FORGOTTEN MUTINY – Indian Rebellion of 1857

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Your magazine has been running two exciting series on India’s march towards freedom. Still, much will remain hidden behind the clouds of time.

However, old records and memoirs of the British officers working in India show us glimpses of several forgotten episodes of the struggle by different sections of our people to win freedom from the colonial rulers. For example, two years before the great rebellion of 1857, the tribal inhabitants of the Birbhum region, the Santhals, declared themselves free! “We’re children of God and servants of none!” they said. They had been oppressed and exploited merci­lessly by the English East India Company, which tried to take away even the last pie they earned through their hard toil.

The Company men made fifty elephants drunk and let them  loose on the Santhal hamlets. The elephants trampled upon hun­dreds of men, women, and children to death. Next, when thousands of them, armed with bows and arrows, marched forward to face the Company, they were attacked with guns and cannons. But they would not retreat. They stood like a well, till the last man dropped dead!

By None Other than Founder: CHAKRAPANI
Controlling Editor: NAGI REDDI

Leave a Reply