THIS book is a compilation of papers from different voices from Delhi when it was besieged by the British during the uprising of 1857. The ghadar of 1857, whether read as a peasant revolt, a religious war, an uprising against an alien power, or as a “multitude of contemporaneous incidents,” had its immediate ramifications for the participants and how they participated and acted during it.
It presents aspects of the uprising that have never been studied before and is thus not a history of the uprising in Delhi. More than the uprising, the papers present a unique record of the city of Delhi at a time of intense turmoil. While we know an extraordinary amount of the emotions, movements and activities in the British camp when their forces besieged Delhi between June and September 1857, we know little about the city’s experience and this is what the book provides in the form of voices from an ancient city in turmoil.
These include petitions and applications from ordinary people as well as directives and commands of officials. We see soldiers beyond the battlefield, demanding rations, wages, promotions and supplies; we meet policemen who arranged these provisions and the constraints they face when they sought to confiscate resources or people. There are complaints by ordinary residents when they find a huge and largely unwanted army billeted in the city. There are bankers who are bullied to make monetary contributions. There are spies who keep a tab on plans and report the slightest fall in morale.
Three essential aspects of the uprising are represented here – firs, the way it affected the common man, the labourers, artisans, shopkeepers, ordinary residents of Delhi; second, it relates to the manner in which the uprising was organised on the ground in a big city – the nature of the management and he processes through which goods and resources were provided for it; third, how these were perceived by a self-ideologue, the firebrand editor of the Delhi Urdu Akhbar, whose sympathies lay neither with the residents, nor with the soldiers, but who was a passionate supporter of the cause of liberation of Hindustan from the hated firangis.
By presenting the documents of the government established by the rebels in partnership with Delhi’s royal establishment as well as the petitions, applications and complaints of the ordinary people who interacted with the government, the book attempts to present the process, the how of the 1857 uprising.
(Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017.)
