letters To Editor, Toronto Star
January 30, 2010
Stamp dredges up colonial past
I am appalled to by the commemoration of William Hall on the postage stamp of Canada for his role in the destruction of defenses and capture of Shah Najaf Mosque in city of Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. I was born and educated in the city of Lucknow, India and have been a frequent visitor of Shah Najaf Mosque. This stamp not only celebrates the destructive deeds, but highlights colonial occupation of an entire sub-continent. Indian Mutiny is referred by us as the First War of Independence, when we rose against the foreign occupiers. It is as seminal a moment in our history as 9/11 is to Americans. Unfortunately we lost and the retribution was worse than that in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. It is not fitting for Canada to dredge up colonial past.
Shah Nawaz Husain, Brampton
The Ghadar
Indian Mutiny of 1857 is remembered by Muslims of sub-continent as the "Ghadar" or insurrection. This phrase has same connotation as "Al Naqba" for Palestinians. In 1857 a colonial empire brutally and mercilessly suppressed defiance of oppressed people. My home town of Lucknow was a seat of Muslim culture and capital of the principality of Awadh, where the ruler, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was a patron of arts.
His cultured rule produced flowering of architecture, arts, music. To this day buildings such as Chattar Manzil, Shah Najaf Imam Bargah, Moti Mahal are still there. So are Char Bagh, Kaiser Bagh, Aminabad, Chawk, all pointing to rich islamic tradition and culture. Nawab was a poet, patron of urdu literature and especially music. Wajid Ali himself could play musical instruments. The court had poets and poetry in the form thumri and ghazal was the rage. His thumri "Babul mera nahear chutoo jai" was a lament for his exile. This song is known to every Muslim adult of Lucknow to this day.
In the midst of this idyllic time came the contagion of colonial British Empire. In 1856, one year before the Ghadar, the British banished Wajid Ali Shah to an internal exile in Calcutta. The principality of Awadh was effectively seized and managed by the British Political Resident(colonial administrator). Ruins of his palatial home, the residency still stands. There has been a simmering discontent in India around this time.
On a fateful day in March 29, 1857 a sepoy (soldier), Mangal Pandey in 34th Native Infantry, stationed at Barrackpore, attacked British Officer. (Please read full account http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangal_Pandey ). Mangal Pandey is our "Rosa Park" and he lit the fuse of rebellion which engulfed a sub-continent.
The oppressed rose in Lucknow, Meerut, Cawnpore (Kanpur), Allahabad and Jhansi. British garrison was attacked. Native troops deserted colonial Army. In Lucknow the Residency was attacked and destroyed, in Kanpur British officers were killed and thrown in a well. (It was preserved by the British as the 'Memorial Well'). Deserting soldiers killed the officers in Meerut and destroyed Lal Kurti Bazar. They marched towards Delhi where the last Mughal Emperor was in a virtual house arrest. He was retained by the British as a figurehead. The battle cry of the deserters was "Dilli Challo!" ('Let's go to Delhi!'). Please read the campaign at Lucknow http://www.defencejournal.com/2000/mar/lucknow.htm
Unfortunately for us British retained the help of turncoats and mercenaries. Among them was preponderance of Gurkha and Sikhs. A rescue was mounted by Sir Henry Havelock. William Hall was a seamen on-board HMS Shahnon which had earlier seen action in the war of 1812 in Americas. This vessel was in Calcutta. He was was a member of the rescue squad and saw action at Lucknow. He manned a 60 pound naval gun, which was transported about a 1,000 miles overland. William Hall's commemoration states:
On 16 November 1857, at the town of Lucknow, British naval guns were brought up close to the Shah Nujeff mosque. The gun crews, of which Hall was a member, kept up a steady fire in an attempt to breach the walls of the mosque. A hail of musket balls and grenades from the mutineers inside the mosque caused heavy casualties for the gunners.
Able Seaman William Hall and Lieutenant T.J. Young, who was in charge of the gun crews, were the only survivors of the crews, all the rest having been killed or wounded, and between them they loaded and fired the last gun which won the battle.
Attached photograph of Shah Najaf Imambargah (shia mosque) is as it stands today. It was built by Nawab Ghazi-ud-Din Haider in 1815. It is also his mausoleum. It has boundary defenses. William Hall's claim to fame is the destruction of the defenses and capture of Shah Najaf Mosques. It is as if the barbarians had captured St. Paul's in London or Notre Dame in Paris.
Retribution
The poet Martin Tupper's poem — In a ferment of indignation played a major part in shaping the public's response. His poems, filled with calls for the razing of Delhi and the erection of 'groves of gibbets' is telling.
And England, now avenge their wrongs by vengeance deep and dire,
Cut out their canker with the sword, and burn it out with fire;
Destroy those traitor regions, hang every pariah hound,
And hunt them down to death, in all hills and cities ‘round.
Two of the leading novelists of the period, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins wrote an essay in Dickens' Household Words calling for the extermination of the 'race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested.' American Oliver Wendell Holmes, opined that Delhi be destroyed like Carthage. Racist Martin Tupper had famously written in his poem The Anglo Saxon Race in 1850, "Break forth and spread over every place/The world is a world for the Anglo Saxon race!".
And vengeance and retribution they did extract. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are child's play compared to the systematic torture and death inflicted on the population. Prisoners were made to lick the ground where White Colonial blood was said to have been split. Thousands of prisoners licked the ground again and again. Prisoners were forced fed pork and cow meat. These are offensive to Muslims and Hindus alike. Hanging from the trees was favorite method of execution, and the bodies were left dangling for days. High value prisoners were lashed to the mouth of the cannon and were blown to pieces with a single cannon shot. There are narration of so many bodies were dangling from the trees that not a single tree limb was without one. In Lucknow a park (which was later named Victoria Park, and had a statue of the Queen) is still known by the locals where every tree branch was festooned by a hanging body. In Delhi magnificent Jama Masjid (Mosque) was defiled by prostitutes and pimps, who rendered concerts on orders of drunken British soldiers. And Muslims in chains were made to witness this debauchery.
Fast Forward - 1942
The empire was at war and it needed food to feed the troops and mother country. Food was appropriated from India in vast quantity, so much so that a man made famine ensued in Bengal. Over a million people died. There were food shortage and food riots throughout India. In Kanpur, where I lived at that time, the city had weeks of curfew and no one was allowed out side the house, including on the balconies. Occasionally we heard young men running down the street, shouting slogans. They were closely followed by police shooting in the air. The situation turned to critical when police shot dead a 16 year old boy. It seems he had climbed on an electrical pole and was cutting wires. I distinctly remember an event. We heard military band in the street. Most adults cowered indoors, while I only 5 or 6 came on the balcony and witnessed a British Army Band and a long column of soldiers marching through the deserted street. They were triumphant, arrogant, imperial showing their might to the cowering but seething population. I distinctly remember the bright red hackles on the beret of soldiers. Later I was to learn that they were from Lancashire Fusiliers an elite regiment of the British Army.
