A Begum & a Rani by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Author:Rudrangshu Mukherjee [Mukherjee, Rudrangshu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789354920165
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2021-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

Such a people’s resistance would guarantee that the British would ‘be unable to do anything, though they may amount to lakhs of men.’ Everybody should fight the British and this would ensure their defeat. It was everyone’s war because the war was about religion. To make certain that this happened, ‘It was necessary to make this Proclamation generally known.’

The proclamation discussed above was circulated with a pamphlet called ‘Fateh-i Islam’.33 The pamphlet is not dated but the editors of the Freedom Struggle in Uttar Pradesh volumes suggest a date based on the internal evidence of the text. Their logic is as follows: The first four paragraphs of the pamphlet speak about the atrocities committed by the British and attempt to rally the people to wage a holy war against them. The pamphlet invokes the efforts made by the sepoys and the common people to attack the entrenchment in Kanpur and in the battles in Delhi and Lucknow. It refers to the atrocities committed in Allahabad, which took place after 18 June 1857. There is also a call to defend Delhi and Kanpur. This would suggest that the document was prepared sometime between 5 July and 17 July 1857—in other words, between the coronation of Birjis Qadr that followed the rebel victory at Chinhat (30 June 1857) and the fall of Kanpur. The latter event made it evident that the next port of call for the British counter-insurgency forces would be Lucknow. This was also the period when Maulavi Ahmadullah Shah was very active in Lucknow.34 Did he have a hand in drafting the pamphlet?

The authorship of the document is much less important than what it has to say, especially because it was the longest statement to emerge from the rebel side. ‘Fateh-i Islam’ began with an invocation to the prophet Mohammed but moved very quickly to the oppression of the British. It is significant that the British were referred to by their religion: ‘The execrable Christians are openly committing oppression and tyranny; they are killing innocent men, plundering their property, setting fire to their houses and shutting up their children in houses, some of which they burn down . . . Such has been the state of anarchy, that the whole country has been insecure and plunderers are robbing the villagers and travellers . . . They [the British] are also hanging men and ravaging villages.’ Going by this list of atrocities and what soon followed, it is clear that the actions of the troops under James Neill as they marched from Allahabad to Kanpur are being spoken of.35

The pamphlet lamented that there had been a delay in fighting the Christians, but this only made the cause of religious war more urgent. If the Christians were not defeated, ‘great misfortunes {would] befall all the Hindoos and Mahomedans, the people, the sepoys, the Kings and the Wuzeers.’ Fortunately, the cause of a religious war had been furthered by the possession of guns, ‘which the people of Hindoostan stood in need of’. These guns were previously with the ‘Mahomedan Kings of Delhi and Lucknow’.

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