‘For many months past, fugitive sepoys, probably to the number of two hundred, mutineers of the 14th Native Infantry of Jhelum, the 46th of Sealkote, and 26th of Mean Meer, have been lurking about, more or less disguised, in the hill near Jummoo. Communications had been made with the Maharajah of Jummoo regarding the presence of these men, and his highness promised that they would be arrested, but this has not been effected.’13
By early 1858, the number of fugitives had dwindled to just a handful of the original sepoys who survived Trimmu Ghat, and had formed into small wandering bands, which included many of the camp-followers from Sialkot. Occasionally they were joined by fresh fugitives from regiments in Punjab, as well as other vagrants. They no longer had any firearms with them, and, according to a number of accounts, most were disguised as religious pilgrims or ascetics. Immediately after Trimmu Ghat, for instance, fugitive rebels had been captured ‘in disguise as Fakeers, Bunneahs, etc.’14 Banias were common traders or moneylenders, and by adopting their identities the sepoys attempted to divest themselves of anything that would associate them with their former military profession. In effect, they sought to blend in with the kinds of pilgrims, mendicants and traders who commonly traversed the region and would be least likely to arouse the attention or suspicion of local authorities.
Even in the depth of the mountains, however, they were never completely safe from the British efforts to hunt down everyone remotely involved in the uprising. While travelling with William Hay, the Deputy commissioner of the Hill States, William Howard Russell had a chance encounter with two suspected fugitives in the mountains not far from the Kullu Valley. Russell, who was the correspondent for The Times, described the incident:
‘Just as we were starting, the cry was raised that the sepoys had arrived, and some five of those wretched hill-men came up to our camp, dragging after them two tall men, bound hand and foot with ropes. They were brought up to Hay for examination. Their upright bearing at once denoted that they were soldiers. One was about six feet high, with a large ill-shapen nose, and a hideous mouth. He wore a dirty thin cotton cap on his head, and a few folds of country blanket round his body. His face and neck were smeared with whitish earth. His companion, a strongly-built and rather handsome man, was attired in the same way. When first questioned, they said they were fakirs from Cashmere; but Khoom Dass [one of Russell’s servants], who was well-up in his religion, proceeded to examine them, and broke them down on cross-examination. The taller at last declared he was a syce [groom or grass-cutter] of the 46th Regiment of Native Infantry at Sealkote, but that he had nothing to do with the mutiny. One of our syces was at once sent for to examine him in the mysteries of his art; and as he completely failed to unravel them, he was driven to confess it was just possible that he might once have been a sepoy in that notorious regiment.’15
The two prisoners were accordingly despatched to Simla for further interrogation and Russell later learned that they ‘underwent severe flogging and other punishments in prison.’16
While some of the fugitives still had loot remaining from Sialkot, most of the remaining rebels were barely surviving, scraping out a meagre existence while constantly being on the move and hiding out in the mountains.17 They had little hope of ever making it back to Awadh but hunger and poverty eventually drove them from the hills, and by the spring of 1858, Alum Bheg and the others hatched a desperate plan. The closest town within British territory was Madhopur, located on the Ravi River at the head of the Bari Doab Canal. It was not a military station, but was home to ‘a large number of native officials, artisans and workmen, nearly all of them from Hindoostan.’18 There was also a sizeable bazaar, which made it a particularly attractive target for the fugitives. Two officers, Havildar Imam Bux of the 46th, and Subadar Ramadeen of the 4th N.I., were the masterminds who planned the raid, and they used a man named Ooree to establish contact with the ‘Hindustani’ labourers of Madhopur.19 Ooree had been a syce at Sialkot, but escaped to Madhopur the previous winter, disguised as a mendicant fakir. It was he who ascertained that the ‘Hindustani’s’ were willing to join the rebels in an attack on the bazaar. Imam Bux and Ramadeen would both later swim across the river to meet up with their co-conspirators in secret. One of the main obstacles was the fact that the rebels no longer had any weapons, so the ‘Hindustanis’ would have to gather those in preparation for the attack. An unsuccessful attempt was made in April 1858, when the fugitives were joined by a local dacoit, or robber, named Taroo. They initially managed to overpower the guards at the ferry at Bahari (Bhadrali), downriver from Madhopur. When they tried to cross the river, however, the ferry became stranded on a sandbank and the party waiting on the opposite bank panicked and fled. The whole affair was subsequently called off.
On 2 June, another attempt was made and this time, Alum Bheg and about thirty others successfully crossed the river on small rafts and inflated animal skins.20 They were armed with tulwars, or swords, lathis (heavy iron-bound sticks), as well as a few matchlock guns they had acquired. The rest of the sepoys would cross over on the ferry once the first party had linked up with the ‘Hindustanis’ and seized control of the bazaar. Alum Bheg and his comrades approached the town using the cover afforded by the high banks of the river, cutting down a local watchman on the road and chasing away the guards at the entrance to the bazaar. As the party entered the bazaar, they were joined by some of the local labourers who began plundering the shops and setting fire to the buildings. The sepoys repeatedly asked for the whereabouts of the ‘sahib logue’, but were mistakenly directed to a house inhabited by several Eurasian clerks, which they then attacked. Two of the Eurasians managed to escape, but the third, Mr Middleton, was severely wounded, as were two of his children. His wife and a third child were killed by the attackers. At this point, a canal official appeared and wounded several of the sepoys with his revolver and after the Sikh guards opened fire, the party finally retreated. Alum Bheg and the others had completely miscalculated the support they would receive once they began their assault, anticipating that hundreds of ‘Hindustanis’ would side with them—some of the local labourers did so, but rather than take control of the station, they merely plundered the shops before running off. In the chaos of the burning bazaar, the attackers were driven back by the better-armed guards.21 The British were now rallying and pursued the attackers to the river:
‘Mr Kelly took a small party down along the bank of the river to try and cut off some of the sepoys, but owing to the difficult nature of the ground, having to go on foot he was in time only to get a few shots at the last of them as they were crossing towards the Jummoo territory on rafts and on skins. He hit one man but saw him struggle out of the water on hands and knees. Many Poorbeahs were drowned and about twenty bodies have been brought in for examination.’
The river was particularly deep at this spot, and the current swift. This was the second time that the Sialkot mutineers had been defeated by the Ravi.22 A few straggling survivors managed to flee into the mountains on the other side of the river. Those who had the misfortune of being apprehended by the British were, in the words of one official, ‘suitably disposed of.’23
In Punjab, where the local population had remained largely loyal to the British, the distinctions between friend and foe were drawn along regional lines, with ‘Hindustanis’ all being labelled as intrinsically disloyal. By December 1857, more than 2,500 ‘Hindustanis’ in Government service had been deported from the province.24 Following the attack on Madhopur, all remaining ‘Hindustanis’ were ‘thoroughly purged’ from Punjab, and ‘a general weeding out of suspicious or idle characters’ was advocated.25 The events of 1857–58 accordingly had a profound impact on the ethnicity and composition of the colonial administration in the region. After the attack on Madhopur, a total of 995 ‘Hindustanis’ were rounded up—mostly labourers on the canal, but also some of the Sialkot fugitives. More than 600 were subsequently released and deported, but eleven of those who were identified as having played an active part in t
he attack were hanged on the spot, under the provisions of Act XVI of 1857.26 A few were given prison sentences and 155 were flogged. Amongst the prisoners at Madhopur, the authorities had identified one sepoy of the 35th, who was sentenced to transportation for life after he turned Queen’s evidence and revealed all the details of the attack.27 A sepoy of the 26th BNI, who had escaped Cooper’s slaughter at Ajnala, was also among the prisoners and he was one of those hung at Madhopur. Another forty-one prisoners were sent to Sialkot for identification, among whom was Alum Bheg.28 He narrowly avoided being executed then and there, but now found himself a prisoner of the British, and was marched back to the site of the outbreak, where it had all begun. The failed attack on Madhopur was little more than the final frenzy of a doomed rebellion, or, as one newspaper put it, ‘a terrible, but not important event.’29 For Alum Bheg, however, this marked the end of his desperate flight.
The attack on Madhopur had shown how groups of sepoy fugitives could still challenge the colonial state’s attempts to re-establish law and order, especially when they combined with locals at outlying stations situated along the periphery of British control. The initial reports on the attack were furthermore highly exaggerated by local English newspapers. For instance, the Anglo-Indian newspaper, Friend of India, wrote:
‘Some of the disbanded sepoys who have found a refuge in Cashmere have crossed the frontier and attacked Madhopore. They murdered fourteen Europeans, including several children, with circumstances of atrocious cruelty. When attacked by the Sikh guard of the treasury, they retreated with a quantity of plunder over the frontier. They appear to have had no motive except to gratify their thirst for European blood. Runbeer Singh, it is said, intends to surrender these men, but that personage has hitherto exhibited a reluctance to give up sepoys, which has called for the admonition from the Chief Commissioner.’30
This was of course a typically alarmist report, and once the true extent of the attack became clear, the Friend of India had to correct its initial account. By ascribing the attack to the fugitives’ ‘thirst for European blood’, however, they were perpetuating what had become standards tropes concerning rebel violence during the uprising. The incident nevertheless convinced the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Ranbir Singh, of ‘the necessity of taking active measures to clear his territory of such lawless characters,’ as one British official put it.31 At the same time that Alum Bheg began his final journey back to Sialkot in chains, there was thus a ‘general exodus’ of the last survivors of the 46th BNI from Jammu and further into the Himalayas. Small groups were later reported near Leh, in Ladakh, heading east towards the Tibetan border, and another at Chini, near Simla, which might have been trying to undertake the impossible journey down to Nepal and then back into India. ‘They may escape into Nepaul or into the deadly terai between the Himalayas and the plains,’ one newspaper reported, and ‘once they get among the people of Oude or Rohilcund they are quite safe.’32 The wilderness of the Terai, along the border between British India and Nepal, was the very region that Nana Sahib had disappeared into and it was generally perceived as a haunt for fugitive rebels.
The truth was that the fugitives in Kashmir were desperate and had nowhere to run. The biggest group of refugees, some eighty-seven men and five women and children, made their way through the inhospitable mountain region to the Spiti Valley and, against all odds, crossed the Chinese border.33 The Chinese authorities, however, maintained a strict policy of keeping out foreigners and refused to let them continue on their way. As a result, the fugitives were stuck, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere: a place known as Chuga, several days’ march east of what is today Kaurik, located near 32nd latitude and 79th longitude, on the Chinese side of the border. With their journey onwards blocked, they could not turn back and risk running straight into the waiting arms of the British. Rumours of sepoy refugees having made it all the way to the Chinese border eventually reached the British authorities and the assistant commissioner of Kullu, Mr G. Knox, immediately set off in pursuit, along with fourteen Punjabi policemen and some local men despatched by the ruler of Spiti.34 Chugra was a fourteen-day march from Kullu, through the Himalayas and across numerous rivers, where the local population was said to be ‘in the lowest stage of civilisation.’35 While Knox was closing in on the hapless fugitives, the newspapers in India got hold of the story and made much of the ‘dreadful sepoys wandering about in the passes of the Himalayas.’36 Some of the stories were particularly paranoid, combining the imperial rivalry with Czarist Russia and fears of the ‘Great Game’ power-struggles, with the ongoing conflict with China:
‘There have been for some time back alarming reports that the Sepoys and the Chinese—“two such named mingled!”—had confederated in some arcana of the Himalayan range to make a conjoint attack on our protected Hill States, while the Russians and the Persians were to invade us from Cabul, and by some other curious routes.’37
Such baseless stories obviously had more in common with the kind of rumours that had circulated amongst the Indian population prior to May 1857, than any realistic reflection of global politics. The prospect of Indian rebels being in contact with foreign powers beyond the borders of British India, whether they be China or Nepal, nevertheless turned this minor incident into something much bigger.
Meanwhile, Knox was approaching the fugitives’ encampment, which lay about a day’s march inside China. Although he had received strict orders not to proceed beyond British territory, he ignored this and crossed the border. The local Spiti officials accompanying Knox went ahead and established communications with the Chinese officials watching the border. A plan of operations was prepared and, probably for the first time in history, British and Chinese officials collaborated in this part of the world. Because of the Second Opium War (1856–60) between Britain and China, the two powers were technically at war, yet in the middle of the Himalayas, this mattered little. In his official report, Knox described what happened next:
‘I arrived at night and sent the Spiti men on ahead, that they might help in surrounding the Poorbeahs, but gave instructions that no attack should be made till my arrival on the spot. They went on in the night as the Poorbeahs would know they were going to be surrounded, and perhaps might attack them. The Chinese had for some days been posted on the heights above the accompanying ground of the Poorbeahs in order not to let them pass, the Spiti men were posted down below and surrounded the Poorbeahs. I went to the spot early in the morning, and immediately on seeing me at some distance off the Spiti men rushed with a shout at the Poorbeahs and by the time I came up the Poorbeahs had each of them their hands tied behind their backs. I must say that before this 2 of the Chinese and some 10 Spiti men […] went to the Poorbeahs on pretence that they would let them go on their road, demanded their arms; three cavalry pistols and two swords and their latties were thus given up, so when the Spiti people rushed on them, they had nothing to fear, as the Poorbeahs were disarmed.’38
Three of the fugitives who tried to run were shot and killed, leaving a total of eighty-four men and five women and children taken be into custody. After some final talks between Knox and the Chinese officials, with the Spiti men as interpreters, the assistant commissioner promised to pay the Chinese a reward for their help in securing the fugitives. The entire party then began the lengthy journey back through the mountains toward British India, where new iron shackles were just then being prepared to greet the prisoners.
This was the last, and biggest, seizure of fugitive rebels in Kashmir and both the authorities and the newspapers were jubilant. One official claimed that ‘the successful capture of these ruffian mutineers, most of whom were probably engaged in the Sealkote mutiny and the Madhopore outrage, will have an excellent moral effect.’39 As India officially became a Crown colony in August 1858, it was important for the British to be able to bring some closure to the turmoil of the uprising. Since the most infamous rebel leaders had thus far avoided capture, the apprehension of the fugitives in Kashmir made welcome
news and allayed some of the lingering calls for retribution. The Times’ correspondent wrote of the affair:
‘The last of the fugitive mutineers who took refuge in the Himalayan regions are being picked up from time to time. The other day a party of 90, after extraordinary wanderings, were trying to escape by Thibet and Chinese territory. Fancy that world of glaciers and rocks and literally howling wilderness being traversed by Sepoys born in the hot and fertile plains of Hindostan! But a pursuing destiny awaited them. They were followed by a civil officer (Mr. Knox) and some 30 Sikhs and hill-men, and were captured in Chinese territory. That a single European with a few Punjabee followers, separated by some 20 marches over several mountain ranges from all European support, should be able to take so large a party in the remotest Himalayan uplands shows that British prestige still lives even in the rudest localities.’40
In the commitment to hunting down Indian rebels in the aftermath of the uprising, a new myth of British colonial mastery was established. The violent retribution and mass-executions had demonstrated the willingness of the British to go to any length in order to regain control over India, and to punish those rebels who dare challenge colonial rule.41 With the relentless pursuit of rebel fugitives, the scope of colonial justice was extended beyond the political borders of British territory. Even when rebels evaded capture, the British fantasised about the divine justice they were certain would ultimately be meted out to their enemies. The figure of Nana Sahib, that was later displayed in London in Madame Tussauds’ ‘Chamber of Horrors,’ accordingly depicted the arch-fiend ‘in the winter costume of his country,’ as a fugitive in the Himalayas. The placard next to the figure described him as the man who had made war ‘against innocent women and children’, and who brought ‘desolation to India, and mourning to England’. Although Nana Sahib was never actually caught, and his fate remained unknown, the text provided a suitable resolution: although he escaped his earthly pursuers, ‘a retributive Providence willed it that punishment was near. Nana was totally defeated whenever he attempted to make a stand, and becoming a wanderer in his native land, died, it is said, the coward’s death, despised and forsaken.’42 This was, in other words, a cathartic narrative, that brought closure and justice, albeit imagined, to the trauma of the ‘Mutiny.’
The Skull of Alum Bheg Page 22