Date: March 29, 1857—place:
Barrackpore in the Bengal division. "The
34th BNI had a British Sergeant Major, Hewson by name,
attached to it, and he was told that a sepoy by the name of Mangal
Pandey had come out of the lines with his musket loaded, which was
against standing orders. In turn he informed the adjutant Lieutenant
Baugh. Hewson and Baugh found Mangal Pandey outside the quarter guard
calling on his comrades to help him strike a blow for their religion: he
fired at Baugh and brought down his horse, and then took on both Hewson
and Baugh with his tulwar and was a match for them both. The Sepoy was
clearly under the influence of some drug, although he was previously of
good character. The guard of twenty sepoys looked on unconcerned, only
one Sheikh Paltu, came to the aid of the Europeans and held Mangal
Pandey while they escaped. Colonel Wheeler of the 34th came
up and ordered the guard to arrest the mutineer but no one obeyed him.
Similarly Brigadier Grant came up and was ignored. Mangal Pandey was
continuing to taunt his comrades. Hearsey and his two sons then rode up
and Hearsey with some courage threatened the guard with his revolver and
forced them to move against the mutineer, but the latter turned his
musket against himself: he fell wounded and was arrested and taken off
to the hospital."
Thus began the saga of Mangal Pandey, then the first mutineer, now the first hero of the first war of Indian Independence. Who was he? What were his motivations? Who were the British officers whose names appear in records and history? What was their relation to the man? Was Mangal Pandey a conscious revolutionary or actually acting under the impulse of some drug? What were the conditions that produced a character like him? Was he linked to earlier and latter events? Was he part of a wider conspiracy of acting alone? What implications did the Mangal Pandey incident really have on the wider uprising that took place in May that year, an uprising that shook the foundations of the greatest Empire of the day?
Hundred and forty eight years after the Barrackpore incident when India is close to celebrating the 150th anniversary of the event, these questions remain at best an enigma. The fact of the matter is that India knows very little about her first hero. Documents are scarce and mention only the outlines; the Indian literary world, and books on 1857, have ignored him; there is a major dispute about his place of birth and origin; and it is only now that a film has been made.
The British came as traders; their new army was part of the East India Company. It tapped the enormous market of martial people in the Awadh and east UP region. Company soldiers were called Sepoys—they were given tight jackets, tunics and pants to wear in the European style. Overnight Tulsidas followers were turned into members of semi-European regiments.
The change was as a dramatic as it was singular. Brahmins had been part of the cavalry dominated Mughal armies. But these armies had a roving nature—tied to Mansabdars or the military-administrative elite they were nevertheless fluid moving from one Commander to the to other. The Mughals had created a largely city oriented professional army—the British Sepoys were part of a professional peasant army.
Mangal Pandey’s village society was in a state of acute flux—his own Sepoy world was crumbling. He was a Brahmin of Awadh who had to set things right even if it meant revolt.
Mangal Pandey was born in Faizabad’s Akbarpur Tehsil. The latter were British administrative divisions borrowed from post-Mughal Indian administrative lingo—they symbolized the level immediately below the zillah (district). The date, as recorded in shattered pages of documents still retained by surviving members of his clan, was presumably July 19, 1827`85. The village in which young Mangal opened his eyes was Surhurpur—a small sleepy hamlet, which still retains the dusty rustic look, that speck of golden grime, the wont of Awadh, distinguishing the region from the more greener pastures of east UP. Divakar Pandey, Mangal’s father actually belonged to another village — Dugvaan-Rahimpur in Faizabad Tehsil. He had settled in Surhurpur as his father-in-law had no male heir — the village property therefore was bequeathed to the son-in-law.
Mangal Pandey entered the east India Company Bengal army in 1849. He was 22, a tall lad, lean and well built. Village anecdotes paint him as a man 9 feet tall—this excusable exaggeration however conceals the truth. The peasants recruited by the Company as Sepoys were mostly unusually tall—so much so that during the 1857 wars Scot Highlanders were brought over especially from Britain to match Sepoy strength and height. Local perceptions played a great part in victory or defeat—the natives considered Sepoys invincible.
The 1806 Vellore Mutiny by the Madras army was threatening—it followed a pattern similar to 1857. Sepoy resentment rose first over interference in wearing caste marks—soon Tipu Sultan sons, captive in Vellore fort were declared rulers as Madras Sepoys went on rampage killing their officers and liberating their environs.
Bloodthirsty force was used to quell the Vellore mutiny—then Barrackpore, the scene of Mangal Pandey’s defiance faced a serious crisis in 1824-25. Sepoys in their hundreds shot in the air, killed a section of their officers and deserted en masse.
The British began to see the Bengal army as a mess and Sepoys as spoiled children. There was politics behind this paternalism—ostensibly the disputes were over pay and other allowances given to the Sepoys before but slowly being curtailed by the British.
Brahminism was a threat because the British wanted to follow the Goa pattern. Here high caste Hindus had converted to Christianity and the old status quo had merged into a new religion creating an effective base for the Portuguese administration. The British wanted Brahmins as partners—making them the administrative equivalents of the comprador traders and bourgeoisie.
In Mangal’s personal story, the Aalha speaks about his break up with Nakki Khan sometime in late 1856. The involvement of a girl is vaguely mentioned but then the friends are shown as patching up—the major fall out seems to have occurred when Nakki Khan informed Mangal of new thoughts blowing in the wind.
Apparently Nakki, who had become a Sufi as well, had come fresh from a religious fair where he had heard Hindu and Muslim saints venting anger at British rule, spelling out its doom in 1857, exactly hundred years after the battle of Plassey.
Mangal Pandey is probably the missing link that connected mutinies in Behrampore and Barrackpore. He was the active who much in the tradition of martyrs decided to sacrifice his life in order to rouse the masses. The Aalha speaks of Nakki Khan and Mangal visiting Calcutta, taking a dip in the holy Ganges and swearing to root out foreign rule. The next stop Mangal made was at a Calcutta mansion to bid goodbye to a Hindustani ladylove married to a Bengali clerk, smarting under colonial Indian male chauvinism. Nakki Khan stood on the doorway looking out for possible intruders as Mangal drank Bhang and made love. He was a long distance away from home and he was soon going to die.
Text and illustrations
excerpted from Mangal Pandey: True Story of an Indian Revolutionary by
Amaresh Misra, Rupa. Pages 120. Rs 95.