topics: |  history | british-india | mutiny

This volume by the RC Majumdar brings an Indian (sometimes called
"nationalist") view to bear on the events of 1857.  The name "mutiny" is
avoided; RCM prefers to call it the "great outbreak" (pages xv, 394, 481).

At one point he quotes from a diary on the "siege of delhi", how indians
awaiting punishment were tortured: "The hair on their heads were
pulled by bunches, their bodies were pierced by bayonets"... but says in his
foot note how he has "not been able to secure a copy of the book and the
quotation was given on the authority of Savarkar.

One may question the tone of the book, but the events are documented clearly
enough.  In my excerpts below, I have often added other related material
from other texts, particularly Kaye/Malleson. 

Excerpts

The great outbreak of 1857 is a memorable episode in Indian history which
no educated Indian or Englishman has ever regarded without interest, and
few without prejudice. - p.xv

Chapter V : Atrocities

very few, outside the circle of historians of modern India, have any
knowledge of the massacre, in cold bloood, of Indian men, women and children,
hundred times the number of those that perished at Kanpur.

   In two days forty-two men were hanged on the roadside, and a batch of
   twelve men were executed because their faces were 'turned the wrong way'
   when they were met on the march.  All the villages in his front were
   burnt when [Neill] halted. - Russell's "Diary in India"

Sherer, about Havelock's march:

   many of the villages had been burnt by the wayside, and human beings
   there were none to be seen... The occasional taint in the air from
   suspended bodies on which before our very eyes, the loathsome pig of the
   country was engaged in feasting. 95

   [at Fatehpur: The streets were deserted... So now our soldiers, English
   and Sikhs, were let loose upon the place, and before the day was spent
   it had been sacked.  Next morning, when the column moved on, the Sikhs
   were left behind, flushed with delight at the thought that to them had
   been entrusted the congenial task of setting fire to the town.

Englishmen did not hesitate to boast that "peppering away at niggers" was
very pleasant pastime, "enjoyed amazingly".

   [in Allahabad] Scouring through the town and suburbs, they caught all on
   whom they could lay their hands — porter or pedlar — shopkeeper or
   artisan, and hurrying them on through a mock-trial, made them dangle on
   the nearest tree. Near six thousand beings had been thus summarily
   disposed off and launched into eternity. Their corpses hanging by twos
   and threes from branch and signpost all over the town, speedily
   contributed to frighten down the country into submission and
   tranquillity. For three months did eight dead-carts daily go their
   rounds from sunrise to simset, to take down the corpses which hung at
   the cross-roads and market- places, poisoning the air of the city, and
   to throw their loathsome burdens into the Ganges.
	- Bholanath Chandra, Travels of a Hindoo p.324 [p.96]

Kaye:
Already our military officers were hunting down the criminals of all kinds,
and hanging them up with as little compunction as though they had been
pariah-dogs, or jackals, or vermin of a baser kind.  One contemporary writer
has recorded that, on the morning after the disarming parade, the first thing
he saw from the Mint was a 'row of gallowses'.  A few days afterwards
military courts or commissions were sitting daily, and sentincing old and
young to be hanged with indiscriminate ferocity... On one occasion, some
young boys, who, perhaps in mere sport had flaunted rebel colours and gone
about beating tom-toms, were tried and sentenced to death.  One of the
officers composing the court went with tears in his eyes to the CO, imploring
him to remit the sentence passed against these juvenile offenders, but with
little effect...

And what was done with some show of formality either of military or criminal
law, was as nothing, I fear, weighed against what was done without any
formality at all.  Volunteer hanging parties went out into the districts, and
amateur executioners were not wanting to the occasion.  One gentleman boasted
of the numbers he had finished off quite 'in an artistic manner', with
mango-trees for gibbets and elephants for drops, the victims of this wild
justice being strunng up, as though for pastime, in "the form of a figure of
eight".

Allahabad after Neill arrived:
"When we could get out of the fort, we were all over the places, cutting down
all natives who showed any signs of opposition; we enjoyed these trips very
much.  [Once from a steamer} we steamed up throwing shots right and left,
till we got up to the bad places, when we went on shore and peppered away
with our guns, my old double-barreled that I brought out, bringing down
several niggers, so thirsty for vengeance was I.  We fired the places right
and left, and the flames shot up to the heavens as they spread, fanned by the
breeze, showing the day of vengeance had fallen on the treacherous villains.
[Note: similarity with the line in Pulp Fiction "And I will strike down
upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger ...   And you will know I am
the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you." ]

Every day we led the expeditions to burn and destroy disaffected villages,
and ... day by day we strung up eight or ten men.  A very summary trial is
all that takes place.  The condemned culprit is placed under a tree, with a
rope around his neck, on top of a carriage, and when it is pulled away, off
he swings.  97

as Gen. Barnard is marching to Delhi towards the end of May 1857:
Officers, as they went to sit on courts-martial, swore that they would hang
their prisoners, guilty or innocent... Prisoners, condemned to death after a
hasty trial, were mocked at and tortured bby ignorant privates before their
execution, while educated officers looked on and approved.... Old men who had
done us no harm, and helpless women with suckling infants at their breasts,
felt the weight of our vengeance, no less than the vilest malefactors."

at the time of the capture of Lucknow—a season of indiscriminate
massacre—such distinction was not made and the unfortunate who fell into the
hands of our troops was made short work of — sepoy or Oudh villager it mattered
not — no questions were asked; his skin was black, and did not that suffice? A
piece of rope and the branch of a tree or a rifle bullet through his brain
soon terminated the poor devil’s existence.
[from Up among the Pandies; or, A year's service in India_, Vivian Dering
Majendie - 1859]

Majumdar says Kaye "draws a veil on the atrocities at Kanpur:
   And if Havelock’s fighting men, whilst the blood was still wet in the
   slaughter-house, had looked upon every Native found in the neighbourhood
   of that accursed spot as an adherent of the Nana, and struck at all with
   indiscriminate retribution, such sweeping punishment might now be looked
   back upon with less feeling of shame than upon much that was done,
   before and after, under less terrible provocation. As the record runs,
   it does not seem that the burden laid upon Kanhpur was heavy in relation
   to its guilt...  FN: Most exaggerated stories of this retributory
   carnage at Kanhpur were at one time in circulation. It was stated both
   in Anglo-Indian and in Continental journals that ten thousand of the
   inhabitants had been killed. This was a tremendous assertion,
   representing rather what might have been than what was. Some wished that
   it had been so, for vengeance’ sake; others that there might be a
   pretext for maligning the English.

though later, Kaye is quite graphic on the Bibighar atrocities of Neill:

There are deeds which it is better to suffer the actor to chronicle in his
own words. In a letter before me, Colonel Neill, after describing events
already recorded in this narrative, says: (p.298-300)

  July:
  "... The floor of the one room they were all dragged into and killed
  was saturated with blood. One cannot control one’s feelings. Who could be
  merciful to one concerned? Severity at the first is mercy in the end. I
  wish to show the Natives of India that the punishment inflicted by us for
  such deeds will be the heaviest, the most revolting to their feelings, and
  what they must ever remember. I issued the following order, which,
  however objectionable in the estimation of some of our Brahmanised
  infatuated elderly gentlemen, I think suited to the occasion, or rather to
  the present crisis.

  ‘25th July, 1857. The well in which are the remains of the poor women and
  children so brutally murdered. by this miscreant, the Nana, will be filled
  up, and neatly and decently covered over to form their grave: a party of
  European soldiers will do so this evening, under the superintendence of an
  officer. The house in which they were butchered, and which is stained with
  their blood, will not be washed or cleaned by their countrymen; but
  Brigadier-General Neill has determined that every stain of that innocent
  blood shall be cleared up and wiped out, previous to their execution, by
  such of the miscreants as may be hereafter apprehended, who took an active
  part in the mutiny, to be selected according to their rank, caste, and
  degree of guilt. Each miscreant, after sentence of death is pronounced upon
  him, will be taken down to the house in question, under a guard, and will
  be forced into cleaning up a small portion of the blood-stains; the task
  will be made as revolting to his feelings as possible, and the
  Provost-Marshal will use the lash in forcing any one objecting to complete
  his task. After properly clearing up his portion, the culprit is to be
  immediately hanged, and for this purpose a gallows will be erected close at
  hand.’ – The first culprit was a, Subahdar of the 6th Native Infantry, a
  fat brute, a very high Brahman. The sweeper’s brush was put into his hands
  by a sweeper, and he was ordered to set to work. He had about half a square
  foot to dean; he made some objection, when down came the lash, and he
  yelled again; he wiped it all up clean, and was then hung, and his remains
  buried in the public road. Some days after, others were brought in – one a
  Muhammadan officer of our civil court, a great rascal, and one of the
  leading men: he rather objected, was flogged, made to lick part of the
  blood with his tongue. No doubt this is strange law, but it suits the
  occasion well, and I hope I shall not be interfered with until the room is
  thoroughly cleansed in this way. ... I will hold my own, with the blessing
  and help of God. I cannot help seeing that His finger is in all this – we
  have been false to ourselves so often."

Kaye:
An Englishman is almost suffocated with indignation when he reads that
Mrs. Chambers or Miss Jennings was hacked to death by a dusky ruffian; but in
Native histories, or, history being wanting, in Native legends and
traditions, it may be recorded against our people, that mothers and wives and
children, with less familiar names, fell miserable victims to the first swoop
of English vengeance; and these stories may have as deep a pathos as any that
rend our own hearts. It may be, too, that the plea of provocation, which
invests the most sanguinary acts of the white man in this deadly struggle
with the attributes of righteous retribution is not wholly to be rejected
when urged in extenuation of the worst deeds of those who have never known
Christian teaching.

George Campbell, condemns the counter-massacres

Campbell, George Campbell. Memoirs of my Indian career:
http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/george-campbell/memoirs-of-my-indian-career-volume-1-ala/page-25-memoirs-of-my-indian-career-volume-1-ala.shtml

It is difficult to say anything in extenuation of the Cawnpore massacre and
the terrible scene at the well, and yet we must remember two things : first,
that it was done, not in cold blood, but in the moment of rage and despair
when Havelock had beaten the rebels and was coming in ; and second, that we
had done much to provoke such things by the severities of which our people
were guilty as they advanced. At a later time a careful investigation was
made into the circumstances of the massacre, and we failed to discover that
there was any premeditation or direction in the matter. It was doubtful
whether, if the Nana had been captured, the guilt of directing that massacre
could have been brought home to him.  Even discounting, as has already been
suggested, a good deal of Kaye's general statements of wholesale atrocities
on our part, enough remains to make it difficult for us to talk as if the
natives only were guilty of deeds of blood.

And afterwards Neill did things almost more than the massacre, putting to
death with deliberate torture in a way that has never been proved against the
natives. Havelock kept him under while he himself was at Cawnpore, but as
soon as Havelock's back was turned Neill set to work. It is a pity that his
deeds could not have been forgotten, but some unkind friend published his own
letters in an Ayrshire journal whence Kaye has taken them and republished
them. He seems to have affected a religious call to blood, and almost gloats
over the way he ordered fat Subahdars and Mahomedan civil officers to be
lashed till yelling, they licked the blood with their tongues, and were
afterwards hanged, in all which he sees the finger of God.

Frederick Henry Cooper kills 500 sepoys of the 26th Native Infantry

[long description of murders by Frederick Henry Cooper, Dy Commisioner of
Panjab, at Ujnalla], whose descriptions of his own exploits reveals a
fiendish mentality which is rare, or perhaps unique, even among the
brutalised military officers of those days.

Rephrased as in Gautam Chakravarty, The Indian mutiny and the British imagination (2005):
  ... the Deputy Commissioner of the Punjab, Francis Cooper, summarily
  executed nearly five hundred unarmed mutineers (who had surrendered
  believing there would be a court martial) using Sikh and Afghan
  mercenaries at Ajnala on 30–31 July, upon which he announced vengefully:
  ‘There is a well at Kanpur, but there is also one at Ujnalla.’

[also] carried out indiscriminate and brutal reprisals whenever the British
had the upper hand, against not only the rebels but also in the countryside,
where they often used a scorched-earth tactic.

William Russell, the Times correspondent in India who had earlier reported
from the Crimean front, while covering the campaigns of 1858 under the
commander-in-chief, Colin Campbell, deplored popular methods of dealing with
the captured rebels:
    sewing Mohammedans in pig-skins, smearing them with pork-fat before
    execution, and burning their bodies, and forcing Hindus to defile
    themselves, are disgraceful and ultimately recoil on ourselves. They are
    spiritual and mental tortures to which we have no right to resort, and
    which we dare not perpetrate in the face of Europe.’

Russell also wrote that "[Neill's] executions were so numerous and so
indiscriminate, that one officer attached to his column had to remonstrate
with him on the ground that if he depopulated the country he could get no
supplies for the men"
    [Michael Edwardes (ed.), My Indian Mutiny Diary (1860/1957), 162.]

Savarkar's apocryphal[?] addition

Among RC Majumdar's quotations is this excerpt, claimed to be from the book
The history of the siege of delhi, by an officer who served there:

    Hundreds of Indians were condemned to be hanged before a court-marial in
    a short time, and they were most brutally and inhumanly tortured, while
    scaffolds were being erected for them.  The hair on their heads were
    pulled bunches by bunches, their bodies were pierced by bayonets and then
    they were made to do that, to avoid which they would think nothing of
    death or torture - cow's flesh was forced by spears and bayonets in the
    mouths of the poor and harmless Hindu villagers...

However, this quote is most likely apocryphal, and may have been invented by Savarkar
himself.  There does not seem to be any text in Google before Savarkar that
dealw with it.  Majumdar says in his footnote:
    I have not been able to secure a copy of "_The history of the siege of
    Delhi_".  So the two quotations are given on the authority, respectively,
    of Holmes and Savarkar.

It appears first in Savarkar, and then in Lala Lajpat Rai, BC
Majumdar, and dozens of Indian sources.  It is claimed to be from
The history of the siege of delhi, putatively a text written by an officer
served in those times.   The quotation is repeated in many Indian sources,
but can't be found in any  British book or text

[Is it true that rightists are more quickly led to invent facts
than the equal fanatics on the left? ]

Contents

Book A. THE FIRST CENTURY OF British RULE IN India

Chap. I : EXPANSION OF BRITISH DOMINIONS
Chap. II : DISCONTENT AND DISAFFECTION :
  1. Discontent due to Economic Causes :
     i. Ruin of Trade and Industry
     ii. Oppressive Agrarian Policy

  2. Discontent due to Social and Religious Causes
  3. Discontent due to Administrative System
  4. Discontent and Disaffection of the Sepoys
Chap. III : RESISTANCE AGAINST THE BRITISH :
  1. Political Causes :
     i. Personal Grievances
     ii. Reaction Against British Conquest
     iii. Misrule in Protected States
  2. Economic Causes
  3. Religious Frenzy
  4. Primitive Tribal Instincts

Book B : THE MUTINY AND THE REVOLT :

Chap. I : THE OUTBREAK OF THE MUTINY :
  1. The Beginnings of the Mutinous Spirit
  2. Mirat (Meerut)
  3. Delhi
Chap. II : THE SPREAD OF THE MUTINY :
  1. A General Outline
  2. Kanpur
  3. Bengal and Bihar
  4. Central India and Rajasthan
  5. The Deccan
  6. The Panjab
Chap. III : THE REVOLT OF THE PEOPLE :
  1. The Immediate Cause and General :
     i. View of the Revolt
  2. The North-Western Provinces :
     i. Budaun
     ii. Aligarh
     iii. Mathura
     iv. Agra
     v. Banda
     vi. Hamirpur
     vii. Jhansi
     viii. Other Areas
     ix. General Review
  3. Awadh (Avadh)
  4. Other Parts of India :
     i. Bihar
     ii. The Panjab
Chap. IV : RESTORATION OF ORDER
Chap. V : Atrocities

Book C. THE HEROES

Chap. I : BAHADUR SHAH
Chap. II : NANA SAHIB
Chap. III : THE RANI OF JHANSI
Chap. IV : TANTIA TOPI AND AZIMULLA :
  1. Tantia Topi
  2. Azimulla
Chap. V : KUNWAR SINGH AND AHMADULLA :
  1. Kunwar Singh
  2. Maulavi Ahmadulla
Chap. VI : The Sepoys

Book D. GENERAL Review

Chap. I : WAS THERE A CONSPIRACY IN 1857 :
  1. The Alleged Conspiracy
  2. Nana Sahib as Organiser of the Conspiracy
  3. Bahadur Shah's Conspiracy with Persia, Russia, and the Sepoys
  4. Sepoy Organization
  5. Chapatis
  6. General Conclusion
Chap. II : THE Character OF THE OUTBREAK OF 1857 :
  1. Divergent Views
  2. Revolution of the Civil Population-Its Extent and Character
  3. Communal Relations
  4. Was the Outbreak of 1857 a National War of Independence ?
Chap. III : THE CAUSES OF THE MUTINY
Chap. IV : THE CAUSES OF THE OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL POPULATION
Chap. V : THE CAUSES OF FAILURE