Gandhi ji watch a film! Ram Rajya or Mission to Moscow













Shobhana Samarth and Prem Adib in Ram Rajya http://8ate.blogspot.in/2009/10/gandhi-ji-watch-film-ram-rajya-or.html






















from internet: Vijay Bhatt.'s Ram Rajya (1943) was the only feature film Mahatma Gandhi ever watched. Read about it at Vijaybhatt.net . They even have a scan of old newspaper clipping that announced: M. Gandhiji Sees Prakash's "Ram Rajya": Historical Event of Indian Film Industry. According to the website it happened in 1945 while he was staying at Juhu, Bombay.

Then recently I came across the following passage in 'Colonial India and the making of empire cinema: image, ideology and identity' by Prem Chowdhry [Google Books]

In the late 1930s the marketability of nationalism and its viability were not merely in the films produced by Indians - most of which became popular hits - but also in the way producers, distributors and exhibitors advertised their products. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, was a favorite for advertising the films. Large size photographs of Gandhi adorned the film advertisements along the much smaller photographs of the lead hero or heroine. Yet other films were advertised as 'helper to the cause of Mahatma Gandhi', or invited the viewers to see their film, advertised as portraying 'the ideals of Mahatama Gandhi', or claimed that 'Mahatma Gandhi's immortal words inspire a picture' So much so that the distributors and exhibitors of a Hollywood film also felt it commercially prudent to put in a sponsored advertisement claiming, 'Mahatma Gandhi sees the first talking picture Mission to Moscow.' The report that followed suggested that Mahatma Gandhi considered this film to be of the 'right type'.
The British officials were aware of the public draw of the Mahatma's name in the film industry. They attempted to curb both advertisements and films that exploited the Mahatma's name. Gandhi sees Ram Rajya




















Intrigued, a bit of searching lead me to cautious lines in 'Gandhi: the man, his people, and the empire' written by Rajmohan Gandh. According to the book, in 1944 while Gandhi was staying at Juha:

On 21, May he was persuaded to watch Mission to Moscow, a Hollywood movie made to popularize America's alliance with the Soviet Union, possibly the first talkie he had ever seen. It did not attract him to Stalin or Communism.
That makes Michael Curtiz's Mission to Moscow Gandhi's first.


After digging a little more, it turned out that 'Ram Rajya' in fact lost out to 'Mission to Moscow' by just twelve days thus only making it 'first Indian talkie to have been seen by Gandhi'. It turns out Gandhi may have caught a fairly decent amount of Cinema in a fortnight. Two film in 12 days in not bad. Gandhi saw 'Ram Rajya' on 2nd June 1944.

Saintly Sinner: Mahatma gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi Saintly Sinner
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Gandhi was visibly depressed during his last days.

According to political psychologist Ashis Nandy:
“If Gandhi in his depression connived at it, he also perhaps felt- being the shrewd, practical idealist he was-that he had become somewhat of an anachronism in post-partition, independent India; and in violent death he might be more relevant to the living than he could be in life. As not a few have sensed, like Socrates and Christ before him. Gandhi knew how to use man’s sense of guilt creatively.”
Did Gandhi know what he was doing?

He once said:

“I find no parallel in history for a body of converts and their descendants claiming to be a nation apart from the parent stock. If India was one nation before the advent of Islam, it must remain one in spite of the change of faith of a very large body of her children”


Gandhi in “Jinnah of Pakistan” by Stanley Wolpert, New Delhi 1985(1st edn 1984) page 232-3.

Ironically, the same line became a battle cry for BJP in the 90s.

30 January 1948, Gandhi and the men who killed him


Mahatma Gandhi on way to his last prayer meeting

On Trial looking relaxed: (Front row, left to right) Nathuram Godse, Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare; (back row, extreme left Digambar Badge - the government approver)


The photographs can be found in The Men who Killed Gandhi by Manohar Malgonkar. Found these in a review of the book published by India Today dated Feb11, 2008.
 -0-
"perhaps it was not an accident that Godse began his political career as a participant in a civil disobedience movement started by Gandhi and ended his political life with a speech from the witness stand which, in spite of being an attack on Gandhi, none the less revealed a grudging respect for what Gandhi had done for the country"
Ashis Nandy :-

Long ago, I had posted an extract from an essay titled The Politics of the Assassination of Gandhi that appears in his book At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics And Culture. The extract traced the early life of Gandhi's assassin, Nathuram Godse. [the essay mentions four point-blank shots]
Checked the notes of that essay and realized that the facts of Nathuram's early life were borrowed mainly from Manohar Malgonkar's well researched book The Men who Killed Gandhi (Delhi: Macmillan, 1978), Chapter 2

Gandhi in Noakhali, 1947

It is believed that while India was having its little “Tryst with Destiny”, Gandhi was at a place called Noakhali in East Bengal(that had already become East Pakistan and what is now Bangladesh). *

Noakhali at the time (and in 1946) witnessed some of the most macabre killings with Hindus and Muslims butchering each other (wiki entry actually reads Genocide). Gandhi, going against all advice and odds, went to the center of this mindless violence and was pacifying the rioting crowd on the first eve of Indian Independence. People at first abused him but slowly the tide turned. There were no reports of rioting in Noakhali while he was there. Mountbatten went on to call it a miracle.

I recently came across some rare photographs of Gandhi's Noakhali experiment in an old Film Magazine. Captions full of 'Bhakti Bhav' make an interesting read in themselves.

On January 28th, at Panchgao (Noakhali).
From FilmIndia dated April, 1947


From FilmIndia dated May, 1947
From FilmIndia dated June, 1947 
-0-
* Patrick French in Liberty or Death – India's Journey to Independence.

netaji subhas chandra bose -the last day of his life


 Netaji: The mystery deepens
What happened to Subhas Chandra Bose in 1945? Maj Gen Himmat Singh Gill (retd) says many questions remain unanswered if we buy the story that he died in the plane crash at Taipei
Netaji Subhas Chandra BoseAn organisation called Mission Netaji, invoking the RTI Act, has succeeded in forcing the government to make public the secret and controversial documents relating to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s reported death in a plane crash at Taipei on August 18, 1945. This would be welcomed by every nationalist Indian, for many of whom Netaji was as towering an icon as Mahatma Gandhi. Questions which have remained unanswered to date and troubled this writer are: whether there was such a plane crash and was Netaji on board? Did he die in the crash as announced by the Japanese.
What is known is that Netaji had first journeyed to Moscow en route Germany, and from there after a prolonged stay he had been transported to Tokyo by sea in German and Japanese submarines in May 1943, to take over the reins of the INA, which was then waging a war against the Allied Forces operating in the Far-Eastern Theatre. The Great Escape to Germany from Calcutta via the Khyber Pass, Kabul and Moscow in 1941, and later in 1945 when as believed by many Netaji took the final flight out of Saigon to Manchuria from where he is understood to have crossed over into the Soviet Union and obscurity, will continue to be studied by political analysts and historians alike who have never bought the official finding that Netaji perished in the Taipei air crash. Though the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee set up during Jawaharlal Nehru’s time and, later on, the Justice G.D.Khosla Commission in 1970 had both ruled that Netaji had died in the Taipei crash, the Justice M.K.Mukherjee Commission in its 2005 report has totally debunked this conclusion of Netaji’s purported death. Inquiries made in Saigon and later in Kabul in our embassies and with many of the old-timers in both the places, have revealed that no one had ever heard anything about the plane crash at Taipei. Though the 1941 Kabul-Moscow journey was a well-recognised fact, there were no signs of any kind that indicated a return journey by Netaji in 1945 through present-day Kyrgtistan, Tajikstan ( both then part of USSR and the shortest route home) or Moscow for that matter into Afghanistan presumably en route India, after his reported crossing over into Russian territory from Dairen. Where did Netaji suddenly vanish after his entry into Russia in 1945? This is a question that needs to be answered.
To understand what possibly happened to Bose on his last flight to Dairen in Manchuria, it is necessary to retrace his successful outward journey through Afghanistan in 1941. As Pradip Bose records in his book Subhas Bose and India Today, Netaji braved a trek over the Khyber Pass and across the Kabul river gorge and the icy Sairobi plains in an overcrowded bus and made his way to Kabul on January 27, 1941. It could have only been a person with a tough mind like that of Netaji who could have made such a hazardous and dangerous journey in such inclement weather and on a highway where even during daytime there are good chances of being waylaid and looted.
Sadly, when Netaji arrived in Kabul he found that the Russian Ambassador there was not very keen on giving him a visa to travel to Moscow, since they anticipated that if Germany attacked Russia as was expected then the Russians would become the allies of the British and it would not do to be seen to be assisting an enemy of the Empire.
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, Bose decided to travel to Japan in 1943 to influence the operations on the Burma-India border with the assistance of his new hosts.
By mid-August 1945, when Japan was on the run, Netaji found himself at Singapore heading a bedraggled INA most of which had already been taken into detention by the Allied Forces and who were now being held in concentration camps awaiting deportation and trial after the war ended. Netaji’s initial plan to stick on with the INA in Malaya and Singapore underwent a change at this stage and he made plans to move closer to the neighbourhood in Burma to carry on the freedom struggle for India. By then the Burmese army had switched its loyalties to the winning Allied Command. It was not possible to set up INA resistance bases in the region, and neither was a route through Burma found practical for Netaji’s return to India because of lack of any local assistance so crucial in such operations.
With the maritime routes blocked by the Allies and the confidence gained in having made a similar land journey before through South and Central Asia, the only feasible routing for Netaji from Singapore was therefore through Saigon, Taiwan, Manchuria and thence into Russia, for a return via Kabul to India. After the nuclear bombing of Japan, it has been well documented that the Russians had launched deliberate attacks from Russian Manchuria into Japanese controlled territory southwards towards Harbin, Fushun and Dalian, and therefore Netaji making for Darien and thence into Russian territory made perfect sense.
The intriguing part, however, is that Netaji is supposed to have died when his plane was taking off from Taipei, and therefore it is clear that there had to be a destination for which he was heading. Surely he could not have been heading for Japan which was by then tottering to a meek fall,and neither could his bomber aircraft with the flying range that such aircraft had in those days be heading right across the vast Pacific Ocean to Hawai and American territory!
Anuj Dhar of Mission Netaji had been intimated by the Taiwanese government in 2003 that no plane carrying Netaji had ever crashed in their territory. Neither is it possible that having flown all the way from Saigon, Taipei was Netaji’s final destination and not just a stopover for refuelling of the aircraft. What was Netaji going to do in the middle of nowhere in Taiwan, when all around him the Axis Powers were collapsing one after the other? It is logical to believe that Netaji took off from Taipei safely and flew on to Dairen, irrespective of Col Habib-ur-Rehman’s (his fellow passenger on the flight) report in the matter much after the purported crash. It is also intriguing that whereas Netaji died of severe burns in the purported crash, Habib-ur-Rahman only had some burnt skin and scars to show for the good luck in his survival.
There is a linkage in this to what Shyam Lal Jain of Meerut, deposing before the Khosla Commission (an account documented by Pradip Bose in his book referred to earlier), had stated that he was asked by Nehru in Delhi to type out a handwritten note which he (Nehru) had handed over to him, and the contents of which Jain, reproducing from memory, had stated to the Commission as follows, "Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose proceeding by aeroplane from Saigon, arrived today August 23, 1945, at Dairen (Manchuria) at 1.30 afternoon". Shyam Lal, in his recorded statement, goes on to state that according to the said note, after a short break Netaji and four others left in a jeep for Russian territory. Access to classified documents of the period will throw light on Bose’s flight in 1945, and there is need to delve further into the matter in the interest of recording truthful history. An unconfirmed report had also appeared earlier that Netaji had died at a ripe age in a Siberian prison, and Pradip Bose also mentions in his book that in July 1946 there were reports that Khurshedben Naoroji, a Secretary of Mahatma Gandhi, wrote to American author Louis Fischer that if Netaji came back to India with the support of the Russians then neither Gandhi nor the Congress would be able to do anything about it. Who then or which power in India was interested in seeing the last of Netaji and did not want his return to his homeland? Was the story of the Taipei crash deliberate misinformation first put out by Japan and later on confirmed by Indian high-ups, so that Netaji never returned to India.
Americk Singh Gill, a former INA man in his book Indian National Army—Secret Service also writes that, "I was thinking that Netaji had put up a mighty camouflage and curtain with the story of the aircrash", indicating that many of those who had been close to Netaji had found it difficult to suddenly believe that he had died in the air crash at Taipei.
There is certainly more than what meets the eye in the sudden disappearance of Netaji in mid-1945, and if the Americans are still investigating the assassination of President John Kennedy then there is no reason why the Indian people, if not their government, cannot move international agencies and the present governments of Russia, Japan, UK, Vietnam, China, Mangolia, Afghanistan and America to release from their archives any confidential material for scrutiny which could reveal the final years of this great patriot.
The Shah Nawaz and Khosla Commissions did to my mind an incomplete and rushed job by just buying the Taipei air crash theory. We often entrust such enquiries to politicians and members of the judiciary. Many of them have little idea of the peculiar terrain, topography and distances of the Far East, all inter-related factors in Netaji’s journeys to that part of the world and his sudden disappearance. It is time for a full-fledged Commission with the right people on it, to find out how and when Netaji met his end.

 

The last picture of Bose on August 18, 1945











m

The Grand Old Man & his miscellanea

Dinyar Patel
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  • Photo courtesy: National Archives of India
    Photo courtesy: National Archives of India
  • Photo courtesy: National Archives of India
    Photo courtesy: National Archives of India
The paper trail leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji have left behind offers a rich insight into the lives of early Indian nationalists and our understanding of them
The spring of 1901 was a moment of despair for Dadabhai Naoroji, then in residence in London. While struggling to secure a new constituency from where he could attempt to re-enter the British Parliament, the Grand Old Man had to contend with increasingly retrogressive Tory policies toward India and flagging spirits within the Indian National Congress. But on 24 April, Naoroji received news of a different yet equally troubling variety: his toilet was malfunctioning. “The plumber has done what he can to rectify the defects of the water waste preventer, & we regret that it is not now satisfactory,” FW Ellis, builder and estate agent in Upper Norwood, London, grimly informed him by post.
Detailed picture
Amidst the reams of important correspondence in the Dadabhai Naoroji Papers — a collection of some 30,000 documents held at the National Archives of India in Delhi — one regularly comes across unexpected material such as Ellis’ note. The Naoroji Papers, which I have consulted for over the past 20 months, provide stunning new insight into early Indian nationalism. Additionally, they paint an extraordinarily detailed picture of the life of one of India’s greatest leaders in the pre-independence era. Naoroji, it appears, decided to keep all of his correspondence for posterity. As a result, letters from Indian and British political luminaries jostle alongside everyday receipts, prescriptions, random newspaper clippings, and the 19th century equivalent of junk mail. Such minutiae are easy to dismiss at first. Yet, taken together, they help us reconstruct the careers of Naoroji and other Indians who lived and worked in the United Kingdom, telling us how they navigated life in a strange and foreign society.
From the Papers, we know a smattering of what is, on the surface, completely trivial information about the Grand Old Man. A receipt, for example, indicates that on 9 January 1897 he purchased hand-made boots from a cobbler in southwest London that cost him precisely one pound and one shilling. We know that his family servant in Bombay was named Baloo. Naoroji might have invested in a company developing the tram system in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as well as the first garden city in England: I located share fliers for both ventures early in my research. A newspaper cutting from the early 1900s suggests he took an interest in the llama, the resourceful South American pack animal. And several months ago, I stumbled across his eyeglass prescription from 1894 (a friend of mine, a doctor at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, diagnoses Naoroji as being far-sighted).
Digging a little deeper, it is possible to piece together greater significance from such random and bizarre information. Investments in South America, the United Kingdom, and India show that Naoroji adopted a very international outlook in his personal finances — finances that he put to productive use by funding nationalist activity. Even his malfunctioning toilet tells us that Naoroji was privy to some of the latest available technology: the waste water preventer was a relatively new invention that was revolutionising sanitation in Victorian England.
Since Naoroji was the senior-most Indian resident in the United Kingdom, he was regularly consulted by his countrymen who travelled to the imperial metropole for study, work, or pleasure. There are literally thousands of letters in the Naoroji Papers from such Indians — documenting incidents of racism, financial trouble, or plain homesickness — and nearly all of them received a prompt and detailed reply from the Grand Old Man. Naoroji functioned as a guardian of sorts for many Indians in Britain. Around 1 am on 2 January 1891, for example, he was awakened by a telegram from a London police constable informing him that a ‘Mr. CK Desai’ was under arrest for public drunkenness and wanted Naoroji to bail him out of jail. Aside from such correspondence, there are reams of letters from concerned parents in India who asked Naoroji to keep tabs on their sons (and, increasingly, daughters), making sure that they were being financially prudent and not consorting with Englishwomen.
The Papers also provide an insight into how Naoroji and his fellow nationalists in London adapted and reacted to life abroad. In addition to collaborating on the formulation of various economic critiques of the Raj, Romesh Chunder Dutt used Naoroji as a character reference for securing his flat in Forest Hill in 1898. While Dutt eventually returned to India in 1903, his fellow Bengali, W.C. Bonnerji, the first president of the Congress, took to London so much that he and his family put down permanent roots there, purchasing a house in Croydon that they christened Kidderpore. The extent of their Anglicisation was evident when Naoroji in January 1893 invited the Bonnerjis to attend, in Indian attire, a function held in Central Finsbury to celebrate his election to the House of Commons. “I am extremely sorry to say that we have not an Indian dress in the house,” a family member responded.
Others dearly missed the staples of Indian life while in England. In January 1906, the radical nationalist Madame Bhikaiji Cama — staying with a family member in North Kensington — invited Naoroji and his grandchildren over for a Sunday ‘Parsee lunch,’ an offer the Grand Old Man must have leapt at given the boiled and bland fare otherwise on offer in London. Some cultural adjustments were easier. Although in his sixties and seventies, Naoroji appears to have taken a fancy to English sports. He was the president of the football club in his parliamentary constituency, Central Finsbury, and the vice-president of a north London cricket club. A tantalising clue about Naoroji’s affinity for the gentleman’s game is offered by his campaign secretary, who in 1895 wrote to Naoroji that, “One would really imagine you to be a God of Cricket.”
But there was one great cultural challenge in Britain that Naoroji had great difficulty in surmounting: people just could not spell his name correctly. In newspapers, posters, and his incoming mail, the Grand Old Man was addressed by creative variants such as Dedabhan Naorji, Devan Novoriji, and Dadabhai Nowraggie. Matters improved slightly once his campaign secretary suggested that he simply go by ‘D. Naoroji.’ After he won election to Parliament by a mere five votes, he was frequently referred to as ‘Dadabhai Narrow-Majority,’ which was presumably easier to remember and spell.
Naoroji and his fellow nationalists, however, were guilty of their own spelling bloopers. The Grand Old Man regularly ended his letters with the valediction “Your’s truly,” adding an unnecessary apostrophe. When the Bengali painter, Sasi Kumar Hesh, visited London in 1899, Romesh Chunder Dutt wrote excitedly of the various ‘pourtraits’ the artist intended to undertake. Madame Cama loved semi-colons; her letters to Naoroji are simply replete with them. What is particularly striking is how so many of Naoroji’s correspondents chose to communicate in broken English rather than in languages where they had a shared greater proficiency, such as Gujarati or Hindustani. But English, even bad English, was a status symbol then, as it remains today. The surprisingly few Gujarati letters in the Naoroji Papers are mostly from his family members.
Common headache
While mastery of English was a challenge to some upwardly-mobile Indians, deciphering one another’s handwriting was a headache shared by all. I have probably done serious damage to my own eyesight by trying to make sense of the scribbles found in the Naoroji Papers. Understanding them was evidently a challenge to the original recipients over a century ago. Naoroji occasionally admonished Behramji Malabari, the prominent Parsi journalist and social reformer, to write neatly. William Wedderburn, one of the British stalwarts in the early Congress, grumbled to Naoroji in August 1891 that he could not read letters from Dinsha Wacha, the longtime Congress general secretary (“But you must not tell him this,” he added). And Allan Octavian Hume, while attempting to go through a draft of Naoroji’s presidential address to the 1893 Lahore Congress, confessed to Naoroji that “your handwriting is rather hard to read.” Perhaps it is appropriate that, toward the end of his life, Naoroji helped fund a bright Maharashtrian inventor, Shankar Abaji Bhise, who was working on new models of typewriters.
Encountering such unexpected miscellanea is a treat to the historian, providing a moment of levity while sifting through otherwise heavy and complex matter. But these miscellanea also perform an important role in our understanding of early Indian nationalists. Individuals such as Naoroji, Dutt, Ranade, and Gokhale have — in both scholarship and our popular conceptions of history — too often been cast as staid, unapproachable, and even downright dull people. The paper trail they left behind tells us quite a different story: it exposes us to the particularities of their lives, their complex characters, their foibles, habits, and everyday routines. It humanises these leaders. Maybe this is one reason why Dadabhai Naoroji, while organising his personal papers during his retirement in Versova, chose to preserve his prescriptions, receipts, and correspondence with his London plumber.
(Dinyar Patel is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Harvard University. Some of the material quoted here will be published in the forthcoming volume, The Grand Old Man of India: Selections from the Dadabhai Naoroji Papers (Oxford University Press), which he is co-editing with S.R. Mehrotra.)

The Quilon Mutiny Of 1812-FROM G'S BLOG

In 1812, a full seven years after the Pazhassi Raja’s death in the jungles of Wayanad, a conspiracy was uncovered in Quilon to overthrow the British subsidiary forces in Travancore and to confer the sovereignty of Travancore to the Pazhassi Raja’s nephew ([1], [2]). Here’s an account of the events [1]:
“On the night of the 24th May 1812 the existence of a conspiracy at Quilon having for its object the destruction of the European officers and men of the subsidiary force in Travancore was brought to the knowledge of Lieutenant and Adjutant Cox 2nd battalion 14th regiment by Jemadar Iyaloo of the same battalion to whom it had been revealed by a private of his company”
“On the morning of the 25th Colonel Hall and the officers in command of battalions met at the Residency and it was there arranged that a general parade of the troops should be ordered for that afternoon and that the principal conspirators should then be seized while the Resident Lieutenant Colonel John Munro took steps for the apprehension of such inhabitants of the town and vicinity as were believed to be implicated.
These measures were successfully carried out. Jemadar Shaik Hoossain of the 14th together with 2 havildars and 22 men of that battalion were called out of the ranks and placed in confinement the troops behaving with perfect steadiness.
Womanah Tumby ex-Dewan of Travancore, an individual claiming to be the nephew and representative of the late Pychy Rajah and several religious mendicants were seized at the same time by the Resident’s people as being the chief instigators.”
“The result of the enquiries made by the Resident which occupied some time led him to the conclusion that Womanah Tumby, the pseudo-Pychy Rajah, and Jemadar Shaik Hoossain of the 14th, had been the originators of the conspiracy.
The design was to confer the sovereignty of Travancore upon the Pychy Rajah. The Jemadar was promised the office of Dewan, but this in all probability, was really intended for Womanah Tumby. The pay of all sepoys as might join in the plot was to be raised to Rs 10 per mensem.
The chief body of conspirators consisted of discharged sepoys fakeers and disaffected natives of the province. The European officers were to have been attacked while at dinner, and the barracks set on fire at the same time in order to distract attention, after which the public treasury was to have been given up to plunder.”
Did one of the nephews of the late king actually go to Travancore to start a revolt? Or could it have been one of the distant relatives of the Pazhassi Kovilakam (the kings of Mavellikkara had close relationships to the royal houses of north Malabar)? Or did the British accounts get it completely wrong, with the memories of the “Pyche Rajah” still so strong that a local revolt was ascribed to him?
Notably, an Indian account of the same incident (P. Shungoonny Menon’s A History of Travancore from the Earliest Times) makes no mention of any Pazhassi prince [3]:
“During the interval, the ex-Dewan Ummany Thamby incurred lasting disgrace by plotting certain measures against the life of the Colonel. The treachery having been discovered, Ummany Thamby was banished the country and was taken to Chingleput and detained there as a State prisoner.”
What happened to the rebels next was not surprising [1].
“Jemadar Shaik Hoossain and Private Salabut Khan of the 14th were tried in a summary manner by a board of officers, of which Major Fraser 2nd battalion 9th was President. Both were convicted, and sentenced to be blown from a gun, which sentence was carried into execution on the evening of the 28th May at a general parade of the whole force.
Two havildars, one naigue, and twenty six privates of 14th, of whom 19 were Mahomedans, and 10 Hindoos, tried by ordinary court martial, and sentenced to death. Of these two privates were pardoned, the rest were either shot or hanged, the sentences being carried into execution at Quilon, Cannanore, Seringapatam, Trichinopoly, Vellore and St Thomas Mount respectively.”
“Womanah Tumby and the Pychy Rajah were tried by the Court of the Travancore Government. The former was sentenced to death but this sentence was commuted to banishment and he was removed to Nellore. The Pychy Rajah was banished to Chingleput, but he was released from confinement in 1815.”

And as for the loyalists,
“On the 16th February, 1813, Jemadar lyaloo of the 14th was promoted to be Subadar and presented with a palankeen and an allowance for bearers. He also received a gold medal and a donation of 1,000 rupees. On his decease, his nearest heir was to be allowed a pension of 35 rupees per mensem.
Vencatram, the sepoy who had informed the Jemadar of the plot was pensioned on the pay of a Jemadar a received a donation of 600 rupees.
Private Hoossain Khan who had given information to Captain Ives of the same battalion on the 24th May but in rather an incoherent manner was pensioned on the pay of a Havildar”

Remembering the Battle of Delhi

Remembering the Battle of Delhi

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The anniversary of the Battle of Delhi goes largely unnoticed. R.V. SMITH sheds light on the events leading up to the battle more than 200 years ago

Today is September 10, the anniversary eve of the Battle of Delhi, fought 209 years ago. There have been many battles of Delhi, starting from 1191-92, including those between Muhammad Ghori and Prithviraj Chauhan, the battle of wits between the Mongols and Alauddin Khilji, Taimur’s rout of the forces of Mahmud Tughlaq at Loni, then the three battles fought at Panipat between Babar and Ibrahim Lodi, Akbar and Hemu (not counting the Karnal skirmish between Muhammad Shah and Nadir Shah, the Persian invader) and the Maratha confederacy and Nadir’s successor, Ahmed Shah Abdali. Though referred to as the battles of Panipat, they were really for the possession of Delhi and as such linked with the fortunes of this imperial city. In all these battles (save the first one between Prithviraj and Ghori) the invaders were victorious, though Alauddin succeeded in chasing away the Mongols camping below the very walls of Delhi by not losing his nerve. During Shah Alam’s reign, 30,000 Sikhs under Baghel Singh camped at Tis Hazari with the intention of invading Delhi but were prevailed upon to withdraw, thanks to the sagacity of Begum Sumroo, who saved the emperor the indignity of capitulating to the besiegers, and thus earned for herself the honorific of “the emperor’s beloved daughter”.

However the only “Battle of Delhi” recorded as such in history is the one between Scindia’s Marathas and the British, with the former pretending to fight on behalf of the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II. But Shah Alam was wavering between support to the two parties as he knew that he was caught between the devil and the deep sea. This battle was fought on September 11, 1803 in what is now East Delhi, with Patparganj being the main arena of action and thus the battle field.

To quote from Percival Spear’s Twilight in Delhi, The British Governor-General, “Lord Wellesley’s object was to secure the prestige of the Moghul name without any admission of its superior authority; Shah Alam’s to maintain the imperial pretensions at the cost of any conceivable practical concessions. Lord Wellesley’s agent was the British Commander-in-Chief, Lord Lake, and his agent in Delhi was the Sayyid Reza Khan. During July and August Shah Alam’s letters wavered between appeals for help (against the Marathas who had made a virtual prisoner of him, keeping him in a golden cage as it were) and complaints of his treatment by the British as the fortunes of war ebbed and flowed. On 27 July, 1803, Wellesley, in a personal letter, assured Shah Alam” that if he accepted the asylum which he had directed Lake to offer, “then every respect and degree of attention would be shown to him and his family and adequate provision will be made on the part of the British Govt for the support (ease and comfort) of your Majesty, your family and household”.

But as Spear also thinks, the Governor-General’s assurances were those of a forked tongue for, besides promising respect, dignity and personal security, he wanted Lake to “urge Shah Alam and the heir apparent Akbar (later Akbar Shah II) to reside at Monghyr in Bengal” (now in Bihar). However, Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror of Sindh who famously said “Peccavi” (Latin for “I have sinned”, punning on Sindh), was of the view that the emperor should be sent to Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar the Great’s deserted capital, which was closer to Delhi and hence perhaps more acceptable to the blind emperor.

Shah Alam asked for British support on August 29 and on September 1, under French dictation, announced that he would take the field against the British “whose invariable custom it is, in whatever country they are allowed to reside under fixed stipulations, speedily to seize upon that country”. Despite this assertion he welcomed Lord Lake five days after the general had won the battle.

As for the battle itself, there was not much to it. It turned out to be more of a skirmish, with the Marathas, more used to guerrilla warfare, failing to carry the day. Their French commanders and the freewheeling local soldiers of Delhi, who had raised the cry of “Deen Deen (Faith) and come out to give battle to the pork-eating infidels” from the galis and mohallas of the city with antique swords, spears and matchlock guns, were the first to retreat, despite individual acts of bravery.

The women of Delhi, the able-bodied men who had stayed at home, the emperor, his son and begums in the Red Fort waited for some miracle to happen but their hopes were belied and the British finally put their seal on Delhi, which was to last till August 1947 when Lake and his troopers, as also Shah Alam and his harem, were dead for more than a hundred years. It is that event that will, as usual, go unnoticed in Delhi this year too, except for some British tourists coming to pay homage to their ancestors who died in that battle and on September 19, when the firangis recaptured Delhi, 54 years later, in the war of 1857.

Fwd: Unseen Historical Pictures

Photos: Kulwant Roy Collection

String serenade
Indian National Army personnel are all military grace as they welcome Gandhi at an event at the Harijan Colony, Delhi, in 1946

DELHI AFTER THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE -1858

In pictures: Felice Beato's 19th Century Delhi

Felice A Beato, the celebrated 19th Century photographer, visited Delhi in 1858. A collection of his rare pictures appears in Beato's Delhi, a new book by Penguin/Viking India. This is Ludlow Castle, a building in the Civil Lines area and home of a residency surgeon.



Kashmiri Gate
The Sabzi Mandi






























The Sabzi Mandi, or vegetable wholesale market, was located beyond the city wall, along the Grand Trunk Road to Punjab. British forces tore down walls and buildings in the area after rebels attacked during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.



The Kashmiri Gate was a double gateway to the walled city. It was built by a British engineer in 1835 and was the scene of a major assault by British forces during the mutiny. After 1857, the historic gate became a major draw for British tourists.



This "picket" was put up in the estate of Thomas Metcalfe, a British agent in the Mughal court, to deter rebels during the mutiny. However, in May 1857, the 1000-acre estate was attacked and burned by local villagers who regarded the property as theirs and appropriated by Metcalfe.



The Delhi Bank, which had many local men of business as shareholders, was set up in 1847 in a stately building. In May 1857, the manager of the bank, a Mr Beresford, defended himself and his family, but was killed by the rebels. British forces took back the bank in September.


Chandni Chowk (the Moonlit Market) is one of the oldest markets of Delhi. One account from 1859 talks about the market's "gay appearance", but in Beato's picture it is a sombre place. The house in the centre is typical of the happy eclecticism seen in most Indian houses then and later.



Delhi was stormed on 14 September 1857, but it was only six days later that the British forces captured and looted the King Bahadur Shah's Palace