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The Events of 1857 in Contemporary Writings in Urdu

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The Events of 1857 in Contemporary Writings in Urdu

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 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies,
n.s., Vol.XXXII, no.2, August 2009

The Events of 1857 in Contemporary

Writings in Urdu

Tariq Rahman

National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University,

Islamabad
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Introduction
The year 2007 marked the 150th anniversary of the climactic events of 1857.
1857 has been variously described as a ‘revolt’, a ‘war of independence’ (in the
nationalist historiography of both India and Pakistan) and as a ‘mutiny’ by
early British historians.1 Today in India it is seen generally as a predominantly
secular, joint Hindu–Muslim project;2 but in Pakistan the Muslim role is
emphasised while the Hindu one is ignored. And the debate as to whether it was
a ‘mutiny’ or a ‘war of independence’ goes on.3 Urdu-speaking literary critics—
Ibadat Barelvi, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, Hasan Askari, and Izhar Kazmi for
instance—all agree with the war of independence thesis, on the grounds that it
was more organised and widespread among ordinary people than would have
been the case had it been a mere mutiny of the soldiery.4 However, Kazmi is
aware that his use of the term ghadar (mutiny) in the title Ghadar ki T a’ bır
en
(Interpretations of the Mutiny) may be seen as being a national insult a century
after the event.5 My objective in this article is to assess what contemporary
authors writing in Urdu made of the uprising. Among the sources which I

1
K.C. Yadav, ‘Interpreting 1857. A Case Study’, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), Rethinking 1857 (Delhi:
Orient Longman, 2007), pp.3–21.
2
Ibid., p.15.
3
R.P. Singh, ‘Re-assessing Writings on the Rebellion: Savarkar to Sarendra Nath Sen’, in Sabyasachi
Bhattacharya (ed.), Rethinking 1857 (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2007), pp.44–57.
4
Nasir Kazmi and Intizar Hussain (eds), 1857 Khial Number (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, [1957], rpr. 2007),
pp.17–44.
5
Ibid., p.40.

ISSN 0085-6401 print; 1479-0270 online/09/020212-18 Ó 2009 South Asian Studies Association of Australia
DOI: 10.1080/00856400903049481
 THE EVENTS OF 1857 IN CONTEMPORARY WRITINGS IN URDU 213

discuss, most were written contemporaneously, but some were also written
later. Works in the last category are included where they shed light on how
perceptions of 1857 changed.

The Emergence of Urdu as a Language for Non-Creative Discourse

Though used in poetry for a long time—as Gujarati from the fourteenth
century and Dakkani from the fifteenth—Urdu did not become a language for
non-creative discourse till the early nineteenth century. The first Hindustani
newspaper, the Bengal Gazette, began publication in 1816. However, the first
real Urdu newspaper, the J am-e-Jah
an Num a, dates from 1822.6 By the 1850s
the North Western Provinces (NWP) were home to 37 ‘native’ or vernacular
newspapers with a combined circulation of 1839.7 The majority of them were in
Urdu, which by this time had replaced Persian as the language of written
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communication for educated people, both Muslims and Hindus, in North

India—i.e. in the area where the soldiers of the East India Company rose
against its rule.

The Argument
The argument advanced in this article is that the ‘rebels’ of 1857 mostly justified
their stance with reference to categories borrowed from religious discourse;
they legitimised their actions with reference to an alleged British attempt to
destroy their religious identity. The ‘non-rebels’, on the other hand, tended to
see the resistance movement as a symptom of ‘disorder’ or catastrophe.
Although the latter agreed that the British were guilty of mistakes and bad
governance, they did not believe the colonial government had lost political
legitimacy. Therefore they deemed armed resistance against it a ‘mutiny’
(ghadar).

Eventually, the ‘rebel’ argument was completely overwhelmed and supplanted

by the discourse favoured by the ‘non-rebels’ and, of course, the British. We
know this because, whereas the contemporary narratives are fairly evenly
distributed between the two positions, all the later writings in Urdu categorise
aghı. This colonial discourse
the events of 1857 as a ‘mutiny’ and the ‘rebels’ as b
was, in turn, supplanted with the internalisation of nationalism as a principle of

6
Tahir Masood, Urd u Sahafat Unnıswın Sadı Mein (Urdu Journalism in the Nineteenth Century) (Karachi:
Fazli Sons (Pvt.) Ltd., 2002), p.130.
7
Report on the Native Presses in the North Western Provinces 1853, IOR v/23/118 Pt. 19 Art .26, Acc No.
11479, National Documentation Centre, Islamabad.
 214 SOUTH ASIA

categorisation of social reality in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The
new vocabulary, calling 1857 a ‘national war of independence’, is misleading in
so far as neither the ‘rebels’ nor the ‘non-rebels’ thought of these events in
nationalistic terms. Moreover, the assumption that the ‘nation’ can be
constructed of unitary space (the whole of India) or a unified people
(transcending religious, ethnic and other categories) is also inapplicable to
the events of 1857 since the uprising was not spread all over India—the areas
now in Pakistan experienced very little of it—nor did the anti-British fighters
transcend their religious identities.

Methodologically, the study draws on the work of linguist Anna Wierzbicka

which shows how an analysis of the key words used by people in their writing
can provide an insight into their political ideas.8 Thus, we can understand (1)
how the ‘Other’—in this case the British or the ‘rebels’—were seen by the
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writers of Urdu, (2) how certain discourses, backed by the power of the colonial
state, became hegemonic after 1857, and (3) how these in turn were eclipsed and
replaced by others, judged more serviceable.

The Writings of Non-Rebels

Memoirs, Histories and Letters
The major apologist of the British, but the only one who took great pains to
explain the Indian position to the British at some personal risk, was (Sir)
Syed Ahmed Khan (1817–98). Syed probably started writing ‘Asbab
Sarkashı-e-Hindust
an ka Jaw ab-e-Mazmun’ (‘An Essay on the Causes of
the Indian Revolt’) (1858) in Muradabad in Urdu and then had it translated
into English. However, he was in such a hurry to send it to members of
parliament in Britain that he sent the Urdu version initially. The first edition
was of 500 copies and most of them went to London. A translation
into English followed—using the title given above—but such was the
paranoia of the time that the foreign secretary initially tried to prevent its
publication.9

Syed begins by defining the term ‘sar kashı’ (lit. taking out or raising one’s
head). He defines it as fighting against, or defying, government. He also deploys

8
Anna Wierzbicka, Understanding Cultures through their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German and
Japanese (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
9
Saleem Uddin Qureshi, ‘Risala Asbab-e-Baghawat-ı Hind’, in Mohammad Ikram Chughtai (comp.), 1857:
Rozn
amche, Mu ‘asir Taehrır
en, Y
add
ashten (Diaries, Memoirs and Contemporary Writings) (Lahore: Sang-e-
Meel, 2007), p.805.
 THE EVENTS OF 1857 IN CONTEMPORARY WRITINGS IN URDU 215

the term ‘baghawat’ to describe acts of violent insurrection or mutiny.10 From

his point of view, many ordinary people in 1857 were guilty of sar kashı, but
awat. Secondly, Syed makes the point—a courageous
only the soldiers of bagh
one for those days—that the British had brought the insurrection upon
themselves by various acts of commission and omission towards their Indian
subjects. Against that, Syed clearly regards the East India Company’s rule as
legal and violent opposition to it, therefore, as unacceptable.

Asadull ah Kh an Gh alib (1797–1869) is usually regarded as the greatest poet of
Urdu and was certainly the greatest man of letters of his day. His Persian-
language work Dastanb u (Bouquet) (1858) was specifically written to appease
the British.11 It is a journal purporting to describe ‘from the beginning to the
end those things that I [Ghalib] myself experienced or those which I personally
heard’ (‘sar t
a sar ın nig a anst k
arish y e bar man hamıravad ya an khuahid b
ud k
e
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12
shunıda mı shavad’) from May 1857 to 31 July 1858. It was published in 1858
although the date 1860 is also given in some accounts.13 The first edition was of
500 copies and copies were sent to high British officials in the hope of getting
financial and other benefits. It may have been ‘suitably revised to meet the
requirements of the situation’, but there is no evidence either for or against this
conjecture.

Ghalib begins with a conventional paean of praise (qasıd

a) for the monarch—in
this case Queen Victoria. Using negative terms such as rastkh ez bej
a
(unwarranted revolt), he goes on to make the claim that 1857 was morally
and legally unjustified—a position which, as we have seen, echoed that of Syed.
However not everything in the book is favourable to the Raj. He calls Delhi a
an)14 and points out that the Muslims suffered shortages of basic
jail (zind
necessities such as candles—‘so that their houses were dark at night’ (‘shab
ana
khana hai ın mardum b agh ast’).15 He was also among the first
e chir
commentators to accuse the rulers of adopting a discriminatory attitude
towards Muslims. The Muslims, he says, were not allowed to bury their dead
while the Hindus could ‘take them to the river and burn them’ (‘Hind u hamı

10
Syed Ahmed Khan, ‘Asbab Sarkashı-e-Hindustan ka Jawab-e-Mazm un’, in Mohammad Ikram Chughtai
(comp.), 1857: R ozn
amche, Mu ‘ asir Taehrır
en, Y
add en (Diaries, Memoirs and Contemporary Writings)
asht
(Lahore: Sang-e-Meel 2007), p.10.
11
Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Dastanb u (Persian: Bouquet) (Lahore: Matbu’at-e-Majlis-e-yadgar-e-Ghelib,
1969).
12
Ibid., p.21.
13
The book was published in the Maktaba Mufid-ul-Khalaiq in Agra by Munshi Hargopal Tafta who gives
the date of 1858. The date of 1860 is given by the chronogram rast khez b a in Ghalib, Dastanb
ej u, pp.83 & 38.
14
Ibid., p.70.
15
Ibid, p.78.
 216 SOUTH ASIA

tawanad ke murd a r
a ba dariy a burd ‘o bar lab-e- and’).16
ab dar atish soz
However, despite mentioning these grievances, Ghalib’s lexicon confirms the
legality of British rule since the sepoys and their rebellion are called sh
orish
(evil, mutiny), sipah kına khuah (soldiers seeking malice) and k ur namakan
(blind to their salt, unfaithful).

Even in his letters, where he could have been more frank, Ghalib does not
challenge the legality of British rule—although he freely laments the
devastation of the city and, above all, of his own class by the chaos unleashed
by the uprising. For instance he says he was afraid (dart a hun);17 in several
letters he uses the words fas ad (destruction), fitn a (evil, conflict), etc. At one
place he suggests that the name of a new magazine about 1857 to be brought
out by his friends should be Ghogha- e-Sipah (Chaos of the Soldiers), Fitn a-
e-
Mehshar (Evil of the Doomsday) or Rastk e-Hind (Doomsday of India).18 He
ez-
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did have English friends and lamented the death of one, Major John Jacobs, at
the hands of the ‘dark-faced blacks’ (‘r u si
ah kalon’).19 In another letter Ghalib
says that Delhi was attacked by five forces: the rebels (b aghi); the British army
(khaki); and so on.20 In short, it seems that Ghalib regarded the uprising of the
sepoys and the events which succeeded it as a breach of order. His references to
the sepoys as k e (blacks) and r
al ah (dark-faced)—racist terms both—
u si
indicate that he regarded their power in Delhi as something of an anarchy. The
British troops (g e) were no better than the native soldiers but, though guilty
or
of individual excesses, were part of a legitimate order which Ghalib trusted to
keep anarchy at bay.

There is remarkably also a European account in Urdu. Its author, George

Puech Shore (1823–1894), was born of a French family who had come over
during the eighteenth century to fight for the Marhattas. They had settled in
Gwalior, and then in Aligarh district. There Shore acquired land and picked up
the habits of the zamindars of Delhi. He even wrote poetry in Urdu which Ram
Babu Saksena has referred to in his book on the European poets of Persian and
Urdu.21 He was one of the last of Dalrymple’s ‘white Mughals’.22

16
Ibid, p.62.
17
Letter from Ghalib to Mirza Shahabuddin Saqib, 8 February 1858, in Ghulam Rasul Mehr (ed.), Khutut-e-
Ghalib (Lahore: Sheikh Ghulam Ali and Sons, 1982), p.92.
18
Letter from Ghalib to Munshi Shiv Naraen, 12 June 1859, in ibid., p.212.
19
Letter from Ghalib to Hargopal Tafta, July 1858, in ibid., p.130.
20
Letter from Ghalib to Anwar ud Daula Shafaq, 1860, in ibid., p.305.
21
Ram Babu Saksena, European and Indo-European Poets of Urdu and Persian (Lahore: Book Traders, rpr.
1943), pp.228–47.
22
William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India (London: Harper-
Collins Publishers Ltd., 2003).
 THE EVENTS OF 1857 IN CONTEMPORARY WRITINGS IN URDU 217

Shore penned W aqae’ Hairat Afza’ (Astounding Incidents) in 1862.23 It is

written in ornate prose on the model of Rajab Ali Beg Suroor’s Fas an
a-
e-Ajaib
(Tale of Wonderful Things) (1824), as well as in verse. He and his family, being
Europeans, suffered in the 1857 uprising. Not surprisingly, he describes it as a
ghadar. He also uses labels like fitn a and fasad and describes the rebels as
marauders. Like other Indian poets, Shore also wrote verse (musaddas)
lamenting the ruin of Delhi.24

As for the histories, Kunahiya Lal’s famous narrative is called Mah araba-
e-
Azım (The Great War).25 But despite its title, the book uses the same
terminology—bagh ad, etc.—which other works do. Similarly, Maulvi
awat, fas
Zaka Ullah’s T arıkh-e-Hindustan uses the term hang ama- awat (the
e-bagh
aghı (rebels) for those who fought
upheaval of the mutiny) for the event and b
the British.26
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Poetry
There is also a good deal of writing in verse about 1857. Its major theme is the
ruin and devastation of Delhi and other urban centres of North India; its
sensibility one of agony and despair over the cruel deaths of contemporaries.
Another response was that of resentment at the government’s handling of the
crisis, but it is muted out of fear of reprisals. Yet a third, though very rare, was
sympathy for the insurgency born out of a sense that the East India Company
had exploited India. Thus the poet Shaikh Ghulam Hamadanı Mushafi
(1750–1824), who experienced the rule of the Company before 1857, thought
that the infidel (k afir) British had snatched away the wealth of India by fraud
(dagh azi).27 Yet despite these political sallies, it is not clear if any of these
a b
poets actually took part in the uprising. In fact, in some poems the victims are
blamed because of their alleged ‘sins’. For instance the poet Mubın, a minor
poet of the period, says:

Zulm g
or
on n
e kiy
a aur n
a sitam k al
on n
e
Hum ko barb
ad ki e hı am
a apn al e.
on n
23
Saksena, European and Indo-European Poets of Urdu and Persian, pp.243–5.
24
Ibid., p.239.
25
Kunahiya Lal, Tarıkh- awat-e-Hind (History of the Mutiny of India) (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2007)
e-Bagh
(based on the 1916 edition).
26
Munshi Zakullah, T arıkh-
e-Hindustan: Saltanat-
e-Isl
ami
a k an (Narrative of the Kingdom of Muslim
a Bi
Rulers), Vol.9 (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 1998), pp.347–8.
27
Quoted from Syed Ehtesham Hussain, ‘Urdu Adab aur Inqilab 1857’ (‘Urdu Literature and the Revolution
of 1857’), in Mohammad Ikram Chughtai (comp.), 1857 Tarıkhı, ‘ilmı aur adabı paehlu (1857: Historical,
Scholarly and Literary Aspects) (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2007), p.563.
 218 SOUTH ASIA

(Neither the whites nor the blacks were cruel to us

Rather we were ruined by our own bad deeds.)28

Mufti Sadruddin Khan Azurda, the muftı (interpreter of Islamic law) of Delhi,
wrote a poem in which he calls the soldiers purbiy e (dwellers in the East)—a
pejorative term for mercenary soldiers—as well as khud a k a qaher (God’s
29
wrath). Mirza Dagh Dehlavi (1831–1905) says that they who chant dın, dın
(religion, religion) do not know what religion is.30

Fiction
One of the most famous novelists of the period was Deputy Nazır Ahmad
(1830–1916).31 Ahmad’s novel Ibn ul Waqt (1888) refers to the events of 1857.
The protagonist, an Indian Muslim gentleman named Ibn ul Waqt, saves the
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life an Englishman, Mr. Noble, whom he finds lying wounded near Delhi. Ibn
ul Waqt gives him the hospitality of his house for three months. After the
British prevail, and Noble is once again installed in a position of power, he
rewards Ibn ul Waqt by making him a subordinate official. At the same time he
encourages him to move to the European part of the city and adopt Western
ways. However, the newly-Anglicised Ibn ul Waqt is not accepted by the
English and also loses the respect of his compatriots. In the end one of his
relatives, Hujjat ul Islam, convinces him that he should stop trying to be a
Westerner.

Hujjat ul Islam’s argument is not that British rule is wrong or should be

resisted. He considers it a blessing. Rather his argument against Westernisation
is that it can lead to Indians considering themselves equal to their rulers and
this, he feels, is insulting to the imperial state: ‘aur hakim o maehk um men
mus aw
at ka h
ona z
of-
e-huk
umat nahın t
o aur kya hai?’ (‘and equality between
the ruler and the ruled, if it is not the weakness of rule, then what is it?’).32
Elsewhere he calls the uprising an evil conspiracy (mufsid an orish) and
a sh
makes fun of what he sees as the cowardice and incompetence of the Mughal
princes.
28
Syed Mohammad Abdullah, ‘Dillı Marh um ka Marsiya’ (‘Elegy for Dead Delhi’), in Mohammad Ikram
Chughtai (comp.), 1857 Tarıkhı, ‘ilmı aur adabı paehlu (1857: Historical, Scholarly and Literary Aspects)
(Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2007), p.593.
29
Quoted from Mohammad Ikram Chughtai (comp.), 1857 Majmu a’ Khw
aj
a Hasan Nizamı (Lahore: Sang-e-
Meel, 2007), p.526.
30
Ibid.
31
For Ahmad’s biography see Iftikhar Ahmad Siddiqui, Maulvı Nazır Ahmad Dehlavi: Aehv al-o-As
ar
(Biography of Nazır Ahmad) (Lahore: Majlis Taraqqı Adab, 1971).
32
Nazır Ahmad, Ibn ul Waqt (Lahore: Kashmır Kitab Ghar, 1984), p.319.
 THE EVENTS OF 1857 IN CONTEMPORARY WRITINGS IN URDU 219

Among these later works one of the most important is Khwaja Hasan Nizami’s
(1878–1955) prose accounts of the fate of the Mughal royal family.33 Basically,
the theme can be summed up as ‘how the mighty are fallen’. Most of the stories
start by recalling what life was like at the Mughal court prior to 1857. Then the
focus shifts to the eventful day of 11 May when the rebel troops entered the
Red Fort. It is a catalyst for chaos. Eventually, Nizami’s princely characters
flee to the villages and jungles despairing for their lives.

Although written after 1919, at a time when nationalism was in full swing, the
word Nizami uses for the 1857 event is still ghadar. The rebel soldiers are called
aghı. And at various points the Mughal princes and princesses accuse the rebel
b
soldiers of perpetrating all sorts of cruelties on the British (although British
cruelties, of which the narrators are victims, are also reported graphically).34
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Rashid ul Khairi’s narratives of the woes of the Mughal princesses are very
similar.35 In his story about Maulvi Abdul Qadir’s heroic rescue of a wounded
British woman from certain death, the Indian soldiers are called not only rebels
aghı) but also cruel (z
(b alim). In another story 1857 is said to be a terrible
affliction or misfortune (musıbat).36

The Writings of the ‘Rebels’

These fall into two categories: the writings of those who wrote after the war was
over; and those who wrote during the upheaval. These former knew that their
work would be seen by the British and, very often, wrote under the patronage
of British officers. As such their work is not very different in tone to that of the
non-rebels. The writings of those who fought and were prepared to die for the
cause are another matter entirely.

Writings of Former Rebels

The poet Syed Zahır Uddın Dehlavi (1825–1911) was a student of the Mughal
court’s poet Shaikh Muhammad Ibr ahım Zauq (1789–1854) and an official at
the court of Bahadur Shah II. During 1857 he and his brother travelled to

33
Khwaja Hasan Nizami, ‘Begmat ke Ans u’ (‘The Tears of the Ladies’), in Mohammad Ikram Chughtai
(comp.), 1857 Majmu a’ Khw aj
a Hasan Niz amı (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2007), pp.13–136.
34
Ibid.
35
Rashid ul Khairi, ‘Dillı kı Akhrı Bahar’ (‘The Last Spring of Delhi’), in Mohammad Ikram Chughtai
(comp.), Majmua’ Khw aj
a Hasan Niz amı (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2007), pp.870–80.
36
Rashid ul Khairi, ‘Agle L ogon kı ek Jhalak’ (‘A Glimpse of Traditional People’), in Mohammad Ikram
Chughtai (comp.), Majmu a’ Khw aj
a Hasan Niz amı (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2007), p.876.
 220 SOUTH ASIA

Jhajar, Sonipat, Najeebabad, Bareilly and Rampur. In 1864, after the hue and
cry had died down, he returned to Delhi; but then went to Alwar and became a
police official, spending 16 or 17 years in British service in Tonk. Later he went
to Hyderabad where he died in 1911. It is not known when his book D ast
an-
e-
Ghadar (The Story of the Mutiny)37 was written but some scholars believe it
must have been at the end of his life after he had settled in Hyderabad.38

He begins by giving an account of the sepoys who had intruded upon the Red
Fort. He calls them b aghı, namak haram (untrue to their salt, unfaithful) and
bal
a-e-Asman (a bolt from the blue). The soldiers tell the Mughal courtiers that
they were driven to mutiny by the insistence of their British officers that they
should cut greased cartridges with their teeth—but now, having taken that
awful step, they are resolved to ‘spread mutiny in the whole of India’ (‘tam am
Hindust an mein ghadar mach o’).39 The king though insists that he is
a d
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powerless to intervene, and offers to ask the Resident at Delhi, Sir Theophilus
Metcalfe, to mediate between the rebel soldiers and the government. And
later, when he talks to the Resident about his proposal he uses the terms fitn a,
fas
ad, mazhab k a jhigra (religious quarrel), etc. His language is quite
unsympathetic. He blames the ‘rebels’ for disturbing the peace of the city,
and goes on to say:

Na r
oz-e-hashr s
e kam thı az ab kı s
urat
Khuda dikhae na is inqil
ab kı s
urat.
(The misery and torture was not less than that of the Doomsday
May God not make anyone experience such a revolution.)40

Occasionally Dehlavi uses the word inqil ab (revolution) to describe what is

happening in Delhi. Yet this is a modern interpolation, and not meant
approvingly, as the author’s use of the word in the context of chaos, evil and
anarchy, makes clear.

Dehlavi does not, it is true, attempt to conceal the brutalities handed out by the
British after their re-conquest of the city. He describes how British soldiers,
g e (whites), entered the homes of residents, and robbed and sometimes killed
or
them. However, while he condemns these excesses, he remains convinced that

37
Syed Zahır Uddın Dehlavi, D ast e-Ghadar (The Story of the Mutiny) (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2007).
an-
38
See Asghar Hussain Khan Ludhianwi and Salahudin Ahmad, ‘Dastan-e-Ghadar’ (‘Story of the Mutiny’)
(1955), reprinted in Mohammad Ikram Chughtai (comp.), 1857: R ozn
amche, Mu ‘
asir Taehrır
en, Y
add
asht
en
(1857: Diaries, Memoirs and Contemporary Writings) (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2007), p.864.
39
Dehlavi, D ast e-Ghadar, p.47.
an-
40
Ibid., p.90.
 THE EVENTS OF 1857 IN CONTEMPORARY WRITINGS IN URDU 221

the uprising was morally reprehensible, illegal and wrong. In short, he too
supports the legality of British rule.

Moinuddın Hasan Khan’s family had rallied to the British after Lord Lake’s
conquest of the NWP in 1803 and was rewarded with estates, titles and
pensions. The author himself, though, rose to be the chief of police (kotwal) in
the service of Bahadur Shah. On 11 May when the rebel soldiers arrived at
Delhi, he was on duty at the Paharganj Police Station. Over the following
turbulent days he used his position to save the life of Sir Theophilus Metcalfe—
whereupon his own house was raided and robbed by the rebels. After the
British victory he went to Bombay and then on to Arabia. Upon his return he
was arrested as a ‘rebel’ but was subsequently absolved of all charges on the
intercession of Metcalfe.
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Moinuddın’s book, Khadang- e-Ghadar (The Arrow of the Mutiny), was written
in 1878,41 but published only after the author’s death in 1885. Moinuddın was
not willing, in his lifetime, to risk jeopardising his freedom and possibly too the
reputation of his patron Metcalfe. Such was the fear and paranoia that gripped
the country in the wake of the British re-conquest. Yet the book was very
moderate in its criticisms. It makes it clear that the ordinary people of India,
including women and men of the working classes, supported the rebel cause at
least in the areas around Delhi and Lucknow.42 However his evidence does not
point to an organised uprising even in these areas. Of course, in other parts of
British India the common people remained quite indifferent to the rebel cause,
in part because they never received more than scanty and belated information
about it. Moreover it is quite scathing in its treatment of the insurgents. The
revolt is variously described as Sh orish-
e-Mufassida (an evil upheaval), ghadar,
balwa (chaos), sh or (upheaval), shar (evil), fas
ad and bagh awat.43 The soldiers
are called baghı, namak har am, mufsid (evil people) and badm ash (hoodlums).44
His account also confirms that the rebel soldiers forced the king to acquiesce in
their plans and that he tried to save the lives of English women and children.
The overall impression which emerges from the book, however, is that there
was anarchy in the city—wrought by people of ‘inferior’ breeding. For instance
41
Moinuddın Hasan Khan, Khadang- e-Ghadar’ (The Arrow of the Mutiny), in Mohammad Ikram Chughtai
(comp.), 1857: R ozn
amche, Mu ‘ asir Taehrır
en, Y
add en (1857: Diaries, Memoirs and Contemporary
asht
Writings) (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel 2007), pp.217–369. It was translated into English by Charles Theophilus
Metcalfe in 1898.
42
For an analysis of Khan’s Khadang- e-Ghadar see Khwaja Ahmad Faruqi, ‘Khadang-e-Ghadar’, in
Mohammad Ikram Chughtai (comp.), 1857: R ozn
amche, Mu ‘asir Taehrır
en, Y
add en (1857: Diaries,
asht
Memoirs and Contemporary Writings) (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel 2007), p.872.
43
Khan, Khadang- e-Ghadar, p.223.
44
Ibid., p.222.
 222 SOUTH ASIA

Moinuddın writes disparagingly that a certain Mir Mohammad Hasan Khan

(no relation of the author) had even inducted weavers, spinners of cloth, sellers
of oil, and sellers of betel leaf (dhun
e, jul e, t
ah elı, tanb
olı) into the rebel army.
This is a view from above—by an author of the Muslim gentlemanly class
af).45
(ashr

‘Rebels’ Who Wrote During the Struggle

The most effective means to disseminate anti-British feelings, however, was the
press. One of the most important outlets of the type was the newspaper Dillı
Urd u Akhbar, of which copies survive from 1840.46 Maulvi Muhammad Baqir,
father of the Urdu man of letters Muhammad Husain Azad, was its editor
during the crucial year of 1857. After the British conquest of Delhi he was
hanged for sedition.47 Baqir used Islamic terminology to legitimate the
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uprising. His columns from May 1857 thank God for punishing the foreign
afir) who had conspired to wipe out the true religion.48 He rejoiced in
infidels (k
the British reverses and considered the revolt a war for faith. His son, not to be
left behind, supplemented this rhetoric with a poem:

O Azad, learn this lesson:

For all their wisdom and vision,
The Christian rulers have been erased
Without leaving a trace in this world.49

The newspaper even published a fatw

a authorising Muslims to rise up against
British rule. However as Shireen Moosvi observes,

. . . from 14 June both the vocabulary and attitude change. Now

the sipah-i-diler (the brave army) the Tilangan-I nar sher (the lion-
like Tilangis) are being enjoined, if Muslims, to take the name of

45
Ibid., p.293.
46
Margrit Pernau, ‘The Delhi Urdu Akhbar: Between Persian Akhbarat and English Newspapers’, in Annual
of Urdu Studies, Vol.18 (2003), pp.105–31. Also see Masood, Urd afat Unnıswın Sadı Mein, pp.320–75.
u Sah
47
According to Shireen Moosvi 16 issues of this paper from 1857 are preserved in the National Archives of
India, New Delhi. As I have not had access to these archives, all quotations and references to this and other
newspapers are from secondary sources. See Shireen Moosvi, ‘Rebel Journalism: Delhi Urdu Akhbar.
May–September 1857’ in People’s Democracy, Vol.XXXI, no.17 (29 April 2007), pp.1–6 [http://
www.cpim.org/ps/2007/0429/04292007_1857.htm, accessed 6 May 2008].
48
Dillı Urd ar (17 May 1857) in William Darlymple, ‘Religious Rhetoric in the Delhi Uprising of 1857’,
u Akhb
in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), Rethinking 1857 (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2007), p.25.
49
Dillı Urd ar (24 May 1857) in ibid.
u Akhb
 THE EVENTS OF 1857 IN CONTEMPORARY WRITINGS IN URDU 223

God and the Prophet, and, if Hindus, to pray to Parmeshar and

Narain.50

This more inclusive stance was justified to the paper’s readers by the assertion
that Hindus shared with Muslims a belief in one god (Adı Purush).51

Another prominent Urdu newspaper, the S adiq-ul-Akhbar, was published by

Saiyad Jamıluddın Khan of Delhi.52 Although its circulation was only about
200, it was passed from reader to reader and also read out aloud many times so
that many people heard what it had to say. The paper was cited during the trial
of Bahadur Shah Zafar as evidence against the king.

In the issue of 19 March 1857 there is a story of a person called Sadiq Khan
who had come from Persia. Sadiq is reported as saying that the Shah of Persia
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wants to conquer India. The editor wonders what kind of happiness will the
rule of the Shah give to the people of India?53 Still, the paper anxiously
anticipates the arrival of Persian troops. When they do not arrive, the S
adiq-ul-
Akhb ar is disappointed. By 13 September it is forced to concede that the
Persians are not likely to come soon, though they would arrive one day.54 The
very next day, 14 September, the city was re-conquered by the British.

The Urdu newspapers sympathised with the plight of the ruling family after the
British victory. Reporting Bahadur Shah’s death, on 7 November 1862, the
Kashf ul Akhbar laments that the empire of Taimur has ended; that ‘the lamp of
Delhi is put off’.55

Shireen Moosvi thinks that

. . . the Delhi Akhbar mirrors the feelings of much of the Delhi

populace, especially its educated section—its elite—and it is
singular how from the early feeling of estrangement towards the

50
Moosvi, ‘Rebel Journalism: Delhi Urdu Akhbar. May–September 1857’, p.3.
51
Dillı Urdu Akhb ar (14 June 1857), in ibid.
52
Faruqui Anjum Taban, ‘The Coming of the Revolt in Awadh: The Evidence of Urdu Newspapers’, in
Social Scientist, Vol.26, no.1/4 (Jan.–Apr. 1998), p.23.
53
‘Iqtisabat S
adiq ul Akhbar’ (‘Excerpts from the S ar’), in Mohammad Ikram Chughtai (comp.),
adiq ul Akhb
Majmu a’ Khwaj
a Hasan Niz amı (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2007), pp.431–40.
54
Ibid., p.440.
55
Kashf ul Akhb ar (27 November 1862), in Ghulam Rasul Mehr, ‘1857 Mutafarriqat’ (‘1857 Miscellaneous
Items’), Aaj Kal (Delhi) (Sept. 1957), reprinted in Mohammad Ikram Chughtai (comp.), 1857 Tarıkhı, ‘ilmı
aur adabı paehlu (1857: Historical, Scholarly and Literary Aspects) (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2007),
p.163.
 224 SOUTH ASIA

sepoys, they become in its pages, much before the fall of Delhi, the
object of admiration, and then begin to be viewed as the valiant
defenders and protectors of the city.56

But it is not clear whether the Dillı Urd u Akhbar does, indeed, ‘mirror’ the
feelings of much of the Delhi populace or even those of its ‘elite’. Certainly
Ghalib’s letters do not confirm this (though it could be argued that the poet,
like almost everybody else who wrote after the event, was so frightened of
British reprisals that even in personal letters he was too cautious to express his
real views).57

Let us now turn to the categories of social affiliation in mid nineteenth-century

India. These could be personal or ‘feudal’ (expressed by terms like namak hal alı,
i.e. being true to one’s salt) or ethnic affiliations. However the wider category of
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religious identity was also available. The ‘non-rebels’ often accused the ‘rebels’
of being namak har am (betrayers of their salt). For their part, the ‘rebels’ used
the idiom of religion to legitimate their struggle against the British. For instance
Tapti Roy refers to a 124-page pamphlet written, or finished, on 15 September
1852 in the handwriting of Sheikh Saied Rungin Rakam. It acknowledges that
the British had pledged good governance and by and large kept their word, but
goes on to point out that recently they had broken faith by imposing
indiscriminate taxation and pushing Indians to become Christians. There are
also anecdotes and stories about alleged British lust and drinking.58 Another
pamphlet, ‘Fateh Islam’ (‘Victory of Islam’) written sometime in July 1857, also
appealed to Muslim religious sensitivities as well as to ashr af snobbery. The
British, the pamphlet alleged, appeared to recognise no distinction between the
Muslim upper classes and the lower ones—which, of course, was unendurable.59

Another rebel leader was Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah. A poetic Urdu biography
of him was written in 1863 by F.M. Taib called Taw arıkh–i Ahmadı. Taib was
an aristocrat of Lucknow and a disciple of Ahmadullah Shah. The biography
glamorises the anti-British exploits of Ahmadullah Shah who is presented as a
hero, for whose actions no apology is needed.60
56
Moosvi, ’Rebel Journalism: Delhi Urdu Akhbar. May–September 1857’, p.6.
57
There were, however, Urdu newspapers like the K oh N ur of Lahore which supported the British against the
mutineers. See Masood, Urdu Sah afat Unnıs wın Sadı Mein, pp.386–9.
58
Tapti Roy, ‘Rereading the Texts: Rebel Writings in 1857–58’, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), Rethinking
1857 (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2007), pp.226–32.
59
Ibid., p.233.
60
Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri, ‘Indigenous Discourse and Modern Historiography of 1857. The Case Study of
Maulavi Ahmadullah Shah’, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), Rethinking 1857 (Delhi: Orient Longman,
2007), pp.243–52.
 THE EVENTS OF 1857 IN CONTEMPORARY WRITINGS IN URDU 225

Another well-known ‘rebel’ was Maulana Fazlul Haq Khairabadi (1798–1861).

Charged with signing a religious decree (fatw a) supporting armed struggle
(jih
ad) against the Company government he was condemned by a British court
to imprisonment and exiled to the Andamans in 1859. During his time in jail he
wrote a book in Arabic called Al-Th urat al-Hindiya (The Agitation of India)
which was later translated into Urdu. However despite the title the Maulana’s
point of view is religious, not nationalistic. He talks of martyrdom (shah adat)
but it is obvious that he refers only to Muslim rebels, not to non-Muslims who
also died opposing the British. And as for the Muslim non-rebels, he stigmatises
them as bad bakht (of evil fortune) and bad ka esh (of evil belief) and even goes
so far as to dub them murtid (apostates). The British are called Christians
(Nas a) throughout and the Hindus are accused of having helped them.
ar
However, these are Hindus of the West (Gharbı Hindus).61 In short, for the
Maulana, the mutiny was a religious war, a jih ad, which could only be won in
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the name of Islam. The British were usurpers for him but so was the majority
community. The Maulana remained, in the mid nineteenth century, a firm
believer in a theocratic form of rule.

The fatwa attributed to Maulana Khairabadi by the British does not, however,
contain either his name or his signature. It was first published in the Akhb arul
Zafar of Delhi, then in the Sadiq-ul-Akhb ar on 26 July 1857. Since the Maulana
did not reach Delhi until August he cannot have been its author.62 However his
book makes it clear that he thought jih ad was ‘a religious duty for the people of
Delhi in proportion to their capability’ (‘farz- e-a
en hai upar tamam is shaher k
e
l
og
on k
e aur ist
a’ at zur
ur ha
e is kı farziat ke w e’).63 On the other hand, Syed
ast
Ahmad Khan says that he actually saw a fatw ad.64
a saying that this was not jih
Moreover, Syed argues that this particular fatw a was fake. It even carried the
65
seal and signatures of certain dead ulema.

Ironically, though, support for the concept of the revolt as a jih

ad was patchy
even in the areas—sometimes called Hindustan proper—where most of the
action in 1857 took place. In the areas with Muslim majorities—the present-day

61
Fazlul Haq Khairabadi, Al-Th a (The Agitation of India) (trans. from Arabic into Urdu) in
urat al-Hindiy
Mohammad Ikram Chughtai (comp.), 1857: R ozn
amche, Mu ‘asir Taehrır
en, Y
add en (Diaries, Memoirs
asht
and Contemporary Writings) (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel 2007), pp.513–31.
62
Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi Rampuri, ‘Maulana Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi aur 1857 ka Fatwa-e-Jihad’
(‘Khairabadi and the Decree of Jihad of 1857’), in Mohammad Ikram Chughtai (comp.), 1857:
Roznamche, Mu ‘
asir Taehrır
en, Y
add en (Diaries, Memoirs and Contemporary Writings) (Lahore: Sang-
asht
e-Meel 2007), p.877.
63
Ibid., p.878.
64
Ibid., p.883.
65
Ibid.
 226 SOUTH ASIA

Pakistani Punjab, North West Frontier Province, Sind, Baluchistan and

Bangladesh—the idea did not gain either credence or currency.

Contrary to the romantic view that he gave evidence against himself, inviting
punishment, Maulana Khairabadi tried his best to get off.66 In a letter to Yusuf
Ali Khan, the Nawab of Rampur, he implored the nawab to intercede on his
behalf with the British authorities. Dated 18 February 1859, the letter protests
that ‘he has been imprisoned by them without any crime’ (‘fidwı r a mahez b e
jurm muqayyad kard a und’).67 Apparently he wrote two earlier letters to the
nawab but this is the only one to have survived. The Maulana’s main argument
seems to be that another person, one Mir Fazle Haq of Shahjahanpur, was
actually responsible for the crimes he was supposed to have committed.68

Although rebel writings did try to de-legitimise British rule, they were more
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critical of recent mis-governance and, especially, of interference with traditional

belief systems, rather than a call to any pan-Indian sentiment.

Thus the identities which the rebels’ works invoke are mainly religious and,
therefore, potentially divisive. I take up this point in the next section.

Mobilisation of Religious Identities

William Dalrymple, in an insightful article, points out that religion ‘might not
have been the only force at work [in 1857], nor perhaps the primary one; but to
ignore its power and importance, at least in the rhetoric used to justify the
uprising, seems to go against the huge weight of emphasis on this factor given
in the rebels’ own documents’.69 The above analysis of the language of the
rebels who wrote during the uprising supports this conclusion. Although it
has focussed on the deployment of the Muslim religious idiom—terms such
as jih
ad, d am (land of Islam), gh
ar ul Isl azı (fighter for Islam), etc.—as this is
what infused Urdu writings, it is noteworthy here that Muhammad Baqir, the
editor of the Dillı Urd u Akhb ar, also drew upon the language of Hindu
mythology in an attempt to mobilise the Hindus against the British.70 The
Hindus, he argued, also need to save their faith (dharm a) from British colonial
corruption.

66
Ibid., pp.880–1.
67
Ibid., p.881.
68
Ibid.
69
Dalrymple, ‘Religious Rhetoric in the Delhi Uprising of 1857’, p.38.
70
Dillı Urd
u Akhbar (14 June 1857), in Dalrymple, ‘Religious Rhetoric in the Delhi Uprising of 1857’, p.32.
 THE EVENTS OF 1857 IN CONTEMPORARY WRITINGS IN URDU 227

However, even if the Hindus are asked to join forces against the British for the
sake of expediency, it is clear that the idiom of religion is potentially divisive
and backward-looking. Thus Taib’s account notes that when the sepoys chose
Prince Birjis Qadar, the son of Zeenat Mahal and the former ruler of Awadh,
Wajid Ali Shah, as their leader, Ahmadullah Shah opposed this on the grounds
that the jih
ad could only be conducted under the guidance of an im am. Since the
prince was a Shi’a, he could not be allowed to lead the muj ahidın who were
dominantly Sunni.71 Moreover, Ahmadullah Shah went on to destroy the
Hindu temples of Hanumangarhi which had allegedly been built ‘at the site of a
destroyed mosque’.72 In short, religious identity, once invoked, had the
potential to polarise the people along sectarian lines.

That said, we do find in the Urdu sources some references to motherland

(watan), country (Hindust an) and freedom (azadi). However, it is not clear
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whether they refer to present-day UP (Hindustan proper) or what came to be

called British India.73 It appears from the use of such terms in other contexts
that probably the former was meant. In any case, these references are few and
far between.

This is not surprising. In the mid nineteenth century religious identity was really
the only type of identity available to Indians which transcended those of
kinship (biradari), occupation (z at) or ethnicity. Nationalism was yet to be
born, so the evocation of an ‘Indian’ identity was not an option.

Conclusion
While it is possible that many people shared the rebels’ anti-British sentiments
in the general area of present day UP and parts of the Punjab, the Urdu
writings which we find today are predominantly by those who thought that the
upheaval of 1857 was a mutiny. It is very much possible that the fear of the
government post-1857 was so great that people dissembled their true feelings—
but this remains a hypothesis yet to be proved.

aghı, fitn
Still, the widespread use of the words ghadar, b a, etc. foreshadowed an
embryonic anti-colonial discourse. Passed down to the next generation, and

71
F.M. Taib, Tawarikh-i Ahmadi (The History of Ahmad) (Lucknow: 1863), cited in Saiyid Zaheer Husain
Jafri, ‘Indigenous Discourse and Modern Historiography of 1857. The Case Study of Maulavi Ahmadullah
Shah’, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), Rethinking 1857 (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2007), p.249.
72
Ibid., p.247.
73
‘Revolt of 1857–Flag Song’, South Asian Research Centre for Advertisements, Journalism and Cartoons
[https://www.sarcajc.com/Revolt_ of_1857_Flag_Song.html, accessed 8 May 2008].
 228 SOUTH ASIA

thence into the corpus of the received wisdom about the country’s history, this
became indeed the hegemonic discourse of the period 1858 until about 1930.
Only in the twentieth century, when nationalistic histories came to be written,
did an alternative discourse emerge. And until it did, these hegemonic Indian
narratives served to confer legitimacy upon the British. The rebels’ own
vocabulary of resistance was quickly marginalised. Indeed as late as 1930 when
Khwaja Hasan Nizami published his book on the revolt, he insisted on calling it
a mutiny (ghadar). Significantly, when this book was reissued in 1946, it was re-
named Dillı kı Saz
a (The Punishment of Delhi).

Thus only in the 1940s did the idea that 1857 might have been a ‘war of
independence’ rather than a ‘mutiny’ gain acceptance, at least within the genre
of Urdu historical writing. Now of course, it has become so entrenched that it is
presented as fact in Pakistani school textbooks. This makes it very difficult for
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Pakistani historians to explain how the Punjab and the North West Frontier
Province actually supplied soldiers for the British conquest of India. That is
probably why isolated incidents of resistance, such as that of Ahmed Khan
Khural, are still magnified and glorified in recent Pakistani historiography
about 1857.74

Glossary

ashr
af elite, the gentlemanly class
bad bakht of evil fortune
bad kaesh of evil belief
badm ash hoodlum, bad character, rough
baghawat rebellion, mutiny
b
aghı rebel
balw
a chaos, insurrection, rebellion, mutiny
(synonyms: fas ad, sar kashı, bagh
awat)
d
ar ul Isl
am land of peace, land of Islam
dhune weavers
fas
ad destruction, evil, opposition
fitn
a conflict, fight, evil
ghadar rebellion, mutiny
gh
azı a Muslim who fights in the way of God, a
warrior for Islam
(continued)

74
Ahmed Saleem, Az am (Freedom and the People) (Lahore: Nigarshat, 1990), pp.33–54.
adı aur Aw
 THE EVENTS OF 1857 IN CONTEMPORARY WRITINGS IN URDU 229

gor
e whites (i.e. British)
inqilab revolution
jih
ad armed struggle, religious war
jul
ahe spinners of cotton
kal
e blacks, native soldiers
khaki one who wear clothing the colour of mud (i.e.
the British army)
kur namak an blind to one’s salt, unfaithful
mufsid troublemaker, evil person
musaddas a sub-genre of Urdu poetry
namak har am untrue to one’s salt, unfaithful
r
u siah dark faced
sar kashı (lit.) taking out or raising one’s head, rebelling
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shah adat martyrdom

shar evil
shor loud noise, upheaval
shorish-e-mufassid
a evil upheaval
shorish evil, mutiny
sipah kına khu
ah soldiers seeking malice
tanb olı sellers of betel leaves
t
elı sellers of oil

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