The Skull of Alum Bheg

by Kim A. Wagner

  ‘we have been treading, as it were, over the mouth of a dangerous volcano, not knowing at what moment it would burst forth and swallow us up. And now the order from the government is for all the European soldiers to leave this place, and march to Lahore, the capital of the Punjab. The order is also accompanied by the statement that all European residents, including ourselves, must leave or stay at the risk of their lives, as there will be no person left to protect them but a native regiment. In addition to all this, Mr. Gordon’s youngest child is lying very sick, and brother G. himself is not at all well; in fact, I may say also, that all our ladies are more or less unwell, through excitement, and fear, and watching; and, as if to put the climax on the wretchedness, humanely speaking, of our condition, the hot season—the season in which we dare not venture out in the middle of the day, nor scarcely stir at any time—is upon us.’31

  Andrew Gordon was no less despondent in his assessment of the situation as they saw their friends leave, one by one:

  ‘The officers have also sent away their families, with a few exceptions. The most that remain here now, i.e., of white people, are these thirty soldiers, fifteen or twenty officers, and four families of missionaries, including the Rev. Thos. Hunter, who was lately sent here by the church of Scotland. We have also been advised by some to leave, or at least to send away our families.’32

  Gordon and his group were really too sick to travel, especially during the hot season, but as it gradually dawned on them that the situation was only going to get worse, they finally agreed it was time to send the women and children to Lahore. Unfortunately, they could not afford renting the carriage required for the two-day, seventy-mile journey. Both Dr Graham and the missionaries had lost their entire savings in the sack of the Delhi Bank, but while the affluent Doctor could shrug off the loss of several hundred thousand rupees, the loss of a fraction of that amount, Rs 1000, was nothing short of catastrophic to Gordon and the other Americans: ‘we cannot avail ourselves of funds to enable us to remove. We have funds enough which will be available as soon as these disturbances are over. But just now nobody will exchange money, and nobody will lend.’33 Meanwhile, Brind did not allow people to do much by way of preparations, lest this should send the wrong signal to the sepoys. The fort at Sialkot also offered little comfort for the increasingly anxious missionaries:

  ‘There is a small and very inferior fort at Sialkot, in which there are two or three officers engaged in training up three or four hundred raw recruits, selected from among the simple countrymen of the Punjab; but there is only one dwelling house in it, and families are refused admittance because the fort is not suitable and safe for them.’34

  Since the Americans literally could not afford to save themselves, they buckled down, borrowed some muskets and tried to fortify the isolated mission compound. The women also sought to prepare for any eventuality:

  ‘Some of the ladies tried the experiment of disguising themselves by dressing like native women, and tying a little money in the corners of their chadars in native fashion; but they soon became discouraged, and abandoned the thought of escaping by such means; because, whilst they might succeed under the cover of night, yet when day would return they could neither escape detection nor endure the heat.’35

  Much like Thomas and Jane Hunter, who were still holding out in their house in the cantonment, Gordon and his companions sought succour in the Bible. All the missionaries in fact sought to understand this crisis in predominantly Biblical terms and their letters home to their respective churches, in Edinburgh or Philadelphia, contained long quotes and invocations of the psalms that spoke to their current tribulations. Some, it seems, even welcomed this God-send opportunity to be become martyred, and Stevenson, in particular, fell into raptures in his letters back home:

  ‘If God see proper to glorify himself by permitting us to suffer a violent death, let his will be done. Just and right are all his judgements.’

  ‘…we are not worthy to suffer for Christ on account of anything that we have done, or can do. But, blessed be God, our worthiness is not of ourselves. It is of our Elder Brother.’

  ‘Such are my feelings in view of death. Let them be put on record…’ ‘I am yours, dear brother, in the hope of a glorious immortality.’36

  While it was easy to speak of self-sacrifice in letters back home, daily life in the station, which was gradually being emptied of Europeans, wore on the nerves of those who remained. Dr Graham kept scouring whatever reports reached him for news about the Delhi Bank, and predicted the imminent fall of the Mughal capital almost every day after the siege had begun in early June—only to be repeatedly disappointed.37 Amid the news of troop movements and the disarmament of sepoys across the region, the reports that rattled the missionaries the most were those that spoke of a grand conspiracy to drive the British out of India. According to Gordon:

  ‘The country was becoming more and more unsettled, and the dangers of our situation were hourly increasing. The centenary day of the battle of Plassey—the 23rd of June, 1857—was at hand, and the impression was on the native mind that the British East Indian Empire, which had begun from the date of that battle, was to last exactly one hundred years, and no longer. Rumours were afloat of traffic in arms and ammunition being carried on in various parts of the country; conspiracies were being concocted; plans for a general insurrection, involving the massacre of the entire Christian population, were coming to light. And once more we took into serious consideration the question of making another attempt to reach a place of safety.’38

  The irony was that those very rumours which so disturbed Gordon and the others at Sialkot, were themselves a reflection of the fears amongst the Indian population concerning the ‘conspiracies’ they ascribed to the British. The stories of contaminated cartridges, polluted foodstuffs, and a government plan to secretly undermine the religion of all Indians, thus found their counterpart in empowering rumours that abrogated such threats—often invoking divine retribution or Persian or Russian invasions that were said would defeat the British. What the British perceived to be the sinister plots of ‘designing men’, were really popular Indian attempts to imaginatively neutralise the sinister plots they believed the British were hatching; the story that the centenary of Plassey in June 1857 would signal the end of British rule was clearly wishful thinking, a sort of last hope of salvation for those who felt their entire world was under threat. Much of the antagonism that fuelled the uprising and its escalation was thus the result of mutually reinforcing fears that were exacerbated by reciprocal cultural misreading. Furthermore, when rumours among the local population were reproduced in British newspapers or disseminated through private letters, they were effectively given a second lease of life. A servant might very well overhear someone like Gordon talking about the centenary of Plassey and then repeat it in the bazaar, giving the story fresh momentum as it circulated among the anxious populace. Much of what was taking place throughout India at this point of time might perhaps be described as a ‘conversation of rumours’—albeit a conversation ‘in which neither of the interlocutors understood the others’ language.’39

  * * *

  During the summer of 1857, the uprising continued to spread as new, localised conflicts erupted across northern India. Popular rebellion grew out of a longstanding climate of dissatisfaction, but assumed different regional characteristics, and was by no means universal across northern India. Some dispossessed rulers and landowners seized the opportunity to regain lost wealth and status, while others engaged in long-standing feuds over land and political power. What set the events of 1857 apart from the numerous smaller uprisings, that had regularly taken place during the previous half century or so, was the impetus provided by the sepoys’ mutiny. The sepoys of the Bengal Army constituted a uniquely coherent group, cutting across religious and social divides, and as such they added a sense of unity to the outbreak that did not exist elsewhere in India. The British themselves recognised this and one officer later described how the Bengal
Army had effectively provided the framework for the uprising:

  ‘Brahman and Mussulman here met as it were upon neutral ground; they have had, in the army, one common brotherhood of profession, the same dress, the same rewards, the same objects to be arrived at the same means. They frequently joined each other in their separate festivals, and the union encouraged by the favour of the Government was finally resorted to as a measure to subvert it.’40

  The outbreak was initiated by the sepoys and it was through their networks of communication, which predated 10 May 1857, that news of the rebellion was transmitted and the diffusion of resistance to the colonial state was sustained. The correspondence between the different sepoy regiments, which had been carried on ever since the first rumours at Dum Dum and Barrackpore in January, now assumed a more focused character. On 18 May, for instance, loyal sepoys of the 64th BNI at Shabqadar handed over a letter to their commanding officer, which had been sent to them by the 51st BNI stationed at Peshawar. The letter contained a warning that the greased cartridges would be distributed to them on 22 May and exhorted the 64th BNI to come to Peshawar the day before: ‘O brother! the religion of Hindoos and Mahommedans is all one—Therefore all you soldiers should know this. Here all the sepoys are at the binding of the Jemadar, Soobadar Major, and Havildar major. All are discontented with this business, whether small or great. What more need be written? Do as you think best.’41 Having been forewarned, the British moved quickly to disarm the affected regiments, but this kind of communication between sepoys was becoming more frequent throughout Punjab.

  By June, the uprising had gained a momentum of its own and Alum Bheg, and the other troops at Sialkot, were now responding to actual events rather than just rumours from far-away cantonments. News conveyed by official reports, letters and the telegraph, however, was deliberately kept from them and they had to rely instead on whatever information did manage to slip through, including the rumours that reached the bazaars. Stationed in a foreign country, where the local population harboured little sympathy for the Purbiya troops, it is likely that Alum Bheg would have been as nervous and as desperate for trustworthy news as Dr Graham or Andrew Gordon. An anonymous Punjabi letter-writer, who harboured strong sympathies for the resurrected rule of the Mughal Emperor, wrote of the difficulties in getting letters through to Delhi:

  ‘The arrangements made for the stoppage of the postal communication of the infidels should be fully maintained, and no dàk should, as far as possible, be allowed to pass. I shall as far as practicable continue to communicate the news of the Punjab. But there is a strict watch kept and no well-wisher can communicate a detailed account.’42

  This description gives the erroneous impression that the stoppage of the mail was due to a deliberate strategy on part of the rebels. The truth was that there was no rebel organisation in place dedicated to cutting off of British communications. In fact, postal correspondence and any other sort of communication via messengers were just as likely to be plundered by roving bands of Gujars or local villagers as being intercepted by mutinous sepoys. The British effort to stop local letters from reaching Punjab, on the other hand, was highly organised and very much part of a strategy to interrupt rebel communication, and prevent disaffection from spreading among the sepoys. In Gujrat, not far from Sialkot, a British officer reported that, after the outbreak in May, ‘Strong guards were placed on the public roads and ferries, entrenchments being thrown up on the river bank opposite the latter. A strict system of passports and search was introduced; the highways were all patrolled; all travellers interrogated and vagrants apprehended.’43 The British were particularly concerned by the unimpeded movement of religious mendicants and other itinerant figures, many of whom were suspected of being fugitive sepoys or rebels in disguise carrying messages.

  Fakirs, sadhus, or yogis as they were also known, were a common sight in India as they moved between the large pilgrim sites with their braided hair and naked bodies covered in ash. They were usually regarded with the utmost suspicion by the colonial authorities, not least because they evaded official surveillance. During the 1830s, sadhus were considered to be part of the itinerant underworld that allegedly spanned the Indian subcontinent. Sleeman famously claimed to ‘have had abundant reason to believe that religious mendicants of various denominations practice robbery in almost every part of India; and often murder persons before they rob them the better to conceal the robbery.’44 Such allegations were never substantiated, and, yet, by 1857 mendicants were associated with religious fanaticism, anti-colonial conspiracies, and commonly believed to be spreading discontent under the guise of devout asceticism.45 British fears verged on paranoia and ‘orders were issued,’ in some instances, ‘for the apprehension of all fuqueers and vagrants found in the neighbourhood of cantonments.’46

  There were also more deliberate attempts to intercept any treasonous correspondence between the sepoys in Punjab. At the head of the Movable Column, the famed General John Nicholson, for instance, ‘made himself Postmaster-General, and all letters that passed along the road were intercepted; the native ones read, and sent on to allay suspicion.’47 Not long after the outbreak, a Hindu sepoy of Alum Bheg’s regiment had written a letter to a comrade in the detachment of the 46th BNI then stationed at Shahpur on the Jhelum river. The letter was intercepted by the commanding officer at Shahpur, who censored all correspondence to and from the sepoys, and who described its content:

  ‘It said that every regiment had mutinied; that the Europeans were banded together in order of battle; that there was a great disturbance throughout India; and that the writer prayed that “Ram” would not stop this state of things. As for himself, the writer went on to remark it would be as well if he were to be allowed leave of absence, for that he did not intend to attend muster after the 1st of next month.’48

  The sepoys were well aware that their correspondence might be read by their officers and the letter was accordingly carefully worded. The writer seemed to have only the most basic idea of what was going on in northern India yet clearly expressed his approval of the unrest, praying that it would be allowed to continue. There was no explicit call to arms, or any indication that he might be thinking of joining his brethren at Delhi, although the allusions to ‘leave of absence’ and ‘attending muster’ might very well have been a sort of code for desertion and an expiry date for his allegiance to the British. At times, however, the sepoys’ letters contained more explicit plans. The entire 35th BNI, which had been part of the Sialkot brigade, for instance, were disarmed by Nicholson after he intercepted their mutinous correspondence. A British officer with the Movable Column approved of this pre-emptive move:

  ‘No doubt can exist as to the wisdom of this measure; reports were current, and authentic information had been, I believe, received that the 35th were in communication with the mutineers at Delhi, and only waited their opportunity, with the wing of the 9th Cavalry, to attack the column; the only reason the latter was not disarmed was the effect it might have had on the other wing at Sealkote.’49

  The British conceived of mutiny among their sepoys in distinctly epidemiological terms, with seditious letters as the source of contagion: ‘Mutiny is like small-pox, it spreads quickly, and must be crushed as soon as possible.’50 Where the missionaries perceived the local population as being in league with the forces darkness, the military feared the effects of secret communication between the different bodies of disaffected soldiers.

  Despite the British efforts to control the circulation of information, proclamations and letters issued from the centres of rebellion proved to be a remarkably effective mode of spreading rebel propaganda. With the fall of Delhi, and the ascension of Bahadur Shah to the throne, the dynamic of the uprising had changed dramatically: what had begun as a purely military mutiny now had political legitimacy. Numerous proclamations and royal decrees were circulated by the new government at Delhi, including one written in the name of Bahadur Shah addressed to local rulers throughout ‘Hindustan’, who had yet
to offer their allegiance to the restored Mughal throne. Printed at Bareilly, the letter was probably written by Mirza Mughal, the eldest of the King’s sons, who played a leading role in the rebel administration and defence of Delhi.51 The circular called upon local rulers to assume the responsibility commensurate to their rank and position in society, in order to ‘protect your faith’ from the onslaught of the British, whom, the letter claimed, ‘are people who overthrow all religions.’ The various policies of the British were all described as part of one concerted effort to forcefully convert the entire population of India, and the retelling of the events that led to the outbreak is especially noteworthy:

  ‘They resolved on compelling prisoners with the forcible exercise of their authority to eat their bread. Numbers died of starvation, but did not eat it; others ate it and sacrificed their faith. They now perceived that this expedient did not succeed well, and accordingly determined on having bones ground and mixed with flour and sugar, so that people might unsuspecting eat them in this way. They had, moreover, bones and flesh broken small and mixed with rice which they caused to be placed in the markets for sale; and tried besides every other possible plan to destroy our religions. […] They…now ordered the brahmans and others of their army to bite cartridges, in making up of which fat had been used. The Mussulman soldiers perceived that by this expedient the religion of the brahmans and Hindus only was in danger, but nevertheless they also refused to bite them.52 On this, the English now resolved on ruining the faith of both, and blew away from guns all those soldiers who persisted in their refusal.53 Seeing this excessive tyranny, the soldiery now in self-preservation, began killing the English and slew them wherever they were found, and are now considering means for slaying the few still alive here and there.’54