01. The vengeance of the feudal classes

02. Cawnpore Massacre

03. A digression to a similar rioting

The vengeance of the feudal classes

QUOTE from THE INDIAN MUTINY OF 1857 by COLONEL G. B. MALLESON, C.S.L: There must have been a latent motive power to make of an unissued cartridge a grievance so terrible as to rouse into revolt men whose fathers and whose fathers’ fathers had contributed to the making of the British Empire in India.

Yet, it was not to last long. For, the social leaders had their routes of command in feudal languages over the ‘Indians’ who worked for the East India Company. In Meerut, some of them were given encouragement to mutiny against their very officers. They caught their English officers, tied them in the front of the cannons and blasted them off.

It was actually a small event if the hugeness of British-India was taken into account. However, the ‘Indian’ social leaders had their vengeance on those who strived to improve their servants. The common man did not understand the inner mechanism of this minor military mutiny. However, no one in Meerut come out in support of this disruptive activity. The soldiers marched to Delhi. It was a small outbreak. But then several British officers and other personnel were killed. Some in a treacherous manner, by brutish un-educated people.

There are books written by British officials who were present in area during the Sepoy Mutiny. Even though the insight they have given is quite profound, all of them seems to have missed the factor of feudal content in the native languages. That the language codes do have a command route that exists quite external to military hierarchy.

In a geographical area, where the English rulers were giving a never-before-in-history chance for the lower sections to improve, it is easy to terrorise them with superstitions, rumours and false stories. That was liberally used by the traditional social leaders of the small places near Meerut. To understand the state of the social minds, see this text I have taken from: Omens and Superstitions of Southern India, written by Edgar Thurston in 1912, who was for some time, the Superintendent of the Madras Government Museum and of the Ethnographic Survey of the Madras Presidency:

Arrack (liquor) vendors consider it unlucky to set their measures upside down. Some time ago, the Excise Commissioner informs me, the Madras Excise Department had some aluminium measures made for measuring arrack in liquor shops. It was found that the arrack corroded the aluminium, and the measures soon leaked. The shop-keepers were told to turn their measures upside down, in order that they might drain. This they refused to do, as it would bring bad luck to their shops. New measures with round bottoms, which would not stand up, were evolved. But the shop-keepers began to use rings of indiarubber from soda-water bottles, to make them stand.

An endeavour was then made to induce them to keep their measures inverted by hanging them on pegs, so that they would drain without being turned upside down. The case illustrates how important a knowledge of the superstitions of the people is in the administration of their affairs. Even so trifling an innovation as the introduction of a new arrangement for maintaining tension in the warp during the process of weaving gave rise a few years ago to a strike among the hand-loom weavers at the Madras School of Arts.

However, there is no contention of mine that all superstitions are totally baseless. They would need to be evaluated in the virtual code arena based on the local language codes.

Cawnpore Massacre

Here I should mention the Cawnpore Massacre. It sure is a digression, but then my writing is about what had happened to persons who really tried to improve the subordinated people. The subordinated people are not a free section of people. They are really the lower ranks in a highly regimented social structure. Even when they are being freed, by outsiders, they still will obey the orders and commands of their master races and classes. For that is how their minds will work in feudal language codes. Each word, even in their soft sounds is a powerful command. They will strike against their own saviours.

The story of the CAWNPORE Massacre is thus as taken from Wikipedia:

The besieged British in Cawnpore (now Kanpur) were unprepared for an extended siege and surrendered to rebel Indian forces under Nana Sahib, in return for a safe passage to Allahabad. However, under ambiguous circumstances, their evacuation from Cawnpore turned into a massacre, and most of them were killed. Those captured were later executed, as an East India Company rescue force from Allahabad approached Cawnpore; in what came to be known as the Bibighar Massacre, 120 British women and children captured by the Sepoy forces were hacked to death and dismembered with meat cleavers, with the remains being thrown down a nearby well in an attempt to hide the evidence.

Even though it is not seen as noteworthy, one of the greatest vulnerability of the British commander here can be seen in this information:

The British General at Cawnpore, Hugh Wheeler, knew the local language, had adopted local customs, and was married to an Indian woman. He was confident that the sepoys at Cawnpore would remain loyal to him, and sent two British companies (one each of the 84th and 32nd Regiments) to besieged Lucknow.

The very fact that he knows the local native vernacular is loaded with an impossible situation. Wherein his native English superiority stands compromised. For, his innate English mood will compromise the natural cunningness that Indian languages would give him. Beyond that his marrying a native female adds to the lowering of his status among the natives of the place. In each and every word they speak, this information would bring down his indicant codes. For, he wouldn’t know how to maintain it powerfully up, like other local feudal lords do. This English stance along with his knowledge of native language and his family links to native woman is a very dangerous combination. Especially in critical situations, wherein he has to deal with cunning feudal-language adversaries.

A lot of terrible and heinous deeds were done by the soldiers and their leaders, the feudal lords. One such is described here: (Taken from Wikipedia):

Finally, on 15 July, an order was given to murder the women and children imprisoned at Bibighar. The details of the incident, such as who ordered the massacre, are not clear. According to some sources, Azimullah Khan ordered the murder of women and children at Bibighar.

The rebel sepoys executed the four surviving male hostages from Fatehghar, one of them a 14-year-old boy. But they refused to obey the order to kill women and the other children. Some of the sepoys agreed to remove the women and children from the courtyard, when Tatya Tope threatened to execute them for dereliction of duty. Nana Sahib left the building because he didn’t want to be a witness to the unfolding massacre.

The British women and children were ordered to come out of the assembly rooms, but they refused to do so and clung to each other. They barricaded themselves, tying the door handles with clothing. At first, around twenty rebel soldiers opened fire on the outside of the Bibighar, firing through holes in the boarded windows. The soldiers of the squad that was supposed to fire the next round were disturbed by the scene, and discharged their shots into the air. Soon after, upon hearing the screams and groans inside, the rebel soldiers declared that they were not going to kill any more women & children.

An angry Begum Hussaini Khanum termed the sepoys’ act as cowardice, and asked her lover Sarvur Khan to finish the job of killing the captives. Sarvur Khan hired butchers, who murdered the surviving women and children with cleavers. The butchers left, when it seemed that all the captives had been killed. However, a few women and children had managed to survive by hiding under the other dead bodies. It was agreed that the bodies of the victims would be thrown down a dry well by some sweepers.

The next morning, when the rebels arrived to dispose off the bodies, they found that three women and three children aged between four and seven years old were still alive. The surviving women were cast into the well by the sweepers who had also been told to strip the bodies of the murder victims. The sweepers then threw the three little boys into the well one at a time, the youngest first. Some victims, among them small children, were therefore buried alive in a heap of butchered corpses.

The Wikipedia-India has done two terrible crimes with regard to this article, as with so many other articles connected to ‘India’. It continuously mentions the incidents as something that took place between ‘Indians’ and the British.

Actually, the word ‘Indians’ should have been more properly defined. For, at this period of time, there was no ‘India’ as such. The current day nation of India is not a direct continuation of this nation or nationalities. Actually, the same geographical area that is identified as ‘India’ in the Wikipedia articles currently consists of three different and mutually belligerent nations.

Digression: Moreover, identifying the people who did these heinous crimes as ‘Indians’ is also questionable. It is just like mentioning some heinous deed done on the Hindus by Muslims or on the Muslims by the Hindus in the Mappilla rebellion (Mappila lahala) in Malabar during the British period as ‘Indians did this and did that’. There are very specific names for the people or section of people who did these barbaric crimes. The loyalists of Taniya Topia and Nana Sahib are not ‘Indians’ and the native soldiery and people who stood by the British are not ‘anti-Indians’.

The vast majority of people, who lived in this geographical area had very little traditional or hereditary links with these barbarians who did the heinous deeds mentioned above. By writing such nonsense, Wikipedia India Pages is becoming a joke. And the writers, a part of a criminal conspiracy.

If the word ‘Indian’ is legitimate and appropriate, then what is wrong in using the word ‘Pakistani’ for the Muslims involved? Most probably the descendants of many Muslims involved in these crimes would be current-day Pakistani citizens. The problem here is that the native people of British-India were called ‘Indians’ by the British. However, the same name ‘India’ has been adopted by a current day nation, formed in a major part of this geographical area. Calling them Pakistanis is as nonsensical as calling them Indians.

Now, think like this. If the new nation had been called ‘Sambrani’, then there wouldn’t be any confusion. For then, calling the people of British-India as ‘Indians’ would not identify them with the people of Sambrani. However, there is a new nation which bears the name India, and so using the term ‘Indians’ to the native people of British-India leads to confusion.

Both are different people, in terms of national loyalty, leadership and connections. The peoples of British-India were variously identified and each had it own communal, social, religious and even clannish leadership, quite different and exclusive from each other, and at times, belligerent to each other. The only connecting link was the British supremacy over them all.

However, even the British policymakers, way back in England, were negligent about understanding this geographical area. The fact is that there were a huge number of tribal and other populations that had not formally accepted the supremacy or sovereignty of the British Crown. How they could be called ‘Indians’ is also a moot question. For, they all had their own tribal, clan or area names.

Coming back to the discussion: Basically what is very evident is the terrible anger that the feudal classes had for the English, who had converted the lower native classes into a higher elevated section of people. That is what is clear in what the mentioned Begum Hussaini Khanum did. Her anger is for this very reason.

Moreover, in the ultimate analysis the so-called Sepoy Mutiny was only a small event when the hugeness of British-India is taken into account. However, when things happen around Delhi, the general feeling is that it is a huge event. When events which are of bigger size happen elsewhere in India, they do not get the adequate level of importance. The disobedience, mutiny and attack on their officers by a small section of soldiers cannot be termed as India’s First War of Independence.

For one thing there was no ‘India’ at that time. To imagine that a Mogul or Jhansi, or Nana Sahib or Tania Topi leadership can be imposed on the rest of the people here, just because they are Delhi-based or Hindi-based, can be an utter idiotism. To put it frankly, it would have taken literally a world war in here to impose them on the rest of this geographical area.

For one thing, what is their personal disposition, intellectual quality, level of refinement and much else, in comparison with the English rulers? Who knows it, and who will allow them to take over the leadership? It is a false belief that Hindi leaders are of calibre enough to take over the leadership of this nation.

The contention that lower level soldiers who mutinied and massacred their officers are ‘Indian patriots’ would be to categorise the huge section of the populace as well as soldiery who stood by their British officers as ‘anti-nationals’. That would be a most satanic idea.

No feudally high person in a feudal language society would condone the liberation of his or her servant class. It is for this terrible crime that the Englishmen and women were butchered. And to cast the blame on the ‘Indians’ is an equally heinous deed of sly treachery. The persons who try to make such terrible definitions on Wikipedia are doing a terrible thing. However, in the ultimate analysis, it may be found that the persons who have the time to idle away on such frivolous writings are from the feudal classes of current day India, wallowing in huge salaries from the government.

A digression to a similar rioting

Since I have mentioned Mappila Rebellion (which the idiot academicians (not others) of India describe as a revolt against the British), I quote from Wikipedia:

A conference held at Calicut presided over by the Zamorin of Calicut, the Ruler of Malabar (My correction: he was the not the ruler then) issued a resolution:

“That the conference views with indignation and sorrow the attempts made at various quarters by interested parties to ignore or minimise the crimes committed by the rebels such as: brutally dishonouring women, flaying people alive, wholesale slaughter of men, women and children, burning alive entire families, forcibly converting people in thousands and slaying those who refused to get converted, throwing half dead people into wells and leaving the victims to struggle for escape till finally released from their suffering by death, burning a great many and looting practically all Hindu and Christian houses in the disturbed areas in which even Moplah women and children took part and robbed women of even the garments on their bodies, in short reducing the whole non-Muslim population to abject destitution, cruelly insulting the religious sentiments of the Hindus by desecrating and destroying numerous temples in the disturbed areas, killing cows within the temple precincts putting their entrails on the holy image and hanging skulls on the walls and the roofs.”

Even though only the atrocities on the Hindus are mentioned here, it is quite possible that the Hindu sections also may have inflicted similar atrocities on the Muslims. However, the Hindus would stand divided as per caste definitions, and thus quite weak. The British government located at far off Madras had to come to the rescue of the terrified populations. However, in retrospect it is seen that the persons who did the crimes and were removed from the locality as punishment were to be redefined as Freedom Fighters.

Many were despatched to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In recent times, these persons were turned into heroic freedom fighters by popular films and flimsy history writing. So much is the great intelligence of the Indian academicians. And the capacity of film producers to create and rewrite history.

DIGRESSION: I need to input this idea. The understandings about the Mappilla lahala (Mappila rioting) are not very deep even in British records. For one thing, it is said to be a rebellion that happened in Malabar. However I get the impression almost the whole of north Malabar was uninvolved in this. For, it mainly took place in the Valluvanad area (north of Calicut to Ponnani). The term ‘Mappilla’ is generally given to the Arab mix Muslims in Malabar. However, the fight between the Muslims and the land owning Hindus seems to have ignited due to the religious conversion of lower caste South Malabar Thiyyas, cherumar &c. to Islam.

In which case, the actual culprit would be the feudal language of the place. For, there would be sudden change of indicant codes. For example, a converted man would not need to use ‘respectful’ words to the higher Hindu man and women. If this is not done, it can mean social insult. For example, a Thiyya man who addresses his feudal land owner with respectful words, the moment he becomes a Muslims would simply use the freedom to address his former caste superior with a Nee and refer to him as Avan or Aval. It can lead to homicide. Even now, it is causing communal problems.

Moreover to define killing of Hindus as an act of rebellion against the British is quite silly.

Now what I wanted to mention here is the fact that in this report, there is no word ‘Indians’ were killed by Muslims or Hindus were killing the ‘Indians’. However, when the leadership of one side is British, then they all are defined as ‘Indians’. Well, the fact is that even on the British side, almost 99.9% of persons would be ‘Indians’ or native people. Their innate brutality towards other natives is generally mentioned as British deeds.