49. Dihli Urdu Akbhar (hereafter DUA), 17 May 1857.
50. Abdul Latif, 1857 Ka Tarikhi Roznamacha, ed. K. A. Nizami, Naqwatul Musannifin, Delhi, 1958, p. 123. For the confectioners see Proceedings on the Trial of Muhammad Bahadur Shah, Titular King of Delhi, before a Military Comission, upon a charge of Rebellion, Treason and Murder, held at Delhi, on the 27th Day of January 1858, and following days, London, 1859 (hereafter Trial), Narrative of Chunni Lal, news-writer, p. 103. See also Kedarnath’s journal, entry for 16 May. DUA, 17 May.
51. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection IIIa, no. 10, May 1857.
52. Ibid., Collection 60, no. 605; also Collection 62, no. 71.
53. Trial, Narrative of Chunni Lal, news-writer, p. 103.
54. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection no, no. 270.
55. Trial, Narrative of Chunni Lal, news-writer, p. 103.
56. DUA, 31 May 1857.
57. Abdul Latif, Roznamacha, p. 123. Ayesha Jalal argues this case very well in her Self and Sovereignty, New Delhi, 2001, pp. 34–5.
58. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 146, no. 3, May 1857.
59. Ibid., Collection 125, no. 12, May 1857.
60. Ibid., Collection 60, no. 72, 11 June 1857.
61. Ibid., Collection 67, no. 14, undated.
62. Ibid., Collection 128, no. 43, 13 June 1857.
63. Trial, Narrative of Chunni Lal, news-writer, pp. 105–6; also Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857, ed. C. A. Bayly, Oxford, 1986, p. 126.
64. Trial, Evidence of Mukund Lala, secretary, and Chunni Lal, news-writer, pp. 86–7.
65. Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives of The Mutiny in Delhi, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 87.
66. Ibid., p. 87.
67. Ibid., p. 87.
68. For the garden, see NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 60, no. 290, 10 July 1857; for the sepoys peering into the zenana, see ibid., Collection 100, no. 6, 22 May 1857.
69. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, pp. 82–3, 88.
70. Sadiq ul-Akabhar, 10 August 1857.
71. PAL, Case 1, 45, letter from Sir Thomas Metcalfe, Delhi, to C. Allen, Sec. to Govt of NWP, Agra, dated 11 January 1849.
72. For Ghalib’s remark, see Ralph Russell, The Oxford Ghalib: Life, Letters and Ghazals, New Delhi, 2003, p. 90. For MKS’s application for the house in Mehrauli, see NAI, Foreign, Foreign Dept Misc., Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for Sunday, 8 August 1852; for his wife’s friendship with the wife of Mirza Fakhru, see entry for Sunday, 1 August 1852.
73. For wife-beating, see NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for Friday, 27 August 1852.
74. For gun accident see ibid., entry for Monday, 7 November 1853, which records how, ‘loading his gun, it went off, and shattered one of his fingers which had been attended to by Subassistant surgeon Chimun Lal’. For complaints against MAB, see, for example, NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 71, nos 95 and 96; also Kedarnath’s journal, entry for 6 July 1857.
75. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for 28 September 1852, and PAL, Case 1, 45, letter from Sir Thomas Metcalfe, Delhi to C. Allen, Sec. to Govt of NWP, Agra, dated 11 January 1849.
76. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entry for Sunday, 1 January 1854.
77. PAL, Case 1, 45, letter from Sir Thomas Metcalfe, Delhi, to C. Allen, Sec. to Govt of NWP, Agra, dated 11 January 1849.
78. NAI, Precis of Palace Intelligence, entries for 14 and 27 February 1852.
79. Ibid., entry for 20 February 1852.
80. For the coronation portrait see Stuart Cary Welch, Room for Wonder: Indian Painting during the British Period 1760–1880, New York, 1978, pp. 118–19.
81. See Chapter 1, note 2.
82. Trial, Evidence of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 89; also, Narrative of Chunni Lal, news-writer, p. 103; Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, pp. 6–7.
83. The letter was first printed in English in N. A. Chick, Annals of the Indian Rebellion 1857–8, Calcutta, 1859 (reprinted London 1972), pp. 101–3. It has recently been reprinted in Salim al-Din Quraishi, Cry for Freedom: Proclamations of Muslim Revolutionaries of 1857, Lahore, 1997. The language is much more aggressive and intolerant than anything written by Zafar, and must presumably be the work of Mirza Mughal.
84. The entire text was published in English for the first time in the Delhi Gazette of 29 September 1857. It can be read in full in Quraishi, Cry for Freedom, or S. A. Rizvi, and M. L. Bhargava (eds), Freedom Struggle in Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow, 1957, vol. 1, pp. 453–6. Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Avadh in Revolt 1857–8– A Study of Popular Resistance, New Delhi, 1984, has argued convincingly that the document has no connection with Delhi. See also Rudrangshu Mukherjee, ‘The Azamgarh Proclamation and some questions on the Revolt of 1857 in the North Western Provinces’, in Essays in Honour of S.C. Sarkar, Delhi, 1976.
85. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 8.
86. Ibid., p. 5.
87. Ibid., p. 8.
88. On 11 May Mirza Ilahe Bakhsh had initially ‘had the whole of his property in the Fort confiscated and his person was sought by his enemy Khwaja Mehboob [Ali Khan]’. He survived the outbreak, however, and played a prominent role in the pro-British faction within the court throughout the Uprising – as a list of his services drawn up by Hodson in December 1857 makes clear. In contrast Mahbub Ali Khan was poisoned soon after the outbreak; by whom is not clear. Delhi Commissioner’s Office Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 1, Services performed by Mirza Elahee Bahksh for WLR Hodson, 1 December 1857.
89. Trial, Narrative of Chunni Lal, news-writer, pp. 105–6.
90. Ibid., p. 106.
91. Ibid., p. 106.
92. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 94.
93. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 10.
94. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
95. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 84.
96. Trial, Narrative of Chunni Lal, news-writer, p. 106.
97. DUA, 24 May 1857.
98. Ibid.
99. Stokes, The Peasant Armed, p. 70.
100. See, for example, the entry for 24 June in Kedarnath’s journal; also DUA, 17 May 1857.
101. Russell, The Oxford Ghalib, p. 118.
102. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 19, no. 10.
103. DUA, 31 May 1857.
104. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 103, no. 24.
105. Ibid., Collection no, no. 293.
106. DUA, 24 May 1857.
107. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 98. There is another account of the same incident in Trial, Narrative of Chunni Lal, News-writer, p. 108.
7: A Precarious Position
1. Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (hereafter OIOC), Photo Eur 31 IB, Hardcastle Papers, pp. 287ff. Also South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box 8, typescript mss by Emily Bayley, Account of the escape of Sir Theophilus Metcalfe from Delhi after the Outbreak of the Mutiny.
2. Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives of the Mutiny in Delhi, London, 1898, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, p. 57.
3. The Dehlie Book and Metcalfe’s panoramic scroll are both now in the OIOC of the British Library, as are the two images of the Nawab of Jhajjar’s durbar; the Nawab of Jhajjar’s hunting image is in the V&A; while the image of Nawab Jhajjar riding his tiger is part of the private collection of Cynthia Polski in New York. See Andrew Topsfield (ed.), In the Realm of Gods and Kings: Arts of India, New York, 2004, Catalogue no. 108, Nawab ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan of Jhajjar rides a tiger in his palace garden, pp. 254–5.
4. OIOC, Photo Eur 31 IB, Hardcastle Papers, pp. 287ff.
5. OIOC, Saunders Correspondence, Eur Mss E 185, no. 24 Agra, 12 December 1857, to J. Lawrence.
6. OIOC, Metcalfe Papers, Eur Mss D 610.
7. Frances W. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994, pp. 15, 26–7.
8. Edward Vibart, The
Sepoy Mutiny as Seen by a Subaltern from Delhi to Lucknow, London, 1858, pp. 63–4.
9. Ibid., pp. 65–70.
10. Ibid., pp. 90–92.
11. Ibid., p. 93.
12. See John Lall, Begam Samru: Fading Portrait in a Gilded Frame, Roli Books, Delhi, 1997, pp. 126–7.
13. Ram Babu Saksena, European & Indo-European Poets of Urdu & Persian, Lucknow, 1941, p. 288.
14. See Linda York Leach, Mughal and Other Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, Scorpion Cavendish, London, 1995, vol. II, p. 794. Two Europeans shown in the painting 7.121 are referred to by their Muslim names Khwajah Ismail Khan and Salu Khan.
15. There is a photograph and good discussion of the Sardhana monuments in Gauvin Alexander Bailey, ‘Architectural Relics of the Catholic Missionary Era in Mughal India’, in Rosemary Crill, Susan Stronge and Andrew Topsfield (eds), Arts of Mughal India: Studies in Honour of Robert Skelton, Mapin, Ahmedabad, 2004, pp. 146–50.
16. For Sardhana and the Begum Samru see Lall, Begam Samru, especially pp. 126–7 for the Christmas festivities. See also: Michael Fisher, ‘Becoming and Making Family in Hindustan’, in Indrani Chatterjee, Unfamiliar Relations, Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2004; Nicholas Shreeve, Dark Legacy, Book-wright, Arundel, 1996, Nicholas Shreeve (ed.), From Nawab to Nabob: The Diary of David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, Bookwright, Arundel, 2000. For the Sardhana poets see Saksena, European & Indo-European Poets.
17. David Dyce Ochterlony Sombre’s diaries: see, for example, entries for Diwali (Thursday, 30 October 1833, p. 66), Holi (Easter Sunday, 29 March 1834, p. 21), Dussera (Thursday, 1 October 1835), witchcraft (3 January 1835, p. 78) and exorcism (Tuesday, 2 September 1834).
18. Saksena, European & Indo-European Poets, p. 288.
19. Vibart, The Sepoy Mutiny, pp. 106–11.
20. National Army Museum (hereafter NAM), Wilson Letters, AW to his wife, Meerut, 25 May 1857.
21. National Archives of India (hereafter NAI), Mutiny Papers, Collection 39, entry for 14 May 1857.
22. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
23. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, ed. S. Muinul Haq, Pakistan Historical Society, Karachi, 1958, p. 14.
24. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 39, entry for 15 May 1857.
25. Ibid., Collection 8, no. 1, entry for 20 May 1857.
26. Dthli Urdu Akbhar, 31 May 1857.
27. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
28. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, p. 61.
29. NAM, Wilson Letters, AW to his wife, Meerut, 26 May 1857.
30. Ibid., AW to his wife, Mehoodeenpore, 28 May 1857.
31. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
32. NAM, Wilson Letters, AW to his wife, Camp Ghazee Deen Nuggur, 30 May 1857.
33. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, pp. 61–2.
34. NAM, Wilson Letters, AW to his wife, Camp Ghazee Deen Nuggur, 1 June 1857.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid., AW to his wife, Camp Ghazee Deen Nuggur, 2 June 1857.
38. Major Charles Reid, Defence of the Main Piquet at Hindoo Rao’s House as recorded by Major Reid Commanding the Sirmoor Battalion, London, 1957, p. 12.
39. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, p. 62.
40. Quoted by Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, London, 1978, p. 124.
41. Richard Barter, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1984, p. 9.
42. Ibid., p. 9.
43. Robert H. W. Dunlop, Service and Adventure with the Khakee Ressalah, London, 1858, pp. 156–7.
44. Harriet Tytler, An Englishwoman in India: The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828–1858, ed. Anthony Sattin, Oxford, 1986, p. 144.
45. Ibid., p. 146.
46. H. H., Greathed, Letters Written during the Siege of Delhi, London, 1858, pp. 24, 27, 128.
47. Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box 10, EC to his mother, datelined Constantia, Simla.
48. Major W. S. R. Hodson, Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India, London, 1859, p. 198.
49. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 126, no. 18, entry for 1 June 1857.
50. Ibid., Collection 126, nos 14 and 17, entries for 28 and 31 May 1857.
51. Abdul Latif, 1857 Ka Tarikhi Roznamacha, ed. K. A. Nizami, Naqwatul Musannifin, Delhi, 1958, entry for 9 June 1857.
52. Zahir Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr: An eyewitness account of the 1857 Uprising, Lahore, 1955, p. 89.
53. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 152, no. 43, entry for 7 June 1857.
54. Barter, The Siege of Delhi, pp. 12–17.
55. Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857, ed. C. A. Bayly, Oxford, 1986, p. 75.
56. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
57. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, p. 63.
58. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
59. Stokes, The Peasant Armed, p. 75.
60. Tytler, An Englishwoman in India, pp. 130, 145.
61. Delhi Gazette Extra, issue of 20 June 1857, datelined Lahore.
62. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 95.
63. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
64. Reid, Defence, p. 14.
65. Vibart, The Sepoy Mutiny, pp. 30–31.
66. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 92.
67. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 118.
68. Ibid., pp. 117–18.
69. John Edward Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative of the Siege of Delhi, London, 1858, pp. 61–2.
8: Blood for Blood
1. Major W. S. R. Hodson, Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India, London, 1859, p. 201.
2. For the King watching, see Richard Barter, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1984, p. 32; for city walls and rooftops, see H. H., Greathed, Letters Written during the Siege of Delhi, London, 1858, p. 141.
3. Sarvar ul-Mulk, My Life, Being the Autobiography of Nawab Server ul-Mulk Bahadur, trans, from the Urdu by his son, Nawab Jiwan Yar Jung Bahadur, London, 1903, p. 16:
4. Ibid., p. 16.
5. Greathed, Letters, p. 45.
6. Zahir Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr: An eyewitness account of the 1857 Uprising, Lahore, 1955, p. 95.
7. National Archives of India (hereafter NAI), Mutiny Papers. Collection 60, no. 253; for the stable boy, see Abdul Latif, 1857 Ka Tarikhi Roznamacha, ed. K. A. Nizami, Naqwatul Musannifin, Delhi, 1958; for Zinat moving to her house, see NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 15, no. 19.
8. Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (herafter OIOC), Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
9. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, Appendix no. 2, ed. S. Moinul Haq, Pakistan Historical Society. Karachi, 1958, entry for 14 June 1857.
10. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
11. Ralph Russell, The Oxford Ghalib: Life, Letters, and Ghazals, New Delhi, 2003, p. 119.
12. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Dastanbuy, trans. Khwaja Ahmad Faruqi, Delhi, 1970, pp. 33–4.
13. Ibid., p. 34.
14. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 111b, no. 14, entry for 3 July 1857.
15. Ibid. Collection 146, nos 13 and 14, 16 July 1857.
16. Ibid. Collection 146, nos 9 and 10, 1 July 1857.
17. Ibid. Collection 61, no. 76, 20 June 1857.
18. Ibid., Collection 67, no. 76, 27 July 1857. The previous item in the collection, no. 75, is Mehrab Khan’s friend Rafiullah, who says he came into town with the ghazis from Faridabad, sold his horse at the same time as Mehrab Khan sold his, was also robbed by the Gujars and was arrested along with his friend.
19. Dihli Urdu Akbhar (hereafter DUA), 14 June 1857.
20. Ibid.
21. See, for example, NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 67, no. 12, 24 June 1857.
22. Irfan Habib, ‘The Coming of 1857’, Social Scientist, Vol. 26, no. 1, January-April 1998, p.
8.
23. Ibid., p. 12.
24. See, for example, NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 67, no. 77, 27 July 1857 for Zinat ul-Masajid; and Collection 15, File 1 for Jama Masjid.
25. See, for example, ibid., Collection 73, no. 171.
26. See the report of the spy Gauri Shankar Sukul in ibid., Collection 18, no. 1, entry for 6 July 1857.
27. Sarvar ul-Mulk, My Life, pp. 16–17.
28. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah
29. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 65, no. 36, Petition of Maulvi Sarfaraz Ali, 10 September 1857.
30. Proceedings on the Trial of Muhammad Bahadur Shah, Titufa King of Delhi, before a Military Commission, upon a charge of Rebellion, Treason and Murder, held at Delhi, on the 27th Day of January 1858, and following days, London, 1859 (hereafter Trial), p. 57, Petition of Ghulam Mu’in ud-Din Khan, Principal Risaldar (no date, but final note is dated 2 August, so petition must be? late July).
31. Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives of the Mutiny in Delhi, London, 1898, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 172.
32. Zakaullah, Tarikh-I Uruj-e Saltanat-e Englishya, New Delhi, 1904, p. 676.
33. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 15, no. 19, undated.
34. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 31. For Zafar paying Brahmins to pray for victory, see NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 102, no. 113, undated.
35. Cited in Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Avadh in Revolt 1857–8– A Study of Popular Resistance, New Delhi, 1984, p. 153.
36. See Habib, ‘The Coming of 1857’, p. 8.
37. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 57, no. 483, Petition of Generals Sudhari and Hira Singh to Mirza Mughal, 12 September 1857.
38. Allamah Fazl-I Haqq Khairabadi, ‘The Story of the War of Independence, 1857–8 ‘, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, pt 1, January 1957, pp. 33, 36. Some scholars have questioned the authenticity of this document, and believe it may contain significant later interpolations.
39. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 100, no. 179 (undated).
40. DUA, 14 June 1857.
41. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
42. Greathed, Letters, p. 71.
43. Major Charles Reid, Defence of the Main Piquet at Hindoo Rao’s House as recorded by Major Reid Commanding the Sirmoor Battalion, London, 1957, p. 17, entry for 13 June 1857.
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