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This letter was published in The Asian Age, Delhi, in response to Amreesh Mishra’s suggestion that the Indian Government do more to bring the remains of Bahadur Shah Zafar to Delhi.

Dear Sir,
Amreesh Mishra in his piece Do Gaz Zameen for Zafar (The Asian Age, May 10,2007) mentions of astounding facts being unearthed by new research and in this context he cites the revolt by 10th Sikh Infantry at Dera Ismail Khan and Benares-Jaunpur centred revolt of Ludhiana Sikhs. The revolt by Ludhiana Sikhs is a well known historical fact and there is nothing startlingly new about it. In fact as early as in 1907, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the great revolutionary, in his book The First War of Independence had covered the rising of Ludhiana Sikhs at Varanasi in great detail. The Sikhs, however, had no preplanned intent of turning against the British,. but were forced to do so by the ham-handed manner in which the disarming of of 37 th Native Infantry and of 13th Irregular Cavalry was handled by Col Neill, a hot-headed officer of Madras Fusiliers, during the parade at Varanasi.

The mutiny at Dera Ismail Khan did not materially affect the course of events in favour of the nationalists. In spite of .Mishra’s contention that Sikhs of only cis-Sutlej supported the British, the fact remains that a great majority of Sikhs joined the British cause. Lord Roberts , the future Commander-In-Chief of India and himself an actor in the events of 1857 wrote in the preface to his memoirs Forty One Years in India “Delhi could not have been taken without Sikhs and Gurkhas”.. Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, India’s first prime Minister and himself a great historian and a scholar par excellence, had this to say in his magnum opus Discovery of India (about the role of the Sikhs in 1857), ”The British got the support of the Gurkhas and, what is much more surprising, of the Sikhs also, for the Sikhs had been their enemies and had been defeated by them a few years before”.

As regards Bahadur Shah, though a great poet and a Sufi that he was, did not exactly cover himself with glory by meekly surrendering to Hodson at the Humayun’s tomb where he had gone into hiding.. This was in complete contrast to the Rani of Jhansi who died fighting ,Tatia Tope whom the British could arrest only by a stratagem. and the Maulavi of Faizabad who was shot in the head by a treacherous Raja. When Delhi was almost lost to the enemy , Bakht Khan the Bareilly leader, who had been appointed Commander-in-Chief by the King himself, urged the old monarch to continue to fight. But Bakht Khan’s impassioned pleas fell on deaf ears. The King’s deposition in his trial, was even more deflating.

He denied all the charges and said that he was not the master of events and that he was daily insulted by the rebels. . It is difficult to appreciate the stand taken by the King. .He was an old man almost nearing the end of his life and a bolder stand was expected of him. .Obviously the courage of conviction had deserted him. One needs to really to stretch one’s imagination to even visualize the memorial of such a man as Bahadur Shah could become a “pilgrimage site” for “millions of Hindus and Muslims”. We should not allow our emotions to get better of incontrovertible historical facts.

Yours faithfully

May 10,2007 (Gautam Gupta)

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