In 1857, Indian soldiers rose up against their British commanders. They were joined by native rulers and thousands of ordinary people in a struggle that threatened to destroy British colonial power on the Indian subcontinent. The reasons behind the rebellion stretch back to the origins of British involvement in Indian affairs.

The Sepoy Mutiny was a violent and very bloody uprising against British rule in India in 1857. It is also known by other names: the Indian Mutiny, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, or the Indian Revolt of 1857.

In Britain and in the West, it was almost always portrayed as a series of unreasonable and bloodthirsty uprisings spurred by falsehoods about religious insensitivity.

In India, it has been viewed quite differently. The events of 1857 have been considered the first outbreak of an independence movement against British rule.

The uprising was put down, but the methods employed by the British were so harsh that many in the western world were offended. One common punishment was to tie mutineers to the mouth of a cannon and then fire the cannon, completely obliterating the victim.

The War of Independence of 1857! Part of the many divisions of the British army marched towards Kanpur, then called Cawnpore, from Calcutta on the 21st of September.  They were to reach Lucknow via Benares, Allahabad, Futtehpore, and Kanpur. Around 2200 Indian sepoys had laid siege to the British Residency in Lucknow including Sikandar Bagh. Sikandar Bagh was a villa and garden spread over an area of  4.5 acres located in Lucknow. It was built as a summer residence during the first half of the 19th century by Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Oudh. This villa had a fortified wall along the boundary on all four sides.

The Ninety-Third Sutherland Highlanders, also a part of the British army, used rail, and bullock carts to reach this destination. They also marched on foot, especially in areas where rail facility was not available. Elephants were used to carry tents and other necessities including ammunition. En route to Kanpur, the Highlanders reached Benares on the 17th of October 1857.

The British Army dreaded the freedom fighters of the region from Benares to Allahabad. In the words of William Forbes-Mitchell, a Sergeant with the Ninety-Third Sutherland Highlanders, who wrote about the 1857 War of Independence in his book  Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny, “From Benares, we proceeded by detachments of two or three companies to Allahabad; the country between Benares and Allahabad, being overrun by different bands of mutineers, was too dangerous for small detachments of one company.”

According to this book by William Forbes-Mitchell, railway tracks have been built up to Lohunga, about forty-eight miles from Allahabad. This line was to connect Kanpur. No stations were built. A considerable force of the British army assembled in Allahabad.

Missionary workers involved in converting the Hindus to Christianity were active in this region during that time. Mitchell mentions meeting a group of missionary workers at Futtehpore, located seventy- two miles from Allahabad. He wrote, “I met some native Christians whom I had first seen in Allahabad, and who was, or had been, connected with mission work, and could speak English. They had returned from Allahabad to look after a property which they had been obliged to abandon when they fled from Futtehpore on the outbreak of the  Mutiny.”  This proves that the War of Independence of 1857 affected missionary workers too. Had the war been a success, India would have been a different nation today! Maybe there was a lack of communication amongst the freedom fighters across the length and breadth of the country, which led to their failure.

Freedom fighters from Banda and Dinapore and adjoining areas, “numbering over ten thousand men, with three batteries of regular artillery, mustering eighteen guns” crossed the Yamuna River to check the advances of the British army. Mitchell mentions about this in his book, but there is no mention of whether any skirmish between the two forces occurred.

The British Army reached Kanpur. Indian sepoys and civilians of Kanpur laid siege to the city in June 1857. The sepoy forces captured 120 British women and children, killed them, and threw their dead bodies in wells. This came to be known as the Bibighar Massacre. The incident drew hateful criticism from the British in India and their home country. The angry British recaptured Kanpur and started widespread retaliation, killing, and hanging of captured sepoys and civilians. Brigadier Wilson of the Sixty-Fourth Regiment was in command of Kanpur when more forces of the British directed for Lucknow reached this city.

Mitchell happened to meet a man, a local guide, a Mohammedan from Peshawar, who could speak broken English and who knew many secrets.  He took him to the “slaughterhouse in which the unfortunate women and children had been barbarously murdered and the well into which their mangled bodies were afterward flung.”

The Peshawari guide narrated a secret related to Nana Sahib, who led the uprising in Kanpur. Nana Sahib was the adopted son of the exiled Maratha Peshwa Baji Rao II and adopted brother of Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi. According to the guide’s account, Nana Sahib, through a spy, tried to bribe the commissariat bakers who had remained with the English. He asked them to put arsenic into the bread they baked for the British. The bakers were Mohammedans. They refused to add poison to the bread. After the Bibighar Massacre, Nana Sahib  had these bakers “taken and put alive into their own ovens, and they're cooked and thrown to the pigs.”

The British army marched from Kanpur towards Lucknow. They reached the outskirts of a village on the east side of Secunderabagh (Sikandar Bagh) in November (1857). They made a short halt at the center of the village. They came across a Yogi in meditation, which Mitchell described as a ‘naked wretch’. The British never termed the Indians with respect then. The Yogi looked like a bodybuilder. His head was cleanly shaven except a shikha (a tuft of hair at the back of the head) adorning it. It was a ritual followed by not only Brahmins but also many other Hindus. Out of the seven chakras or energy centers in the human body, the shikha is believed to cover that part of the skull wherein lies the Shasrara Chakra. The tuft of hair is retained to protect it. Mitchell’s book finds no mention of the name of this Yogi. His body was smeared with ashes and his face was painted white and red. He was seated on a leopard’s skin. He was counting a rosary of beads when the British army saw him.

In the words of Mitchell, the Yogi “was of a strong muscular build, with his head closely shaven except for the tuft on his crown, and his face all streaked in a hideous manner with white and red paint, his body smeared with ashes. He was sitting on a leopard’s skin counting a rosary of beads”. The white and red paint that the Yogi applied on his face might be chandan and kumkum. British could perceive it only as paint.

James Wilson, a British soldier aimed his bayonet at the Yogi, addressing him as a ‘painted scoundrel’ and ‘murderer’. Another officer, Captain AO Mayne, Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General of that troop, stopped him. Mayne said that Hindu Yogis were harmless. He had just scarcely uttered the words and his sentence not yet completed when the Yogi stopped counting the beads, took out a pistol, and fired at the chest of Captain Mayne in seconds. It all happened at lightning’s pace! Mayne lay dead. The British army could not stop his action then.

Here is what Mitchell described the encounter:

About the center of the village, another short halt was made. Here we saw a naked wretch, of a strong muscular build, with his head closely shaven except for the tuft on his crown, and his face all streaked in a hideous manner with white and red paint, his body smeared with ashes.

He was sitting on a leopard's skin counting a rosary of beads. A young staff officer, I think it was Captain AO Mayne, Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General, was making his way to the front, when a man of my company, named James Wilson, pointed to this painted wretch saying, "I would like to try my bayonet on the hide of that painted scoundrel, who looks a murderer."

Captain Mayne replied: "Oh don't touch him; these fellows are harmless Hindoo jogees, and won't hurt us. It is the Mahommedans that are to blame for the horrors of this Mutiny."

The words had scarcely been uttered when the painted scoundrel stopped counting the beads, slipped his hand under the leopard skin, and as quick as lightning brought out a short, brass, bell-mouthed blunderbuss and fired the contents of it into Captain Mayne's chest at a distance of only a few feet. His action was as quick as it was unexpected, and Captain Mayne was unable to avoid the shot, or the men to prevent it.

Immediately our men were upon the assassin; there was no means of escape for him, and he was quickly bayoneted. Since then I have never seen a painted Hindoo, but I involuntarily raise my hand to knock him down.

Immediately, the army was set to action. The Yogi was already surrounded by thousands of the British army at the time of the assassination. They quickly bayoneted and shot him dead.

Was he really a Yogi? Or was he only waiting, disguised, to kill a high-ranking British officer without fearing for his life? No records of History mention this! Thanks to the account by Mitchell. Salute the valor of the unknown Yogi.

Jai Hind!

References:

Saffron Swords: Centuries of Indic Resistance to Invaders - Manoshi Sinha Rawal, Yogaditya Singh Rawal