1857 Beyond the Famous

In February 1857 the magistrate of Mathura found four chapatis on his desk and learned that villages across the north were passing them hand to hand. This chapter follows the people the year's famous names leave out: an eighty-year-old zamindar crossing the Ganga under fire, a taluqdar who walked into Nepal rather than sign, a woman in a pipal tree at Sikandar Bagh, two queens in Bundelkhand, a chief hanged at Chandni Chowk, and the year-long chase that ended at Shivpuri.

Lessons in this chapter

• The Chapatis Reach Mathura — The board in the spring of 1857: the cartridge, the annexations, and the map of who rose where
• The Old Man of Jagdishpur — Kunwar Singh crossed the Ganga wounded at nearly eighty, and his brother Amar Singh held Bhojpur for a year after him
• The Taluqdar Who Would Not Sign — Offered his estate back at Shankarpur in November 1858, Beni Madho Singh gave up the fort and would not give up himself
• The Woman in the Pipal Tree — Sikandar Bagh, 16 November 1857: the marksman in the pipal tree that a Highlander's memoir records and tradition names
• The Other Rani of Jhansi — Jhalkari Bai of the Durga Dal, Jhansi 1858: the story Bundelkhand carried and the paper never recorded
• The Rani of Ramgarh — Avantibai Lodhi of Ramgarh in Mandla, 1857 to 1858: a queen the Company refused to recognise, who took the field anyway
• The Road from Nasibpur to Kabul — Rao Tula Ram ran Rewari as his own government for six months, broke a British column at Nasibpur, then left India to find an ally and died in Kabul
• Hanged at Chandni Chowk — Raja Nahar Singh held the Delhi to Agra road for the rising, and paid for it near the fountain on 9 January 1858
• The Long War of Tatya Tope — Kanpur in winter, Gwalior in June, then ten months and four provinces that no British column could close

Back to Kranti Veer: The Rising and the Underground (1857-1911)