Emperor of Dehli.” [W W Hunter: The Indian Musalmans: Are they bound in conscience to rebel against the Queen? London 1871. p185-7]

However, the first half of the 19th century saw a concerted assault from evangelists, on the one hand, and utilitarian reformers on the other, that resulted in a deep contempt of Indian sensibilities and culture. It coincided with attempts by the Company, which had so far functioned within traditional forms of governance and recognised the authority of the Imperial presence at Delhi, to shed the shackles of this dependence and establish itself as an independent power. As a result, beginning with the Vellore incidents of 1806, a chain of disaffected, mutinous actions occurred in the Bengal Army across the country. “Almost all mutinies of India. . .have been more or less produced. . . .There has usually been some departure from contract, some disregard for the feelings, health or convenience of the native soldiers, when at the same moment the utmost care was lavished on a European regiment;” [The Mutiny in the Bengal Army by a Retired Officer. London, 1857. p4]. They were usually put down with brutality.

[To be continued]