The Skull of AlamBheg: A Tale of Brutal British Raj in India
By RiazHaq
CA
HavaldarAlamBaig (Alum Bheg), stationed in Sialkot, was shot out of a cannon and blown to pieces as punishment by the British colonial rulers of India in 1857. All that was left of him was his severed head that was taken to England by a British officer as a war trophy.
A recently published book "The Skull of Alum Bheg: The Life and Death Of A Rebel In 1857" by Kim A. Wagner tells the tale of the brutality that this man and many others suffered at the hands of the British Raj in 1857.
Wagner, a historian of Danish origin, describes the discovery of a human skull early 1960s in The Lord Clyde, a pub in the eastern English coastal town of Walmer in Kent by the pub's new owner. It was hidden in some boxes and crates in the back of the building. It was missing its lower jaw, the few remaining teeth were loose, and it had the deep sepia hue of old age. Inside one of its eye-sockets was a neatly folded sheet of old paper, a handwritten note that briefly outlined the skull’s history as follows:
“Skull of Havildar ‘Alum Bheg,’ 46th Regt. Bengal N. Infantry who was blown away from a gun, amongst several others of his Regt. He was a principal leader in the mutiny of 1857 and of a most ruffianly disposition. He took possession (at the head of a small party) of the road leading to the fort, to which place all the Europeans were hurrying for safety. His party surprised and killed Dr Graham shooting him in his buggy by the side of his daughter. His next victim was the Rev Mr Hunter, a missionary, who was flying with his wife and daughters in the same direction. He murdered Mr Hunter, and his wife and daughters who after being brutally treated were butchered by the road side.
Alum Bheg was about 32 years of age; 5 feet 7 ½ inches tall and by no means an ill looking native. The skull was brought home by Captain (AR) Costello (late Capt. 7th Drag. Guards), who was on duty when Alum Bheg was executed.”
Kim Wagner teaches British imperial history at Queen Mary College in London. His specialty subject is colonial Indian history.
“I received an email from a family who had a skull,” he told Marco Werman of PRI's the World recently, “and didn’t know really what to do with it".
Wagner's research indicates that AlamBaig was not “a principal leader” of the revolt, as claimed in the note found in his skull. “Alum Bheg was in many ways an insignificant soldier,” says Wagner. “Just one amongst thousands who served in the East India Company army, but who got entangled in the uprising of 1857.”
“At Sialkot, where Alum Bheg was, it wasn't as violent as was the case elsewhere,” explains Wagner. “But there was a Scottish missionary couple and a small baby who were waylaid and cut down. And that is one of the murders that Alum Bheg was alleged to have carried out.” “As I found out in the process of researching the book,” Wagner says, “Alum Bheg was actually innocent but as far as the British were concerned it didn't matter much. Because all Indian soldiers — and in many instances, all Indian men in areas where the outbreak had happened — were considered to be guilty. With or without any evidence, really.”
Whitewashing History
The brutal response to the 1857 rebellion against the colonial rule is just one of a series of brutalities in India that have been whitewashed by the British historians. Wagner's book is an exception to such history that has almost always been told from the British point of view.
It's only recently that scholars like American historian Audrey Truschke and Indian writer Shashi Tharoor have begun to challenge the British version of Indian history.
In his recently published book "Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India", DrTharoor has argued that British Raj greatly impoverished India. He says that "Britain came to one of the richest countries in the world in the 18th century and reduced it, after two centuries of plunder, to one of the poorest". He told a British TV host that the Brits suffer from "historical amnesia". “The fact you don’t really teach colonial history in your schools... children doing A-Levels in history don’t learn a line of colonial history.
Colonial-era British historians deliberately distorted the history of Indian Muslim rule to vilify Muslim rulers as part of the British policy to divide and conquer India, says American history professor Audrey Truschke, in her recently published book "Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King". These misrepresentations of Muslim rule made during the British Raj appear to have been accepted as fact not just by Islamophobic Hindu nationalists but also by at least some of the secular Hindus in India and Muslim intellectuals in present day Pakistan, says the author. Aurangzeb was neither a saint nor a villain; he was a man of his time who should be judged by the norms of his times and compared with his contemporaries, the author adds.
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