At the termination of this battle of 1857, the British viceroy to India requested his own ministers and counselors of India to submit a report on how they can firmly secure the British government’s hold over India in the post-war period.
Contents
Muslims were the Leaders of War of India’s Independence
One of the leading politicians of India, Doctor William Yur submitted a report to the viceroy. He wrote:
“Of the entire population of India, the Muslims are the most spirited and vigilant.
The battle of independence was fought mainly by the Muslims.
As long as the Muslims cherish the spirit of jihad, we will not be able to impose our rule upon them.
Hence, first and foremost, the snuffing out of this spirit is imperative.
The only way this can be achieved is by weeding out the ulema and by eradicating the Quran.”
Acting on this advice, in 1861 the government launched a campaign against the Quran. 300 000 copies of the Noble Quran were set alight by the government. Thereafter, they made a resolution to eradicate the Ulema.
Though the War of Independence was truly a national war in which Hindus and Muslims had participated freely and equally and India had not yet seen a more stirring spectacle of popular enthusiasm, unity and patriotism, the leadership of War of Independence was predominantly in the hands of Muslims.
More often than not, the leaders of the movement at various levels belonged to the Muslim Community.
Consider the following leaders of the war of Independence.
Azimullah Khan, General Bakht Khan, Maulana Ahmadullah, Maulana Liaquat Ali and Begum Hazrat Mahal were among the front-rank leaders of the revolt, Maulana Ahmadullah being the most outstanding.
Holmes in his ‘History of the Indian Mutiny‘ has spoken of Maulana Ahmadullah in these words:
“The most formidable enemy of the British in Northern India.” (p. 539).
In another book of his ‘The Sepoy War‘ he has paid him the following tribute:
“A man fitted both by his spirit and his capacity to support a great cause and to command a great army. This was Ahmadullah, the Moulvi of Faizabad.”
Similarly, Malleson has said of him that:
“The Moulvi was a true patriot. He had not stained his sword with assassination.
He had connived at no murders: he had fought manfully, honourably and stubbornly in the battlefield against the strangers who had seized his country, and his memory is entitled to the respect of the brave and the true-hearted of all nations.” (Vol. IV, P. 381)
Brutal Vengeance of British
After the failure of the movement of 1857, for reasons that are well known, the British took a savage revenge from the Indians and let loose a spate of fury which revived the memories of Chengiz Khan and Halaku.
It has to be admitted that the Indians too had been guilty of gross excesses during the war like the slaughter of English women and children, but what the Englishmen did by way of retaliation could only be described as savage madness and bestiality. It certainly exposed the people laying claim to culture and civilization.
The rebels were ruthlessly pursued, caught and punished. There was ruin and desolation everywhere.
The three young sons of the Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar whom the British themselves had given asylum, were killed by them so ruthlessly that it made even the Englishmen shudder.
Thirty-three other members of the imperial family including the old and the sick were also slain along with them.1
The aging Emperor himself was put to severest indignity.
He was tried for treason in excessively humiliating circumstances and would have certainly been put to death had a high English army officer not guaranteed the security of his life.
He was exiled to Burma to spend the rest of his days in utter poverty.
Genocide of Islamic Scholars by British Rulers
An English historian, Mr. Thompson writes in his memoirs:
“From 1864 to 1867, the British government firmly resolved to eradicate all the Ulema of India. These three years are one of the most heart-wrenching periods of Indian history.
The British hanged 14000 Ulema to death. From Chandi Chowk of Delhi up to Khaibar, not a single tree was spared the neck of the ulema.
The ulema were wrapped in pig-skin and hurled alive into blazing furnaces. Their bodies were branded with hot copper rods.
They used to be made to stand on the backs of elephants and tied to high trees. The elephants would then be driven away and they would be left hanging by their necks.
A makeshift gallow was set up in the courtyard of the Shahi Mosque of Lahore and each day up to eighty ulema were hanged.
The ulema were at times wrapped up in sacks and dumped into the Rawi river of Lahore after which a hail of bullets would be pumped into each sack.”
Thompson writes further:
“As I got into my camp at Delhi, I perceived a stench of putrefied flesh. As I stepped out and went behind my camp, I saw a blazing fire of live coals. I saw a group of forty naked ulema being led into the fire.
As I was witnessing this scene, another group of forty ulema were brought onto the field. Right before my eyes, their clothes were taken off their bodies.
The English commander addressed them thus:
O Molvies! Just as these ulema are being roasted over this fire, you will also be roasted. To save yourselves, just one of you must proclaim that you were not part of the 1857 uprising of freedom. I will release all of you the moment I hear just one of you affirming this.”
Thompson writes;
“By the Lord who has created me! Not one of the ulema said any such thing.
All of them were roasted over the fire and another group was also brought and roasted over the blazing fire.
Not a single alim(Islamic Scholar) surrendered to the demands of the British.”
By 1867 not a single Islamic institute remained. One would be quite astonished to realize that in 1601 when the British arrived in India for trade, there were a thousand Islamic institutes in Delhi alone.
Extreme Cruelty and Destruction by Britishers in Delhi
As the victorious British army entered the city of Delhi the terrible havoc it wrought there provided eloquent commentary to the Quaranic verse:
In fact when the kings enter a town, they put it to disorder, and put its honorable citizens to disgrace, and this is how they normally do. (27:34)
The troops were given a free hand to plunder the city for three days and they made use of the opportunity with such enthusiasm that an English officer Lord Lawrence, felt compelled to write to General Penny, who was the General-in-Command, in such strong words about the whole affair:
“I believe we shall lastingly and indeed justly be abused for the way in which we have despoiled all classes without distinction.”2
For three days death and destruction reigned supreme in Delhi. People were slain indiscriminately, shops were looted, and houses were burnt. Men, women and children fled the town in thousands.
In the end, Delhi the city which till yesterday was the seat of Muslim splendour was reduced to shambles.
A graphic account of the general ruin and spoliation is furnished in his memoirs by Lord Roberts who had led the English army from Kanpur to Delhi. This entry bears the date, September 24, 1857, which means that it was made soon after the Red Fort of Delhi had fallen to the British. Lord Roberts writes:
“That march through Delhi in the early morning light was a gruesome proceeding.
Our way by the Lahore Gate from the Chandni Chowk led through a veritable city of the dead; not a sound was to he heard but the falling of our own footsteps; not a living creature was to be seen.
Dead bodies were strewn about in all directions, in every attitude that the death-struggle had caused them to assume, and in every stage of decomposition.
We marched in silence or involuntarily spoke in whispers, as though fearing to disturb those ghastly remains of humanity.
The sights we encountered were horrible and sickening to the last degree. Here a dog gnawed at an uncovered limb, there a vulture disturbed by our approach from its loathsome meal, but too completely gorged to fly, fluttered away to a safer distance.
In many instances, the positions of the dead bodies were appallingly life-like. Some with their arms uplifted as if beckoning and indeed, the whole scene weird and terrible beyond description.
Our horses seemed to feel the horror of it as much as we did, for they shook and snorted in evident terror.
The atmosphere was unimaginably disgusting, laden as it was with the most noxious and sickening odours.”3
Indian War Of Independence was an Islamic Revolution
It was indeed a general massacre but the wrath seemed to be directed particularly against the Muslims, for many among the higher British authorities associated the uprising with an Islamic Jihad and believed that the moving spirit behind it were Muslims. To quote Henry Mead:
“This rebellion, in its present phase, cannot be called a sepoy Mutiny. It did begin with the sepoys, but soon its true nature was revealed. It was an Islamic revolt.”4
Another narrator of the dreadful drama says:
“An English officer had made it a principle to treat every Muslim as a rebel.
He would enquire from everyone he saw if he was a Hindu or a Muslim, and would shoot him dead right there if he turned out to be a Muslim.”5
Mass Execution of Muslims by British
After Delhi had been subdued and the British control was firmly established over it, there began the public executions.
Scaffolds were built on the thoroughfares and such places were treated as centres of entertainment by the Englishmen. They would collect there in groups to ‘enjoy’ the executions. Several localities of Muslims were totally wiped out.
“Twenty-seven thousand Muslims were executed, to speak nothing of those killed in the general massacre.
It seemed that the British were determined to blot out of existence the entire Muslim race.
They killed the children and the way they treated the women simply belies description. It rends the heart to think of it.”6
Lord Roberts writing to his mother on June 21, 1857 remarked:
“The death that seems to have the greatest effect is being blown from a gun. It is rather a horrible sight but in these times we cannot be particular.”
The purpose of this “business” was to show “these rascally Musalmans that, with God’s help, Englishmen will still be the masters of India.”7
Open Revenge of British from Muslims
The British made no attempt to conceal their ill-will against the Muslims. They caught hold of them at the slightest excuse and showed no mercy.
They waged a fierce war against the small band of Mujahids (Crusaders) beleaguered in the tribal belt of the North-West.
Whoever was suspected by them to be in league with the Mujahids or with the party of Syed Ahmed Shaheed was arrested and legal proceedings were started against him.
Innumerable religious leaders, merchants and noblemen were tried on these grounds at Patna, Thanesar and Lahore, and sentenced to heavy terms of imprisonment. Some of them were branded as Wahabis and punished on that account.
Symptomatic of the boundless British hatred towards the Muslims was the judgement delivered by an English judge while condemning the three alleged Wahabi leaders, Maulana Yahya Ali, Mohammad Jafar Thanesari and Mohammad Shafi Lahori to death. The learned Judge, in the course of his judgement remarked:
“You will be hanged till death, your properties will be confiscated and your corpses will not be handed over to your relatives. Instead, you will be buried contemptuously in the jail compound.”8
After the sentence of death had been passed, parties of English men and women visited the jail to see condemned prisoners in their cells and take delight in their sighs and groans.
But when they found that these prisoners instead of being sad and dejected, were actually exulting in their state and looking forward expectantly to the martyrdom that had so blissfully fallen to their lot, they felt cheated and urged upon the government for the revision of their sentence to one of life-imprisonment.
Ultimately, it was announced by the Deputy Commissioner of Ambala to the unfortunate men that the Chief Court had altered the death penalty passed against them to transportation for life. He said:
“You rejoice over the sentence of death and look upon it as martyrdom. The Government therefore, have decided not to award you the punishment you like so much.
The death-sentence passed against you has been changed to that of transportation or life.”9
The three prisoners along with two others, Maulana Ahmadullah Azimahadi and Molvi Abdul Rahim Sadiqui were then deported to the Andamans in 1865 where Maulana Yahya Ali and Maulana Ahmadullah died.
The entire property of the family of Sadiqpur in Patna was seized by the Government, their houses were ploughed down and official buildings were constructed on their sites.
The tombs of their ancestors were demolished. All this was done to quench the mad thirst for vengeance.
Several other noted Ulema were sent to the Andaman Islands to serve life-sentences in banishment. These included Maulana Fazl-i-Huq Khairabadi, Mufti Inayat Ahmad Kakorwi and Mufti Mazhar Karim Daryabadi, of whom Maulana Fazl-i-Huq met his death in exile while the other two returned home on completing their sentences.
This polity of unmitigated spite and revengefulness was responsible for the political and educational backwardness that came over the Muslims during the earlier stages of British rule and from which they have not yet been able to recover.
Inhuman Face of British Empire-Atrocities on Mopla Muslims
During the struggle for freedom, the severest loss in terms of life and property was suffered by the Mopla Muslims of Malabar.
Provoked by unmitigated tyranny and coercion, the Mopals rose in armed revolt against the British Government on August 21, 1921.
The rebellion which lasted for a little over six months, assumed such massive proportions that the Government had to call in even a warship to deal with it and fifty-one lakhs of rupees were spent by them on its suppression from August to December alone. Thousands of Moplas were killed.
As an instance of the ghastly atrocities perpetrated by the British, Mopla prisoners were herded together like cattle in the compartments of a railway train which three doctors had unanimously declared unfit for human transport, with the result that a great many of them perished in the way.
The British paid no heed to their loud cries of anguish and pathetic requests for water.
The detained people were kept under strict vigilance and subjected to all kinds of humiliation after the rebellion had been quelled and for a long time the Moplas in general, were denied the enjoyment of ordinary civil liberties.
The Committee of Inquiry appointed in 1922 by the Special Commissioner of Malabar reported that:
“There are at least 35,000 Mopla women and children whose condition is extremely miserable and unless proper measures are taken for their relief, many of them are likely to die of disease and starvation.”
References
- Munshi Zakaullah: Urooj-i-Sultanat-i-Englishia, Vol . 2, p.708
- Bosworth Smith: Life of Lawrence (1883), Vol. 2, p.258
- Field Marshall Lord Roberts: Forty One Years in India (1898) p.142
- Reproduced from Ghulam Rasool Mehr, 1857
- Urooj-i-Sultanat-i-Englishia, Vol. 2, p.712
- Kamaluddin Hyder: Qaiser-ul-Tawareekh, Vol. 2, p.454
- Edward Thompson: The other Side of the Medal (1926) p.40
- Muhammad Jafar Thaneswari: Kala Pani
- Ibid