What a skull in an English pub says about India's 1857 mutiny | Hacker News Reader

What a skull in an English pub says about India's 1857 mutiny

bbc.co.uk

33 pointsgadders12 comments

> He murdered Mr Hunter, and his wife and daughters after being brutally treated were butchered by the road side.

I believe that ‘being brutally treated’ means raped.

> Dr Wagner writes that his book sets out to ‘restore some of the humanity and dignity that has been denied to Alum Bheg … I hope I have prepared the ground for Alum Bheg to finally find some peace …’

If Havildar Bheg did indeed murder two men and rape & murder two women, I can’t say that I’m all that concerned about his dignity, and not terribly impressed by his humanity.

As an aside, being blown from a cannon, while rather spectacular from our modern perspective, was traditional in India dating back to the Mughal era. I imagine that it must be remarkably painless.

> who was executed in 1858 by being blown from the mouth of a cannon

Wow.

This isn't quite as it sounds, although not exactly better.

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowing_from_a_gun

> George Carter Stent described the process as follows:[1]

>> The prisoner is generally tied to a gun with the upper part of the small of his back resting against the muzzle. When the gun is fired, his head is seen to go straight up into the air some forty or fifty feet; the arms fly off right and left, high up in the air, and fall at, perhaps, a hundred yards distance; the legs drop to the ground beneath the muzzle of the gun; and the body is literally blown away altogether, not a vestige being seen.

> ...

> The destroying of the body and scattering the remains over a wide area had a particular religious function as a means of execution in the Indian subcontinent as it effectively prevented the necessary funeral rites of Muslims and Hindus.[9] Thus, for believers the punishment was extended beyond death.

Actually, frankly, thats worse than I imagined.

How sad that British were able to sow enough seeds of hatred and division in India that brothers in arms ended up fighting each other and separating into two not quite at peace neighbors less than a hundred years later.

I think its far far more complicated than that. Partition was/is a disaster, so was bangladesh.

However when the mutiny broke out, a huge wave of violence was unleashed, first against the british, then anyone who was seen to be helping the british, then the nextdoor Raj. Finally in reverse by the british.

Of course it is. However, divide and rule was the original british mantra. It saddens me personally how well it worked on the Indian sub-continent and as a student of history I wonder why it did.

Was the history that peaceful before the British got there? I was under the impression that the sub-continent always had a decent amount of fighting and unrest

There was always unrest, true, though it was no exception for the time considering its size. Either way the colonialists did nothing to help the situation but were focused on milking the cash cow. https://youtu.be/f7CW7S0zxv4

But the british only really replaced the Raj, or shoved a hand firmly up the puppet hole. The power structures and practices, along with the sectarian tensions were already there.

Does that make the british blameless? no. The evangelicals that were hell bent (excuse the pun) on taking what essentially was an abusive trading relationship and turning it into a massive christian mission. that corruption of purpose, "natives must be cured/saved" arguably caused the most damage

That hatred and division was there long before the British- indeed, it was the primary mechanism by which the British gained control of India in the first place.

There were warring states and kingdoms, but not hatred the way sowed by british's divide and conquer.

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