Skeletons In The Cupboard: Cawnpur Well Massacre

Native runners known as sepoys or infantry men were the backbone of the East India Company army.  They constituted more than 90 per cent of the company army numbering 300 thousands.  Two months prior to the outbreak of rebellion, in the villages of northwestern provinces of India witnessed the revival of an old custom of circulating chapathis in the night by the Sepoys. It is believed that it was a secret message to be prepared for the mutiny. 

How it worked 

° A runner coming at night carrying few chapathis.

° He deliver them to the chowkidar.

° Chowkidar prepares another set of chapathis.

° These are then sent to other villages through other runners.

Irish reporter of Times, William Howard Russel later noted that it was a mysterious and fast method and difficult to trace the origin. It was thought that the mutineers were getting prepared. It was believed that it worked more swiftly than the British mail. It travelled from Farrukhabad to Gurgaon, from Oudh to Rohilkhand to Delhi. Its reach was extensive.

The claim that ancient Israelites used similar method of passing bread as a signal has no historical evidence.  The possible Biblical source is from the Book of Judges, connected with the story of Gideon. A Midianite soldier recounts a dream:

A barley loaf rolled into Midianite camp overturned a tent.

Gideon interprets this as a symbol that Israelites would defeat Midianites.

Divided Loyalty

The British officials, who were witnesses to the custom informed of this to their superiors in Calcutta. They were told to quit worrying about the substitutes for a hot-cross bun.  Since the founding of the East India  Company war had been a way of life for the British in India. 125 thousand British civilians -- men women and children living in small cantonments amid a native population of 250 million.  Cantonments were a combination of military barracks and English village, complete with homes, churches, and social clubs.

East India Company had three separate armies based at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. The total army strength was 250 thousands; out of which 43000 were British officers and enlisted men. Bengal infantry and cavalry consisted mainly of Hindu upper castes. They looked down upon the native troops from.Bombay and Madras. Native troops in Bengal felt that they were not being treated equally with their British counterparts. Majority of the native army were from newly annexed Oudh. They were loyal to the erstwhile rulers. Resentment was burning in them against annexation. Loyalty was a matter of caste honour and clan affiliation.  Sepoys felt that they were not equally treated with British professionals. Arrival of missionaries also added to the discontentment. Some of the lower castes and tribals were attracted to Christianity. These people were pushed to the periphery by the upper caste people by observing pollution and untouchability. The down trodden people were not part of that religion which we now call Hinduism. The religion of upper caste people was called Sanathana Dharma.  It professed and practised untouchability. Manusmriti was a part and parcel of Sanatana Dharma. The people outside Sanatana Dharma found a space in the new religion and they accepted it. It was not conversion, but accepting a religion by people who were born and brought up in polytheistic worship culture.

There was a short period when British officers took Indian wives, followed Indian way of life, and there was much rapport between British officers and native army men.

A Spark of Rumour 

Behrampur, Bengal.

February 1857. Members of 19th Native Infantry had refused to take, or even touch, newly issued paper cartridges for their nuzzle loading Enfield rifles. The cartridges were greased for lubrication, and the soldiers had to bite off the end of each cartridges before ramming it down the barrel.of their guns.  A rumour ran through the Bengal army that the grease used to lubricate the cartridges was made from pigs, which were anathema to Muslims, and from cows, which were sacred to upper caste Hindus.  It was an intentional device, the rumour maintained, by which the British planned to defile the sepoys, break down their caste system and convert them to Christianity.

Ensuing the stand off between sepoys and their British comrades the 19th regiment was disbanded by Governor General Charles Canning. But the unrest spread to other native regiments.

On 29th March, Mungal Pandey of the 34th Infantry, on the parade ground of Barrackpore, suddenly broke rank calling his comrades to rise up and resist the new cartridges.

General John Hearsey rode up to Pandey and defied him to shoot.  The badly rattled Pandey shot himself. He survived his suicide attempt, only to hanged for mutiny, 10 days later.

The report of unrest quickly reached 

the government at Calcutta, which responded by directing that only British troops should use factory greased cartridges. Sepoys could grease their own cartridges by bees wax and vegetable oil.  But it was too late.  The unrest was spreading.  Open revolt erupted at Meerut on May 10.  Eighty five sowars of 3rd Light Cavalry had refused to accept the new cartridges from their Commander General William Hewitt.

Hewitt had the sowars arrested and court-martialed.  While the sowars languished in jail, placards began appearing in the nearby bazars calling for the murder of all Europeans in India.  On the day of sentencing sowars were taken to the open square at Meerut, where their sentences were read aloud, their uniforms stripped, and shackles and chains were placed on their arms and legs, and shuffled on the parade ground.

Next day at five in the afternoon, Meerut exploded signalling the start of rebellion. The company officers, because of intense heat were in short sleep. Buckled sowars and sepoys carrying weapons began running through the contonment, shooting, looting, and setting fire to bunglows and other buildings.  They broke into the arsenal for more weapons and released the sowars from their cells.  Joined by mobs from markets and convicts newly freed, the rioters set upon unwary soldiers returning to camp. Several soldiers were stoned or stabbed to death.  An officer's pregnant wife was eviscerated  by a Muslim butcher.  A woman suffering from smallpox was pelted with flaming torches and burned alive, and the cantonment quickly became littered with white corpses. By the time soldiers had managed to regroup on the parade ground, fifty men, women and children lay dead and the rebellious sowars had galloped out of Meerut on the road to Delhi, followed on foot by hundreds of sepoys in frenzy.

The palace of Bahadur Shah Zafar, opium addicted octogenarian and poet, and the last king of the Mughal Empire.

The rebels arrived at the palace. He was only a king in name, and received a paltry pension from the company. The Company had been waiting for his death to phase out the Mughal line.  The king retreated into the palace and summoned his keeper, a company captain named Douglas, who said to rioters, "Don't disturb his royal highness, disperse yourself." 

There were no space for words. They immediately chopped down Douglas.

British Commissioner Simon Fraser who came to the palace was caught and they cut off his head.  They set about killing European men, women, or children who happened to be in their way. The manager of the Delhi.and London Bank along with everyone in his family, had their heads cut off.  Europeans were tied together and slaughtered en masse by the servants of the king.

There were no regiments exclusively for the British in Delhi.  The sepoys of Delhi garrison killed their officers and joined the mutineers.  The officers who were not killed made their way along with terror-stricken civilians, who had escaped the killing, to Delhi Ridge overlooking the city where they set up a stronghold.  The garrison's main powder magazines and arsenal were blown up, killing nine officers.  Inside Delhi, some of the company managed to escape with the help of their faithful servants and a few loyal sepoys.  The city's telegraph office received an alarming message, "We must leave office.  All bunglows are being burnt down by the sepoys from Meerut." 

Thousands of mutineers poured into Delhi. A form of civil administration was set up, with Bahadur Shah Zafar as the head of a ruling council.  The king's sons and grandson were the real players behind the set up.  Word of Meerut mutiny spread throughout northwest India and mutineers spread to new areas like Aligarh, Gwalior, Jhansi, and Benares. 

The news reached Cawnpur on May 14.  But the week passed silently.  The garrison Commandor General Hugh Wheeler had been in the subcontinent for half a century and had an Indian wife. He did not disarm the sepoys because he felt it would send a wrong message.  The British Cawnpur contingent had nine hundred people including three hundred military men, three hundred women and children, and about one hundred fifty, merchants  drummers, engineers and others. Drummers were traveling sales men, who beat their empty wooden box to notify their arrival and thus attract buyers.  The native servants in the contonment left soon after the commencement of the siege.

Suitable defensive location for the British was the magazine in the north of the city. However General Wheeler decided to take shelter in the south of the city, in an entrenchment composed of two barracks surrounded by a mud wall.  The area lacked sanitary facilities and there was only one well.  There were several buildings overlooking which would provide cover for the attackers to attack the company forces. It is believed that Wheeler chose this location because he anticipated reinforcement to come from the southern part of the city.  He also assumed that in the event of rebellion the Indian troops would collect the arms and move to Delhi.

Therefore he did not expect a long siege.

          TO BE CONTINUED 

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