(Representational picture)

Japan K Pathak

In this first season of History series, I am republishing some carefully selected old reporting/articles of historical value, curated from over 100 years old records. Such articles though deserving, never got placement in any book, journal or even Google search engine through all these years. They were once published and forgotten. After over a century, I am collecting such writings and putting them here with opening remarks on their historic value.

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Total 18 native Indians of British Army involved in the 1857 revolt were killed in public in Ahmedabad by Britishers in the same year in the month of December. An  eye-witness account of this by a Britisher was published on December 5, 1857 in a newspaper, which is presented below in full text.

The venue of executions was Shahibaug cantonment area according to a book ‘1857 Kranti ma Gujarat’, written by my late senior well-wisher Asutoshbhai Bhatt. However Asutoshbhai in his book claimed 21 persons were executed, while the news reporting published below mention execution of 18 persons.

The execution of freedom fighters took place in public. It is understood that the names of those executed were never made public in attempt to prevent any adverse reaction in related caste-religious groups.

Following is eye-witness account from parade ground Ahmedabad in full text:

The Indian Execution – Appalling Scene –

A party writing from Ahmedabad on Oct. 26th gives a very graphic account of an execution which took place there : –

“I rode down at five, and day dawned as I cantered along. I know nothing so sad as that slow drawing on of the sunrise which is to be the signal for an execution. There were many groups of natives moving towards the parade ground, which is four miles from the city, and every now and then a carriage with the lamps still lit.

When I reached the ground the bugles were only sounding, and there was little to be seen but the gallows with ten nooses, and the miserable prisoners seated in a double row in front of it. I rode slowly past them, and could see no signs of emotion, except that one or two were very pale. The regiment in which the mutiny occurred was the first to take up its ground, opposite to the gallows. The other native regiment drew up at right-angles to it, and the English regiments, behind the gallows, completed the third side of a square. Between them were four guns. At the fourth side were drawn up five guns, pointing outward, across the flat level. To these the sentenced men were to be bound. The area of the square was now covered with mounted officers, a few civilians, the general, and his staff.

The whole eighteen prisoners were marched before the native regiments, and their offence and sentence read in a clear voice. This over, the last terrible preparations were commenced. The ten mounted to their places on the drop, and stood there white and shadowy against the pale sky, but firm and quiet, their faces hidden in white caps. A firing party of 12 moved up to a spot within 20 yards of the place where I stood, facing outwards, as the guns did, but behind them, further back into the square. The three men who were to be shot were placed in front, and not more than twelve paces from the muzzles of the muskets. They knelt down, their eyes were bandaged, and their hands tied.

Meanwhile the doomed five had been marched to the five fatal guns. They were bound by the arms to the wheels, but their legs were free, and the end man- the only one whom I could entirely see from my place on the flank leaned his back against the muzzle, as launders lean against a mantelpiece. I fixed my eyes intently on that man, and in a moment the signal was given. There was a roar, and the whizzing of a bullet far away from the firing party ; a bank of white smoke, and a jet and shower of black fragments, sharp and clear, which leaped and bounded in the air; then a fearful sound from the spectators, as if the reality so far exceeded all previous fancy that it was intolerable ; then a dead stillness.

I walked straight to the scattered and smoking floor before the guns. I first came to an arm, torn off above the elbow, the first clinched, the bone projecting several inches, bare. Then the ground sown with red grisly fragments, then a black-haired head and the other arm still held together. This was the man I had watched ; close by lay the lower half of the body of the next, torn quite in two, and long coils of entrails twined on the ground. Then a long cloth in which one had been dressed rolled open like a floor-cloth and on fire.

One man lay in a complete and shattered heap, all but the arms ; the legs were straddled wide apart, and the smashed body in the middle of them ; the spine exposed ; the head lay close by, too. The last body was that of a native officer, who was the archfiend of the mutiny ; he was a short man, with a cruel face. His head had been cut clean off, but the muscles of the neck had contracted round the throat like a frill. His face was half upturned and calm, the eyes shut. I saw no expression of pain on any of them. What had been his body lay on its face, the legs as usual not shuttered, but all the flesh torn like cloth from a sharp angle in the hollow of the back, off and on, till it merged in one mangled heap.

I turned next to the three who had been shot. One had been struck in the heart, and only bowed slowly over on his face. The others had been pistolled afterwards through the head. All I think, however, had been badly hit, as all wore prostrate when I ran forward to the guns. And only now – they were so much more terrible – did I look up to the ten white figures slowly swinging and revolving over this scene of blood. I hope they died quickly, but the ropes were very short. The troops immediately marched off, and I rode home at speed, and when I dismounted the dogs came and licked my feet.”