War is a Savage Beast

The picture at the top was taken by Samuel Bourne, just three years after one of the bloodiest incidents of the First War of Indian Independence—the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857—and about 115 years before a wide-eyed little Indian girl would stand there, trying her level best to understand an adult retelling of war.

As the Mutiny gathered pace in 1857, Kanpur—a name anglicized and extended to Cawnpore—was its epicenter for several weeks in June and July. It is a historic city, one that variously owes its beginnings to either the 13th century King, Kanh Deo of Kanhpuria, or the King of Sancheti—Hindu Singh Chandel; the antecedents of both, however, are lost to the ages.

Karna, one of the key figures in the Hindu epic, Mahabharata, could also claim to have had the city named after him—which would date the city by thousands of years. Given the proximity of Bithoor, and its connections to the other great Hindu epic, the Ramayana, it is perhaps not too far-fetched an origin. In any event, the city we see today owes its origins to an army cantonment, developed by the British East India Company after defeating the Nawab of Awadh, Shuja-ud-Daula, in 1765.

After a series of spelling changes, the name Cawnpore found favor; a result that did little for the area’s destiny. In 1857, this cantonment would go on to become both a shelter and an albatross for the British.

Ill-prepared to handle the uprising, General Hugh Wheeler’s entrenchment within that cantonment proved to be a disastrous choice to defend; its few buildings and mud walls were a poor match for summer heat, dysentery, cholera, and the force of Nana Saheb’s attack that began on the 5th of June.

The British eventually surrendered three days after a major assault on June 23, 1857. Under an agreement with Nana Saheb—one of the Mutiny’s leaders—they prepared to pull out on the 27th of June with assurances of a safe passage downriver to Allahabad. They would embark on boats at Satichaura Ghat, a short distance from the now battered entrenchment.

Perhaps inevitably in the fog of war, and amidst the carts and elephants that made their way to the riverfront, there was confusion at the Ghat as the boats pulled away. Shots rang out; it was never proven that Nana Saheb gave his troops the order to fire—but fire they did, and a massacre of the British troops ensued.

Two women —Amy Horne and Margaret Wheeler—would escape, but 124 women and children were pulled aside and taken to Bibighar, a villa less than an hour’s walk away from the Ghat. Built by an erstwhile British officer for his mistress, the villa would hold about 200 prisoners—watched over by a sex worker: the mercurial Begum Hussaini Khanum.

Initially intended to be used by Nana Saheb as hostages, the prisoners soon became a problem. Reports from the front indicated growing British brutality and that led to heated debates both for and against killing the women and children at Bibighar.

Increasingly nervy and impatient, it is believed to have been Begum Khanum who—in an impulsive and ill-judged moment—ordered the execution of the hostages. The sepoys assigned to her balked at the order and it fell to her lover to bring in local butchers armed with cleavers. Three women and three children would survive the merciless bloodbath, but they were found the next morning and thrown into the dry well near Bibighar—along with all the other victims.

The very same dry well that a little girl silently peered into 115 years later.

Retaliation by the British was swift and equally bloody. Arriving in the area on July 16th, they recaptured the city only to find blood-splattered horror at the villa. Anger would give rise to terrible acts of revenge, and the battle cry: Remember Cawnpore!

Under General Neill, anyone remotely suspected of being part of the massacre was first made to confess before licking clean sectioned-off squares of ‘British blood’ from the floors and walls of Bibighar. Their anger then turned communal—Hindus were force-fed beef and Muslims, pork; there are unsubstantiated reports the latter were sewn into pigskins before both communities were hung from the area’s many banyan trees. The choice of tree was deliberate—it is sacred to Hindus. Some rebels were reportedly tied to the mouth of cannon and blown away; it was bloodlust at its worst.

Bibighar and its aftermath were savage—forming some of the darkest moments of India's long journey to independence.

Never ones to let slip the opportunity for a memorial to colonization and have Indians fund its construction, the British would build one right at Bibighar.

Drafted in by Lady Canning and using parts of her design, the sculptor Carlo Marochetti would create his vision of the well and an angel.

The entire structure was moved to the Kanpur All Souls Memorial Church after Indian Independence; the image on the right shows you what the memorial—now behind the church—looks like today.

The memory of that unfenced well has always stayed with me; decades later, Monu and I would walk into what is still today a city park, although one far removed visually from the dusty one of my childhood. There are still mature banyan trees around—but the stories of 1857 are now hidden in the stump of the last remaining tree from that time.

It was a sunny day and teams of young men were playing cricket; as we followed the sound of the ball, I blinked in surprise. Where the remains of Bibighar once stood, there is now a small stadium. The slightly raised pitch that both teams were playing on was a capped and cemented over well—a well that once held the bodies of 200 women and children. Some of those bodies may still be in there; burial details at the time found them too decomposed to move.

It was a surreal moment and I did wonder aloud if the players actually knew what happened right under their feet all those years ago. The only suggestion of that fog-shrouded moment in history, are a bust of Nana Saheb’s general—Tatya Tope—near the well, and a few other dusty statues and plaques around the park.

I’m reminded, in retrospect, of so many Civil War battlefields in America. Children there, as here, explore and play—running over fields and areas that once told a very different story of life, war, and death. And that life inexorably moves on; the innocence of children, no matter who—or where—they are, is perhaps the best antidote to the horrors of war.

Perhaps here at Bibighar, it is time to simply absorb the irony of a very English game of cricket being played by Indians atop a well where so many of the former lost their lives during a struggle for independence by the latter.

I do wish history were better presented here; at the very least, the freedom fighters who laid down their lives here deserve their stories to be told. At the same time, it would be instructive if the British side of events were also presented, because only then do we truly learn from the past.

There’s an odd footnote to Bibighar.

Begum Hussaini Khanum—she of the murderous intent—seems to have survived the entire episode, filing a legal notice in 1899 over a land deal in 1830. If this is indeed the same woman, I’m intrigued that she somehow escaped the aftermath.

War is a Savage Beast: Bibighar, Cawnpore

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