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Home , Capture of Delhi (1771), John Baptist Collins, Karl Friedrich Neumann, Piracy Act 1837, Sandokan, The Steam House

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Insurgent Sepoys Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ii Insurgent Sepoys Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Contents iii

Insurgent Sepoys Europe views the Revolt of 1857

Editor Shaswati Mazumdar Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

LONDON NEW YORK NEW DELHI iv Insurgent Sepoys

First published 2011 in India by Routledge 912 Tolstoy House, 15–17 Tolstoy Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi 110 001

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ISBN: 978-0-415-59799-9

This book is printed on ECF environment-friendly paper manufactured from unconventional and other raw materials sourced from sustainable and identiﬁ ed sources. Contents v

Advance Praise for the Book

Nothing could be more welcome than a book on the European responses to the revolt of 1857 in India. Long focused on how the Indians and British locked horns, we have ignored how so many others in the world viewed this bitter contest. Here at last an international cast of scholars assess German, French, Italian, Czech, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Spanish, and Portuguese literary and media responses to these traumatic events. Ambivalent always, they variously endorsed the colonial punishment of India, were severely critical of British rule, or rubbed their hands with glee at British discomﬁ ture. Like the colonial administrators, the European literary imagination returned to the theme for several decades, ceaselessly recasting the images of Indians and of the British in India. We may now look forward to an equally stimulating volume on reactions from other parts of Europe and the world.

Madhavan K. Palat Formerly Professor of Russian and European History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

This timely and essential collection offers unprecedented perspectives on the Indian Revolt of 1857. With its focus on European responses it brings out the enormous international signifi cance of the events. Materials in no fewer than eight European languages other than English have been uncovered and studied, often for the fi rst time. The collection sheds light on the extraordinarily wide spectrum of European interpretations of the confl ict between the British and Indians. With its focus on journalistic and fi ctional writing it includes Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 newspaper articles as well as popular adventure novels and literary texts by well-known authors such as Theodor Fontane, Jules Verne, Francisco Luis Gomes, and Jacinto Benavente — many of them displaying an uneasy tension between orientalist modes of thinking and a sustained critique of British imperialism. The individual essays show how European responses to the revolt must be understood against the backdrop of the fundamental transformations taking place on the continent roughly at the same vi Insurgent Sepoys

time. What resonates in writings on the revolt are issues of colonial power-politics and discourses of race, palpable, for example, in texts from France and Spain; emergent nationalism and uniﬁ catory processes in Germany and Italy; and, in Hungarian, Czech and Bulgarian writing, the “ideas of 1848” and the struggle for independence. This collection clearly is a signiﬁ cant step towards establishing an archive of the worldwide reactions to the revolt of 1857. It will open up the road ahead for further research on the transnational repercussions of colonialism.

Astrid Erll Professor of English and New Literatures, Goethe-University Frankfurt Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Contents vii

Contents

List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgements xiii

1. Introduction 1 Shaswati Mazumdar

Part I: News and Views 2. German Responses: Theodor Fontane, Edgar Bauer, Wilhelm Liebknecht 19 Claudia Reichel 3. French Counter-narratives: Nationalisme, Patriotisme and Révolution 43 Nicola Frith 4. Freedom and Democracy: The Revolt in the Italian Press 63 Chiara Cherubini 5. A View of the Revolt in the Spanish Press 81 Vibha Maurya and Maneesha Taneja 6. Hungarian Responses: Between Support and Disagreement 94 Margit Köves 7. Czech Representations of India and the Rebellion, 1850–1930 111 Sarah Lemmen Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 8. Buˇlgarska Dnevnitsa: A Bulgarian Response to the Uprising 124 Rashmi Joshi

Part II: Fact and Fiction 9. Retcliffe’s Nena Sahib and the German Discourse on India 137 Anil Bhatti viii Insurgent Sepoys

10. The Rebellion of an Indian Temple Dancer 152 Carola Hilmes 11. The Stirring Story of the ‘Cipays’: Italian Narrative Responses 171 Flaminia Nicora 12. ‘Remember Cawnepore’: The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators 189 Sharmistha Lahiri 13. Emilio Salgari’s The Two Tigers: Exoticism, Anti-imperialism and Ambivalence 211 Alessandro Portelli 14. Lost in Translation: Jules Verne and the Indian Rebellion 221 Swati Dasgupta 15. ‘A Great Insurrection’: Jules Verne and British ‘Mutiny’ Fiction 237 Suchitra Choudhury 16. The Rebellion in a 19th-century Indo-Portuguese Novel 251 Everton V. Machado 17. Francisco Luiz Gomes’s Os Brahamanes: The Uprising and Anglo-Indian Society 269 Balaji Ranganathan 18. El dragón del fuego: A Dramatic Representation of the Revolt 278 Vijaya Venkataraman Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 About the Editor 289 Notes on Contributors 291 Index 297 Contents ix

List of Illustrations

The visuals have all been photographed for this book from the sources mentioned. Thanks are owed to the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library) for assistance and permission to photograph the visuals from German sources and to Flaminia Nicora for the visuals from Italian sources. Every effort has been made to ﬁ nd out any owners of copyright regarding the visual material reproduced in this book. Perceived omissions if brought to notice will be rectiﬁ ed in future editions.

1. ‘Delhi und seine Umgebungen’ (Delhi and its Environs), in the German weekly Illustrirte Zeitung (Illustrated Newspaper), Leipzig, no. 750, November 14, 1857, p. 317; probably drawn after an illustration entitled ‘Plan of Delhi and its Environs’ in the Weekly Dispatch, London, 1857, but with information added on population ﬁ gures of Hindus and Muslims separately. p. xiv 2. ‘Zur Gastronomie. Unter allen „Delicatessen“ der diesjährigen Herbst-Saison werden gegenwärtig in London zum Dessert ,,Indische Nester“ am liebsten und mit wahrer Begierde eingenommen. Es gehört aber ein gesunder Magen dazu’ (On Gastronomy: Amongst all the “Delicacies” for Dessert in this Year’s Autumn Season in London, “Indian nests” are Currently the Most Popular and Consumed with Avid Desire. But it Certainly Requires a Healthy Stomach), in the German weekly Kladderadatsch. Humoristisch-satyrisches Wochenblatt (Crash: Humourous Satirical Weekly), Berlin, September 27, 1857, p. 180; the full page may be viewed at http://diglit.ub.uni- heidelberg.de/diglit/kla1857/0180. p. 18 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 3. ‘La Guerre des Indes’ (The Indian War), in Histoire Populaire Contemporaine de la France (Popular Contemporary History of France), Paris: Hachette, 1865, vol. 3, chapter XIII (La Guerre des Indes), p. 305. p. 42 4. ‘Die Einnahme der Hauptmoschee Dschamna Musdschid zu Delhi am 16. September’ (The Capture of the Main Mosque Jama Masjid in Delhi on 16 September), in Illustrirte Zeitung, no. 754, December 12, 1857, p. 380. p. 80 x Insurgent Sepoys

5. ‘Flucht der Sipoys bei Entsetzung der Residenz von Lacknau durch Sir Colin Campbell am 18. November’ (Sepoys Fleeing during the Relief of Lucknow by Sir Colin Campbell on 18 November), in Illustrirte Zeitung, no. 761, January 30, 1858, p. 73. p. 110 6. ‘Nena Sahib, nach einem Oelgemälde von Beechy’ (Nana Sahib, after an Oil Painting by Beechy), in Illustrirte Zeitung, no. 748, October 31, 1857, p. 288. An almost identical image was carried in two other European periodicals: in the German weekly Die Gartenlaube. Illustrirtes Familienblatt (The Arbour: Illustrated Family Magazine), Leipzig, no. 37, September 10–16, 1857, p. 589, entitled ‘Nena Sahib’; and in the Hungarian weekly Vasárnapi Újság (Sunday Magazine), Pest, November 22, 1857, p. 509, entitled ‘Nana Sahib’. p. 136 7. ‘Die Erschießung meuterischer Sipoys zu Firospur am 13. Juni’ (The Execution of Mutinous Sepoys at Firozpur on 13 June), in Illustrirte Zeitung, no. 740, September 5, 1857, p. 153. The illustration was probably drawn after one that appeared in the Illustrated Times, London, 1857, entitled ‘The Blowing of Sepoy Prisoners of War from the Mouth of Cannon’. An almost identical image with minor differences also appeared in two other European publications: in Die Gartenlaube, no. 36, September 3–9, 1857, p. 497, with the caption ‘Hinrichtung indischer Meuterer’ (Execution of Indian Mutineers); and in Edoardo Warren, L’ India inglese. Prima e dopo l’ insurrezione del 1857 (British India: Before and after the Revolt of 1857), trans. Cesare Sabbatini, Naples: L. Padoa, 1858 (Italian edition of original in French: Édouard de Warren, L’ Inde anglaise: Avant et après l’ insurrection de 1857, Paris: Hachette, 1857), with the caption ‘Supplirio alla bocca del cannone’

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 (Torture at the Mouth of the Cannon). The illustration from the Illustrated Times was later reproduced in Harper’s Weekly, New York, February 15, 1862, p.109, with the caption ‘British Civilization — How the English Treat Prisoners of War — Blowing Sepoys from Guns in India, 1857’. p. 170 8. ‘Khanpur, vom Ganges aus gesehen’ (Kanpur, Seen from the Ganges), in Illustrirte Zeitung, no. 753, December 5, 1857, p. 364. p. 210 List of IllustrationsContents xi

9. ‘Insurrection de l’Inde (1857) — Troupes anglaises se défendant dans les rochers contre la cavalerie des insurges’ (Insurrection in India [1857] — British Troops Defending Themselves behind Rocks against Insurgent Cavalry), in Histoire Populaire Contemporaine de la France, Paris: Hachette, 1865, vol. 3, chapter XIII (La Guerre des Indes), p. 313. p. 236 10. ‘Die Campbells kommen! Scene aus der Belagerung von Laknau, nach einem Gemälde von F. Goodall’ (The Campbells are Coming! Scene from the Siege of Lucknow, after a Painting by F. Goodall), in Illustrirte Zeitung, no. 769, March 27, 1858, p. 201. p. 268

Cover Illustrations Front cover: ‘Assalto di Delhi, 20 Sette 1857’ (Assault on Delhi, 20 September 1857). Chromolithograph by Lit Richter C. (signed) of Richter & Co., Naples, Italy, 1858. The drawing was probably commissioned for the book by Giuseppe Lazzaro, Della compagnia, o Della dominazione inglese nelle Indie fi no alla caduta di Delhi nel 1857 (About the Company, or About British Domination in India up to the Fall of Delhi in 1857), Naples: Pellerano, 1858. It appears to have been drawn after an illustration in The Illustrated London News, November 28, 1857, entitled ‘The Storming of Delhi — The Cashmere Gate’. Inside front fl ap: ‘Indien’ (India). Part of a full-page illustration in Kladderadatsch. Humoristisch-satyrisches Wochenblatt, August 2, 1857, p. 141; the full page may be viewed at http://diglit.ub.uni-heidelberg. de/diglit/kla1857/0141. Inside back fl ap: ‘Indien’ (India). Part of a full-page illustration in Kladderadatsch. Humoristisch-satyrisches Wochenblatt, September 27, 1857, p. 176; the full page may be viewed at http://diglit.ub.uni-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 heidelberg.de/diglit/kla1857/0176. xii Insurgent Sepoys Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Contents xiii

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without initial support by the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) to a research project proposed by the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi, during the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Revolt of 1857. I am particularly indebted to Prof. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Chairperson of the ICHR, for his readiness not only to cross the disciplinary boundaries of history and literary studies but also to invest in an idea that had little material evidence to support it at the outset. Today that evidence has swelled to an extent that is only suggested in this book. I am also grateful to the University of Delhi for supporting individual research on the project with research grants. I wish to specially thank the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS) for the grant of a fellowship to work on the project, which also helped me complete the manuscript for this book. Thanks are also due to colleagues and friends for their help and suggestions, both with regard to historical issues and the translation of some of the quotations and references included here from the different European languages. Last but not least, I wish to thank the students who chose to become a part of this research project and assisted in the collection and organisation of material. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 xiv Insurgent Sepoys , November 14, 1857. Illustrirte Zeitung Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ‘Delhi und seine Umgebungen’ (Delhi and its Environs), in 1 Introduction Shaswati Mazumdar

I The 1857 revolt in India has so far largely been viewed as an event that was of interest to British and Indian scholars investigating the various consequences of British colonial rule in India. For almost a hundred years after it took place, studies of the revolt were dominated by views that sought to diminish both its magnitude and its anti-colonial character. In the half-a-century following the end of British rule and the establishment of an independent India, such views have been questioned by scholars in India and Britain and considerable evidence has been gathered to give a different account of the revolt. This tells us that the ‘mutinous spirit’ that raised its head in the ranks of the British Indian army in the early months of 1857 did not remain confi ned to these ranks but in fact found fertile ground in signifi cant sections of the civilian population, that too not just in and around the most active sites of the mutinying sepoys in northern India but also in other more distant parts. The complete story is yet to emerge regarding the extent to which disaffection against colonial rule had spread and the forms it took during the turbulent two years before the British rulers were able to suppress the revolt. Meanwhile, other scholars have also taken a closer look at the consequences of the revolt in Britain and found enduring marks of the wounds infl icted by the revolt on the material and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 spiritual pillars of British society, wounds that certainly endured till the end of British rule.1 Curiously, these wounds have a habit of resurfacing every now and then even long after the prospects of

1 See Gautam Chakravarty, The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Christopher Herbert, War of No Pity: The Indian Mutiny and Victorian Trauma, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. 2 Shaswati Mazumdar

British rule in India have defi nitively been laid to rest and other prospects concerning the planet Earth as a whole and our collective future on it engage our attention.2 What has remained out of the focus of study during the last 150 years is the possible impact of the revolt elsewhere, its so to say international dimension. What in particular was the reaction in Europe where elemental social and political transformations were underway, that would impact on the rest of the world, the fates of which were linked to a not inconsiderable extent with the fortunes of British power and therefore with the outcome of the revolt in India? At the time of the revolt, Europe stood, as it were, at a crossroads. The 1848 revolutionary movements had been defeated and monarchical governments restored. But the ideas of 1848 continued to animate nationalist movements, liberal and more radical ideologies. It is surely signifi cant that the revolt in India coincided with the articulation of nationalist identities in Europe and the widespread growth of nationalist movements in central, southern and eastern Europe. At the same time, industrialisation spurred the expansion of economic and military power and dreams of colonial conquest fed incipient imperialism. Europe was a potpourri of contending forces straining to defi ne a still uncertain future not only of the nations that it geographically constituted but also of much of the rest of the world. As news of the ‘mutinous spirit’ fomenting trouble in India broke along the recently laid telegraph lines, it was not seen on the continent as a minor skirmish in a corner of the all-powerful British Empire. The telegraph lines were still to connect Europe with India, so news from India could only come by ship and that took around six weeks. But the industrialised and urbanised stretch of northern Europe was already telegraphically connected and news traveled across the continent faster than ever before.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 It is not as if there had been no indications available for the reactions set off in Europe by the revolt. Marx, in his articles on India written for the New York Daily Tribune, was perhaps not representative of the reactions in most European newspapers and

2 See Felicity Hand, ‘In the Shadow of the Mutiny: Reﬂ ections on Two Post-Independence Novels on the 1857 Uprising’, in Susan Onega, ed., Telling Histories: Narrativizing History, Historicizing Literature, Amsterdam/ Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1995, pp. 61–70. Introduction 3

the paper was aimed primarily at readers in the United States.3 But the fact that he was commissioned to write for the most widely circulated newspaper of the times is itself a sign of the international interest in the revolt. Apart from writing in quite extraordinary detail about various aspects of the ongoing confl ict, Marx often makes references to its international dimensions. In his fi rst article on the revolt he drew attention to the ‘general disaffection’ in Asia and argued that the revolt was ‘intimately connected with the Persian and Chinese wars’.4 Similar connections are drawn in articles specifi cally on the revolt as well as in articles focusing on other issues such as the fi nancial crisis, or the political situation in Europe. Moreover, the reports, and particularly editorials in British newspapers during the revolt, frequently referred to reactions in Europe (and America), highlighting voices of support for the British efforts to put it down and expressing offence at those that used the opportunity to criticise British colonial policy. Soon after the post from India brought the fi rst news of the capture of Delhi by mutinying sepoys, The Times observed caustically: ‘Such an affair as the Indian mutiny was not likely to pass without some malicious comments from our ill-wishers abroad.’5 As hopes of the quick suppression of the ‘mutiny’ had to give way to the reality of a more protracted war, The Times felt aggrieved by criticism from the continent: ‘Our opponents cannot openly and straightforwardly pray that we shall be beaten in India, because this would be simply siding with barbarism against civilisation.’6 After the arrival of the long awaited news of the fall of Delhi brought some relief, the paper felt compelled to note:

Since the tide of success in India has been turned against the mutineers, notwithstanding their numbers, by the unconquerable fortitude of

3 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 The articles appeared unsigned in accordance with the owners’ wishes. They were published in English in 1959 from Moscow under the title, The First Indian War of Independence. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The First Indian War of Independence 1857–1859, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959. 4 ‘The Revolt in the Indian Army’ (June 30, 1857), in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, volume 15, 1856–58, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986, p. 298. 5 The Times, Saturday, July 4, 1857, p. 9. 6 Ibid., Saturday, October 10, 1857, p 6. 4 Shaswati Mazumdar

our isolated countrymen, the journals of certain European States have exchanged their forebodings of disaster for deprecations of vengeance, and, instead of forecasting the ruin of England, have employed themselves in denouncing the spirit of revenge which they assume to be rampant in British hearts.7

The lack of attention to the international dimensions of the revolt in general as also to the reactions on the European continent in particular is doubtless a consequence of the fact that the historiography of the revolt since the end of colonial rule was perforce drawn primarily to investigations of the actual participants, the scale and nature of what really happened, to whether it was a mere mutiny or a larger revolt against colonial rule. It is indeed a remarkable exception that the volume Rebellion 1857 brought out by P. C. Joshi just ten years after independence, on the centenary of the revolt, contained an entire section of essays on international responses.8 In his foreword, Joshi had expressed the hope that ‘these foreign papers will help to write a hitherto unknown chapter in India’s national history’. At the time Joshi was particularly interested in reactions abroad that had seen in the 1857 events a national revolt. In fact, the predominant responses on the European continent were more mixed, ranging from anxious support to the British to harsh condemnation as well as more ambivalent positions; and sympathy for the rebels did not necessarily mean sympathy for their cause. Whatever the varied nature of the reactions, the space given to the revolt in many European newspapers and journals while it was in progress is certainly extensive. What is more, representations of and refl ections on the revolt appeared both during the event and for long after its suppression, above all in forms of popular fi ction but also in historical accounts, letters, reminiscences and other forms of writing. The collection of essays in this volume ventures into this unexplored terrain and offers a fi rst look at some of these

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 European responses.

II With the exception of the articles on the revolt by Marx, who wrote them in English and for an American readership, almost all

7 The Times, Monday, October 26, 1857, p. 6. 8 P. C. Joshi, Rebellion 1857, republished in 2007 by National Book Trust, New Delhi, with a foreword by Irfan Habib. Introduction 5

the reactions on the continent appeared, not surprisingly, in other European languages. Surprisingly, however, the reactions were immediate, numerous and sustained over a long period till at least the end of the Second World War and of colonial rule in most parts of the world. Most of this material, fi ctional and non-fi ctional, is not available in English. Nor has any study been published so far — apart from the essays in the volume by P. C. Joshi — that focuses on reactions to the revolt in any of the individual European languages. News of the ‘mutinous spirit’ observed in the ranks of the sepoys in the early months of 1857 had already been picked up by the European press well before the mutinying sepoys rode from Meerut to Delhi where they, as The Times reported, ‘massacred almost all the Europeans without regard to age or sex, plundered the bank, and proclaimed the son of the late Moghul Emperor as king’.9 This news appeared by the next day in the European press, embellished in some cases with headlines or other details that refl ected the views of the concerned paper. The major source of information was of course the British press, but often other European sources were also cited in order to show up inconsistencies and to suggest a different interpretation. As news of the further progress of the mutiny kept pouring in and predictions of its quick suppression turned out to be misplaced, the events in India were given a larger and separate space, quite often that of front page news. Crucially, the events became a subject matter for editorials and lead articles that linked the still uncertain outcome of the revolt with the future of British power and its infl uence in Europe. From the outset, the European press produced its own versions of ‘the naming game’, using with effect the terms ‘rebellion’, ‘popular uprising’, ‘insurrection’, ‘revolution’, ‘national revolt’, as also ‘mutiny’, the term hotly defended by most sections of the British press. Illustrative of this

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ‘game’ is the use of terms such as ‘insurrection’ and ‘revolution’ in France, Britain’s major colonial rival. Liberal and conservative viewpoints in their speciﬁ c nationalist variations also clashed swords as the news from India became grist for the mill of European politics, at home and abroad. Support to the British was more pronounced in the liberal camp, whereas the conservatives pounced on the

9 The Times, Saturday, June 27, 1857, p. 9. 6 Shaswati Mazumdar

opportunity to expose British two-facedness, the one for the people in its colonies rising in revolt, the other for conservative governments in Europe. However, the stance of seeing the events in India as a battle of ‘civilisation versus barbarism’ was as much refl ected in both liberal and conservative viewpoints as were confl icting interpretations generated by the heated polemics. Views expressed in newspapers of the so-called small nations, threatened on the one hand by great power politics and simultaneously in the throes of incipient nationalist urges, were accordingly modulated, as, for instance, in Pesti Napló (Pest Diary), the most prominent Hungarian newspaper of the time, in Pražské Noviny (Prague News), the main Czech newspaper, and in Buˇlgarska Dnevnitsa (The Bulgarian Diary), an important journal of Bulgarian nationalism. In a country like Spain, which had already lost most of its colonies in South and Central America, support to the British was seen as a way to stave off the rising infl uence of America. Within this general spectrum of opinion, there were also collective and individual voices of dissent that watched the events in India with genuine sympathy; in some cases as a distant herald of their own hopes and a possible ally in their own struggles. In England, Ernest Jones and the Chartist movement represent one such voice. The revolt also encouraged Irish radicalism in Ireland and North America and ‘a few of these white radicals began to see an analogy to their own political predicament in the revolt of a non-white “people”’.10 The writings of Marx and Engels apart, working- class movements in Europe were still in their formative stages and opinions expressed from their ranks were rarely publicised in the major newspapers, and when at all, then as targets of attack. Though not lacking in a greater or lesser degree of ambivalence, voices of sympathy were also found, for instance, in Italia del Popolo (Italy of the People), the newspaper of the Italian democrats, as among

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Hungarian, Czech and Bulgarian nationalists, and even among individual conservatives. An example of the latter is the German novelist and poet Theodor Fontane who wrote for the Kreuzzeitung,11 the leading conservative German newspaper.

10 C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Con- nections and Comparisons, Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2004, Indian reprint by Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, New Delhi, p. 160. 11 Kreuzzeitung (Cross Paper) was the popular epithet for the Neue Preußische Zeitung (New Prussian Newspaper) because of the cross on the masthead. Introduction 7

Coverage of the revolt in the European press was certainly sustained right through the siege of Delhi and also went on with decreasing frequency beyond 1857. As the reports of actual events become less and less frequent, some newspapers resorted to a new form to satisfy the interest of readers in the happenings in India, that of the serialised novel. The considerable amount of space devoted to the revolt is indeed testimony to the signifi cance attached to it not only by the newspapers but apparently also by their readers. The fi rst English Mutiny novel, a genre created by the event, was published in 1859; entitled The Wife and the Ward; or, a Life’s Error, its focus was on the Anglo-Indian world threatened from outside by the rebels.12 The fi rst English novels that also included the world of the rebels were published only a decade later.13 In comparison, novels about the revolt started appearing on the continent as early as 1858 and with titles referring directly to the event: in French — Félix Maynard, De Delhi à Cawnpore: Journal d’une dame anglaise, pages de l’insurrection hindoue; in German — Sir John Retcliffe, Nena Sahib, oder die Empörung in Indien; in Italian — Aristide Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana.14 Of these, the latter two novels are both over a thousand pages long and the novel by Retcliffe was a runaway bestseller. Apparently, the mutiny became the most favoured theme for novelists located in England or in the Anglo-Indian world and more than seventy English mutiny novels were written in the span of around ninety years from its outbreak till the end of colonial rule.15 But they were initially slow in coming. The mutiny novel

12 Chakravarty, The Indian Mutiny, p. 5. 13 See ibid., Edward Money, The Wife and the Ward; or, a Life’s Error, London: Routledge, Warnes, and Routledge, 1859. 14 Félix Maynard, De Delhi à Cawnpore: Journal d’une dame anglaise, pages

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 de l’insurrection hindoue (From Delhi to Cawnpore: Journal of an English Lady, Notes from the Indian Revolt), Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1858; Sir John Retcliffe, Nena Sahib, oder die Empörung in Indien. Historisch- politischer Roman aus der Gegenwart (Nena Sahib or the Uprising in India: Historical-political Novel of the Present Times), 3 volumes, Berlin: Carl Nöhring, 1858/1859; Aristide Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana (Scenes of the Indian Insurrection), Milan and Verona: Stabilimento Civelli Giuseppe, 1858. 15 The number of mutiny novels has long been disputed, with some insisting on a lower ﬁ gure, others on a higher one. Gautam Chakravarty puts the ﬁ gure at around seventy. 8 Shaswati Mazumdar

had its boom between the 1890s and the First World War, a period of intense imperialist rivalry signalled by the Berlin Conference in 1884 and the ‘scramble for Africa’. A parallel development can probably be found in other parts of Europe. While the continent could not compete in numbers against the frenetic literary preoccupation with the mutiny in England, the presence of the revolt in fi ctional writing in other European languages is in itself quite extraordinary. Jules Verne’s novels are the best known since they were translated into English, though it is perhaps less known how politics intervened in the translations. Several titles appeared in French, Italian and German spanning a period from 1858 till around the Second World War. Some French novels on the revolt were also translated into other European languages. A tentative list of more than twenty titles in German alone, including novels, short stories, plays and even a long poem, is an indicator of the place occupied by the revolt in the European imagination. As in the case of the English mutiny novel, Nana Sahib seems to emerge as a clear favourite, if not always for the central character, then certainly for an important one. Whether seen with a baleful or sympathetic eye, Nana Sahib and his alleged role in the Kanpur massacre became synonymous with the Indian revolt and different interpretations of the event were presented through the stories woven about and around him. The next most popular fi gure is probably the Rani of Jhansi. Much of this literary production on the continent would best be described as popular fi ction. Though frowned upon and treated with indifference by many scholars of literature, this form of writing had a far greater infl uence in shaping public opinion about the revolt. The popular novel with a mass readership came into its own in the middle of the 19th century. Popular novels were published in the form of the serialised novel in newspapers and magazines and as colporteur novels which were home delivered in installments by door-to-door salesmen.16 Several genres of popular fiction Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 emerged towards the end of the 19th century — colonial adventure, espionage, crime detection — particularly directed at a young and

16 Colporteur novels were novels in installments which were sold mainly by door-to-door salesmen. The French called them Bibliothèque Bleue, the English Chapbooks, the Italians Libretti popolari, the Germans Volksbücher. See Rudolf Schenda, Volk ohne Buch. Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der populären Lesestoffe 1770–1910 (People without a Book: Studies on the Social History of Popular Reading Materials 1770–1910), Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 3rd edition, 1988, pp. 276, 300–301. Introduction 9

often male readership. There is also a signifi cant presence of women authors, sometimes writing under a male pseudonym. Popular fi ction included the forms of the dime novels, the penny dreadfuls, and the boys’ adventure novels. Plots centring on turbulent happenings in the colonies — such as the revolt in India, the Boer war, the Herero uprising in German southwest Africa, the Boxer rebellion in China — were suitable favourites. The stories were often not only adventurous but also bloodthirsty.17 The depiction of extreme forms of violence was evidently seen as indispensable to ensuring popularity. A few of these fi ctionalised accounts are discussed in this volume. Some of them still enjoy great popularity whereas others have become rare possessions of a few libraries and their authors have fallen into obscurity. Still others have only left behind the trace of their titles in library catalogues, being otherwise forever lost to the ravages of war. While the revolt made quite an impact on popular fi ction, its presence is hardly visible in the work of writers classifi ed as ‘high culture’ (although this term is undoubtedly problematic). Why this is so, is a question still looking for an answer. The little-known play El dragón del fuego (1904) by the Spanish playwright and Nobel Prize winner, Jacinto Benavente, or the brief account ‘L’olocausto di Cawnepore’ by the Italian poet Guido Gozzano seem to be among the few exceptions that prove the rule.18 Perspectives become more complicated in the Portuguese novel Os Brahamanes (1866) by Francisco Luiz Gomes, a Goan intellectual in Portuguese- controlled Goa.19

17 See Populäre Lesestoffe. Groschenhefte, Dime Novels und Penny Dreadfuls aus den Jahren 1850 bis 1950. Katalog zur Ausstellung von Heinz J. Galle (Popular Reading Materials: Groschen Novels, Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls of the Years 1850 to 1950. Catalogue of the Exhibition in the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 City and University Library of Cologne by Heinz J. Galle), Cologne: Kleine Schriften der Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Cologne, 2002. 18 Jacinto Benavente, El dragón del fuego (The Dragon of Fire), Barcelona: E. Domenech, 1910 (ﬁ rst published in 1904); Guido Gozzano, ‘L’olocausto di Cawnepore’ (The Holocaust of Cawnpore), in Guido Gozzano, Verso la cuna del mondo: Lettere dall’India (Journey to the World’s Cradle: Letters from India), edited by Alida D’Aquino Creazzo, Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1984 (ﬁ rst published with the title ‘L’olocausto di Cawmpore’, in La Donna, 11(248), Turin, April 20, 1915). 19 Francisco Luiz Gomes, Os Brahamanes (The Brahmans), Romance, Lisbon: Typographia da Gazeta de Portugal, 1866. 10 Shaswati Mazumdar

The field of European responses to the revolt is no doubt characterised by signifi cant differences and polemical exchanges. However, this fi eld is also structured by certain commonly held notions, the nuts and bolts as it were of the dominant European way of seeing and representing the revolt. In conclusion, two general observations may be made about these notions. First, in Europe there had developed a discourse on India that tended to view it as passive, spiritual and essentially submissive to foreign domination. The considerable interest in India generated across Europe through the establishment of the Asiatic Society and the founding of departments of Indology was directed mainly towards its ancient past and was concerned little with its present. The revolt showed Indians in a quite unexpected light. It seemed to catapult India out of a distant past into contemporary history and to invest it with an unsuspected agency. Several commentators of the time noted this contrast between the conventional image and the reality of a revolt that against all predictions took considerable time and effort to suppress. The fi ctional representations of the event, whatever the specifi c slant in their interpretation, also focused willy-nilly on the defi ance in attitude and action displayed by the rebels. This new image must have been provocative and threatening for those committed to the colonial enterprise. One response to contain its impact was to insist on calling it a mutiny and to simultaneously play down the ability of the rebels to hold their own against the British army. But this was evidently not enough as repeated assertions of the imminent end of the revolt were forced to give way to news that the British forces were not having an easy time and that the revolt was not only spreading to other centres but also into the ranks of the civilian population. It seems to me that the other more pernicious approach was to concentrate the spotlight on the violence perpetrated by the rebels against Europeans and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 to blow it out of proportion while minimising in comparison the violence on the part of the British forces as well as the violence of colonial rule in general. This duplicity was pointed out by Marx in several of his articles and it also did not go unnoticed in the European press.20 Nevertheless, the excessive focus on the violence associated with the revolt, which often took on even more exaggerated

20 An article by Marx entitled ‘Investigations of Tortures in India’, ends as follows: ‘And if the English could do these things in cold blood, is it Introduction 11

forms in the ﬁ ctional representations, fed the ‘civilisation versus barbarism’ dichotomy. There is no denying that extreme forms of violence took place, that the spectre of violence was indeed terrifying to those who became its targets. But there seems to be another point here. An analogy may be drawn with the revolution in France in 1789. The passions that moved the revolutionaries in France were, in the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, ‘hatred of the ancien régime’ and absolute fear of ‘a return to the old order’.21 A similar desperation must have moved the rebels of 1857. Responding to a more recent context of attempts to diminish the promise of revolution by castigating its violence, Arno J. Mayer writes: ‘Indeed, revolution presents two contrasting faces: the one glorious and appealing; the other violent and terrifying.’ Devaluing the former by reference to the latter is, he believes, ‘as prejudicial to the critical study of revolution as the revolutionary premise itself’.22 He further argues:

there is no revolution without violence and terror; without civil and foreign war; without iconoclasm and religious conﬂ ict; and without collision between city and country. The Furies of revolution are fueled primarily by the inevitable and unexceptional resistance of the forces and ideas opposed to it, at home and abroad. This polarization becomes singularly ﬁ erce once revolution, confronted with this resistance, promises as well as threatens a radical refoundation of both polity and society.23

Perhaps the furies of both events, the revolution of 1789 in France and the revolt of 1857 in India, and the manner in which both were or are represented to devalue the promise of a ‘radical refoundation’ may provide some insightful comparisons. In the

surprising that the insurgent Hindoos should be guilty, in the fury of revolt Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 and conﬂ ict, of crimes and cruelties alleged against them?’ (August 28, 1857). In another article he writes: ‘There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself’ (September 4, 1857), in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, volume 15, pp. 341, 353. 21 Cited in Arno J. Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. ix. 22 Ibid., p. 3. 23 Ibid., p. 4. 12 Shaswati Mazumdar

case of the Indian revolt, its furies were held up to deny it political legitimacy and demean its anti-colonial character. As the century wore on, this sleight of hand, as it were, was able to more or less suppress the threatening aspect of the revolt, while established and emerging colonial powers fought over existing or would-be colonial possessions, moving inexorably in the process to the confl agration of the First World War. The older, decisively less threatening image of a passive and spiritual India was back in place and continued to dominate scholarly discourse. The memory of the revolt largely lived on as a site of exotic adventure in forms of popular fi ction, more often than not cleansed of its threatening political ramifi cations. Second, the Indian revolt also drew comparison with the American War of Independence. But as Gautam Chakravarty points out, ‘unlike the American War of Independence, the rebellion and its much-debated causes underscored a model of radical confl ict between cultures, civilisations and races; a confl ict that at once justifi ed conquest and dominion and proved the impossibility of assimilating and acculturating subject peoples’.24 This discriminatory approach between the two events is also refl ected in sections of the European press, a typical example of which is provided by the liberal German newspaper Volks-Zeitung (People’s Newspaper). Accused by the conservatives of supporting Britain against Russia and of defending the revolution in America but not the one in India, the Volks-Zeitung expressed its view in successive editorials splashed all across the front page that Indians had not yet reached the cultural level to justify a revolution, though it was completely justifi ed in the case of America. This was further proven by the barbaric practices motivating the discontent in India. England, according to the Volks-Zeitung, had its benefi ts from the colonies, but it was developing the concerned peoples to civilisation. Only ‘empty- headed communists’ or ‘hypocrites’ could see in it a ‘robber baron 25

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 system’.

24 Chakravarty, The Indian Mutiny, p. 4. 25 Volks-Zeitung, August 22, 1857, August 23, 1857, September 2, 1857 and September 4, 1857. See also Jürgen Fröhlich, Die Berliner ‘Volks- Zeitung’ 1853 bis 1867. Preußischer Linksliberalismus zwischen ‘Reaktion’ und ‘Revolution von oben’ (The Berlin ‘Volks-Zeitung’ 1853 to 1867: Prussian Left Liberalism between ‘Reaction’ and ‘Revolution from Above’), Frankfurt/Main, Bern, New York, Paris: Peter Lang, 1990, pp. 114–15. Introduction 13

The concept of radical difference underlying such views was common to European liberals and conservatives alike (though the latter found in the revolt an opportunity to criticise Britain). It was equally the basis for distinguishing between contemporaneous nationalist aspirations in Europe and those in India, bestowing legitimacy on the former and denying it to the latter. The invocation of Europe as a common point of reference transcending all other differences is perhaps the most obvious way in which the difference is marked. Difference was also marked by a religious-moral discourse which can be identifi ed as a distinct, running thread in the fi ctional and non-fi ctional representations of the revolt and which became in some cases the main prism through which the view of the revolt was refracted.26 The revolt, one may further recall, occurred at a time when theories about race started to be given the shape of a ‘scientifi c’ discourse that legitimised white supremacy. Such ideas of cultural and civilisational alterity reinforced the discourse of ‘civilisation versus barbarism’. As they gained greater currency and acquired ever more strident overtones, they were used to justify colonial conquest and partitioning of much of the rest of the world and the brutal crushing of rebellions against such conquest. They later became a fundamental premise for the fascist vision of the world. Today they insidiously continue their existence in fundamentalist and sectarian ideologies as also in imperialist rhetoric, justifying wars of aggression in the name of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’.

III This collection of essays is part of a larger effort to document representations of the 1857 revolt in non-English-speaking Europe, an effort started in 2007 at the Department of Germanic and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

26 A specifi c and very infl uential form in which this religious-moral discourse was articulated in Britain was that of the sermons on 1857. See Salahuddin Malik, 1857 War of Independence or a Clash of Civilizations? British Public Reactions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. I am grateful to Amar Farooqui for having drawn attention to this. Whether such sermons were written on the continent is still a matter for investigation. However, a religious-moral discourse can certainly be identifi ed in the continental representations of the revolt. 14 Shaswati Mazumdar

Romance Studies of the University of Delhi. Since the project is still in a nascent stage, the present collection may be seen as a kind of a curtain-raiser on an area that has so far gone unnoticed; it will hopefully raise more questions than it can attempt to answer. The idea that gave birth to the project was prompted by the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the revolt. As an idea it was admittedly pretty nebulous, since we initially had no inkling of where to look or what to look for. But it became ever more persuasive with each passing day. It was based on a simple conviction, that the 1857 revolt, seen in its time as the most formidable threat to Britain’s status as the foremost world power, could not have gone unnoticed on the continent. This conviction drove the ensuing hunt for material. The preliminary yield was a list of curious titles, most of them unheard of in the canons of European literature, with a sprinkling of well-known names among the authors. The idea then led to a research project that was graciously supported by the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) and to a conference held in October 2007. Some of the essays in this volume were presented there, others were contributed later. Of course there are signiﬁ cant gaps and areas left uncharted, most prominent among them the reactions to the revolt in Russia but also others that could not be included in this collection. I hope that this preliminary attempt will provoke further interest and help to unearth more details including those of the dissenting voices. I am deeply indebted to the ICHR and in particular to its chairperson, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, for the support to the project and for having considered the risk worth taking, a double risk in a sense, since the proposal came from a department focusing on language and literary studies, from persons therefore who were not trained in the ways of professional historians. We were conscious from the outset of this not entirely baseless suspicion about language Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 and literary scholars dabbling in the ﬁ eld of history but convinced nevertheless that the cooperation across disciplines would be productive. I am also indebted to several historians who encouraged us in our efforts, to Jean-Marie Lafont, Denys Leighton and Amar Farooqui for their suggestions and help in organising the conference and in a variety of other ways, to Hari Vasudevan, Madhavan Palat Introduction 15

and Majid Siddiqi for their invaluable interventions during the conference. Kim A. Wagner deserves special thanks for sending me his unpublished paper. Last but not least, I am grateful to all those who participated in the conference and to those who contributed essays for this volume for having taken time off from other preoccupations to engage with an area that at ﬁ rst glance appeared decidedly lean. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 16 Shaswati Mazumdar Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Part I: News and Views Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 18 Claudia Reichel Delicatessen“ der diesjährigen Herbst-Saison werden gegenwärtig in London zum ” , September 27, 1857. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Indische Nester“ am liebsten und mit wahrer Begierde eingenommen. Es gehört aber ein gesunder Magen ” ‘Zur Gastronomie. Unter allen Dessert dazu’ (On Gastronomy: Amongst all the “Delicacies” for Dessert in this Year’s Autumn Season London, “Indian nests” are Currently the Most Popular and Consumed with Avid Desire. But it Certainly Requires a Healthy Stomach), in Kladderadatsch 2 German Responses: Theodor Fontane, Edgar Bauer, Wilhelm Liebknecht Claudia Reichel

‘The entire colonisation policy is nonsense.’1 This is how, towards the end of his life in 1897, renowned German author Theodor Fontane (1819–98) summed up the view that he had already advanced forty years previously in his journalistic writings on the Indian rebellion. In September of 1855, when Fontane travelled to London as press agent for the Prussian government, relations between Prussia and Great Britain were extremely tense. Prussia had remained neutral during the Crimean War (1853–56), angering the British government and leading to ﬁ erce anti-Prussian reactions in English newspapers. Fontane was supposed to supply the English press with Prussia- friendly articles and report on English life and politics for Prussian readers. This resulted in a wide-ranging activity as a political columnist and correspondent for several German and English newspapers.2 The most important German paper for which Fontane worked from 1855 to 1858 in London and from 1860 to 1870 in Berlin, ﬁ rst as a journalist and later as editor, was the Neue Preußische Zeitung —

1 Fontane, in a letter to James Morris, October 26, 1897, in Theodor Fontane, Werke, Schriften, Briefe (Works, Writings, Letters), Abt. 4, Munich:

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Hanser, 1976, pp. 670–71, p. 671. 2 On Fontane’s stay in London, also see Charlotte Jolles, Fontane und die Politik. Ein Beitrag zur Wesensbestimmung Theodor Fontanes (Fontane and Politics: A Contribution to Deﬁ ning Theodor Fontane’s Character), Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau, 1988, pp. 98–129; Heinz Ohff, Theodor Fontane Leben und Werk (Theodor Fontane: Life and Work), Munich, Zürich: Piper, 1998, pp. 177–99; Helmuth Nürnberger, Der frühe Fontane. Politik, Poesie, Geschichte 1840 bis 1860 (The Early Fontane: Politics, Poesy, History 1840 to 1860), Hamburg: Christian Wegner, 1967, pp. 209–55; Hans- Heinrich Reuter, Fontane, volume 1, Munich: Nymphenburger, 1968, pp. 295–335. 20 Claudia Reichel

popularly referred to as the Kreuzzeitung (Cross-paper) because of the iron cross on the paper’s masthead. Founded in 1848 as an organ of the conservative Junker reaction against the revolution of 1848–49, the paper was from its start a mouthpiece for the corporative thinking of the East-Elbian landed gentry. Under the motto ‘Forward with God for King and Fatherland’ (from the time of the anti-Napoleonic wars), extremely conservative, monarchical forces assembled around the newspaper.3 What made Fontane’s participation possible was the fact that the editorship of the paper allowed its employees some degree of editorial freedom and tolerated, at least to some extent, their liberal attitude. Nevertheless, Fontane still had to accommodate the arch conservative, anti-British and pro-Russian line of the paper. During his time in London, however, he was not in the habit of showing the Kreuzzeitung a great deal of sympathy. His political views were so far apart that often his essays were either not used at all, or the editors amended them or felt compelled to correct the opinions of their employee.4 We will see that this was often the case in relation to the India articles. In his journalistic writings on the Indian rebellion, Fontane did not comment on the actual events of the rebellion itself; instead, his main focus was on the repercussions that the events in the Far East had in Great Britain, in particular, how politics and the general public reacted to the reports from India. According to his diary entries, he wrote some twenty correspondences on the subject during 1857, of which a total of sixteen were published, with the ﬁ rst on July 24 and the ﬁ nal one on December 30. Fontane’s view of the rebellion is articulated in the following ways: First: In his initial article, Fontane takes the view, widespread in the German press at the time, of the mishandling of British colonial policy in India resulting from ignorance and egotism. He compares two opposing viewpoints without any apparent bias in order to introduce Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

3 On the Kreuzzeitung, see the introduction by Heide Streiter-Buscher in Theodor Fontane: Unechte Korrespondenzen 1860–1865 (Theodor Fontane: Fictitious Correspondences 1860–1865), edited by Heide Streiter-Buscher, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1996, pp. 19–47 (Publications of the Theodor Fontane Gesellschaft, volume 1.1); Christian Grawe and Helmuth Nürnberger, eds, Fontane-Handbuch (Fontane-Handbook), Stuttgart: Kröner, 2000, pp. 799–817. The Neue Preußische Zeitung is hereafter referred to as the Kreuzzeitung. 4 See Reuter, Fontane, pp. 309–10; Jolles, Fontane und die Politik, p. 122. German Responses: Fontane, Bauer, Liebknecht 21

himself as an objective reporter. He sets one view — presented by him as the impartial opinion of a German businessman with many years of experience in India — against the views of an Indo-British civil servant, whose opinions are immediately qualiﬁ ed as biased. He quotes the businessman as saying,

English arrogance and overestimation is to blame for everything; followed by nepotism which nowhere in the world makes more trouble than in India. The offspring of this nepotism, who for whatever reason can no longer be accommodated in England itself, are granted posts and honors in India. They arrive there with no knowledge of the people, its customs and language, and mimicking at once a small nabob holding court, they are masters and judges over large communities, about whose concerns, whose welfare and woes they are so indifferent. . . . They see the land and people as a means to their personal ends, and they appease their conscience (if they have one) with the notion that they are the rulers of a subordinate and morally depraved race.

In contrast, the English civil servant sees the uprising merely as a military mutiny caused by the great leniency of the British towards the religious prejudices of the Indians.5 The reader quickly notices which position the author takes, particularly since Fontane never used the term ‘sepoy mutiny’ that was so common at the time. He did not believe that the rebellion was a simple mutiny of soldiers. It is also interesting that he also did not share the popular opinion that all difﬁ culties in ruling India would end if the country, which had so far been administered by the East India Company, were to come under the direct control of the British government.6 The notions underlying this view that the Asian peoples were incapable of governing themselves and that Europeans had to take on a civilising

5 [Theodor Fontane], ‘Verschiedene Standpunkte’ (Differing Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Viewpoints) in Kreuzzeitung, number 170, July 24, 1857, column: ‘Ostindien’; reprinted in Theodor Fontane, Unterwegs und wieder daheim. Appendix: Korrespondenzen, Kommentare, Register (Away and Back Home Again. Appendix: Correspondences, Commentaries, Index), Munich: Nymphenburger, 1972, pp. 738–39, hereafter the page numbers of reprints of articles from this volume are provided at the end of each reference in parentheses. All further contributions by Fontane appear under the column ‘Großbritannien’ (Great Britain). 6 He only brieﬂ y mentions the East India Company in two articles. [Theodor Fontane], ‘Die neue Parlamentssitzung. Lord Palmerston und 22 Claudia Reichel

role — views reﬂ ected widely in German newspapers — were completely alien to Fontane. In a further correspondence, he explains that it is not so much the reports from India that are alarming, but rather the perception

that, if seen politically the hundred-year occupation of the country had not led to even the slightest knowledge of those magniﬁ cent regions. . . . One is in the position of an old man become rich, who disdained all knowledge and book learning all his life and was proud of the fact that he could become so rich without knowing how to read and write. Now he travels through the desert, where he is captured and taken away. A poorly scribbled note might perhaps save him, but even mere scribbling is beyond his powers. For the ﬁ rst time in his long life, the heavy burden of his failure falls upon him and the object of his ridicule takes revenge.

India as a treasure chest had been broken open by England with the sword and England had failed in the process to search for the golden key that would unlock the understanding of the country, if not also the hearts of its inhabitants.7 Second: Fontane made reference early on to the signiﬁ cance of the Indian rebellion: it was precisely not a mere military mutiny but ‘the most serious of all uprisings that was ever encountered between the Ganges and the Indus’ and whose suppression would not be easy.8 While he did not anticipate the success of the Indians, he was equally unconvinced of a quick victory by the colonial troops.9 One question that occupied the press for weeks was the battle for

Russell’ (The New Parliament Session: Lord Palmerston and Russell), in Kreuzzeitung, number 285, December 5, 1857 (pp. 763–64), and his last report, ‘Die letzten Tage von Leadenhall-Street’ (The Last Days of Leadenhall-Street), in Kreuzzeitung, number 304, December 30, 1857

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 (pp. 768–69). 7 [ Theodor Fontane], ‘Das indische Rätsel’ (The Indian Puzzle), in Kreuzzeitung, number 192, August 19, 1857 (pp. 743–44). 8 [Theodor Fontane], ‘Das Transportschiff “Transit”’ (The Transport Ship ‘Transit’), in Kreuzzeitung, number 199, August 27, 1857 (p. 745). 9 See [Theodor Fontane], ‘Gerechte Sorge und schlechter Trost’ (Justiﬁ ed Concern and Poor Consolation), in Kreuzzeitung, number 226, September 27, 1857 (pp. 751–52) and [Theodor Fontane], ‘Vellore und Delhi. Eine Parallele zwischen 1806 und 1857’ (Vellore and Delhi: A Parallel between 1806 and 1857), in Kreuzzeitung, number 234, October 7, 1857 (pp. 753–54). German Responses: Fontane, Bauer, Liebknecht 23

the recapture of Delhi, which had been taken by the insurgents in May 1857. Fontane had attended a lecture in London on September 28 with pictures from Delhi, and his report was published in the Kreuzzeitung four days later. In his typically ironic manner, he noted that the lecture had the advantage of allowing one to open the gates of Delhi, which the Indians were currently defending so stubbornly, with no danger whatsoever. He could take no pleasure in the optimistic belief that ‘we will capture them [the Indians] as if they were in a mousetrap’.10 Fontane saw the particular threat from the uprising in the fact that Hindus and Muslims were ﬁ ghting together on the same side — a view that was very widespread. Karl Marx also advanced the same opinion in an article for the New York Tribune. According to Fontane, the art of ruling over other people consisted of making the different groups keep one another in check: ‘the English rule in India is based on the hate and jealousy that exists between the Hindus and the Muhamadans.’ If the two groups united, England’s rule would be endangered. The principal task of English policy was therefore to nurture this enmity.11 Marx began his ﬁ rst article on the Indian rebellion with the same thought:

The Roman Divide et impera was the great rule by which Great Britain, for about hundred and fifty years, contrived to retain the tenure of her Indian empire. The antagonism of the various races, tribes, castes, creeds and sovereignties, the aggregate of which forms the geographical unity of what is called India, continued to be the vital principle of British supremacy.12 Following the recapture of Delhi by British troops in September of 1857, Fontane described the continuation of the confl ict in exhausting guerrilla warfare: ‘A new type of confl ict, an Indian guerrilla war, will begin. In such a confl ict, the winner will be whoever holds his breath the longest.’13

10 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 [Theodor Fontane], ‘Das Panorama von Delhi’ (The Panorama of Delhi), in Kreuzzeitung, number 230, October 2, 1857 (pp. 752–53). 11 [Theodor Fontane], ‘Verschiedene Standpunkte’ (p. 738); also see [Theodor Fontane], ‘Kaffernregimenter’ (Idiot Regiments), in Kreuzzeitung, number 219, September 19, 1857 (p. 749). 12 Karl Marx, ‘The Revolt in the Indian Army’, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (MECW ), volume 15, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986, p. 297. 13 [Theodor Fontane], ‘Der Herd genommen, die Flamme entwischt’ (The Hearth Taken Away, the Flame Slipped Away) in Kreuzzeitung, number 255, October 31, 1857 (p. 760). This type of warfare was also 24 Claudia Reichel

Third: Fontane dedicated special attention to the reporting in the English newspapers. In particular, the intentionally optimistic reports which celebrated a quick and glorious victory of the British forces provoked his criticism. His articles refer cuttingly to the English press as the ‘Hanswurst wider Willen’ (reluctant buffoon) ‘running after or even running ahead of the great events’ and even lapsing into the ‘inexplicable tactlessness of selling the lion’s pelt before it is slain’.14 He comments on the demand to destroy Delhi: ‘“Delhi must cease to exist!” — this is the battle cry that now rings out through every crack’, but, he adds ironically, only after photographing it ﬁ rst and then leaving a single stone to show where the city once stood.15 The editors of the Kreuzzeitung found this depiction too sympathetic to the Indian cause and added an editorial comment to the article which assured its readers that ‘the natural sympathy that every European feels for these Asian ﬁ ghters against the English grows into disgust against a country and people capable of such despicable acts’.16 The view expressed frequently in the English press that the Indian uprising was instigated and controlled by Russia was dismissed by Fontane by referring to the Russia-phobia that had rekindled in Great Britain. Since the revolt was not sparked by the issuance of new bullets as had been repeatedly reported, another explanation was needed, ‘a cause that was not compromising, and so it was found where it had always been found before — Russia’.17 Of course, a defence of Russia was completely in the Kreuzzeitung’s

mentioned by Friedrich Engels in numerous articles. See, e.g., Friedrich Engels, ‘Details of the Attack on Lucknow and ‘The Indian Army’, in MECW, volume 15, pp. 532 and 580–84. 14 [Theodor Fontane], ‘Indische Nachrichten. Englischer Zeitungsstil’ (Indian News: English Newspaper Style), in Kreuzzeitung, number 202, August 30, 1857 (p. 746). 15 According to Fontane, this expresses ‘a callousness of the soul the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 kind of which one seldom encounters these days’, ibid. p. 747. He once again criticised the demand to destroy Delhi but to photograph it ﬁ rst in a later article. See [Theodor Fontane], ‘Kricketspiel und Heldentum’ (Cricket and Heroism), in Kreuzzeitung, number 222, September 23, 1857 (pp. 750–51). 16 ‘Indische Wuth und englische Zügellosigkeit’ (Indian Rage and English Lack of Restraint), in Kreuzzeitung, number 202, August 30, 1857. 17 [Theodor Fontane], ‘Russenfresserei und die Zusammenkunft in Stuttgart’ (Devouring Russians and the Meeting in Stuttgart), in Kreuzzeitung, number 216, September 16, 1857 (p. 749). German Responses: Fontane, Bauer, Liebknecht 25

interest, since the highly conservative paper far preferred the autocratic Tsarist Empire to a liberal Great Britain without censorship. It is interesting how England’s colonial policy could be attacked from an arch reactionary stance, while the liberal standpoint meant that Britain, as the trailblazer of western civilisation, had to be supported in its war in India. This thoroughly justiﬁ ed the conclusion, directed explicitly against the Kreuzzeitung that, among England’s opponents, the friends of despotism were the greatest sympathisers of the Indian rebellion.18 The objective of this sympathy was to transform the attack on Britain’s India policy into a blow against parliamentarianism and bourgeois democracy. Following from this, the notion that the Bengali zamindar represented ‘an ideal for the Farther Pomeranian Junker’ also made sense.19 Fourth: In his journalistic writings, letters, diary entries and other works, Fontane never agreed with the popular notion of the superiority of Europeans over Asian peoples. He refused to accept such an attitude either on the basis of Christian religion or of a superior European race, and also disagreed with the notion of a civilising modernisation and industrialisation process, the latter not least due to his own conservative position with its distrust of a modernisation process accompanied by rampant Mammonism and a society that has succumbed to materialism. He was therefore only being sarcastic when he wrote that the English, by suppressing the rebellion, had ‘proven themselves to be members of that proud race whose destiny it is to conquer and rule the world’.20 The Kreuzzeitung’s editorial department held the view, dominant in Germany, that the Indians were a people subordinate to the

18 See article beginning ‘Der so viel belobte conservative . . .’ ( The so highly commended conservative . . .), in Gustav Freitag and Julian Schmidt, eds, Die Grenzboten: Zeitschrift für Politik und Literatur (Dispatches from Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 the Border: Journal of Politics and Literature), Leipzig: F. L. Herbig, volume 16, 1857, part 2, number 3, p. 237. ‘Die Ereignisse in Ostindien’ (The Events in East India), ibid., p. 391; article beginning ‘Bei dem indischen Unglück . . .’ (In regard to the Indian disaster . . .) in Allgemeine Zeitung, Augsburg, number 248, September 5, 1857, p. 3957. 19 ‘Skizzen aus Indien’ (Sketches from India), in F. Gustav Kühne, ed., Europa. Chronik der gebildeten Welt (Europe: Chronicle of the Educated World), Leipzig: Lorck, number 13, March 27, 1858. p. 419. 20 [Theodor Fontane], ‘Kricketspiel und Heldentum’ (p. 750). 26 Claudia Reichel

‘European race’ and needed the leadership of the Europeans.21 It was not only the far more liberal Augsburg-based newspaper, the Allgemeine Zeitung (General Newspaper), which saw it as a ‘world- historical duty’ for Europe to win over ‘Asian humanity’ to Christian civilisation.22 Fifth: Particularly conspicuous in Fontane’s comments on the Indian rebellion is the lack of any mention of the suffering of the British in India — for example, the massacre of British women and children in Cawnpore at the end of June 1857 or the fate of the besieged population of Lucknow. The siege of the Lucknow residence by large numbers of insurgent troops over the many months from the end of July until the second relief in mid-November of 1857 gave rise to an immense hue and cry in the press. When Fontane ﬁ nally reported the liberation of Lucknow to his readers, he only mentioned the event brieﬂ y and added tellingly: ‘You already know what I think about the Indian question.’ He then shared with his London neighbours the simple joy that their relatives may indeed have escaped the horrors of the war.23 For the editors of the Kreuzzeitung this appeared to demonstrate too little solidarity with the English, so they added the comment: ‘Over 1,000 women and children were trapped in the Lucknow residence and would have fallen into the clutches of the murderous bands without the arrival of the relief troops!’ The editors simultaneously published an editorial article on the liberation of the British.24 Fontane on the other hand only mentioned the cruelty of English warfare towards the Indian population and energetically defended the so-called ‘Clemency Resolution’ of Governor General Lord Canning, which was meant to put a stop to the summary execution of captured insurgents

21 See ‘Indische Wuth und englische Zügellosigkeit’. 22 ‘Die indische Armee der Engländer’ (The Indian Army of the English),

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 in Allgemeine Zeitung, Augsburg, number 206, July 25, 1857, p. 3281. A similar view which, however, also signiﬁ cantly expounds the problems can be found in Karl Friedrich Neumann, Geschichte des englischen Reiches in Asien (History of the British Empire in Asia), volume 1, Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1857, pp. 672–73; ‘Die Verwaltung Ostindiens’ (The Administration of East India), in Kühne, Europa, number 52, December 26, 1857, p. 1662. 23 [Theodor Fontane], ‘Lucknow ist entsetzt’ (Lucknow has been Relieved), in Kreuzzeitung, number 303, December 29, 1857 (pp. 767–68). 24 Ibid. Also see ‘Ostindien’ (East India), in Kreuzzeitung, number 303, December 29, 1857. German Responses: Fontane, Bauer, Liebknecht 27

who were not guilty of murder.25 Canning’s recommendation for a more humane treatment of prisoners unleashed a storm of indignation in the British press. Though in his journalistic contributions he had already expressed no sympathy for the actions of the Britons in India, Fontane was far more critical of English policies in his letters. When Henriette von Merckel, a Berlin benefactor of his for many years, opined in a letter, ‘Today, we see our war heroes, or rather peace heroes returning home from manoeuvres covered in dust — it would be good if they could be made to march directly on Delhi to subdue the devils there’, he answered as follows:26

India, as you point out, is genuinely an interesting chapter; but I cannot in any way raise myself to indignation and I am very happy that our regiments only have to swallow dust rather than drink Hindu blood. . . . I remain cool and sober on the matter. In Mecklenburg, 20 years ago, it happened that an entire village conspired against the bailiff who for a full quarter century had done them every conceivable wrong. His name was Haberland and he belonged to a family full of petty tyrants. The farmers ﬁ nally destroyed his house, drank all his wine, stripped him of his clothes and, while they caroused, they repeatedly made him dance for 10 minutes at a time on glass, after which they permitted him an hour’s rest before starting the bloody dance again. This story never made a great impression on me. Why not? Because guilt and punishment are neutralised in it and pity and the sense of justice are so fully balanced that the mind remains calm and in equilibrium. It is exactly the same with the events in India. A people, who, much like the Italians, deserve our sympathies and our admiration of their great intellectual qualities, have been trampled underfoot, often with brutality, but always with a stupid overestimated self-image, and I am always pleased when in cases of such or similar Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 25 See [Theodor Fontane], ‘November im Oktober. “Muselmännische Symptome”. Lord Canning und seine Schmäher’ (November in October. ‘Mussulman Symptoms’. Lord Canning and His Disparagers), in Kreuzzeitung, number 252, October 28, 1857, p. 758 and [Theodor Fontane], ‘Der Herd genommen, die Flamme entwischt’ (p. 759). 26 Henriette von Merckel to Emilie Fontane, September 4, 1857, in Gotthard Erler, ed., Die Fontanes und die Merckels. Ein Familienbriefwechsel 1850–1870 (The Fontanes and the Merckels: A Family Correspondence), volume 1, July 30, 1850–March 15, 1858, Berlin: Aufbau, 1987, pp. 147–48. 28 Claudia Reichel

wrongdoing the backlash comes and when the trampled serpent victoriously strikes at the point where the superior but crude force remained vulnerable . . . my heart always rejoices when a suppressed people, be they Christian or pagan, overthrows its oppressor . . . this English calico mission however, with its somewhat lame Christianity and bawdiness and crates of opium may also be a tool in the hand of the Almighty, but I am as little enthused by it as by the deeds of the pig herder and hero of students, Pizarro. As one gets older, one thinks less of these cutthroats.27

Fontane’s friend and benefactor, the Prussian jurist and author Wilhelm von Merckel, represented, like his wife Henriette, the overwhelmingly popular view of the Indian situation in Prussia when he opined,

I wish that Nana Sahib and all of his mutineers had already been pounded into crayfish butter and Delhi razed to its very foundations . . . as for the Indians themselves, one should surely not wish to say that a nation or a race or any other nobler term for a fragment of humanity had risen, such as the Poles or Circassians or the Bedouins, etc.28

Fontane, however, reinforced his opposing view in his reply:

I do not completely concur with your views on England and India. I am neither so strongly opposed to the one nor to the other . . . as for the Hindus, we know so very little of them, and what we do know, we know through and by dint of the English, and even this biased morsel is in my opinion not capable of completely depriving them of our sympathies. The Indian princes are scoundrels; this appears to me to be the only thing that is conﬁ rmed. If you draw a comparison with Poles or, as you so elegantly put it, with another ‘noble fragment of humanity’, then I believe the conclusion favours the Indians . . . you speak most charmingly of the ‘authority’ that Europe is on the brink

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 of forfeiting there. Such authority however never existed . . . violence is not always authority . . . as for the reported atrocities, they bear no more weight than a straw. The English have operated very similarly; in Magdeburg under Tilly, in Brescia under Haynau, in Scotland under Cumberland, in Dorsetshire following the Monmouth

27 Theodor Fontane to Henriette von Merckel, September 20, 1857, ibid., pp. 155–57. 28 Wilhelm von Merckel to Theodor Fontane, September 29, 1857, ibid., pp. 160–61. German Responses: Fontane, Bauer, Liebknecht 29

Rebellion, in France during the Cevennes wars, precisely such atrocities were committed in the service of the Kingdom by Grace of God or for the greater good of the Only True Church. I could extend the list endlessly simply from the last 150 years.29

At the end of November 1857, Fontane asked his supervisor, Chief Editor Tuiscon Beutner of the Kreuzzeitung, to relieve him from his job as a regular employee of the paper. He stated his main reason as irreconcilable differences in regard to the reporting on the Indian rebellion:

We have moved from our original positions to virtually opposing directions. India has become the primary point of disagreement. The whole of England, when it is named in relation to India, nauseates me. When the struggle began, I was still a good Englishman, full of sympathies for this country’s cause. That is long since past. These ‘red-haired barbarians’, with all their great attributes, which I never dispute, are a nation of robbers and pirates through and through . . . the ways of God are indeed marvellous, but for the present I doubt that He will avail Himself of this unenthusiastic petty huckstering in order to Christianise Asia, or that he plans to make some gallows bird from the Warren Hastings school into a Gottfried of Bouillon.30

Fontane’s relationship with England was changed forever by the Indian rebellion. As we have seen, he never shared Europe’s civilising and missionary pretence towards non-European peoples anyway, and instead demonstrated understanding for these peoples’ desire for independence. He was also greatly critical of the English press, which in his opinion was hypocritical and self-righteous in its commentary on the events in India. Shortly before the Indian rebellion, the Second Opium War in China had provoked his criticism. When London’s The Times defended the smuggling of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 opium by the English, he commented:

There has never been a more valuable illustration of the famous ‘La bourse ou la vie.’ In the left hand the rolled up ﬂ ag of civilisation, a

29 Theodor Fontane to Wilhelm von Merckel, October 23, 1857, ibid., pp. 172–74. 30 To Tuiscon Beutner, November 23, 1857, number 286, in Theodor Fontane, Briefe, 1. Bd., 1833–60 (Letters, volume 1, 1833–60), in Fontane, Werke, Schriften, Briefe, sec. 4, pp. 596–97. 30 Claudia Reichel

piece of calico, and in the right a strange weapon, half opium pipe, half shotgun barrel; this is how John Bull descends upon the Chinese and calls out, ‘calico or death’.31

He described the reasons declared for the war by British prime minister Lord Palmerston as a ‘hair-raising story of robbery’ in which one slaps the ‘truth recklessly in the face’.32 While Theodor Fontane lived in the English capital by order of the Prussian government and reported on the events in India for a conservative newspaper with close ties to the royal dynasty, the political refugees who had found asylum in England after the defeat of the revolution in 1848–49 also followed the reports from India with interest. One of those who observed London’s emigrant scene in the 1850s was German publicist Edgar Bauer (1820–86). Himself a political refugee, he now authored confi dential reports for the Danish police on individual exiles, but also on people from other countries. He reported on the Prussian government’s offi cial employee Fontane and on the emigrant Karl Marx, both of whom he occasionally met. Since July of 1857, Edgar Bauer had been providing information in his reports on how the events of the rebellion in India were affecting the lives of the European emigrants in London. Some refugees linked the diffi culties with which the British government saw itself confronted with the hope for a renewed revival of the democratic movement on the continent. An England now weakened by the ‘Indian catastrophe’ could in contrast to 1848–49, itself be drawn into a reawakened revolutionary process.33 Bauer also noted a brief fl are-up of the Chartist movement in England. ‘This resurrection of democracy has been caused by the fi nancial crisis, unemployment in the factory districts and the Indian Revolution.’34 In addition, a change in the administration of British

31 [Theodor Fontane], ‘Opiumhandel und “Times”-Logik’ (Opium Trade Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 and ‘Times’-logic), in Kreuzzeitung, number 62, March 1857 (p. 727). 32 [Theodor Fontane], ‘Lord Palmerstons Adresse an die Wähler von Tiverton. Lug und Trug’ (Lord Palmerston’s Address to the Voters of Tiverton: A Pack of Lies), in Kreuzzeitung, number 73, March 27, 1857 (pp. 730–31). 33 Report 31, December 14, 1857, in Edgar Bauer, Konﬁ dentenberichte über die europäische Emigration in London 1852–1861 (Informers’ Reports on the European Emigration in London), edited by Erik Gamby, Trier: Karl-Marx- Haus, 1989 (Publications from the Karl-Marx-Haus Trier, 38), p. 289. 34 Report 26, November 10, 1857, ibid., p. 276. German Responses: Fontane, Bauer, Liebknecht 31

India could have a direct impact on election reform in England, and it was anticipated ‘that next year will be a period of great changes and reforms’, which the radical and democratic movement on the continent would welcome.

In conclusion, we should not forget one thing which at this particular moment favours political changes in Europe. We mean the Indian Revolt. In so far as England is forced to throw all of its force toward Asia, it must allow things to happen in Europe which under different circumstances it would perhaps prevent in the interest of maintaining the balance of power.35

The Indian rebellion, which Edgar Bauer called a ‘revolution’, also had an effect on the public activities of the refugees. Many exiles who were tolerated by the British government tried to refrain from becoming conspicuous through political activities. Bauer states the reasons for this:

It must be assumed that the British nation, which itself has to suffer under a revolution now, has lost a portion of its fondness for the European revolutionary. Even in London’s own press the question is posed as to whether it is sensible to give refuge to the enemies of the continental governments while every prince on India’s borders who would provide asylum to the ﬂ eeing mutineers would be treated as an enemy.36

When the participants in a Chartist meeting demonstrated solidarity with the ‘Indian freedom ﬁ ghters’ and asked foreign refugees such as French revolutionary Louis Blanc and Hungarian freedom ﬁ ghter Lajos Kossuth to participate, both refused with the explanation that political emigrants in England had to keep quiet at the moment. French politicians took the opportunity to propose the extradition of French refugees, arguing that the British government

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 had no reason to complain about the ‘Hindu Revolution’, since England ‘itself gives shelter and encouragement to those men whose sole wish is the overthrow of the continental governments’.37

35 Report 27, November 19, 1857, ibid., p. 280 and Report 19, September 3, 1857, p. 267. 36 Report 25, October 22, 1857, ibid., p. 275. 37 Report 32, December 18, 1857, ibid., p. 291. Bauer quoted the French Marshal and Bonapartist Certain de Canrobert. 32 Claudia Reichel

Many Europeans who sympathised with the efforts for independence on the continent saw the Indian uprising as one in a series with the Polish, Hungarian, Italian and Irish national movements (Fontane had, as mentioned earlier, compared the Indians with the Italians and the Poles). But such placing on an equal footing encountered harsh rejection from some leaders of national movements. Participants in a gathering of Polish refugees, as Edgar Bauer reported, not only rejected an Indian right to independence, but also did not want to permit the ‘efforts of civilised nations . . . to be confused with the pointless uprising of barbarian hordes’ against a charitable, even tolerant government. They did not want their own struggles, which they viewed as ‘a righteous cause of national freedom and independence’ to be equated with the uprising of the Indian insurgents.38 The Indian revolt also brought Fontane work as a translator or biographer. In November of 1857, the very popular General Sir Henry Havelock died in Lucknow. An overcoat that was fashionable during that year was named after him. Havelock was thought of as immensely pious, which was indeed the reason that August Fournier, pastor of the French Reformed congregation in Berlin, commissioned his parishioner Fontane to write a work on the English general. This was probably the translation of William Brock’s A Biographical Sketch of Sir Henry Havelock, a book of some 300 pages, which was already in its eighth edition in 1858.39

38 Report 27, ibid., pp. 282–83. 39 See Nürnberger, Der frühe Fontane, p. 242. We only know of this work from letters and diary entries. Fontane’s manuscript was not preserved. His material basis, the extensive Havelock biography by Baptist pastor William Brock (A Biographical Sketch of Sir Henry Havelock, London: James Nisbet and Co., 1858), enjoyed within only a few weeks eight printings

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 with a total of 45,000 copies sold. By the middle of April 1858, two more biographies were published: by W. Owen (The Good Soldier. A Memoir of Sir Henry Havelock, London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1858) and James P. Grant (The Christian Soldier: Memorials of Major-General Sir Henry Havelock, London: J. A. Berger, 1858). The Indian soldier had become very popular in Germany as well, and in 1859 a brochure was published in Stuttgart by J. F. Mürdter (‘General-Major Sir Henry Havelock, Baronet von Lackenau, Kommenthur des Bathordens u.[s.w.] als Kriegsheld und als Christ. Nach den Biographien von W. Brock, James Grant und John Marshman geschildert’ [General Major Sir Henry Havelock, Baronet of German Responses: Fontane, Bauer, Liebknecht 33

The news reports from India also motivated Fontane to occupy himself more intensively with Indian questions. His diary entries of 1857 and 1858 show that he had read Thomas Babington Macaulay’s ‘Warren Hastings’ and ‘Lord Clive’, acquired information on Indian religion and philosophy from Johann Gottfried Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1787) and ordered the two-volume work Geschichte des englischen Reiches in Asien (1857) by Orientalist and historian Carl Friedrich Neumann, for reading and review.40 The rebellion in India was also a theme that captivated Fontane’s poetic side, even after he had already left London. He had long been planning to write a ballad on the events in Lucknow. A Scottish girl, Jessie Brown, had had a vision during the siege of Lucknow in which she saw Scottish soldiers, her ﬁ ancé among them, liberating the city. This story had spread far and wide and attracted much public attention. Fontane was so excited about the story that he began to arrange it into a ballad. He wanted to read it to his artists’ guild in Berlin (‘Tunnel über der Spree’ [Tunnel over the Spree]) under the title, ‘Das Mädchen von Lucknow’ (The Girl of Lucknow). But before the piece was completed, his friend, the poet and dramatist Bernhard von Lepel, read a ballad of his own before the group on the same subject. Fontane found Lepel’s conception banal, even frivolous, and he reacted passionately against his friend. Even after almost forty years, he remembered this scene most vividly: ‘I was obsessed with this [theme] as with nothing else before, and

Lucknow, Commander of the Order of the Bath etc. as War Hero and Christian: Sketched from the Biographies of W. Brock, James Grant and John Marshman], Stuttgart: J. F. Steinkopf, 1859). It is said to have been given to all soldiers in the Prussian army in 1870 on their way off to war. Also see Theodor Fontane, Tagebücher (Diaries), 1852, 1855–858, edited Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 by Charlotte Jolles, Berlin: Aufbau, 1995, pp. 317, 329, 611 and 623. 40 See Fontane, Tagebücher, 1852, pp. 267–68, 292–93, 301, 586 and 594. Also see Thomas Babington Macaulay, Warren Hastings, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851; Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Clive, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851; Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas for a Philosophy of History of Mankind), 4 volumes, Riga, Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Hartlnoch, 1784–791; Neumann, Geschichte des englischen Reiches in Asien. 34 Claudia Reichel

had rolled the grandiose poetic story around inside me for months.’ For him, this was a ‘ballad ﬁ gure of the highest level, almost bigger than Lenore; prophetic, mystically fantastic, simultaneously spine-chilling and sublime, the very heavens would open up’.41 Fontane was not alone. Other German authors also created prosaic works on the fate of the besieged people of Lucknow. The poet Emanuel Geibel published his poem, ‘Der Campbellmarsch’ in 1862, which was also set to music.42 Historian and author Felix Dahn depicted the subject matter in a ballad of some 120 verses whose content clearly reﬂ ected the popular view in Germany of the events in India: Ultimately the good and just cause of the British was victorious and the Indians were destined to suffer defeat, since they were not Christians and did not possess the courage of the British soldiers.43 Fontane nevertheless wrote a poem in 1859 which was inspired by the rebellion in India — ‘Das Trauerspiel von Afghanistan’ in which he lyrically transposed the disaster of the British Afghanistan adventure of 1842. Immediately following the suppression of the Indian insurrection by the British, he shows a picture here not

41 Theodor Fontane, ‘Von Zwanzig bis Dreißig’ (From Twenty to Thirty), in Theodor Fontane, Sämtliche Werke (Complete Works), volume 4, Autobiographisches (Autobiographical Writings), Munich: Hanser, 1973, pp. 452–53. Fontane’s fragment was not preserved. 42 ‘Der Campbellmarsch. Nach einer wahren Begebenheit aus dem indischen Kriege’ (The Campbell March: Based on a True Incident from the Indian War), in Illustriertes Familienbuch zur Unterhaltung und Belehrung häuslicher Kreise (Illustrated Family Book for Entertainment and Edu- cation in the Domestic Sphere), Trieste: Buchdruckerei des Oesterreichischen Lloyd, 1862. Reprinted under the title, ‘Schön Ellen’ (Beautiful Ellen), in Emanuel Geibel, Gedichte und Gedenkblätter (Poems and Remembrances),

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 6th edition, Stuttgart: Cotta, 1875, pp. 49–52. 43 Felix Dahn, ‘Die Campbells (Nach einer Anekdote aus dem indischen Aufstand 1858)’ (The Campbells [Based on an Anecdote from the Indian Uprising 1858]), in Düsseldorfer Künstleralbum (Duesseldorf Album of Artists) 11, Düsseldorf: Institut von Levy Elkan, Bäumer & Comp., 1861. Reprinted in Felix Dahn, Gedichte (Gesammelte Werke. Erzählende und poetische Schriften. Neue wohlfeile Gesamtausgabe). (Poems: Collected Works, Narrative and Poetic Writings. New cheap complete edition), 2nd series, volume 6, Leipzig, Berlin: Breitkopf & Härtel, ca. 1920, pp. 650–53. German Responses: Fontane, Bauer, Liebknecht 35

of British heroism, but instead focuses intentionally on an event that depicts a signiﬁ cant defeat and humiliation of British global power.44 Fontane generally engaged himself with India and colonial policy right up to the end of his life. In 1895 he wrote a poem on an anti-Dutch uprising in Bali, ‘Die Balinesenfrauen von Lombok’. According to a description of the defeat of the insurgents in which women were also killed, he concludes:

‘Mynheer meanwhile in his ofﬁ ce, dreams of Christian culture.’

He originally wanted to add the following couplet:

‘Where is Lombok? Well, somewhere, Anyway, everybody does things this way.’45

A similar idea appears in the well-known line from one of his most famous novels, Stechlin: ‘You say “Christ” and mean calico.’ Targeting British colonial policy, in 1896 he wrote the poem ‘Britannia an ihren Sohn John Bull’.46 His criticism of British activities in Asia ﬁ nally reached its peak in a letter dated 1897 to his former London doctor, James Morris:

I am following with great interest the English battles in India and on the Nile in our German newspapers. The former are naturally the more important, because they are the prelude to the great and decisive

44 Theodor Fontane, ‘Das Trauerspiel von Afghanistan’ (The Tragedy of Afghanistan), in Fontane, Sämtliche Werke, sec. 1, volume 6, Munich: Hanser, 1973, pp. 164–165. 45 Theodor Fontane, ‘Die Balinesenfrauen auf Lombok’ (The Balinese Women in Lombock), ibid., pp. 382–83.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 46 ‘Son, here you have my spear, Take many and then more; That the seas are yours, I need not swear to you, But also the terra ﬁ rma Must you patronise for Christ’s will, Christ’s will and because of cotton’.

Theodor Fontane, ‘Britannia an ihren Sohn John Bull’ (Britannia to Her Son John Bull), ibid., p. 383. 36 Claudia Reichel

event that is coming . . . the English rule in India must collapse, and it is a miracle that it has maintained itself until today. It will fall, not because it has made mistakes or committed crimes — all that has little signifi cance in politics. No, it will fall because its time is up . . . this process of development is taking place throughout the entire world wherever one looks, and it is an immense blessing that it is taking place. The time of the conquistador, in which twenty robbers, because they had pop guns, were able to crush much more civilised peoples and to torment the kings of these better peoples — this brutal time is over, and more just days are dawning. The entire colonisation policy is nonsense. . . . Nowadays I shudder when I read daily about the desperate efforts that England wants to make to maintain the old situation à tout prix.47 And only a few weeks before his death he wrote, ‘I am following England’s political diffi culties — and “diffi culties” is a very mild word — with the greatest of interest’. England was facing great danger in India and China. ‘But I do not see how this danger can be eliminated altogether. The railroads, the world travel conditions have created new world situations, all of which are unfavourable for England.’48 In closing, here are a few words on Wilhelm Liebknecht’s journalistic writings on the Indian revolt. Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900), who was later a co-founder of Germany’s Social Democratic Party, lived in London from 1850 to 1862 as an emigrant following the failure of the revolution of 1848–49, earning his living as a private teacher and newspaper correspondent. During this time he also maintained close ties with Karl Marx. As with Marx and many other political refugees, journalism was also Liebknecht’s main source of income. He wrote for several German newspapers and also for German-language and English-language newspapers in the US.49 The most important paper that Liebknecht worked for as an England correspondent from 1855 to 1860 was Augsburg’s Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

47 Fontane to James Morris, October 26, 1897, in Fontane, Briefe, 4 volumes in Fontane, Werke, Schriften, Briefe, sec. 4, pp. 670–71. 48 Fontane to James Morris, March 14, 1898, ibid., p. 704. 49 See Utz Haltern on Liebknecht’s time in London, Liebknecht und England. Zur Publizistik Wilhelm Liebknechts während seines Londoner Exils (1850–1862) (Liebknecht and England: On Wilhelm Liebknecht’s Journalistic Writings during His London Exile [1850–1862]), Trier: Karl-Marx-Haus, pp. 12–16 (Publications from the Karl-Marx-Haus Trier, 18.) German Responses: Fontane, Bauer, Liebknecht 37

Allgemeine Zeitung. Founded in 1798, the liberal–conservative paper was Germany’s leading political daily in the fi rst half of the 19th century, for which Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Engels also wrote from time to time. As a newspaper of international ranking, it had a dense global network of correspondents, and Liebknecht was only one of several England correspondents. His journalistic writings consisted primarily of simple reporting and commenting on daily events, for which he obtained his information mainly by reading British newspapers. The most important question occupying the British press — the rebellion in its largest colony — also formed the main focus of the German emigrant Liebknecht’s reporting in over 100 articles from July 1857 to September 1858. His main job was to report in condensed form on the impression that the events in India were making on London. Along with the descriptions of military confl icts in the Asian theatre taken from the British press, his reports specifi cally reveal three other aspects. First: As did many of his contemporaries, Liebknecht also harshly criticised the East India Company’s system of exploitation and its corrupt, archaic apparatus of administration. The monopoly’s anachronistic administration system was completely incapable of accommodating the requirements of a modern industrial and colonial policy. According to Liebknecht, the rebellion was justifi ed by the policy of the English, and the war hysteria unleashed by the English press was intended to make the nation forget ‘that India was systematically mismanaged for 100 years and the victim of the self-interest of a few privileged families; (the nation) is intended to forget that the indigenous population has been mistreated in the most barbaric fashion’.50 He described the Indian uprising as spreading further from day to day and fi nally beginning to take on a national character. The ‘rural population — this is perhaps the most alarming symptom — shows itself to be thoroughly well-disposed Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 toward the insurgents’.51 He saw in the tax and sharecropping system of the colonial regime — a system that had depopulated entire

50 [Wilhelm Liebknecht], article beginning ‘London, Sept. 7’, in Allgemeine Zeitung, Augsburg (hereafter AAZ), number 253, September 10, 1857, p. 4039, column: ‘Großbritannien’ (Great Britain). All of Liebknecht’s articles were under this column. 51 [Wilhelm Liebknecht], article beginning ‘Wären von Seiten der Regierung . . . ’ (If from the side of the government . . .), in AAZ, 38 Claudia Reichel

provinces — one of the main causes of the rebellion. The East India Company had committed grave sins:

It has stripped India naked, maltreated the nation, destroyed the domestic industry, and the English merchants and capitalists have prevented India’s enormous resources from being developed to the beneﬁ t of both the ruling race and that which is governed. Its mean-spirited, short-sighted system of exploitation has ruined the population without sowing the seeds of future prosperity.

If the East India Company had created means of communication and promoted agriculture it would have won over the Indians. ‘In any case, the military mutiny would not have swelled into a national uprising.’52 In addition, the aggressive policy of the British towards Indian states — such as the annexation of Oude — contributed to the expansion of the insurrection. Second: A prime focus in Liebknecht’s writings on the Indian events was on the question of the industrialisation of India by the English middle class, for Liebknecht saw the future of the Indian subcontinent in its modernisation. He had always been particularly interested in economic and technical developments and had consistently attributed a global revolutionary character to the process of industrialisation. Industrial progress was closely linked for him to possibilities for emancipatory and democratic development; it would contribute to the modernisation of the pre-industrial economy not only in the English motherland, but also in the colonies. This in turn would initiate progress there that was not only economic,

number 247, September 4, 1857, p. 3941. Also see [Wilhelm Liebknecht], article beginning ‘Wie aus verschiedenen Zeitungscorrespondenzen . . .’ (As in various newspaper correspondences . . .) in AAZ, number 265,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 September 22, 1857, p. 4229. 52 [Wilhelm Liebknecht], ‘Controverse über indische und amerikanische Baumwolle’ (Controversy about Indian and American Cotton), in AAZ, number 182, July 1, 1857, pp. 2897–2898; [Wilhelm Liebknecht], ‘In den jüngsten Rundschreiben . . .’ (In the most recent circulars . . .) in AAZ, number 353, December 19, 1857, p. 1 (extra insert); [Wilhelm Liebknecht], article beginning ‘London, Sept. 23’, in AAZ, number 269, September 26, 1857, p. 4299 (insert). Liebknecht also emphasised elsewhere that India was not undergoing a military mutiny, but rather a national uprising. (See [Wilhelm Liebknecht], article beginning ‘London, October 9’, in AAZ, number 284, October 11, 1857, p. 4539.) German Responses: Fontane, Bauer, Liebknecht 39

but also social and political. This is why he defended politically liberal colonial reformers in his articles and propagated the industrial development of India by the English middle class, whose interests he saw as identical with those of the Indian population.53

The British middle classes view “Indian Colonisation” as nothing more than the industrial and commercial exploitation of India, and since their interests in this regard go precisely hand-in-hand with those of the native Indian population, the so-called “Indian Colonisation” is one of the most important problems of the present time. In order to prevent India being monopolised as it has been up to now by a small, privileged minority, the British enterprising spirit must be directed there.

The fundamental requirement for this was the migration of English capital to India.54 Liebknecht supported the view expressed in the liberal Economist that investing more capital in India would prove to be equally beneﬁ cial for both Great Britain and India.55

While Sir Colin Campbell attempts to reconquer India by force of arms, the English middle class is working toward the same end by peaceful means, and the latter path is undoubtedly the surest. Railroads, river steamboats and canals are better suited than armies to annex the ‘Eastern Realm’ to Great Britain, and fortunately for such undertakings, private and national beneﬁ ts go hand-in-hand.56

Third: Liebknecht — like Fontane and Edgar Bauer — discussed the effects of the Indian revolt on British domestic policy, the press, the general public, the military and the economy. An important fact lent his writings on this matter a certain originality and differentiation over other reporters. The man who would later become leader of the German labour movement observed with particular interest the posture of the English worker towards its government’s colonial policy. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

53 On this matter also see Haltern, Liebknecht und England, pp. 31–36 and 42–43. 54 [Wilhelm Liebknecht], article beginning ‘Nächsten Montag wird der . . .’ (Next Monday the . . .), in AAZ, number 172, June 21, 1857, p. 2777. 55 See [Wilhelm Liebknecht], article beginning ‘London, October 13’, in AAZ, number 291, October 18, 1858, pp. 4707–708 (insert). 56 [Wilhelm Liebknecht], article beginning ‘London, January 3’, in AAZ, number 158, January 7, 1858, pp. 2540–541. 40 Claudia Reichel

He attended Chartist meetings and quoted from their resolution that the Indian ‘national uprising’ was justifi ed and that reforms in India fi rst required reforms at home.57 He characterised as a joyful moment the fact that the workers were ‘beginning to recognise the harmony of their interests with those of the Hindus’.58 Perhaps one could say that the political refugees living in London focused particular attention on the repercussions that the events in India could have on British society. Some thought that the anti-British uprising would markedly reduce England’s role in the concert of the Great Powers, others saw better prospects for a new revolutionary revival on the continent if England was involved this time. Marx also fostered such hopes as he professed to Engels in January 1858, ‘In view of the drain of men and bullion which she will cost the English, India is now our best ally’.59 In the wake of the international fi nancial crisis of 1857, Liebknecht also noted the ‘germs of a tempestuous internal movement everywhere’ in Great Britain, and also counted the Indian revolt as one of the moments intensifying the crisis. He felt that the Chartist movement should take advantage of the political reawakening in the country and the government’s weakness and use them to push through reforms.60 The ‘Indian Crisis’, as Liebknecht put it, would create a political storm in England. It would not only sweep away the British system of governance and administration in the ‘Eastern Realm’, but also ‘rock to their foundations, if not completely dispense with’ the conditions existing in England itself, which were based in part on this system.61

57 See [Wilhelm Liebknecht], article beginning ‘Wie die Erfahrung der letzten . . .’ (As the experience of the last . . .), in AAZ, number 314, November 10, 1857, p. 5013; [Wilhelm Liebknecht], article beginning ‘Noch vor wenigen Wochen . . .’ (Just a few weeks ago . . .), in AAZ,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 number 350, December 16, 1857, p. 2 (extra insert). 58 [Wilhelm Liebknecht], article beginning ‘Noch einige Wörter . . .’ (A few words more . . .), in AAZ, number 352, December 18, 1857, p. 5624 (insert). 59 Marx to Engels, 14[16.] January 1858, in MECW, volume 40, p. 249. 60 [Wilhelm Liebknecht], article beginning ‘Erlauben Sie mir . . .’ (Allow me . . .), in AAZ, number 9, January 9, 1858, p. 139 (insert). 61 [Wilhelm Liebknecht], ‘Die Petition der brittischen Geschäftsleute’ (The Petition of the British Businessmen), in AAZ, number 269, September 26, 1857, pp. 4299–300 (insert). German Responses: Fontane, Bauer, Liebknecht 41

In summary, it can be said that the Indian rebellion was evaluated in very different ways by observers of the time. No simple interpretation according to political standpoints or ideological categories is possible in the examination of the contemporaneous German journalistic writings. This is demonstrated in the observations made by such different authors as Theodor Fontane, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Edgar Bauer. The conservative Fontane, who wrote for an extremely reactionary paper, nevertheless clearly stood with his uncompromising anti-colonial posture in opposition to the predominant views of other contemporaries, while the socialist Wilhelm Liebknecht, proceeding from the fundamental premise that the process of industrialisation and modernisation could provide the basis for worldwide social and political progress, was convinced of the necessity of British colonial rule in India. It would be interesting, against this background, to compare such views with Marx’s dialectical analysis of British colonial policy in his correspondences from the 1850s. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

‘La Guerre des Indes’ (The Indian War), in Histoire Populaire Contemporaine de la France, Paris: Hachette, 1865. French Counter-narratives 43

3 French Counter-narratives: Nationalisme, Patriotisme and Révolution Nicola Frith

The problem with naming the uprisings that took place in India between 1857 and 1858 has a long history to which the plethora of contrasting terminologies attests. Clearly, the restrictive term, ‘Indian mutiny’, being the common vernacular within British colonial historiography, fails to capture the idea that numerous Indian-led demonstrations took place against British rule, including not only military revolts, but also peasant uprisings, regional and national coups d’état and protracted guerrilla campaigns. Likewise, the more expansive terms that have been used in Indian historiography, such as ‘Indian War of Independence’, artiﬁ cially impose a nationalist teleology, giving these events an embryonic role within the history of the Indian nation.1 While acknowledging the colonialist–nationalist debates engendered by these various titles, this essay will focus instead on the nomenclatures found in 19th-century French- language writing, including journalistic, historical, travel and ﬁ ctional accounts, all of which consciously and/or subconsciously employ what can be seen as counter-descriptive terms to Anglo-centric narratives of the so-called ‘mutiny’. It will demonstrate that these alternative French narratives tend to exacerbate the potential for Britain to lose its sovereignty of India on the one hand, while denying the possibility for Indian self-rule on the other.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 After sketching out a contextual background in the form of a semantic analysis of the term ‘mutiny’, this essay will compare the reductionism typically found in many British narratives to the open-ended counter-narrations produced in the French métropole. Centrally, it will analyse the rhetorical effects that particular terms, such as ‘insurrection’ and ‘révolution’, have on representations of the Indian uprisings and, in doing so, will seek to expose the colonial

1 Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Indian War of Independence, New Delhi: Granthagar, 1970; ﬁ rst published London: [n. p.], 1909. 44 Nicola Frith

and national discourses that underpin these terminological choices. In short, it will consider how French writing has used the Indian uprisings as a moment in which to imagine an India beyond British control; a fantasy that displays a desire to compensate for what Claude Farrère termed, in 1935, l’Inde perdue, meaning France’s failure to colonise the subcontinent in the 18th century.2 Since it is now generally recognised that the titles used to name 1857–58 are imprinted with colonialist or nationalistic discourses and cannot, therefore, be used neutrally or objectively, paratexts, especially prefaces and footnotes, have provided textual spaces in which to rationalise particular terms.3 Ward, for example, uses the preface to his historical account of the Kanpur massacres to recount an anecdote that attempts to mitigate his frequent employment of the word ‘mutiny’:

Though the Mutiny, even the Great Mutiny, is an inadequate name for what transpired in the Upper Provinces of India in 1857–58, it seems to have outlasted everything else that is applied to it. . . . [W]hether in India, the United Kingdom, or the United States, whenever I sit down with historians to talk about 1857, no matter how fastidious we try to be, by the end of the evening we are all talking about the Mutiny.4

2 The Treaty of Paris in 1815 left France with only a marginal foothold in India, henceforth represented by ﬁ ve enclaves scattered around the fringes of British Indian territory — Pondichéry, Chandernagor, Karikal, Yanaon and Mahé. The memory of this loss is continually reinvigorated by the ongoing existence of these geographically marooned trading posts. 3 This circumspection does not necessarily translate to genres outside of academia, such as the popular media. For example, in headlines celebrating the 150th anniversary of the uprisings in 2007, the British press repeatedly and unproblematically used the term ‘mutiny’: Anonymous, ‘Causes of the Indian Mutiny’, Telegraph, May 8, 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/08/windia108.xml, accessed April 22, 2008; Anonymous, ‘Recollections of the Indian Mutiny’, The Times, August 18, 2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/ article2279867.ece, accessed April 22, 2008; Beth Hale and Amrit Dhillon, ‘Death Threats and a Hotel Siege for the Britons Trapped in the Indian Mutiny 2007’, Daily Mail, September 26, 2007, http://www.dailymail. co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=483873&in_ page_id=1811, accessed April 22, 2008. 4 Andrew Ward, Our Bones are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny of 1857, London: Murray, 2004; ﬁ rst published London: Murray, 1996, p. xvii. French Counter-narratives 45

Despite an avowed preference for the term ‘1857 uprising’, this historian confesses to the ineluctable hold that ‘mutiny’ has over his (and others’) imagination(s) and, in doing so, grants himself (and others) permission to use this tendentious Anglo-centric appellation.5 Ward suggests that, although other terms, particularly ‘rebellion’ and ‘revolt’, have also frequently been deployed in British narratives of the Indian uprisings, ‘mutiny’ remains the normative term, even among 21st-century historians. While its continued (albeit nuanced) use may be unsurprising, its ubiquity remains important at a semiotic level since, intentionally or not, it has an important effect on representations of the past; one that can be better understood by considering its etymology. In the mid-19th century, ‘mutiny’ was defi ned by Webster’s as an ‘insurrection against constituted authority, particularly military or naval authority; open and violent resistance to the authority of offi cers; concerted revolt against the rules of discipline; hence, generally, forcible resistance to rightful authority on the part of subordinates’.6 The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) today provides a similar description of ‘mutiny’ as ‘a rebellion of a substantial number of soldiers, sailors, prisoners, etc., against those in authority’, or ‘open revolt against constituted authority; (now usually) spec. rebellion on the part of a body of people normally subject to strict discipline, such as soldiers or sailors; behaviour which fl outs or shows disregard for discipline’. Although Webster’s is more emphatic, both defi nitions assign a negative role to the mutineers, whose actions are considered to be enacted against a rightfully constituted authority and are deemed, as such, to be unlawful. Thus, its use with regards to 1857–58 not only defi nes the act of mutiny as a crime that violates the laws of British governance, but also persistently forces readers to imagine the uprisings within a specifi cally military frame of reference, thereby writing out the involvement of other social

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 groups from this history. By criminalising this act of resistance through the designation ‘mutiny’, British newspapers in 1857–58 were able to present the uprisings as lacking in ideology, disorganised and ad hoc, rather than coordinated and national. As one journalist for The Times wrote,

5 Ward, Our Bones are Scattered, p. xvii. 6 Noah Webster, Dr Webster’s Complete Dictionary of the English Language, rev. by Chauncey A. Goodrich and Noah Porter, London: Bell and Daldy, 1864, p. 871. 46 Nicola Frith

Had this revolt . . . sprung from the people . . . there would have been . . . a strong prima facie ground that we had been maltreating them. . . . But the motive of a military mutiny is ambition. . . . It is satisfactory to ﬁ nd this out, because a military mutiny is a decidedly manageable thing . . . a thing we can put down.7

With almost explicit self-consciousness, this article reveals its attempts to limit the psychological impact of the Indian uprisings, speciﬁ cally by using the word ‘mutiny’, since this (rather than ‘people’s revolt’) was ‘a decidedly manageable thing’.8 This example demonstrates a clear desire to narrativise these events in a speciﬁ c way — for example, a ‘mutiny’ anticipates the quick reestablishment of the legal status quo following a period of unwanted disruption. Hence, its widespread use with regards to the Indian uprisings makes the assumption that the ‘righteous’ authority, Britain, will eventually triumph over the ‘wrongful’ insurgents. As such, The Times, in 1857, sketched out a narrative from which few 19th- and earlier-20th- century British writers would deviate. Collectively, Anglo-centric representations of these events have continued to narrate them as a successful overseas military conquest, in which well-trained and courageous western soldiers triumphed over their more numerous but weaker Indian, and particularly Hindu, counterparts; a rhetoric that is based on the polemics of warfare and on an Orientalist discourse that assumes the Indian other to be weaker than the European self.9 Consequently, the strategic use of reductive phrases, such as

7 Anonymous, The Times, August 6, 1857, p. 6. 8 Ibid. 9 According to Inden, Hindu India was stereotyped and imagined by certain western writers (particularly Vincent Smith, Sir Charles Eliot, James Mill, Hegel and A. L. Basham) as the irrational female counterpart to European or western masculinity and rationality; Ronald Inden, Imagining

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 India, London: Hurst, 2000; fi rst published Oxford: Blackwell, 1990, pp. 85–130. Said analyses ‘western’ (particularly European) Orientalist discourse throughout Orientalism and describes the way in which the ‘west’ defi nes itself in opposition to the ‘east’, for example, by counterpointing European strength with Oriental weakness: ‘the essential relationship [between Europe and the ‘Orient’], on political, cultural, and even religious grounds, was seen — in the West . . . to be one between a strong and a weak partner’; Edward Said, Orientalism, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003; fi rst published London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, p. 40. French Counter-narratives 47

‘military mutiny’, enabled Britons throughout 1857–59 to imagine a swift end to what threatened to become a national movement and has continued, since that time, to minimise the censorious impact of these events on British colonial discourse and the history of the British empire. In short, it has played a key role in a polemical word game that endeavours to manage crisis through language. Such dissimulative language did not, however, go unnoticed across the Channel. Indeed, both during and after the uprisings, French-language texts have repeatedly challenged and subverted the nomenclature and narrative structures found within Anglo-centric accounts of the uprisings, and have often done so for their own political and national motivations. In 1857, for example, L’Univers: Union Catholique (The Catholic Union Globe), a virulently Catholic ultramontane newspaper, noted that, ‘Les événements de l’Inde produisent en Angleterre une sensation plus grande que les journaux ne veulent l’avouer’ (‘The events in India have produced more of a stir in Britain than the newspapers want to admit’).10 Le Siècle (The Century), a moderately republican and progressive newspaper, noted a similar tendency:11 ‘les journaux de Londres font de patriotiques efforts pour soutenir l’esprit public; cependent le commentaire dont ils accompagnent les nouvelles laisse percer une légitime inquiétude’ (emphasis added) (‘the London press is making a patriotic effort to boost public spirits, yet a legitimate anxiety still pierces through the accompanying commentary’).12 The vaguely admiring and sympathetic tone of this second quotation can perhaps be accounted for by the fact that Le Siècle was more pro-British than many of its contemporaries, such as L’Univers. But irrespective of their political afﬁ liations, these combined examples demonstrate the tendency of French-language journals to question the rhetoric of the British press. This, in turn, suggests that Said’s blanket approach to colonialist literature, which he deﬁ nes in Orientalism (1978) as a Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

10 Barrier, L’Univers: Union Catholique, July 2, 1857, pp. 1–2. All translations are mine, unless otherwise stated. 11 All political afﬁ liations have been collated from Histoire Générale de la Presse Française (A General History of the French Press), edited by Claude Bellanger and others, 5 volumes, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1969, p. ii. 12 Emile de la Bédollière, ‘Partie politique: Courrier’ (The Political Column: Letters), Le Siècle, September 21, 1857, p. 1. 48 Nicola Frith

singular discourse, overlooks the counter-discourses inherent within ‘western’ writing.13 Where French-language representations of India are concerned, there is often a need, as Marsh and Magedera postulate, to consider how the French voice differentiates and defi nes itself in opposition to both an eastern other (India) and a colonial rival (Britain).14 As will be demonstrated, by refusing to accept the simplistic version of events narrated by their European neighbours and by challenging the assumption that Britain would be, or was, victorious, French-language texts have repeatedly written of the uprisings as the beginning of the end of British colonialism in India. In this counter-discourse, nomenclature played a fundamental role. Whereas The Times persistently used the term ‘military mutiny’, many French-language newspapers stressed from the outset the threat of the revolts becoming a more general phenomenon; one that could kindle a spirit of nationalism among India’s disparate populations. This is evident even in those newspapers that supported a British victory in terms of European ‘civilisation’ triumphing over eastern ‘barbarism’. For example, an article written for the imperialist newspaper, Le Constitutionnel (The Constitutional), was punctuated with a series of pessimistic comments: ‘D’un moment à l’autre, l’insurrection pouvait devenir générale, gagner les garnisons demeurées fi dèles, se communiquer aux populations’ (‘Any minute now, the insurrection could become more widespread, reaching those garrisons that have remained faithful and spreading out to the general populace’); ‘l’insurrection est presque générale, et le prestige anglais se trouve gravement atteint’ (‘the insurrection has spread almost everywhere and British prestige has received a signifi cant blow’); and: Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 13 Said, Orientalism. 14 French-language representations of India are ‘additionally predicated on the establishment of an other [sic] colonizer: the British’. Thus, ‘rather than a binary relationship between France and India, a triangular discursive model is apparent, composed of the colonized (India), the subaltern colonizer (France) and the dominant colonizer (Britain)’; K. Marsh and I. H. Magedera, ‘Les cinq noms sonores: The French Voice in the Story of British India 1763–1954’, Journal of Romance Studies, 5(1): 65–77, p. 66, 2005. French Counter-narratives 49

[L]’insurrection est dans toute sa force et l’Angleterre n’est qu’une poignée d’hommes pour y tenir tête. . . . [L]’Angleterre doit opposer à toute une armée en révolte, et bientôt peut-être à toute une population que le moindre accident peut d’un jour à l’autre entraîner dans les rangs des insurgés.15 The insurrection is in full swing and Britain only has a handful of men to keep it aﬂ oat. . . . [I]t is having to defend itself against an entire army in revolt and soon, perhaps, against the whole population, which, at any moment, and under the least provocation, could be incited to join the insurgent ranks.

Written on July 24, 1857, the message of this article contrasts directly with the editorial line taken by The Times only three days earlier, in which the ‘natives’ were depicted as ‘indisposed to any sympathy with the mutineers’ and the ‘mutiny’ was presented as having resulted in ‘discomfi ture and defeat already’ and ‘likely to re-establish British power on a new basis’.16 The openness of Le Constitutionnel in opposition to the foreclosure of The Times is also clearly expressed in the terms used to defi ne these events. As the above quotations exemplify, ‘insurrection’ (unlike ‘mutiny’) was a particularly popular locution, also appearing in the titles of contemporaneous French books, such as Édouard de Warren’s L’Inde anglaise: Avant et après l’insurrection de 1857 (1857) and Félix Maynard’s De Delhi à Cawnpore: Journal d’une dame anglaise, pages de l’insurrection hindoue (1857).17 In contrast, The Times categorically denied this appellation. In both July and August 1857, it stated that ‘It is not an insurrection; it is a mutiny. It is a rising not of people, but of soldiers’ and ‘Had this been the case of a popular insurrection . . . of a people maddened by centuries of oppression, as the days of the fi rst French Revolution — there would have been less to be said. Nothing of the sort, however, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 15 H. Marie Martin, Le Constitutionnel, July 24, 1857, p. 1. 16 Anonymous, The Times, July 20, 1857, p. 8. 17 Édouard de Warren, L’Inde anglaise: Avant et après l’insurrection de 1857 (British India: Before and After the Revolt of 1857), revised edition, 2 volumes, Paris: Kailash, 1994; fi rst published 1844–45 and 1857; Félix Maynard, De Delhi à Cawnpore: Journal d’une dame anglaise, pages de l’insurrection hindoue (From Delhi to Cawnpore : Journal of an English Lady, Notes from the Indian Revolt), n.p.: Elibron Classics, 2005; fi rst published Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1858. 50 Nicola Frith

was the case here.’18 This quip at the French Revolution had a historical precedent, which could perhaps explain The Times’s reluctance to use the term ‘insurrection’. Stemming from the verb ‘s’insurger’, the Dictionnaire historique de la langue française states that ‘insurgent’ — being the agent of insurrection — came from English and was originally employed to refer to ‘colons américains qui ont pris partis contre l’Angleterre pendant la guerre de l’Indépendance’ (‘American settlers who took part in the War of Independence against Britain’) and subsequently gained popularity in France during the Revolution of 1789.19 Arguably, its usage with reference to the crisis in India may have triggered unwanted connections with other major historical events that had brought about an end to established authorities. In addition, the noun ‘insurrection’ in both English and French has many positive connotations that the British press were undoubtedly keen to downplay in 1857–58. In contrast with the restrictive and negative connotations associated with ‘mutiny’, Webster’s and the OED emphasise the openness of the term ‘insurrection’, being an ‘open and active opposition’ and ‘the action of rising in arms or open resistance against established authority or governmental restraint’ (OED).20 The Dictionnaire historique de la langue française equates it to the idea of ‘“se dresser”, specialement pour attaquer, et fi gurément “monter, devenir plus puissant”’ (‘“to stand up”, especially in order to attack and, fi guratively speaking, “to rise, to become more powerful”’).21 As such, it carries the idea of becoming more powerful by literally and physically engaging in active protest against an authority: ‘S’insurger contre les abus de l’Administration’ (‘To revolt against the abuses of the Administration’).22 Unlike ‘mutiny’, therefore, an insurrection is specifi cally directed against the government of a country: ‘Soulèvement contre le gouvernement’ Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 18 Anonymous, The Times, July 3, 1857, p. 9; Anonymous, The Times, August 6, 1857, p. 8. 19 Dictionnaire historique de la langue française (The Historical Dictionary of French Language), Paris: Dictionnaire Le Robert, 1992, p. 1036. 20 Webster, Dr Webster’s Complete Dictionary, p. 702. 21 Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, p. 1036. 22 Lexis Larousse de la Langue Française (Lexis Larousse French Language Dictionary), edited by Jean Dubois, Paris: Larousse, 2002; fi rst published Paris: Larousse, 1979, p. 968. French Counter-narratives 51

(‘Uprising against the government’), and contains within it (especially in the 19th century) a sense of popular injustice: ‘Ceux qui emploient ce mot y attachent ordinairement une idée de droit et de justice’ (‘Those who use this word ordinarily attach to it a sense of rights and justice’).23 In short, the discernable opposition between keywords, such as ‘mutiny’ and ‘insurrection’, is broadly analogous to the particular attitudes of mainstream British and French newspapers towards these events at the time. Journals such as The Times constantly attempted to reduce the events in India to a manageable problem contrary to many French-language newspapers that emphasised instead their expanding and potentially national nature, allowing the reader, not without some relish, to imagine the diffi culties that Britain would face and the possibility that Britain could lose its most important colonial possession. This is most evident in articles and texts that employ the term ‘révolution’. This complex and historically weighty locution is more capable than any other of signifying an important political, social and historical event that threatens to overturn the established regime. To illustrate the prevalence of this term, examples can be taken from different textual genres, the fi rst being a letter published in Le Constitutionnel from a French resident living in India, who used the word ‘révolution’ specifi cally to challenge the reductive and deceptive nomenclatures of the British press and government:

Le gouvernement [Britannique] a voulu d’abord se persuader que ce n’était là qu’une rébellion accidentelle, qui se bornerait aux deux ou trois régimens où elle avait éclaté. . . . La prétendue mutinerie [sic], pour parler le langage adopté par la presse anglaise, est en réalité une révolution fomentée dans toute l’Inde par les rois détrônés et par les princes musulmans dépossédés.24 At ﬁ rst, the British government wanted to convince itself that this was nothing more than an unforseen rebellion that would remain Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 limited to the two or three regiments where it had broken out. . . . The so-called mutiny, to use the language adopted by the British press, is a revolution that has been stirred up across India by its dethroned kings and dispossessed Muslim princes.

23 Académie Française, Le Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (The Dictionary of the Académie française), 6th and 7th editions, Paris: Firman Didot, 1835 and 1878 (on CD-ROM). 24 Anonymous, Le Constitutionnel, September 12, 1857, pp. 1–2, p. 1. 52 Nicola Frith

‘Révolution’ is employed here not only as a corrective to the fabri- cations of the British press, but also to foreground the abuses of a government that, reminiscent of the French monarchy at the end of the 18th century, had incited the wrath of Indian elites and the general populace. By questioning the provenance of ‘cette révolution’ (‘this revolution’), the letter writer categorically denies that it could simply be attributed, as many British newspapers had claimed, ‘aux cartouches graissées’ (‘to the greased cartridges’), and lists instead multiple grievances, including annexation, the treatment of women, the dismissal of princely inheritance rights, the falling prestige of Europeans settlers, the favouring of certain Hindu elites, the wanton absorption of money by the Company and ‘une fausse application de ce que le gouvernement se complaît à appeler philantropie’ (‘a false application of what the government likes to call philanthropy’).25 A second example is from a political exposé, entitled L’Inde, l’Angleterre et la France, written by Frédéric Billot in 1857, who was particularly emphatic in his labelling of the uprisings as ‘une révolution nationale’ (‘a national revolution’). This text condemned British colonialism in India as an enslaving regime and celebrated the uprisings as ‘le plus grand fait politique de notre siècle, comme l’événement le plus fécond en changements heureux pour l’univers entier’ (‘the greatest political event of this century; one that will bring fruitful changes to bear on the entire world’).26 Further illustrations can also be found once ‘peace’ had ostensibly been restored to India in 1859, with French texts often remembering the uprisings as a revolution against British rule, albeit one that was not ultimately successful. Later examples include Darville’s ﬁ ctional travelogue, L’Inde contemporaine: Chasses aux tigres. L’Indoustan.

25 Anonymous, Le Constitutionnel, September 12, 1857, pp. 1–2, p. 1. The

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 introduction of a new greased rifl e cartridge that had to be bitten by the gunmen before being inserted into the Enfi eld rifl e has often been cited as the catalyst to the uprisings. Rumours that this new regulation cartridge was encased with beef and pork tallow, a concoction abhorrent to both Muslims and Hindus, alarmed many Indian sepoys since their use would have resulted in either being defi led (Muslims) or outcaste (Hindus). The tendency to overplay the role of the cartridges in inciting revolt has, however, caused other reasons for insurgency to be overlooked. 26 Frédéric Billot, L’Inde, l’Angleterre et la France (India, Britain and France), Paris: Dentu, 1857, p. ii. French Counter-narratives 53

Nuits de Delhi et révolte de cipayes (1874) and, 110 years later, de Grèce’s historical novel, La Femme sacrée (1984).27 To understand why French writers from 1857 onwards have employed the term ‘révolution’ is, in part, to understand the different meanings that, following three consecutive revolutions in France, had been attached to it by the mid-19th century. To this end, Tocqueville’s L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution published in 1856 provides a useful reference point.28 By 1857, the word ‘révolution’ had undergone a major semantic metamorphosis, descending from the ethereal plane of astronomy to the more human sphere of politics. Originally used to explain cyclical astronomical phenomena, such as ‘Le retour d’une planète, d’un astre au même point d’où il était parti’ (‘the return of a planet or a star to its point of departure’), its meaning expanded following the Revolution in 1789 to denote, paradoxically, a radical change in human politics that broke with the past.29 Tocqueville’s use of ‘revolution’ lies at a crossroads between these two ideas, being at once new and old. The French Revolution was new in the sense that, ‘Les Français ont fait . . . le plus grand effort auquel se soit jamais livré aucun peuple, aﬁ n de couper . . . en deux leur destinée, et de séparer par un abîme ce qu’ils avaient été jusque-là de ce qu’ils voulaient être désormais’ (‘No nation had ever before embarked on so resolute an attempt . . . to break with the past, . . . to create an unbridgeable gulf between all that had hitherto been and all they now aspired to be’).30 His text celebrates this

27 W. Darville, L’Inde contemporaine: Chasse aux tigres, L’Indoustan, Nuits de Delhi et Révolte de Cipayes (India Today: Tiger Hunting, Hindustan, Delhi Nights, and the Sepoy Revolt), Limoges: Ardant, 1874; Michel de Grèce, La femme sacrée (The Sacred Woman), Paris: Olivier Orban, 1984. 28 Alexis de Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (The Ancien Régime and the Revolution), edited by J. P. Mayer, Paris: Gallimard, 1952; fi rst published 1856. 29 Le Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 6th, 7th and 8th editions. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Arendt argues that this contemporary meaning only came about after the French Revolution, before which (and since the 17th century) it was used in political circles to mean a ‘revolving back to some pre-established point and, by implication, of swinging back to into a preordained order’; Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, 2nd edition, revised by Hannah Arendt, London: Penguin, 1990; fi rst published Viking, 1963, pp. 42–43. 30 Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime, p. 43. All translations for Tocqueville are taken from Alexis de Tocqueville, The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution, translated by Stuart Gilbert, London: Fontana, 1966; fi rst published Anchor Books, 1955, p. 23. 54 Nicola Frith

heyday in which ‘l’amour de l’égalité et celui de la liberté partagent leur cœur’ (‘the love of equality and the urge to freedom went hand in hand’), inspiring in its leaders a desire not only to ‘fonder des institutions démocratiques, mais des institutions libres’ (‘set up . . . democratic governments but [also] free institutions’) that would abolish privilege and constitutionalise human rights.31 Yet following its fi rst fl ush of youth, the second phase of the Revolution is viewed by Tocqueville as a revolving back to a former order — ‘sans le vouloir, ils s’étaient servis . . . [des] débris [de l’Ancien Régime] pour construire l’édifi ce de la société nouvelle’ (‘though nothing was further from their intentions, they used the debris of the old order for building up the new’) and, in doing so, opened France up to the autocracy of Bonapartism and the continuities of centralism.32 Thus, a true and successful revolution is not one that simply overturns a political power, but one that puts into practice the ideology of political freedom and prevents political regression.33 Although, according to these criteria, the French Revolution ultimately failed at that time, it has remained nonetheless a powerful symbol of republican ideology, captured within that infamous axiom, liberté, égalité, fraternité, whose memory ‘les hommes con- serveront éternellement’ (‘men will forever cherish’).34 As such, 1789 has acquired a particular historical signifi cance that, while specifi c to the history of the French nation, was also a universal phenomenon, rendering France ‘une patrie intellectuelle commune dont les hommes de toutes les nations ont pu devenir citoyens’ (‘a common intellectual fatherland whose citizenship was open to men of every nationality’).35 For Tocqueville, these late-18th-century events constituted a defi ning historical moment that had laid the basis for national consciousness, just as Nehru, writing from his prison cell in 1932, turned to this Revolution as a source of inspiration for political and social change in modern-day India Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

31 Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime, p. 48; Gilbert, The Ancien Régime, p. 27. 32 Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime, pp. 43–44; Gilbert, The Ancien Régime, p. 23. 33 Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime, p. 52. 34 Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime, p. 48; Gilbert, The Ancien Régime, p. 27. 35 Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime, p. 68; Gilbert, The Ancien Régime, p. 41. French Counter-narratives 55

under British rule.36 This analysis, then, returns to its point of departure — the French Revolution became a touchstone to which all future ‘revolutions’ return and against which all have been judged. By naming the Indian uprising as a revolution, French-language texts subscribe, intentionally or not, to a narrative emplotment in which the once ‘passive’ Indians, as stereotyped by Eurocentric representations, having become cognisant of, and ready to act against, British oppression, turn to political action. To a mid-19th-century French audience, this idea would have been highly problematic. Indeed, the mere suggestion that India was a nation capable of revolution invited mockery by the satirical journal, Le Charivari (Hullabaloo), which spoke of those newspapers that had begun to ‘parler très sérieusement du patriotisme indien, de la nationalité indienne, des droits politiques et sociaux que ces populations opprimées ont cru devoir revendiquer les armes à la main’ (‘speak in serious terms about Indian patriotism, Indian nationalism and the political and social rights believed to have been demanded by the oppressed at the point of a sword’).37 The article continues by satirising the language of such newspapers, which are caricatured as crying with revolutionary gusto, ‘Vivent ces braves, ces dignes Indiens! A bas ces traitres d’Anglais! Puissent les Anglais être exterminés dans l’Inde jusqu’aux dernier, puisse la révolte des cipayes triompher sur tous les points!’ (‘Long live those brave and worthy Indians! Down with those treacherous Britons! May the British in India be completely routed and may the Sepoy revolt be utterly victorious’).38 Of course, this mockery works because the idea of India being capable of overthrowing European rule and of creating an Indian-governed nation was laughable to the French readership of this period. Rarely, if at all, did French-language texts suggest that India could or even should be independent from some form of external leadership. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

36 Jawaharlal Nehru, Glimpses of World History being Further Letters to his Daughter, Written in Prison, and Containing a Rambling Account of History for Young People, 4th edition, London: Drummond, 1949; ﬁ rst published India: n.p., 1934, pp. 377–78. 37 Arnould Fremy, ‘Les jounaux indiens’ (Indian News), Le Charivari, August 6, 1857, p. 1. 38 Ibid. 56 Nicola Frith

Thus, to comprehend why terms such as ‘national’ and ‘révolution’ were used at all requires an understanding of the extent to which French and British national and colonial discourses operate in competition with each other. Rather than taking these terms at face value, it is more likely that they were used because, at a rhetorical and historical level, they were powerful signs capable, at one and the same time, of connoting the idea of Indian cohesion and, with it, an end to British global hegemony. Moreover, the use of ‘révolution’ implicitly celebrates the grand récit of the French Revolution. For example, Billot applauded India’s destruction of ‘la puissance anglaise . . . pour le monde entier’ (‘British power . . . on behalf of the world’) because it enabled him to imagine French ascendancy: ‘Quand l’Angleterre descend, la France monte et, avec elle, les libertés du monde’ (‘As Britain falls, France rises bringing freedom to the world’).39 In this way he characterised revolutionary France, in contrast to the British, as a positive, progressive and liberating force. Within the context of the uprisings, Billot imagines the French nation leading a worldwide revolution against British oppression:

Ce n’est pas la France seule qui doit intervenir, c’est l’Europe et l’Asie tout entière, non pour donner à l’Inde des maîtres nouveaux et une couleur nouvelle à l’oppression, mais pour secourir et affranchir. . . . C’est la croisade la plus solennelle et la plus sainte.40 It is not just France that must intervene, but the whole of Europe and Asia as well, not so that India will acquire new masters and yet another form of oppression, but in order that it will be saved and liberated. . . . That would be a most solemn and holy crusade.

Within this modern-day crusade, Britain is deﬁ ned as the world’s foe to be defeated by France and her global allies in the name of liberté, égalité, fraternité. Billot depicts this anti-British allied force as ‘la fédération des peuples’ (‘the people’s federation’), being Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ‘l’aspiration universelle, parce que c’est la liberté dans tous ces développements necessaries, c’est l’égalité dans l’activité, c’est la paix, mère de la fraternité qu’on cherche où elle n’est pas et que notre époque doit produire’ (‘a universal goal because it represents equality in all actions and also peace, that mother of fraternity that

39 Billot, L’Inde, l’Angleterre et la France, p. 1. 40 Ibid., p. 131. French Counter-narratives 57

we must seek wherever it is absent and must seek to achieve in our lifetime’).41 In Billot’s future republican-fuelled world vision, British- style colonialism has been consigned to an unwanted past, clearing the path for French-led global morality. Even those writers, such as Édouard de Warren and Xavier Raymond, who insisted that the events in India had no national basis, nonetheless implied that Indian nationhood was a future probability.42 For example, rather than subscribing to the idea that a British victory would deﬁ nitively mark the end of the uprisings, de Warren considered instead their ongoing effects:

Elle [1857] laissera d’abord les ruines faites, moins par elle-même que par la vengeance anglaise, et puis des haines impérissables qui seront le premier germe d’un sentiment public [sic], le premier ciment d’une nationalité commune; nationalité qui n’existait point encore, mais qui commencera à se former du jour où . . . l’Inde . . . [sera courbée] sous le même joug impitoyable [c’est-à-dire les Anglais]. Chaque État subsidaire ou protégé qui disparaîtra fournira une pierre dans la construction du nouvel édifi ce; mais avant que cet édifi ce soit assez grand pour écraser les Anglais, il faudra des années, peut-être un siècle, peut-être plus encore.43 Initially, [1857] will leave in its wake a trail of destruction, created less by itself than by the revenge of the British. This will generate an implacable hatred, spawning the fi rst seeds of a public feeling and the fi rst bonds of a common nationality. Although this sense of nationality does not yet exist, it will begin to form as soon as . . . India . . . [is] once again entirely subjugated under the same pitiless yoke [meaning the British]. With every state that is annexed and made into a protectorate another building block will be added to this new construction; but years will be needed, perhaps an entire century or more, before it is great enough to crush the British.

Although marginally less apocalyptic than Billot’s future vision

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 of British-ruled India, in which ‘La silence de la destruction, de la dévastation et de la mort règne partout’ (‘The silence of destruction,

41Billot, L’ Inde, l’ Angleterre et la France, pp. 132–33. 42 Raymond denied that any notion of nationalism could exist in India which he perceived as a fractured whole: ‘Ce n’est pas une nation . . . , c’est une poussière sans vertu et sans ciment’ (‘It is not a nation . . . , it’s just fragmented collection of worthless dust’); Xavier Raymond, Journal des débats politiques et littéraires (Journal of Political and Literary Debate), August 26, 1857, p. 1. 43 De Warren, L’Inde anglaise, ii, 274. 58 Nicola Frith

devastation and death reign everywhere’), de Warren’s prognosis is nevertheless bleak.44 Yet, it is precisely from the abject wretchedness of complete dispossession and (re-)colonisation that a spirit of communality and a common desire for liberation will fi nally be engendered. These open-ended counter-narrations to the foreclosure and reductionism of Anglo-centric narratives are not just symptomatic of French writing in 1857, but continued long after British rule was reinstated. A fi nal example of this process is Darville’s fi ctional travelogue, published in 1874. Produced post-‘mutiny’, the introduction points to the continuing fragility of British rule:

Un point dans l’histoire [1857] semble donner un démenti à la continuation de cette domination [anglaise]. L’Inde est toujours l’Inde. . . . La domination anglaise ne peut pas être enracinée dans le sol . . . plusieurs révoltes ont prouvés que le gros de la nation n’accepte point les Anglais.45 A single moment in history [1857] seems to belie the chances of Britain continuing its domination. India will always be India . . . British rule will never be able to engrain itself into the soil . . . as several revolts have proven, the majority of the country does not accept the British.

Thus, Darville’s narrator presents the idea that India, by continually remembering 1857, will move forward through a series of revolts towards independence, or, at least, back towards self-rule. In this way, the Indian uprisings are endowed with the same kind of historical signiﬁ cance as 1789, being a point of reference that will inspire future action. The question of Indian liberation recurs throughout the narrative told by Thimour — an Indian revolutionary of dual religious heritage, being the descendent of the Islamic Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah 46

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 II, and a Hindu Thuggee leader. His pilgrimage in India teaches

44 Billot, L’Inde, l’Angleterre et la France, p. 121. 45 Darville, L’Inde contemporaine, p. 219. 46 Nineteenth-century European texts often depicted Thuggee as a depraved Hindu cult. For more information, see Martine Van Woerkerns- Todorov, ‘Trois barbares en Asie: Une énième histoire de Thugs’ (Three Barbarians in Asia: The Never-ending Tale of the Thugs), in Catherine Weinberger-Thomas, ed., L’Inde et l’imaginaire (India and the Imagination), Paris: Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1988, pp. 257–79. French Counter-narratives 59

him that ‘l’Inde est un bazar où se vendent des esclaves’ (‘India is a bazaar where slaves are sold’), rendering Britain the slave owner from whom India must be freed.47 Through Thimour, the reader is presented with a deplorable picture of a land that is divided between the ignorance and fanaticism of criminal cults (or ‘sociétés de brigands’) and the ineffectuality of an oppressive British government that is unable to quash such criminality.48 It is Thimour’s aim to unite India’s chiefs and princes in order to ‘délivrer l’Inde de l’oppression des étrangers’ (‘deliver India from foreign oppression’).49 If this can be achieved through ‘une révolte sérieuse’ (‘an effective revolt’), Thimour will be able to glimpse at a future, one that ‘permettrait d’espérer la rehabilitation de l’Inde’ (‘would allow us to hope for India’s rehabilitation’) following years of abuse.50 The motivation for this freedom is based on the memory of a past glory that Thimour attempts to reawaken in those that he meets, such as the emperor’s sons:

Tous n’ont pas oublié les grandeurs de leurs pères; tous ne sont pas tombés dans une mollesse énervante; et vienne le jour de lutte, ils se réveilleront au souvenir du passé. Vous . . . trouveriez-vous incapables de resister aux cris de la patrie renaissante?51 Not everyone has forgotten the glorious past of their forefathers; not everyone has fallen into this irksome state of inertia; and the day will come for battle when they will recall their history. And then would you really be capable of resisting the cries of the nation reborn?

Terms like ‘patrie rennaissante’ (‘nation reborn’) and references to an almost forgotten historical past feed into the seductive idea of revolution and the nation. As Thimour leaves the meeting with the princes, he says, ‘Nous nous séparâmes, eux [les princes] rêvant un passé évanoui, et moi, persuadé que j’avais fait un grand pas en faveur de la révolution que je voyais sur le point d’éclater’ (emphasis Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 added) (‘We parted ways, with them [the princes] dreaming of a faded past and me persuaded that I had taken an important step

47 Darville, L’Inde contemporaine, p. 248 and p. 238. 48 Ibid., p. 261. 49 Ibid., p. 263. 50 Ibid., p. 265. 51 Ibid., p. 265. 60 Nicola Frith

towards the revolution that was about to explode’).52 Within this vision is contained both the 17th-century concept of revolution and its more modern permutation. In the ﬁ rst instance, the appeal to the Mughal empire’s former glory can be seen as a revolving back to a past order. But in the second instance, the union of Hindu and Muslim peoples, encapsulated within Thimour’s dual heritage, implies something much more revolutionary than a nostalgic return to this nebulous past. Thimour calls for a common movement against oppression that is underpinned by the distinctly French-sounding ideologies of liberation and freedom. Yet, ultimately, he fails to inspire India’s freedom because he is unable to channel the inherent ‘savagery’ of his compatriots, especially the Thugs, towards this ‘nobler’ revolutionary goal. Instead, the Indians remain guided by ‘les principes . . . de détruire et de piller’ (‘the principles . . . of destruction and pillaging’).53 Thus, while ostensibly promoting the idea of liberation, Darville’s text ventriloquises the ﬁ gure of the Indian revolutionary in order to voice the impossibility of Indian self-rule and, in doing so, suggests the need for external (European) intervention. Implicitly, this ushers in the nostalgic fantasy of France’s lost empire outlined in the text’s introduction:

Les années se sont écroulées, et cependant les Indiens n’ont oublié ni le nom de l’héroïque Dupleix, ni celui de son lieutenant de Bussy . . . et ces souvenirs prouvent que si la France eût soutenu Dupleix et son lieutenant, l’Inde, au lieu d’être aujourd’hui anglaise, serait française, et plus florissante, plus heureuse que sous le gouvernement plus qu’oppressif de la Compagnie anglaise.54 The years have gone by, yet the Indian people have not forgotten the name of the heroic Dupleix and his lieutenant de Bussy . . . and these memories prove that if France had supported Dupleix and his lieutenant, India would today be French, not British, and would be Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ﬂ ourishing far more happily than under the unspeakable oppression of the East India Company.

The implication is that, had France ruled India, no need for revolt would ever have arisen and it is this fantasy that arguably

52 Darville, L’ Inde contemporaine, p. 266. 53 Ibid., p. 301. 54 Ibid., p. vii. French Counter-narratives 61

underpins the entire narrative. Hence, although the foreclosure of Anglo-centric narratives is counter-narrated through the emphasis on India’s ongoing desire for liberation, the narrative simultaneously upholds the stereotype of Indian barbarism through the fi gure of the depraved Thuggee devotee and, thereby, refutes the possibility of Indian freedom. In short, this comparison of the processes of naming the events of 1857–58 conducted across English- and French-language texts foregrounds the effects of nomenclature on representations of the past. It highlights the desire, inherent within 19th-century English- language texts, to contain and manage these events through key terms and qualifi ers that expunge any positive connotations from the act of anti-colonial rising, reframing them as a negative moment to be quashed, assigned to the past and remembered as a British victory. Simultaneously, it has explored how competing French voices have highlighted and challenged such foreclosure by utilising contrastive terms, such as ‘insurrection’ and ‘révolution’, and has considered to what political and national ends these alternative titles have been employed. Most importantly, by studying the way in which linguistic terms are used, this study has exposed the competing colonial and national discourses that underpin French-language representations of India and, specifi cally, the uprisings. Indeed, the texts explored here display nostalgia through their implicit desire to compensate for France’s loss of India. Although, by 1857, the idea of an India colonised by France was purely fantastical, the future development of a competitive French empire — an Afrique française to counter an Inde anglaise — was not. Thus, French writers, such as Billot, could use the uprisings to envisage a world that was split between good and bad colonial powers, between the philanthropic, enlightened French and the self-interested and barbaric British: where ‘L’Angleterre abaisse,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 la France élève’, where ‘l’Angleterre abrutit, la France civilise’ and where ‘l’Angleterre écrase par tous les excès, la France élève par la moralisation et le génie chrétien’ (where ‘Britain humiliates, France ennobles’, where ‘Britain stupeﬁ es; France civilises’ and where ‘Britain crushes through its excessive greed, France elevates through its spirit of morality and Christianity’).55 In this discursive

55 Billot, L’Inde, l’Angleterre et la France, pp. 61–62. 62 Nicola Frith

battle between colonial competitors, India’s ‘révolution nationale’ was simply co-opted into French writing as a platform from which to voice a competing discourse; a vision in which as ‘l’Angleterre descend, la France monte et, avec elle, les libertés du monde’ (‘as Britain falls, France rises bringing freedom to the world’).56 In short, these texts are less concerned with Indian independence than with destabilising British hegemony and, consequently, with promoting the French nation and its colonial expansion during a moment of British colonial weakness. Implicitly and explicitly, they envisage a future beyond British hegemony; one in which France, through its projected empire, can see itself, once again, as a world leader. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

56 Billot, L’ Inde, l’ Angleterre et la France, p. 1. The Revolt in the Italian Press 63

4 Freedom and Democracy: The Revolt in the Italian Press Chiara Cherubini

The periodicals of pre-unification Italy were conventional instruments for the creation of consensus or opposition and hence important channels for the transmission of political ideas. The lead article in a periodical often contained a commentary about the main political events of the week, with traces of contemporary debates. The institution of the lead article had the function of affi rming the editorial line of the paper and of conveying the political ideology of the editor to the public.1 In the second half of 1857, many of the Italian political editorials published long and detailed commentaries on the sepoy mutiny in India. The papers cited here represent mainly the views of three major currents of the Italian political debates of those years: those of the conservatives, the democrats and the moderates. The conservative view is interpreted in this context as the voice of the Austrian- Hungarian Empire and other absolutist monarchies of Italy, which also included the papal states. The political interests of these conservative monarchies were generally identifi ed by anti-unifi cation, Catholic and anti-British feelings. For the democrats, the nascent Italian patriotism was strictly connected with the formative ideals of democracy. Britain was regarded by the democrats with mixed feelings of diffi dence, admiration and opportunism. The democratic

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 party was composite and represented various currents of thought on how to achieve national independence and democracy. One failed revolutionary attempt in the kingdom of Naples in June 1857 was

1 J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, pp. 181–211; D. M. Bruni, Potere e circolazione delle idee. Stampa, accademie e censura nel Risorgimento italiano (Power and the Circulation of Ideas: Press, Academics and Censorship in the Italian Regime), Milan: Franco Angeli, 2007. 64 Chiara Cherubini

further cause for deep divisions in the party and also for comparisons to the Indian uprising. The moderates took a fi rm liberal, pro- unifi cation, nationalist, anti-clerical and pro-British view. They felt threatened by the radical and revolutionary goals of some of the democrats and envisaged in moderate Britain the perfect ally for achieving national unifi cation under the constitutional monarchy of Piedmont-Sardinia. The international context assumed the greatest importance both for the Italian patriots looking for a political ideology which would legitimise the formative Italian national identity, the ideal government for Italy and its place in Europe, and for the reactionaries, who were fi ghting change and the idea of change incarnated in the growing protestant British empire. The importance assumed by the Indian revolutionary events in the political debates of pre-unifi cation Italy can be assessed by looking at the different interpretations of these events in the contemporary press. Given the active role of the periodicals in the transmission of ideas, it is possible to advance the hypothesis that their representations of the Indian revolt served the purpose of reinforcing and contextualising their political ideologies in the fl uid political debates of the time. This short study will show how the conservative press saw the revolt as an opportunity to denounce and delegitimise British power and expansionism as well as British moral guidance to those European patriots who were trying to subvert and overthrow the old monarchic regimes. It will also show how the democratic press interpreted the Indian uprising in the light of their ideas of nationalism and democracy which, according to them, had only developed in the European historical context, and which still had to fi nd their place in the ‘distant’ Indian world. Finally, this study will show how the interests of the moderates and of the classes they represented were too intertwined with those of Britain for them to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 express any sympathy for the Indian rebels. The very ﬁ rst reports on the Indian rebellion appeared in Italy as early as May 1857.2 Initially the information was scarce and delivered in the form of short synthetic accounts, indicating little more than the number of men and the regiments involved in the ﬁ ghting. With the

2 See, for example, the newspaper Italia del popolo (Italy of the People) of May 16, 1857. This periodical had been founded by the republican and nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini and represented his ideas. The Revolt in the Italian Press 65

passing of the weeks, however, the articles became longer and their tones more alarmist: ‘The insurrectional spirit rather than subsiding is spreading.’3 The coverage became increasingly more regular: ‘India, India, always India, who knows for how much longer!’4 News from India arrived in Europe not without difﬁ culty and sometimes with a time lag of many weeks or even months. Some of the news was transmitted via telegraph and the rebels were also reported as trying to kill the clerks of the telegraphic service in the attempt to disrupt communications with Europe.5 The Italian periodicals mostly used the British, Indo-British, and French press as sources for news of the rebellion. The British press coverage was often accused of being biased and censored. La Ragione (The Reason) — the paper of the rationalist Ausonio Franchi published in Turin — referring to the allegedly partial reporting of The Times, remarked:

This newspaper does not have any equals, (before) it was asserting that the revolt was purely military and did not have any other social roots; now that it is necessary to ﬁ nd payment for the debts caused by the English oppression, it maintains that the most wealthy classes of Hindustan kept secret alliances with the rebels.6

The conservative papers, in particular, were the most adamant in claiming that the British had all the interest in downplaying the actual extent and severity of the uprising. According to La Sferza (The Whip), a conservative paper of Lombardy-Venetia, the news from Paris via Marseilles — where steamers from India transited — was more reliable than that arriving from Great Britain:

3 ‘Lo spirito d’indisciplina, anziché essere compresso si propaga,’ Italia del Popolo, May 29, 1857. 4 ‘Indie, Indie, e sempre Indie, chi sa per quanto tempo!’ Corriere del Lario, September 9, 1857. Corriere del Lario was a local weekly based in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Lombardy with liberal inclinations, published under the strict censorship of the Austrian regime. 5 La Sferza, January 2, 1858. 6 Note that in the original Italian texts ‘English’ or ‘England’ was often used as synonymous with ‘British’ and ‘Great Britain’. ‘Questo stesso giornale, non ha guari, sosteneva che la rivolta era puramente militare, e non aveva alcune radici negli altri ceti; ora che si tratta di far pagare i debiti cagionati dall’oppressione inglese, trova che le classi più facultose dell’Indostan mantenevano segrete intelligenze co’ ribelli,’ La Ragione, November 14, 1857. 66 Chiara Cherubini

The Times, with bellicose enthusiasm, cried that the War was over, that England was invincible, that the example of India was a terrible warning to its enemies. . . . However, the latest reports which have reached Paris via telegraph from Marseilles bring nothing else than the news that Lucknow has fallen again into the hands of the rebels.7

La Sferza also denounced the censorship of some telegraphic dispatches: ‘It is true that recent telegraphic dispatches announce that the revolution has already been suppressed; however, in all probability, every syllable in these dispatches is false.’8 Sometimes the correspondence and the papers from India were carried by steamers which transited in Italian ports like Trieste before continuing on to different destinations in Europe.9 The Osservatore Triestino (The Trieste Observer) was in those years one of the main governmental papers in Trieste which had fi rst-hand access to the news carried by the steamers. For the conservative Italian papers, this was an important source of unfi ltered news. La Sferza commented: ‘Today the Osservatore Triestino has become extremely important because it is the newspaper which can publish the breaking news about India carried by the steamships of the Lloyd.’10 This comment also refl ected the burgeoning public attention on India.

7 ‘Il Times, in uno slancio di guerriero entusiasmo, gridò ﬁ nita la Guerra, invincibile l’Inghilterra, il fato dell’Indie esempio terribile ai nemici della sua patria. . . . Ma gli ultimi ragguagli giunti a Parigi col telegrafo di Marsiglia recano niente meno che Lucknow era ricaduto in mano ai ribelli,’ La Sferza, June 9, 1857. 8 ‘E’ vero che recenti dispacci telegraﬁ ci annuncerebbero già sedata quella rivoluzione; ma secondo tutte le probabilità in questi dispacci ogni sillaba non sarà vera,’ La Sferza, June 2, 1857. 9 See, for example, ‘Ancora sul transito delle valigie provenienti dalle Indie per l’Inghilterra tenendo la via di Trieste’ (More on the Transit of Parcels from India to Britain via Trieste) in Annali universali di statistica

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 economia pubblica, geografi a, storia, viaggi e commercio (Universal Annals of Statistics, Economics, Geography, History, Travels and Trade), February 1846, volume 7, number 20, pp. 232–33 and ‘Ancora sul trasporto della valigia inglese proveniente dalle Indie per Londra’ (More on the Transport of British Parcels from India to London), in Annali universali di statistica economia pubblica, geografi a, storia, viaggi e commercio, January 1847, volume 11, number 31, pp. 134–36. See also, Corriere del Lario, July 18, 1857. 10 ‘Oggidì rendesi importantissimo l’Osservatore Triestino — come quello che è in grado di pubblicare le più fresche notizie dall’Indie recategli dai piroscafi del Lloyd,’ La Sferza, July 4, 1857. The Revolt in the Italian Press 67

By June and July, the character of the reporting on the ‘unappeased and aggravating mutiny’ had changed and often consisted of extensive and detailed accounts of the battles and carnages of the Indians and the British.11 The descriptions of the deeds of ﬁ gures such as Nana Sahib and of the dynamics of the rebels’ conspiracies assumed an almost ﬁ ctional quality.12 The increasing public curiosity about India during this period was evident from the appearance of lengthy essays on Indian geography, climate, people, culture, history and religion, which were published either as long articles or as a series of long articles. In addition, various reference books on India were serialised as weekly supplements and advertisements about them appeared in several papers.13 Many of these descriptions offered stereotypical images of a distant and exotic world.14 If Indian life, culture and society were represented as distant and different, the political significance of the events of 1857 was portrayed as directly related to the national interest and the

11 See numbers 102, 115, 118, 125, 128 of June 1857 of Italia del Popolo. 12 For example, the description of one conspiracy called the ‘chapatti conspiracy’ dwelled in great detail on the signs used by the conspirators to communicate with one another by eating or breaking bread in unconventional ways; see Monitore Toscano (The Tuscan Monitor), one of the governmental papers of the absolutist Duchy of Tuscany, October 7, 1857. 13 In 1857, one famous geographer of the time, Francesco Costantino Marmocchi, started to issue weekly pamphlets of thirty-two pages, which provided a ‘geographical’, ‘historical’, ‘monumental’, ‘statistical’, ‘religious’, etc. description of the British possessions in India in two volumes. The advertisements for these pamphlets appeared in the month of December

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 1857 in the Corriere del Lario and Gazzetta Piemontese. According to the advertisements, the title of the work was: L’Impero Anglo-Indiano (The Anglo-Indian Empire), Turin, 1858, which was later republished by Giovanni Flechia, Storia delle indie orientali (History of East India), Turin: Tip. Scolastica di Sebastiano Franco e ﬁ gli, 1862. 14 For example, the Lombard local paper, Gazzetta di Cremona (The Cremona Gazette), published a series of articles containing several detailed descriptions of Indian history, culture, as well as contemporary life in India, Delhi, etc. during the month of September 1857, along with the reporting of the revolt. 68 Chiara Cherubini

international balance of powers: ‘Outside European borders, in countries which were once at the peak of civilisation, great events are taking place from which Italy can benefi t or suffer.’15 The fi rst political comments on the revolt appeared in July. The Italian press was almost unanimous in condemning the methods of the East India Company, because of its inconsistencies, brutality and, above all, because of its ineffectiveness in moulding the distant Indian society along European cultural and political ideals. This interpretation was shared by many Italian papers with the most diverse political agendas; from the Catholic ones which maintained that the British had failed to Christianise pagan India, to the democratic ones who averred that they had failed to bring the values of reason, equality and freedom to superstitious India. The conservative papers interpreted the revolt as a confi rmation of Britain’s double-dealings in post-Restoration Europe and, ultimately, of its failure as a colonial power. The conservative Lombard paper La Bilancia (The Balance) noted:

England no longer stirs affection or sympathy, it is nothing else than a nation greedy for empire, envious of the others, and capable of setting the world on ﬁ re in order to dominate it . . . during all the current century England has tired Europe with her revolutionary proselytism which is opposed to the reactionary spirit, but which she uses as a shield against innovations.16

The conservative press was particularly resentful of the relentless British criticism of the Italian absolutist monarchies, which were accused of being archaic and repressive. It attacked Britain for not practicing the same kind of civility and modernity which she demanded from the conservative Italian kings when it came to her own imperialist interests which also extended to some former Italian Mediterranean islands: ‘The children of that same Albion, who was so outraged a few months ago by the punishment rightly meted out Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

15 ‘Fuori dai conﬁ ne europei, in paesi che furono la cima della civiltà, si compiono grandi avvenimenti dai quali anche l’Italia può per consenso, ritrarre utile o danno,’ Italia del Popolo, August 17, 1857. 16 ‘L’Inghilterra non desta più affezione, né simpatia, essa non è più che una nazione cupida d’impero, invidiosa degli altri, e capace di dar fuoco al mondo per dominarlo . . . in tutto il presente secolo l’Inghilterra ha stancato purtroppo l’Europa con un proselitismo rivoluzionario opposto allo spirito conservatore che è scudo a lei medesima contro le innovazioni,’ La Bilancia, July 9, 1857. The Revolt in the Italian Press 69

by the king of Naples to vindicate his royal authority, use the stick and the most tyrannical methods in the Ionic islands.’17 The references to alleged corrupt practices of the East India Company in India were recurrent in the conservative papers. In the Lombard Corriere del Lario (The Lario Courier), one author wrote that the corruption of the colonisers had caused the uprising: ‘The blond barbarians are sucking the country (dry) like leeches.’18 Their immoral methods and the incompetence of the people posted in India had created a system of ‘brutal oppression which tramples on every human right, every law of justice and civilisation for the proﬁ t of only a few men’.19 According to the conservative press, with the East India Company the British had inaugurated a new but negative model of colonisation. This new model was not comparable to the positive colonisation systems of the past that were aimed primarily at the moral improvement of the colonised country and its cultural assimilation to the motherland. The immoral and incompetent British colonisers were the real cause of the Indian rebellion:

The great British-Indian empire threatens to collapse. Nothing simpler! After having lost its great colonies in America, England had inaugurated a new system of colonisation. . . . It now rules in Calcutta . . . sucking dry the country, absorbing the resources, having little concern for its material and moral improvement.20

What India needed, according to the conservatives, was a more interventionist and authoritarian colonial rule, based on military power and national prestige:

17 ‘Nell’isole Ionie, terra italiana, il bastone ed i mezzi più tirannici vengono posti in opera . . . da ﬁ gli di quella medesima Albione, che tanto scapito menava pochi mesi or sono per alcune condanne segnate dal re di Napoli, onde giustamente vendicare l’offesa alla sua autorità reale,’ La Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Sferza, January 9, 1858. 18 ‘I barbari biondi succhiano il paese al pari delle sanguisughe,’ Corriere del Lario, August 5, 1857. 19 ‘La brutale oppressione che calpesta ogni umano diritto, ogni legge di giustizia e di civiltà il che torna a proﬁ tto d’alcuni pochi uomini,’ ibid. 20 ‘Il grande impero Britannico-Indiano minaccia di cader in ruina. Nulla di più semplice! L’Inghilterra dopo aver perduto le più grandi sue colonie d’America era ricorsa ad un nuovo sistema di colonizzazione. Ella impera a Calcutta . . . dissanguando il paese, assorbendo le risorse, poco curandosi del resto del suo materiale e morale incremento,’ La Sferza, June 14, 1857. 70 Chiara Cherubini

Such a country, rich in so many ﬁ nancial and material resources, cannot remain for much longer under a ruler who is so distant and weak, more mercantile than military, and with no other strength than the ﬁ nancial strength of the speculators, a colonizer without heroism, led only by the god of gold.21

The conservative papers pointed at other positive examples of colonisation such as, for example, that of Catholic France over Algeria which was deﬁ ned as a ‘wise and enlightened system of colonisation’.22 According to Civiltà Cattolica (Catholic Civilisation), the periodical of the Jesuits, India needed a more active missionary role in its Christianisation. Civiltà Cattolica cited the Portuguese and Spanish examples as positive models of colonialism to be imitated, and pointed out that, unlike its Catholic predecessors, Britain had contributed nothing to the colonised, leaving the ‘barbarian and superstitious nations, just as they had found them a century and half ago’.23 Civiltà Cattolica did not turn down the opportunity to condemn the expanding British empire. Honest and Catholic Europe, it argued, was pleased at the turn of events in India and the weakening of Great Britain as an outcome. Moreover, Civiltà Cattolica denounced the ‘unobjective’ admiration of the Italian moderate patriots for Britain. The Jesuits accused the Italian moderates of hypocrisy because, while they were defending the principles of Italian national independence, they were also arguing against the Indian struggle for independence:

To argue so emphatically against one-hundred-and-ﬁ ve million human beings, who want to gain national independence is illiberal . . . we are referring, obviously, to the principles of the reformists and humanitarian patriots; and to those passionate admirers of England . . . we could say that the Carnatic and Bengal, for example, do not have less of a right to be independent nations than any other 24 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 country of the world.

21 ‘Un tal paese, ricco di tante risorse ﬁ nanziarie e materiali, non può lungamente restar sottoposto ad una dominazione lontana, debole perché più mercantile che militare, senza energia tranne quella bancaria degli speculatori, senza eroismo essendo retta dal gran nume dell’oro,’ ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 ‘Nazioni barbare ed idolatre niente meno di quello che aveale trovate un secolo e mezzo fa,’ Civiltà Cattolica, September 19, 1857. 24 ‘Illiberale il perorare così acceso contro un presso a centocinque milioni di esseri umani, I quali vogliono riconquistare l’Indipendenza nazionale. . . . The Revolt in the Italian Press 71

The Gazzetta Piemontese (The Piedmontese Gazette) represented those moderate patriots who had been the object of the violent invective of Civiltà Cattolica. The Gazzetta Piemontese was the offi cial voice of the government of Piedmont from which it received its fi nancial support. This daily which normally used a very dry editorial style with few comments dutifully reported, day after day, very detailed accounts of the battles — taken from the most conservative British papers — without refraining from expressing, however, enthusiastic congratulations for each British victory. Quite different was the position of the Italian democratic patriots. They were torn between an enduring admiration for the British tradition of liberty, the hope of British political support for their insurrectional plans and their diffi culty in accepting British imperialist encroachment into other nationalities’ independence. In general, the democrats condemned the East India Company’s brutal rule in India and the principles of British colonialism. With rhetoric in some aspects similar to that of the conservative papers, the daily Italia del Popolo accused the British of using in India the same repressive methods for which the British press had harshly criticised the absolutist king of Naples: ‘England used those same tortures in India for which, with shameless hypocrisy, it criticised Ferdinand Borbone in Europe.’25 Many Italian democrats, though they did not share the conviction or belief in the rightfulness of British imperialist policy, still counted on its material and moral support to the Italian nationalist cause. Such was the position of the democrat Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of the Italian Risorgimento. In his political will, Garibaldi cited the case of India to denounce British encroachment on the free sovereignty of European nations. ‘The terrible massacres in India, which made Lord Clive sadly infamous’ confi rmed, according to him, that

[t]he English, like the Germans, are insatiable devourers of human Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 races . . . The Anglo-Saxon race overﬂ ows excessively in Europe to

Noi parliamo, com’è manifesto, secondo i principii dei patriotti riformisti ed umanitarii; ed a questi ammiratori appassionati dell’Inghilterra . . . si potrebbe dire che il Carnatic e il Bengal, esempligrazia, non hanno minor diritto ad essere nazioni indipendenti di quello che abbia qualunque altro paese del mondo,’ Civiltà Cattolica, September 19, 1857. 25 ‘L’Inghilterra adoperò nelle Indie quelle torture che con ipocrisia sfacciata in Europa rimproverava a Ferdinando Borbone,’ Italia del Popolo, August 17, 1857. 72 Chiara Cherubini

the detriment of all us Romans and Slavs. The power of Great Britain has its pivot in egoism, thirst for conquest, and the most absolute disdain for the rights of humanity.26

Also citing the British occupation of the former Italian Mediterranean islands, Garibaldi pointed at Britain, and at the old Austrian empire, as the two main obstacles to freedom and national sovereignty in Europe. It is possible to observe the same ambivalent resentment of the British conquest of territories which, according to other authoritative ﬁ gures among the Italian democratic patriots, should have been Italian. Both Felice Orsini and Antonio Martinati denounced the British colonial presence in the Ionic islands and Malta.27 The Italian democrats, while in disagreement among themselves about the principles of democracy and revolution, were usually in agreement about the general features of a model of national identity which extended to all territories sharing some level of common Italian history. For this reason, they resented the British occupation of these Mediterranean islands. Moreover, they unanimously condemned the principles of British colonialism as an ideal. However, they generally cultivated a friendship with Britain because it was the emblem of freedom in Europe and because it actively supported the cause of Italian national uniﬁ cation: ‘We love England for the freedom of the press and for the asylum offered to political refugees, however, its government in India has been execrable and a civilized and civilizing government cannot follow repressive methods.’28 Garibaldi wrote:

26 ‘E le immani stragi dell’Indie, che resero si tristamente infame Lord Clive,’ E. Croce, Testamento Politico del Generale Garibaldi (Political Testament of General Garibaldi), Paris: A. Sevine, 1891, 161. ‘Gli Inglesi al paro dei Tedeschi, sono ingoiatori insaziabili di razze umane. . . . La razza anglo-sassone straripa eccessivamente in Europa a danno di tutti noi Romani e Slavi. La Potenza della Gran Bratagna ha per Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 suo cardine l’egoismo, la sete di conquista, il disprezzo più assoluto de’ diritti del genere umano,’ ibid., p. 160. 27 Archival letters by Orsini and Martinati (1852-54) cited in Dalle Nogare, ‘Echoes of 1857 in Italy’, in P. C. Joshi, ed., Rebellion 1857, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1957, 324–25. 28 ‘Amiamo l’Inghilterra per la libertà di stampa e per l’asilo ai perseguitati politici ma il suo governo in India è stato esecrabile e un governo civilizzato e civilizzatore non può seguire metodi repressivi,’ Italia del popolo, October 18, 1857. The Revolt in the Italian Press 73

‘I love the English who, with more selfi shness, imitate the Romans: but I abhor their government which . . . oppresses the Indians.’29 In analysing the Indian case, they acknowledged the importance of the cause of the struggle for independence in India, as well as the popular nature of the rebellion. Nonetheless, they did not recognise in the Indian uprising their idea of a democratic revolution. According to them, the Indians had not had the chance to develop the consciousness of their nation as a society of free and equal citizens, hence they could not have nationalist feelings strong enough to organise a large-scale revolution. It is interesting to look at Carlo Cattaneo’s representation of British colonial rule. Cattaneo was one of the most radical among the Italian democrats. A decade before 1857, he had written a detailed account of Indian society in which he had criticised the rule of the East India Company as aimed exclusively at the exploitation of the people and not at its education. He accused the British of an insuffi ciently engaged stance vis-à-vis pernicious Indian superstitions which obstructed the spread of rationalism and progress.30 For Cattaneo, religious and social divisions and the lack of suffi cient contact with European culture were preventing the exposure to the values of equality and individual rights which were essential for the appropriate maturation of nationalist feelings. Cattaneo condemned the East India Company; nonetheless, he saw in its very presence in India, the cause of those social changes which would provide the Indians with the necessary moral and material strength for emancipation. Only when posterity was able to observe the effects of these changes in Indian society, only then, he claimed, would it be possible to pass a defi nitive judgement on the British colonisation of India: Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 29 ‘Amo gli Inglesi che, con un po’ d’egoismo in più, arieggiano i Romani: ma abborro il governo loro che . . . opprime gli Indiani,’ Croce, Testamento Politico del Generale Garibaldi, p. 60. 30 Carlo Cattaneo, ‘L’India Antica e Moderna’ (India Ancient and Modern) published originally in Rivista europea (European Review), Milan, March-April 1845, pp. 320–62, and published again in Ernico Sestan, ed., Opere di Giandomenico Romagnosi — Carlo Cattaneo — Giuseppe Ferrari (Works by Giandomenico Romagnosi, Carlo Cattaneo, Giuseppe Ferrari), Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1957. 74 Chiara Cherubini

The seeds of emancipation took root in India since the day the slave of the Brahmin became prince, and allowed his master to become his servant. . . . Will the caste division be eternal now that opulence and poverty blur its destiny in many ways? . . . Only then could the British conquest be judged by humanity.31

For the time being, he maintained, though the seeds of emancipation had been sowed, the Indian people were not yet ready to reap its harvest: ‘For a long time, the indigenous sepoy will neither have the courage to confront the feared Europeans, nor will the thought cross his mind; because those fragments of opposed castes and religions cannot merge so soon into any unity of goals and hope.’32 Even though the events of 1857 proved Cattaneo’s prediction wrong — since not too many years passed before the ‘indigenous sepoy’ found the ‘courage to confront the feared Europeans’ — the editorials of Italia del Popolo, ten years later, shared the same pessimistic lack of faith in Indian national consciousness.33 In one article, the author reasoned that although the analysis of the few known facts pointed to a large-scale revolution which was probably the result of long-term planning, he still could not believe in the

31 ‘Il germe dell’emancipazione nell’India allignò da quel giorno che lo schiavo del bramino poté divenir principe, e concedere al suo padrone d’essergli servo. . . . La divisione delle caste sarà dunque perpetua, ora che l’opulenza e la povertà ne confondono in tante maniere i destini? . . . Allora solamente la conquista britannica potrà essere giudicata dal genere umano,’ concluding paragraph, ibid. A wrong translation of this passage has been published in the article by Nogare, ‘Echoes of 1857 in Italy’, p. 324. Dalle Nogare translated the above passage as follows: ‘The seeds of emancipation have taken root in India since those days so that the enslaved Brahmin may become the prince and assign to his master the place of a slave,’ thus changing the meaning and omitting the reference to the actual

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 workings of the caste system. 32 ‘Né per lungo tempo al soldato indigeno basterà l’animo d’affrontare sul campo i temuti Europei, né per lungo tempo gliene potrà venire il pensiero; poiché quei frammenti di caste avverse e di nemiche religioni non possono così presto fondersi in qualsiasi unità di ﬁ ni e di speranze,’ Cattaneo, ‘L’India Antica e Moderna.’ 33 It has to be said that even though the Mazzinian Italia del Popolo and many Italian democrats did not endorse entirely all of Cattaneo’s radical views, nonetheless the editorials of this periodical expressed a judgement similar to his, on what they regarded as the ‘rigidities’ and ‘political immaturity’ of Indian society. The Revolt in the Italian Press 75

nationalist motive: ‘We prefer to use reason rather than fantasy and therefore we do not want to dream that all over India the feeling of nationality and the need to gain it is causing the revolt.’34 While the writer recognised the importance of Indian philosophy and culture — recently discovered in Europe — he also pointed out that a long history of tyranny and lack of political discourse about freedom and equality had kept the Indians inexperienced about the civil and moral engagement which was necessary to develop a national consciousness:

And if here, more than in other parts of Asia, men acquired feelings of dignity and their spirit was less slave to nature, this greater perfection revealed itself more in the works of the intellect and in moral and religious knowledge, than in the practice of political and civil life. We therefore think that the opinion of those who want to see in the rebellion a nationalist war is more fanciful than true.35

Moreover, he added, the culture of caste division had prevented any feelings of national brotherhood and unity: ‘The division into multiple castes and enemy sects prevents a strong consensus of men in one single belief.’36 Another editorial of the Italia del Popolo reiterated the same concept: ‘Indians have against themselves the deep mistrust which long oppression leaves in slaves and the fear impeding their actions, then the inexperience of government, the divergences in the efforts deriving from the differences of religion, origin, language, costumes.’37

34 ‘Noi non vogliamo, seguendo più la fantasia che la ragione, sognare che l’India sia da una parte all’altra agitata dal sentimento di sua nazionalità, e dal bisogno di conquistarla, spinta a rivolta,’ Italia del Popolo, August 17, 1857. 35 ‘E se in essa più che in altra parte dell’Asia, gli uomini acquistarono sentimenti di dignità e lo spirito fu meno schiavo della natura, questa Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 maggiore perfezione si rivelò più potentemente nelle opere dell’ingegno e nella sapienza morale e religiosa, che non certamente nella pratica della vita civile e politica. Ci sembra quindi più appariscente che vera l’opinione di quanti vogliono nella ribellione . . . scorgere una guerra di nazione,’ ibid. 36 ‘La divisione molteplice in caste e sette nemiche, impedisce un forte consenso degli uomini in un solo pensamento,’ ibid. 37 ‘Gli indiani hanno contro di sé la profonda sﬁ ducia che una lunga oppressione lascia nello schiavo e impaura i suoi moti, poi l’inesperienza di governo, le divergenza negli sforzi, proveniente dalla differenza di religione, di origine, di lingua, di costume,’ Italia del Popolo, September 15, 1857. 76 Chiara Cherubini

At the same time, the author saw in the revolt the ﬁ rst stirrings of emancipation and the beginning of future struggles for freedom: ‘It is at any rate true that the very fact that the spectre of revolution appeared on the bank of the Ganges is an immense event and, in any case, the sign of a new impulse in the spirit of freedom.’38 The author cited the Indian example to encourage the Italians to start a revolution (or a series of revolutions) following the lead of the Action Party. He compared freedom to a garment to be woven with patience, many struggles and sacriﬁ ces:

The Action Party has been maintaining for a long time with words and examples that despotism never abdicates voluntarily and that the people advance on the road of progress not with papers and books, but with action and at the cost of perpetual sacriﬁ ces, to weave, thread by thread, that great virile garb of freedom, which one day will be theirs.39

The Action Party, among the democrats, recommended several necessary revolutionary actions to bring to maturation the political consciousness of the citizens and to consequently seize power. Giuseppe Mazzini wrote: ‘Instruction in action must be initiated by action.’40 According to this view, a series of revolutions, even if premature and destined to failure — like the Indian and Neapolitan ones — would have a positive impact on the unaware citizens, awakening in them feelings of their own nationality and rights.41

38 ‘Gli è pur sempre vero che l’apparizione dello spettro rivoluzionario sulle rive del Gange è un immenso avvenimento e in ogni caso l’indizio d’un nuovo slancio dello spirito di libertà,’ ibid. 39 ‘Il partito d’azione predica da gran tempo colla parola e coll’esempio che il despotismo non abdica mai volontariamente e che un popolo, non colle carte e coi libri, bensì cogli atti e a costo di sagriﬁ ci perpetui, procede nelle vie del progresso e conquista lembo per lembo quella gran toga virile,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 la libertà, di cui deve un giorno vestirsi,’ ibid. 40 G. Mazzini, ‘Mazzini to the Editors of the Polish Democrat’, in The English Republic, June 3, 1853, p. 315, republished in S. Mastellone, Mazzini. Scrittore politico in inglese (Mazzini: Political Writer in English), Firenze: Olschki, 2004, p. 297. 41 This comment could have also contained a veiled reference to the failed revolutionary attempt in the south of Italy carried out on June 25, 1857 by the democrat Carlo Pisacane and violently repressed by the Bourbon monarchy, which had provoked several polemics and divisions in the democratic party. The Revolt in the Italian Press 77

In conclusion, in 1857, Italian public opinion understood the Indian rebellion in light of the contemporary internal debates on the legitimate forms of government and nascent ideas about national identity. India, at the time, was relatively unrepresented in Italian literature and the press, and while Indian culture and philosophical traditions were highly appreciated and praised in philosophical circles, general knowledge about the country was very poor and limited primarily to prevalent European stereotypes. The rebellion was portrayed according to ‘static’ political para- digms which were the product of the Italian political debate, but which could not enter into a dynamic discourse with the events and occurrences in India as they unfolded on the ground. In general, India was represented as a country distant and different, which had to assimilate European political values in order to be able to effectively engage in a political dialogue on an equal basis with its colonisers. The periodicals representing different political ideologies used the Indian events primarily to buttress their political agendas. Moreover, pre-unifi cation Italy could not have any colonial aspirations, and therefore any judgements passed on British colonial exploitation depended on how it indirectly impacted on the political interests of the various Italian political factions. The Italian moderate patriots, who admired the British tradition of liberalism and cultivated their affi liation with British policy in Europe and abroad, did not sympathise with the Indian rebels, and neither did they take any specifi c interest in their claims or accounts while reporting on the events of 1857. The conservative press represented the declining power of the Italian absolutist regimes and perceived in the British moral tutelage of the Italian moderates and democrats a challenge to the legitimacy of the old European powers. The conservatives interpreted the Indian uprising as a stunning blow to the protestant mercantilist

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 colonial system of the East India Company. They denounced the new colonial methods as too weak and non-interventionist for the moral improvement of the barbarian colonial subjects. Moreover, for the Catholics, revolutionary protestant Britain had failed in pursuing the mission of Christianising pagan India. The Italian democrats could not approve of the principles of colonial oppression or British imperialist foreign policy; at the same time, however, they considered Britain a powerful ally in their struggle against despotism in Europe. The democrats’ ideal 78 Chiara Cherubini

of nationalism implied the citizens’ moral and civil engagement in political life on an equal basis, from which their sense of justice and, ultimately, of national belonging would derive. According to them, though Indian culture and philosophy had reached rare and inﬂ uential sophistication in the distant past, a long history of subjugation and social divisions had prevented adequate exposure to the ideals of progress, equality and liberty crucial for effective political engagement. The Indian revolt was doomed to failure because the rebels lacked the awareness of their rights and the historical background which had produced it. The interaction with the British colonial empire, though unjust and brutal, had provided Indian society with a necessary initial exposure to the European historical tradition of reason and liberty. The Italian democrats believed that, with the revolt of 1857, the Indians had just started on the path to political maturity which would eventually lead them to the development of their national identity, to the necessary end of all colonial rule in India and to Indian national freedom. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 The Revolt in the Italian Press 79 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 80 Vibha Maurya and Maneesha Taneja , December 12, 1857. Illustrirte Zeitung Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ‘Die Einnahme der Hauptmoschee Dschamna Musdschid zu Delhi am 16. September’ (The Capture of the Main Mosque Jama Masjid in Delhi on 16 September), The Revolt in the Spanish Press 81

5 A View of the Revolt in the Spanish Press Vibha Maurya and Maneesha Taneja

This essay looks at an article entitled ‘India Inglesa. Su población y Razas’, published in Madrid in 1857 in the second volume of a journal called Escenas Contemporáneas.1 The journal covers a vast range of subjects as is shown on the cover page: political, parliamentary, biographical, necrological, scientifi c, literary and artistic. Further, a subheading says ‘Reports from the Foremost Municipalities and Towns of Spain’. The second volume is edited by Don Manuel Ovilo y Otero and comprises the issues from the months of September, October and November of 1857. Interestingly, at the end of the article, a note by Luis Estrada says that he had published the same article earlier in an accredited newspaper El Parlamento (The Parliament). Hence, we can deduce that the author of this piece is Luis Estrada, a political commentator of those times. The author sets for himself a number of objectives while exploring the situation in the Indian subcontinent. He believes that the fast- developing and dramatic situation in India offered to the ‘astounded’ Europeans and to the world an issue worthy of serious study. While his main aim is to inform the Spanish and perhaps the European public about the specifi cs of the social fabric, religious composition, caste system and other peculiarities of the people of English India as opposed to those of the American Indias, he fi nds it diffi cult to write about these issues without grounding his discussion within the turbulent happenings in many parts of India from the beginning of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 May 1857. Therefore, he fi rst attempts to examine the causes of what he variously calls the revolt, the insurrection or the uprising.

1 Luis Estrada, ‘India Inglesa. Su población y Razas’ (English India: Its Population and Races), in Escenas Contemporáneas. Revista (Contemporary Scenes: Journal), Tomo II, edited by Don Manuel Ovilo y Otero, Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográﬁ co de D.A. Vicente, 1857. (All translations are the authors’.) 82 Vibha Maurya and Maneesha Taneja

He also attempts to throw some light on the socio-political situation in India during the early colonial period and analyses the political and administrative strategies of British colonial rule. As a result, only the last few pages of this twenty-four-page-long essay are devoted to what he actually sets out to write about, that is, ‘the population and races of India’. Here we shall not dwell on this part of his article because we intend to examine the view of a political journalist from Spain — which was a colonial empire too — on the revolt by Indian subjects against British colonial power. Before proceeding further to examine the article under study, we think it necessary to discuss briefl y the situation in Spain during the 19th century, as a close reading of the text shows that the tensions and concerns arising out of the crisis which prevailed in the Spanish empire underlie this article as well. The author’s location in a dissipating empire on the one hand, and the internal turmoil caused by the liberal republicans’ struggle against the conservative forces on the other is in itself signifi cant. The prevailing tensions on the ground level and the debates in Spain about its future as an empire amongst intellectuals and rulers also fi nd resonance in the text. Spain in the 19th century was a scene of unprecedented turmoil. Napoleon’s occupation of Spain from 1808 to 1814 led to the brutal War of Independence against his rule, thus forging a sense of Spanish nationalism on the one hand, while manifesting the will of the people to defend and safeguard the liberal constitution of 1812 on the other. The country was facing diffi cult times in a civil war waged by the liberals against the conservatives. Even though King Ferdinand VII’s rule was fi nally restored, attempts to overthrow the monarchy continued and culminated in short-term successes of a few revolutions (the Vicalvarada Revolution in 1854 and La Gloriosa in 1868). However, the fate of the Spanish empire in the New World was dealt a big blow after the abrogation of the liberal

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 constitution by Ferdinand VII. It was seen as a betrayal of the people who had reposed their faith in the king in opposition to the terrible regime of Joseph Bonaparte (Napoleon’s elder brother). This loss of conﬁ dence in the monarchy and continuous military interventions weakened and undermined the government in Madrid and led to a loss of hold over the colonies in the Americas. The Spanish empire in the New World had already started crumbling by the beginning of the 19th century as most of the countries, with the exception of Puerto Rico and Cuba, had The Revolt in the Spanish Press 83

gained independence. In 1810, Caracas and Buenos Aires, for example, had begun functioning as autonomous states and had sent their envoys to the United Kingdom, thus establishing an independent political and administrative structure. British intervention in many Hispano-American countries encouraged them to move away from Spanish economic and political infl uence and pushed them towards developing extensive trade relations with Britain and other European countries. It was in this context that some representatives of the ruling Juntas from Caracas, Buenos Aires and other places came to England to exchange views and seek support for their cause. The Juntas visiting Britain consisted of some of the important leaders and thinkers of Latin America of that time — the liberator Simon Bolívar and the analyst Andrés Bello were amongst those who participated in talks at various levels. However, it may be noted that on reaching England the Junta representatives found divided opinions amongst the British intelligentsia regarding the question of the independence of Spanish American colonies. While some sections supported full independence for these countries, others were of the opinion that the time was not yet ripe. Political commentators like James Mill and Jeremy Bentham had published articles on these issues in journals like The Edinburgh Review in 1809, attempting to persuade their government to help the Spanish American people realise their ‘unanimous desire to be independent’. They also emphasise the fact that ‘Spain’s destiny is sealed because it is in the hands of Napoleon’s France’.2 Inter-imperialist rivalry and competitive colonial aspirations compel them to think quite alike because Mill’s advice to Britain, in the fi nal instance, was to grab the opportunity ‘to liberate Latin America and bring it under its own infl uential protection instead of giving it away to Bonaparte to enslave these countries under the French monarchy’.3 Another group of intellectuals who opposed Mill’s and Bentham’s

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 thesis argued from a more cautious standpoint. Though not against the idea of Latin American independence per se, Lord Holland and Joseph Blanco White were strongly opposed to any immediate drastic change. Therefore, they argued in favour of Spanish regeneration and against the disintegration of the empire.

2 Antonio Cussen, Bello y Bolívar (Bello and Bolivar), Mexico: Tierra Firme, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998, p. 43. 3 Ibid. p. 44. 84 Vibha Maurya and Maneesha Taneja

Blanco White, in a journal entitled El Español (The Spaniard), articulated his views on politics, economics as well as on other issues concerning Latin American countries. Interestingly, his formulations on social issues are more relevant to our discussion. According to him, a signiﬁ cant obstacle was ‘the “cast” system in Hispanic- America, because tensions between different casts would increase instead of decreasing if colonies were liberated as the leaders there seek only personal glory’.4 These political debates obviously found resonance amongst the intelligentsia within Spain and across the erstwhile colonies. Central to these discussions was the question of the form of political rule — the monarchical system versus the republican one. Thinkers were also reexamining the role and function of European powers in the former colonies as the newly independent states were considered incapable of self-governance. In the case of Latin America, the most important issue that engaged the minds of leaders and political advisors was that of national and continental unity and identity, and the nature of their relationship with the northern neighbour and ex-colonial masters. It is quite clear that Luis Estrada, the author of the essay under study, participated actively and engaged consciously in debates surrounding issues of governance in the colonies. Looking from within an old, disintegrating empire with a long colonial experience at the emerging colonial powers elsewhere in the world, Luis Estrada could not have possibly ignored these discussions while writing on the Indian situation. It is known that the ﬂ ow of news from India was slow and meagre. Estrada uses French and British sources but forms his opinions on the basis of the experiences of the Spanish empire in the Americas. Therefore, we think that the author takes a slightly different position vis-à-vis the uprising. He begins his article by commenting on some of the recent events

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 unfolding in India. He says that the insurrection is a matter of great concern for England and for Europe but what had moved everyone was the news of the manner in which the revolt was spreading in north India. Estrada gives some examples: he refers to the battle of Arrat. In this township, according to Estrada, there were only twelve Englishmen (some sort of technical staff ) who, in the face of the uprising, armed

4 Antonio Cussen, Bello y Bolíver (Bello and Bolivar), Mexico: Tierra Firme, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998, p. 45. The Revolt in the Spanish Press 85

themselves and took refuge in a house, fortifi ed it and waited for more forces to arrive to rescue them. This he calls the Dinapore Uprising. He further informs us that with the help of forty-fi ve Sikh soldiers these men resisted the attacks of the insurgents and were fi nally saved by a reinforcement unit of 200 Englishmen. He says: ‘As opposed to the small number of 200 English soldiers a strong contingent of 3000 rebels were led by a Raja.’5 He goes on to add that similar scenes were witnessed daily. These incidents are cited in the article because the author wants to prove two points: fi rst, he criticises, to some extent, the callous and indifferent attitude of the Company’s generals towards the British people living in the disturbed territories. British civilians and their families were left to fend for themselves as there was no intention or plan to send a big force to deal with the diffi cult situation and rescue them. If reinforcements at all arrived, they came from other Asian colonies, while Estrada strongly feels that a big force should have arrived straight from Britain to crush the rebellion. Second, he says that if there had been a conscious effort and prompt action on the part of the Company it would not have been diffi cult to overcome the reverses. On the basis of his perception of the revolt on the one hand and his understanding of the East India Company’s preparedness or willingness to crush the revolt on the other he concludes:

The reconquest of India does not demand more than some time and some more forces. The insurrection has so far not acquired the character of a national war, and the known and incurable inferiority of the Indian Race in relation to the European one allows for a well founded hope of prompt and complete peace.6

In an attempt to give a convincing characterisation of the war as well as to show the incompetence of the native rebels, he further examines the ideological stances and socio-political under-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 standing of the leaders of the revolt. While referring to Nana Sahib he mentions the proclamation made by him in Kanpur, which was reproduced in the British press. He says that the proclamation refers to ‘the ofﬁ cial project of the East India Company to Christianise the entire indigenous population, Muslim or otherwise’7. In this manner,

5 Estrada, ‘India Inglesa’, p. 357. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., p. 358. 86 Vibha Maurya and Maneesha Taneja

Estrada brings in the issue of religion and religious conversion, which he discusses later in the article. He condemns Nana Sahib for making a false charge and explains how tolerant the Company had been to the different religions and sects in India. He says:

They have not only always abstained from violating the religious beliefs of the natives but have directly and efﬁ ciently favoured and ﬁ nanced Muslim and Indostani schools.8

However, Estrada clearly does not approve of the English policy of non-intervention in religious affairs which was in stark contrast to the Spanish colonial policy. He criticises Hastings and others for opposing the Biblical Societies’ intervention in matters of religion and beliefs. He argues that it was a mistake to allow Indians to carry on with their ‘wrong and monstrous beliefs of different religions which had divided society’.9 He further blames the British colonisers and says that this was in fact the real reason for their isolation at the time of the revolt. According to the data mentioned in the article, there were 42,000 converts then and only a small number of these were conscious in following the new path adopted by them and therefore they did not come to the rescue of the British nor did they show any commitment towards their colonial masters by joining in the war. Estrada further goes on to say that Nana Sahib’s proclamation was a ‘blatant lie’ and was meant to give the insurrection a ‘character which it did not have since its inception’. Anyway, the author is curious about the effects of such a prophetic and clever move by the leader of the insurgents. In the later part of this section of the article Luis Estrada offers a brief summary of the composition of the population in some parts of India — Bengal, Agra, Madras, Hyderabad, Mysore, etc. While doing so he also takes into account the princely states. The data Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 provided by him, whether reliable or not, is not for the purpose of carrying out an examination of the religious divide or of sectarianism. It is just a region-wise population count. Here, he comments on the Indian people saying that foreign newspapers have speculated that had this happened to so many millions of oppressed masses elsewhere, or with any other people like the Chinese, it would have

8 Estrada, ‘India Inglesa’, p. 358. 9 Ibid. The Revolt in the Spanish Press 87

been extremely dangerous for the British. Interestingly, he goes on to characterise the Indian people (as if he had ﬁ rst-hand experience) in the following manner:

but the climate, food habits, different and mutually opposing monstrous religious doctrines, and above all twenty centuries, if not more, of tyranny and abject servile living have made them apathetic and indolent, as well as patient and resigned . . .10

He further states that if these ‘patient and resigned’ people have fi nally woken up, it is also because the British colonisers have remained passive and inactive and have not used the already divided people to their advantage. So much so that they have remained deaf to the fi rst cry of independence, while leaders like Nana Sahib have seized this moment to appeal to religious fanaticism. Luis Estrada also draws our attention to other fl aws in the British colonial policy and in the administrative system. He offers two reasons as to why Indians could succeed in the uprising. He says: ‘One reason was a carefully planned and skillfully directed conspiracy and the second was administrative lapses on the part of the British, even though they may have been to a lesser extent.’11 With this, the author moves on to suggest that perhaps more than religion, it was the dynastic interests, especially those of the Muslim rulers, which played a crucial role. In consonance with the French press, he confi rms that the Company, instead of easing the yoke in recent years, practiced the policy of annexation and confi scation on an even larger scale, which sooner or later would have anyway led to this catastrophic situation. The author himself seems to be quite wary and doubtful about the role of the princely states as he terms them ‘hydras with a hundred heads’ and therefore advises the British to reinforce and strengthen colonial administration. In the second part of his article, Estrada mainly refers to and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 quotes from other European papers, particularly from the French press, as he feels that several news items and editorials that appeared occasionally in the French Journal des Débats (Journal of Debates) were more authentic and in agreement with his own opinions. He also uses this to provide more information about the Indian situation.

10 Estrada, ‘India Inglesa’, p. 362. 11 Ibid., p. 364. 88 Vibha Maurya and Maneesha Taneja

We shall brieﬂ y refer to this part of his essay as it focuses on issues which had not been thus far raised in any substantial way in the context of British colonial rule in India. Luis Estrada, echoing French opinions, talks about the commercial and mercantile interests of the British. The French had extended economic help, expressed racial solidarity with the British and supported the victims of the revolt. Another crucial aspect which went in favour of the British was the debate on ‘civilisation and barbarism’ in the French press. The article that Estrada cites from the Journal des Débats highlights this point:

We look without mistrust and envy upon the increasing domination and preponderance of the British in India and the Far East; because for us the cause of British domination is the cause of civilisation in those far off lands; and the insurrection is the cause of barbarism. We cannot vacillate between these two sides.12

Further, Estrada cites from the Journal des Débats to highlight the French criticism of British rule in India:

emotional sentiments and sympathy that we profess for England neither blinds us to the grave crisis that her domination is presently experiencing nor allows us to ignore the cause that has produced this crisis.13

Central to all that was being written in the press on India and on the British management of the revolt was the so-called civilising mission that was foremost in the minds of the French. The atrocities purportedly committed by the rebels were naturally seen as examples of barbarism; therefore, the recurring questions in the Journal address these concerns persistently:

why has England not found in the entire continent, without any exception, any sympathy that would have naturally promoted the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 anti-barbarian cause, especially when barbarism was stained with the excesses of atrocities which have outraged all hearts and stirred everyone’s conscience?14

Echoing other voices from within French opinion makers, the Journal article condemns in unequivocal terms the failure of

12 Estrada, ‘India Inglesa’, p. 367. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. The Revolt in the Spanish Press 89

the British to inculcate moral Christian values amongst the native population. If French views were drawn from their own colonial experiences in Africa, Spanish views were also extremely infl uenced by the prevailing debates in the metropolis of the colonising countries in general and in the Spanish ex-colonies in particular. Hispanists in post-colonial times would consider it important to allude to the debate on civilisation and barbarism in Latin America from the time of the independence movement as well as to the continuation of these debates today. It would be necessary to briefl y mention them here in order to understand Estrada’s concerns in a proper perspective. An archetypal dichotomy between these two terms — civilisation and barbarism (also referred to as savagism) — as espoused by Europe in the mid-18th century only echoes old concepts of barbarism with newer connotations. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to examine the new use of the old concept. Counter positioning these terms — civilisation versus barbarism — was only a deliberate attempt to measure certain societies or communities using arbitrary parameters. If the fi rst term implied a harmonious and humane form of existence, the second one by obvious implication meant an inhumane or openly bestial form of living (which characterised underdeveloped, localised communities of often ignorant and ferocious peoples).15 We know that the term ‘barbarian’ came into use in ancient Greece and simply meant ‘foreigner’, the other, or the one who is not Greek. Colonial encounters and subsequent progress in Europe brought into use the dichotomous term civilisation. The Cuban poet and critic, Roberto Fernández Retamar, explains that the cult of the Greek polis or the Roman urbe — the cities (civita) as opposed to the rusticity of the countryside (rus) — are similar in all homologous situations.16 Lévi-Strauss contests the European Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 15 Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz has explained it so: ‘The Greeks and then the Romans used the term barbarian for naming the rest of the peoples, especially the ones who were far away. Some think that this word alludes onomatopoeically to their language; it gives unintelligible sounds like whispering . . .’ El engaño de las razas (The Deceit of the Races), 2nd edition, Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975, p. 39. 16 R. Fernández Retamar, ‘Algunos usos de civilización y barbarie’ (Some Uses of Civilisation and Barbarism), in Revista Mexicana de Sociología (Mexican Journal of Sociology), 51(3), July–September: 291–325, p. 297, 1989, UNAM, Mexico. 90 Vibha Maurya and Maneesha Taneja

term civilisation and says that ‘it refused to admit cultural diversity; it preferred to throw out of culture, into nature, all those who did not conform to the norms of European living’.17 All this leads us to understand that as the European bourgeoisie matured, its opinions about non-Europeans began to crystallise. Western projects of expansion and colonisation demanded brutal and massive exploitation of other peoples of the world, which devastated their economies, societies, cultural relics and manifestations, which would have been the means of their own development. But these people were not allowed to make choices, the normal course of development was not to happen, instead they became semi-colonies or colonies of self-proclaimed civilisations. Moreover, these exercises of expansion, followed by destruction and, in some cases, extermination, acquired one more dimension which went against the ancient notion of barbarism. Retamar argues that for the Greeks and the Romans the difference between them and the barbarians was not ‘a matter of blood but rather of culture’, while for the western bourgeoisie, engaged in widespread destruction of other peoples (who came to be known as coloured people) ‘the difference was not a matter of culture but of blood, and of race’. Even though it is a known and accepted fact that there have always existed some evident and banal somatic differences amongst human beings, these differences came to be articulated as signiﬁ cantly decisive and as predetermined facts of life only after the imperialist campaign of overseas expansion.18 One should not underplay the enormous importance of the Europeans’ arrival to faraway places like the Americas, Asia or Africa. After all, this encounter of the people of modern times also proved to be a factor fundamental in the development of a new socio-economic formation in western Europe, namely capitalism. As a consequence, discourses were produced, ideas were debated, and their relevance was established. Thus, ideologues and intellectuals of colonialism Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 17 Retamar, ‘Algunos usos de civilización y barbarie’, p. 293. 18 Racial prejudice, as it exists in today’s world, is exclusively a white man’s attitude and it had its origins in the 16th-century European conquerors’ need to rationalise and justify looting, slavery and the continuous exploitation of coloured people all over the world. Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, El capital monopolista: Ensayo sobre el orden económico y social de Estados Unidos, Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1968 (Spanish edition), pp. 199–200 and Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1966 (original English edition). The Revolt in the Spanish Press 91

generated discussions with a view to obtaining sanctions for such practices. The famous debates between Bartolomé de las Casas, the priest who defended the rights of native Indians in the Americas, and Ginés de Sepúlveda, his opponent in the Spanish Court and the most vehement supporter of slavery and racism, are examples of the use of the intellect to justify and rationalise one or the other practice. Sepulveda, as early as in the 16th century, argued:

What greater beneﬁ ts and advantage could those barbarians have gained than their subjugation to the empire, whose prudence, virtue and religion have converted them from barbarians to just men, humans and civilised.19

Later, during the long struggle for independence, leaders of the liberation movement were also engaged in charting out the political, economic and social directions of their countries, and at deﬁ ning moments they also had to deal with issues related to civilisation, culture, education and religious beliefs and practices of their populations. The well-known postulates of the Argentinean statesman, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and his criticism by the Cuban Hero of National Liberation, José Marti and others are well- documented in contemporary Latin American history. Almost 200 years after the beginning of this debate in the 16th century, a similar thesis was propounded in the context of British colonialism in the Indian subcontinent because 19th-century bourgeois thought leaned heavily on the conception of a singular history of the world. Thus, by simplifying the understanding of history ‘universal history was reduced to European history, and a rectilinear plan of development was drawn which did not envisage gaps, deviations or catastrophes . . . .20 Therefore, when we discuss these issues from a contemporary vantage point we notice a complete disregard on the part of the European colonial thinkers for the stages

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 of development and historical periodisation of different colonial projects. It is in this context that Estrada’s extensive citations from

19 Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Demócratas Segundo o De las justas causas de la guerra contra los indios (Second Democrates, or about the Just Causes of the War against the Indians), Madrid, 1951, as cited in Retamar, ‘Algunos usos de civilización y barbarie’). 20 Retamar, ‘Algunos usos de civilización y barbarie’, p. 320. 92 Vibha Maurya and Maneesha Taneja

the Journal underlining the importance of civilising missions become more signiﬁ cant for our discussion.21 The French response to the Indian uprising, in the ultimate instance, echoed two types of reactions: one vehemently critical of England and the other somewhat hopeful and sympathetic to British interests. The fact that Luis Estrada’s views encompass both reactions once again reveals that 19th-century European understanding about the rest of the world was very stereotyped and produced similar approaches and reactions. The civilisation versus barbarism dichotomy is fundamentally rooted in not recognising the plurality of civilisations, cultures, races and religions. In the last part of the essay, Estrada draws his conclusions on the revolt and offers advice to the British. Needless to say, any articulated Spanish reaction to British colonial rule cannot overlook the role of Britain in the Hispano-American war. Therefore Estrada cautiously but explicitly states:

When Journal des Débats claims that the cause of England in India is the cause of civilisation, it says a great truth, but an incomplete truth, because the complete one is that, along with the civilising cause lies the cause of trade and industry, the cause of human progress in every moral and material sense, this is the cause of peace and order.22

And he ﬁ nally adds:

and with this I do not want to justify how Great Britain behaved with Spain in the past, nor do I want to absolve it of its selﬁ sh ambitions which cost our peninsular interests so heavily.23

Spain as a declining empire at that time could only look at newer colonial projects with appreciation and caution, therefore, Estrada ﬁ nally concludes by suggesting that: Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

21 Estrada states: ‘Far from deserving to be accused of proselytism and of suffering from religious intolerance, the Company, on the contrary, should be accused of not doing anything, or doing very little in the great tasks of instruction, moral and religious education of its subjects.’ ‘India Inglesa’, p. 369. 22 Ibid., p. 370. 23 Ibid. The Revolt in the Spanish Press 93

a) at the present stage of European culture, the decline of Great Britain would cause massive upheavals in international relations, which would sooner than later give the gigantic US an importance detrimental to European interests; b) it would cause a serious commercial and industrial crisis which in turn would put at risk the overseas interests and possessions of Europe; c) and lastly it would signiﬁ cantly delay by centuries, or even indeﬁ nitely, the cultural progress of the Asian people, their civilisation and human goodwill.24

To conclude, we can say that Luis Estrada’s long essay is perhaps one of the few writings found in the Spanish press of those times on the uprising and that it is an important piece of writing, ﬁ rst because it shows how the 1857 revolt resonated in different parts of Europe, but more importantly, because it gives us an insight into the serious concerns that the turbulent upheavals of 1857 in India aroused in Spain. Unlike in France, where opinions favourable to the revolt also appeared sporadically, in Spain, British domination was upheld, ‘indigenous’ natives downgraded and colonial expansion justiﬁ ed. Even though one perceives an underlying tension and hostility towards England as a former rival and competitor, what occupies central space, however, is the positive and friendly advice to an emerging power that is encouraged to rule peacefully and spread Christian moral values and beliefs. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

24 Estrada, ‘India Inglesa’, p. 371. 94 Margit Köves

6 Hungarian Responses: Between Support and Disagreement Margit Köves

‘A suppressed nation never kisses the hand of an alien who annihilates his freedom, and forces the proud nation’s neck into a yoke, whoever that alien is.’ — Pesti Napló

Hungarian responses to the 1857 rebellion were deﬁ ned to a great extent by the attitudes and strategies which developed after the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848–49. The end of the War in August 1849 marked a new historical phase with the terror of Haynau (1849–50) and the absolutist rule established directly from Austria under the Bach regime (1850–67).1 The 1848 revolution and the 1857 rebellion serve as analogies: two peoples (nations) rise against the ruling empires. In October 1857 Ernest Jones (1819–69), the Chartist, claimed: ‘No man can say “I am for Hungary and against India”. If he does so he lies against himself, against principle, against truth, against honour.’2 Sympathy for India was not expressed as directly as Jones demanded. Hungarians were interested in what happened in India, but their understanding did not reach the level of support. Though they were tacitly aware of some similarities between the 1857 rebellion and the Hungarian freedom struggle they were still in the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

1 Julius Jacob von Haynau (1786–1853), was a general in the Austrian army, notorious for his harsh quelling of the Italian uprising near Brescia in 1849 and the Hungarian revolution in 1849–50. Alexander Bach was Austrian minister of the interior, 1850–67. 2 James Bryne, ‘British Opinion and the Indian Revolt’, in P. C. Joshi, ed., Rebellion 1857: A Symposium, Calcutta, New Delhi: K. P. Bagchi & Company, 1957 reprint 1986, p. 306. Hungarian Responses 95

process of coming to a historical interpretation of the Hungarian events. The 1857 rebellion provided a context for understanding the Hungarian events in the form of universal laws of history. The immediate responses were often not articulated or very limited. It would be difﬁ cult to spell out all the reasons, but the following may be mentioned:

1. After the failure of the freedom struggle, Haynau as the plenipotentiary military commander of Hungary set up military courts which sentenced the members of the Hungarian government of Batthyány to death in 1849. Those who participated in the revolution and the freedom struggle were imprisoned. A great number of Hungarians were forcibly enrolled in the Austrian army and many radicals emigrated to west Europe or Turkey. If they stayed on in Hungary they were silenced. 2. Before Gandhi’s ‘passive resistance’ or ‘satyagraha movement’ Ferenc Deák (1803–76) propounded the policy of passive resistance in Hungary, advocating complete abstinence from public affairs and not submitting to the law of the Austrian authorities even if this meant disadvantages and penalties.3 This meant the refusal to cooperate with the executive powers, refraining from posts in the government, not accepting incomes from the state, rejecting control over religion, non-cooperation with compulsory military service, desertion from the army if necessary, and non-violent obstruction of the work of the government. Along with abstinence from public affairs Deák’s movement also proposed alternative forms of independent public forums and institutions, which slowly paved the way for the 1867 compromise with the Austrian government of Emperor Franz Joseph I. 3. Literature and poetry appeared to be the only forms of express- Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ing the grief felt after the failure of the freedom struggle.

3 Deák was Hungarian statesman and minister of justice. Csapody Tamás, Passzív rezisztencia szekunder formái Magyarországon 1848 és 1865 között (Secondary Forms of Passive Resistance in Hungary between 1846 and 1865), Politikatudományi Szemle (Review of Political Science), 1995, http://www.poltudszemle.hu/szamok/2005_1szam/2005_ 1_csapody.pdf, accessed August 9, 2008. 96 Margit Köves

Poetry and prose used allegories of the 1848 revolution, for example, the poet, Mihály Tompa (1817–68) who in his poem ‘To the Stork’ (1850) tells the stork that one of its two countries is lost.4 János Arany expressed the despair over the failure of the freedom struggle in a mock epic The Gypsies of Nagyida (1852), a narrative about the defence of the fort of Ida.5 In the leader of the Gypsies, Hungarian readers could recognise Kossuth, the leader of the freedom struggle, for the poem describes Kossuth and the radicals as responsible for the failure of the struggle.6

The Hungarian Press after the Freedom Struggle Newspapers dealt mainly with foreign affairs, looking for parallels with the Hungarian events. The discussion of the international situation often served as a channel to play out tensions, which was not possible in the framework of the Hungarian situation. For some authors it also meant slow, steady work on concepts like history, nation and revolution. Constitutional monarchy of the British kind was one of their ideals that was seen as an alternative to the Austrian political system. The most vocal representative of these views was Zsigmond Kemény (1814–71), novelist, essayist and journalist, who was connected to the newspaper Pesti Napló (Pest Diary) from its inception in 1850. Kemény was a liberal who supported reforms of the ancient county system but opposed Kossuth.7 After the failure of the freedom struggle Kemény took a stand against radical ideas and claimed that radicalism and a revolutionary spirit were foreign to the Hungarian national character and Hungarians

4 A magyar irodalom története IV, A magyar irodalom története 1849-to˝l 1905-ig (The History of Hungarian Literature, volume IV: The History of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Hungarian Literature from 1849–1905), edited by István So˝tér, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1965, pp. 159–68. 5 Ibid., pp. 96–152; see also Lóránt Czigány, Oxford History of Hungarian Literature, http://mek.niif.hu/02000/02042/html/27.html, accessed January 21, 2010. 6 Lajos Kossuth (1802–1894). 7 Gyula Tóth, ‘Utószó’ (Postword), in Zsigmond Kemény, Változatok a történelemre. Forradalom után. Még egy szó a forradalom után (Variations for History. After Revolution. One more Word after Revolution), edited by Gyula Tóth, Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1982, pp. 563–91. Hungarian Responses 97

were best represented by political representation at the level of local government of the county. He put forward these ideas in two pamphlets, which are linked: After Revolution (1850) and Another Word after Revolution (1851).8 In these pieces addressed to both Austrians and Hungarians Kemény argued that a number of common interests connected the two countries, that the failure of the freedom struggle and the political and economic decline could be turned into advantages. In the world of Hungarian intellectual life 1857 marked the gradual emergence of a liberal movement, which brought together historians and writers who stood behind Ferenc Deák, and those who opposed them. Kemény, along with the literary historian Gyulai, and Antal Csengery, the editor of Budapesti Szemle (Budapest Review), backed Deák. After the lively public life and the ascent of the press during the years of the Age of Reform (1825–48) a setback took place after the freedom struggle. The reading public dwindled as a result of executions, emigration and exile of the intelligentsia; the primary readers were traders and businessmen. Freedom of the press, one of the demands and achievements of the freedom struggle was practically untouched, there was no censorship.9 However, the police had a strong control over the press. Newspapers had to be submitted to the police after printing and one hour before circulation; circulation and posting of the paper could start only if no objection was raised. The result of this system was self-censorship exercised by the editors and publishers in fear of possible material loss. The press law of 1852 prescribed a large sum of caution-money to guarantee that ‘no incitement against the throne, the unity of empire, morality and order’ would be published in newspapers. This essay deals with four publications: 1. Budapesti Hírlap (Budapest News) (1853–60), a half-ofﬁ cial daily; 2. Vasárnapi Újság (Sunday Magazine) (1854–1921), a weekly edited by the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 famous Hungarian novelist, Mór Jókai, and his friend, Albert Pákh;

8 Kemény, Változatok a történelemre. 9 György Kókay, Géza Buzinkay and Gábor Murányi, A magyar sajtó története (The History of the Hungarian Press), Budapest: A Magyar Újságírók Szövetsége — a Bálint György Újságíró-iskola kiadása a Magyar Könyv Alapítvány támogatásával, 1994, pp. 107–29. 98 Margit Köves

3. Budapesti Szemle (1857–59), which became a leading journal of academic orientation and liberalism edited by Antal Csengery; and 4. Pesti Napló (1850–1939), the most prominent and popular paper at the time. In the period 1849–58 Austrian political pressure prevented the emergence of clearly expressed differences between the political views of those representing feudal, historical rights and those who more or less supported 1848, but started reconsidering their originally revolutionary point of view after 1849, moving from radical positions to various shades of liberal standpoints. The second group found their organ in Pesti Napló, which articulated their views and propagated passive resistance.10 Pesti Napló did not go into matters concerning the internal structure of the Empire, it mainly dealt with external politics and stayed within the framework of constitutional legality. Ferenc Deák and his supporters, who from the beginning of the 1860s were increasingly seen as politicians able to resist the Austrian system of absolutist politics, collected around Pesti Napló, especially after the mid-1850s when Kemény took over as chief editor. In the course of the next ten years (1857–66) Pesti Napló prepared the ground for the compromise with the Austrians. This essay refers to all four newspapers, but mainly to Pesti Napló and Budapesti Szemle, in which we can see Kemény’s work with his speciﬁ c view of history and progress. In the reports and articles about the Indian rebellion themes and issues emerge which are often connected and also relevant for the Hungarian situation: the issue of whether it was a national revolution or a military mutiny; the question of constitutional monarchy and its institutions; the position of religion in India and national progress; Islam and the difference between religious and political Islam. A number of articles foreground the contrast between the orient and western civilisation and introduce the issue of Oriental Despotism.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 In regard to India’s economic position as part of the British empire, the exploitation of its riches is highlighted. Most of the issues emerged from reports of the discussions in the British Parliament. But the Hungarian press evolved its own framework for discussion, with some articles attempting to interpret the events in a framework of laws of history.

10 A magyar sajtó története, II/I 1848–1969, edited by Domokos Kosáry and Béla G.Németh, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1985, pp. 14–21. Hungarian Responses 99

As soon as the fi rst news of the mutiny reached in July 1857 the Hungarian papers discussed the religious and caste divisions within the Indian army and the difference between the army of the East India Company and the Indian army. Budapesti Hírlap published a three-part article about the sepoys at the end of July, highlighting the religious (Muslim–Hindu) and caste divisions, and the nationalities, which constituted the different regiments of the army, as well as the hierarchy in the army.11 Budapesti Hírlap mentions the Battle of Bharatpore in 1805 to underline the heroism of Indian troops, the fact that the higher ranks were entirely European and that a small number of Englishmen ruled over large masses of Indians. Some units of the Indian army sent to deal with the Taiping Rebellion were recalled as news of the Indian rebellion spread. Later there were suggestions to exchange the army units stationed in India and China. The question of a national army was extremely important for Hungarian readers since the separation of the Hungarian and the Austrian armies was one of the twelve demands of the revolutionaries in 1848.12 In August 1857 Disraeli in the British Parliament referred to the events in India as a national revolution which raised the issue of how to defi ne the events and questioned the offi cial defi nition of the uprising as a military mutiny. The offi cial response and the treatment of the participants had to be different if it was regarded as a national revolution. In January 1858 Hungarian papers raised the same question.13 They mention four sources: General Edwards, Sir John Lawrence, Lord Canning and the board of directors of the East India Company. These newspapers all argued that the uprising was a military mutiny, and even referred to it as ‘the panic of the Sepoys about changing into Christians’. The same newspapers quote Lawrence to report that people from the surrounding villages rushed to Delhi after its recapture ‘welcoming British protection’. The newspapers also referred Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 to reports in British papers that the people in general were not anti-British.

11 Budapesti Hírlap, Tárcza (Feuilleton), July 28, 29, 30, 1857. 12 Among the demands of the freedom of the press, annual parliament, civil and religious equality, joint sharing of taxes, release of political prisoners, the tenth demand in 1848 was: ‘our soldiers must not be dis- patched abroad, foreign soldiers must be removed from our soil.’ 13 Pesti Napló, January 5, 1857, Külföldi Hírek (News from Abroad). 100 Margit Köves

The Indian uprising came at a time when Hungarian liberals like Kemény and Csengery were evolving the conceptual system of history. In 1855 Csengery (1822–80) published a series in Pesti Napló in which he presented the works of Ranke, Lamartine and Palacky. He also worked on the translation of Macaulay’s writings into Hungarian. Csengery and Kemény developed the concept of nation as a community created by culture within a concrete, political, historical and economic framework.14 Though many of the articles in Pesti Napló are not signed we know that most of them were written either by Miksa Falk (1828–1908) or Zsigmond Kemény. Kemény’s language and interpretation is recognisable, Falk formulated his articles in a more popular form with hidden Hungarian references, analogies and parallels.

Constitutional Monarchy and Institutions Pesti Napló reports Disraeli’s speech, which approved of the conquest of India provided the government beneﬁ ted the land. ‘We conquered India, like William of Orange England with the promise of protection of religion and private property. India saw in us the protector of its religion and property. The principle of this policy changed about ten years ago. Since then we threaten every nationality with annihilation.’15

14 Zsigmond Kemény, Élet és irodalom. Tanulmányok (Life and Literature Studies), edited by Gyula Tóth, Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1971. 15 The lines from the original English version of Disraeli’s speech on the Indian mutiny, July 27, 1857 are as follows: … our conquest of India in the main has been a conquest of India only in the same sense in which William of Orange conquered England. We have been called in . . . by populations suffering under tyranny, and we have entered those kingdoms Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 and principalities to protect their religion and their property. It will be found in that wonderful progress of human events which the formation of our Indian empire presents that our occupation of any country has been preceded by a solemn proclamation and concluded by a sacred treaty, in which we undertook to respect and maintain inviolate the rights and privileges, the laws and customs, the property and religion of the people, whose affairs we were about to administer. . . . But, Sir, of late years a new principle appears to have been adopted in the government of India. If the old principle — the principle upon which our empire was created and Hungarian Responses 101

The report of Disraeli’s rhetoric also reveals that for the liberal authors of Pesti Napló Britain along with Belgium was seen as a model of constitutional monarchy, with the king as the constitutional head of the state who could deal with national and social discontent on the basis of the constitution. In the summer of 1857 there were protests and demonstrations in Belgium. Pesti Napló emphasised the positive role of the constitution and the fact that constitutional existence provided the Belgians with ‘political maturity’ and ‘sober consciousness’, which helped to resolve the crisis. The Hungarian press depended for information on English, German and French sources. But information also reached the British press and Parliament late. Though the telegraph was invented in 1840 and in regular use between America and Britain, its use elsewhere in the world was still limited. There were plans to connect India and Britain under the Red Sea. Pesti Napló comments how the shortage of news from India made the reports of The Times malicious. ‘The paper gives the impression as if it was introduced into some terrible secret, it prepares its readers for the worst. Delhi, which is surrounded by a simple stone wall, has become a terrible wall. Not only has every Bengali soldier changed into a rebel in their eyes but the native armies have started wavering even in Bombay and Madras.’16 The December issue of Vasárnapi Újság carried a sketch of Indian history with a number of illustrations and a summary of England’s role in regard to the rebellion:

And now if the Sepoy rebellion does not take a national direction (which it has already taken) and is crushed by England, which we strongly believe will happen, then England can provide institutions for the future to safeguard itself against such uprisings: East-India will become the foundation of the greatness and richness of England.17 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

established, and which prevailed until very recent times — was a respect for nationality, the principle of the new system seems to be the reverse, and may be described as one which would destroy nationality.’ http://hansard. millbanksystems.com/commons/1857/jul/27/motion-for-papers; accessed January 21, 2010. 16 Pesti Napló, July 25, 1857, ‘Külföld’ (Abroad). 17 Vasárnapi Újság, Gusztáv Pokorny, December 6, 1857 (number 49), p. 544. 102 Margit Köves

Religion Popular rumours circulated by the English papers about the religious fanaticism of Indians were reported by Pesti Napló. This was put forward as the reason for the uprising. According to the papers, the ‘padres’ had asked the queen to allow them to convert the Indians into Christians with the aid of pork grease on bullet charges. Pesti Napló characterised this accusation as ridiculous: ‘Such allegations are made by fanatics or by such people who want to exploit the gullibility of the masses.’18 In the reports about the British atrocities the paper switches to ﬁ rst person plural to intensify the voice and emotional stress of The Times in order to create a distance between British opinion and the position of the Hungarian paper.

We have to make the Indian monsters feel the weight of our anger. We support our soldiers in the fulﬁ llment of their duties if they commit similar acts of revenge on those who are not even humans.19

Pesti Napló adds that ‘terrible revenge’ is demanded, also because the uprising is deﬁ ned as a ‘military mutiny’. In a three-part overview of ‘India and its people’ published in Budapesti Szemle Zsigmond Kemény presents the religions of India mainly through the relationship of the Christian churches (Syrian Christians, Catholics and Lutherans) to Hinduism.20 In an early work Kemény had divided Europe into two parts on the basis of the relationship between church and state. In his model of the liberal state, state and religion are separated, as are the civil and private spheres of life. The idea that religion is a part of the private sphere of the individual was emphasised because of the political atmosphere in the Bach regime during which the Austrian government appointed only Catholics to high public posts. According to Kemény, the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ancient system of the Hindus ‘covers all relationships in life’, because of which Christianity may not be attractive for them. He also argues that the missionaries are overzealous and supports this

18 Pesti Napló, July 25, 1857, ‘Külföld’. 19 Ibid. 20 Budapesti Szemle, Zsigmond Kemény, ‘India és népei’ (India and its People), 1857, second volume, pp. 307–22. Hungarian Responses 103

view with his sketch of such missionaries settled in the ‘Hurdwar’ market distributing leafl ets against baths of purifi cation. As a liberal, Kemény disapproves of the intervention of the state in matters of religion except for when there is danger to life, like in the case of Sati or the murder of unwanted children. Pesti Napló devoted special attention to the role of England in relation to Islam. The Berlin Kreuzzeitung (a conservative royal paper) attacked Palmerston as a supporter of Islam and revolution, and in response Pesti Napló came up with a theory of difference between political and religious Islam.21 The Crimean war of 1855, with Prussia fi ghting on the side of Russia and Britain on the side of Turkey, provided the backdrop to these positions. Pesti Napló maintained that England supported political Islam because it played a positive role at the time in Europe. In contrast, religious Islam is considered by Kemény as part of the private sphere:

Religious Mohammedanism was never supported by England, because in general England does not support, and does not persecute, any religion; in a country where the house of the citizen is his castle, and is considered holy by everybody. The Government of such a country does not want to sink into the hearts of the people and purify it with the force of authority from the dirt; and what England does not do at home, it would not do elsewhere. It does not care what the faith in Istanbul is, they in Istanbul can believe in anything they want, or in nothing if they wish.22

The relationship between Britain and India is rather deﬁ ned by the relationship of conqueror and conquered: ‘a suppressed nation never kisses the hand of an alien, who annihilates his freedom, and forces the proud nation’s neck into a yoke, whoever that alien is.’ But Pesti Napló simultaneously argues that British rule could lead to development in the framework of constitutional monarchy. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Orientalism and Western Civilisation On September 18, 1857 the papers reported three possibilities about the disappearance of Nana Sahib from three different sources: one was that Nana Sahib had disappeared; the other that Nana Sahib

21 Pesti Napló, September 12,1857, Tájékoztatás (Information). 22 Pesti Napló, September 12, 1857. 104 Margit Köves

had committed suicide; and the third that Nana Sahib had killed himself and his family. Vasárnapi Újság in its November issue carried a piece on Nana Sahib, the origin of his name, his life, his adoption and his past relationship with the English and the ofﬁ cials of the East India Company before the mutiny:

He brought them on elephants to dine in his magniﬁ cent palace and introduced his wives and children to them. He did all this to get his father’s pension, but this was denied to him because he was only an adopted son.23

The description of Nana Sahib reveals an almost ﬁ ction-like interest in the person: ‘his Excellency is a stout gentleman, his face is round, his eyes are shining, restless, the complexion of his face is almost white, at least he is not darker than the Spaniards in Europe. His features betray a cheerful person, an attitude ready for playful jokes.’ The description ends with a surprising contrast when the paper suggests that Nana Sahib ‘will give a lot of work to the English until they can hang him on the gallows-tree for which he is meant’.24 The theme of Nana Sahib and the news from Marseilles and England about the death of General Wheeler and the women of his company became the basis for discussions of Oriental despotism.25 ‘Reading these reports one does not know which European journalist would demand that the war should continue based on the rules of international warfare against these wild animals — the sepoys.’ The issue of cruelty and inhumanity appears with less distance in the reports of Vasárnapi Újság. In November both Pesti Napló and Budapesti Hírlap published feuilletons: ‘An Indian Court’ by Gyula Bulyovszki and a history of Delhi, by Valdemar, a Prussian Prince, perhaps an invented author, whose character suited the demands of the genre. The feuilleton had become a popular genre in Hungarian

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 newspapers at the end of the 1850s. Bulyovszki’s piece is about the cruelty and despotism at the Indian court. The narrator is an eyewitness and this adds a constant voyeuristic effect. The last part of his ﬁ ve part series, ends with a generalisation:

23 Vasárnapi Újság, November 22, 1857, p. 509. 24 Ibid. 25 Pesti Napló, September 1, 1857. Hungarian Responses 105

‘This is how it happened and not only in the Indian courts, but in each place, which is part of the East. The ﬁ rst caliphs, the Spanish Arabs, the Mameluk Sultans, the Mongols and their more recent followers. The East is all over and everywhere the same as in the new Lucknow, it must have gone on in the palaces of the Achmanids and at the courts of the pharaohs.26

Bulyovszki’s piece ends with a remark that refl ects the emerging ideology of oriental despotism and its amplifi cation in fi ctional accounts:

. . . the only new thing is that despotism is sketched in such detail. When one speaks about despotism in Europe you know what you mean, but under our cool climate, the word has no teeth and nails, the real hot despotism, which pricks up its ears lying in the green grass in its mottled snakeskin is characteristic of the East.27

The September 10 issue of Pesti Napló shows that a new interpretation of British rule had emerged. ‘The cause of England in India is the cause of bourgeois development, the cause of humanity. For this reason we also register news of positive content.’ In an article about the position of Islam after the Crimean War published on October 25, Pesti Napló refers to England as the country that can save India for trade and civilisation.

Culture and Intellectual Conquest Civilisation and culture were also seen as possible means of intellectual conquest by the liberal authors. On September 16 the editor (probably Kemény without his signature) reacted sharply to an article in the Oestg. Zeitung, which had described the importance of German as a world language. The article rejected the idea of world languages being identifi ed as languages of culture. The editor even Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 quotes Emperor Francis Joseph’s remark, ‘Respect each language’, and then develops a theory of cultural languages exemplifi ed by Danish, Italian and Hungarian which had their own literatures, were able to express processes of scientifi c reasoning, and had a rhetoric of their own. The editor resolutely defends Hungarian against the

26 Pesti Napló, November 14, 1857. 27 Ibid. 106 Margit Köves

possibility of forced introduction of German, apprehensions about which were widespread immediately following the defeat of the freedom struggle during the terror of Haynau. He emphatically maintains that the middle and lower classes, which had registered an increase in readership in the 1840s, would hold on to the Hungarian language as their birthright. This idea is exemplifi ed by Greece, which was occupied by military means, but which conquered Rome by means of its intellectual superiority. Kemény fi nds culture and language also important in the context of India. In his writings in Budapesti Szemle he mentions the role of Oudh as a source of inspiration for the freedom fi ghters after the fall of Delhi.28 Oudh is described as the centre of religion, literature and glory of the past, and admiration expressed for its literature and language, and the ‘strange coincidence’ of Hindu–Muslim cultural unity in the rebellion.

Economy and Progress Economy and trade became leading subjects in Pesti Napló after the middle of the 19th century.29 Large-scale enterprises and technical change were viewed as symptoms of progress. The Indian events were also described in the framework of the constant expansion of world trade and intense international economic rivalry with French and Russian interests in India. In Budapesti Szemle Kemény emphasises the importance of the cotton, silk, spices and indigo trade from India. The rebellion induced a slump, which affected the British economy and European manufacturers and created an overall setback in the European ﬁ nancial markets.30 Comparing the proportion of taxes at the time of Akbar (30 per cent of the production) and the East India Company (50 per cent of the production) Kemény establishes that the guiding idea of the British government in India was exploitation.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 He wavers between two positions: capitalism as the path to bourgeois development and industrial growth and capitalism in the light of exploitation of the riches of India.

28 Budapesti Szemle, Zsigmond Kemény, ‘A keletindiai kérdés. India története’ (The East India Question: The History of India), 1857, second volume, pp. 272–88, p. 274. 29 Pesti Napló, ‘Franciaország belsõ-indiai tervei’ (French Designs for Central-India), November 13, 1857. 30 Budapesti Szemle, Kemény, ‘A keletindiai kérdés. India története’, pp. 284–85. Hungarian Responses 107

History and Providence At the beginning of December we get a different view of the events.31 Pesti Napló announces a change of editor; Kemény as a new chief editor gives a summary of the events of the year, marking 1857 as an important year for world history, a year of progress. He underlines two important changes in world politics: the emancipation of the serfs in Russia (which took place in practice only in 1861) and the new position of India: ‘The British lion does not any longer consider Indians suppressed mice who are jumping around and can be shaken off with one shrug of its mane.’32 In the Christmas and New Year issues the lead article on ‘The importance of the Indian and Chinese rebellions’ in three parts connects the future of Europe to what happens in India and China.33 In the account Kemény describes the caste system as ‘inhuman’ and argues that India could never become a nation because of the overall fragmentation of society. He expresses his admiration of ‘a people of many millions, who possess a language of perfection in the organization of its structure and a literature, which by its quantity and quality you can only call “gigantic”’.34 He sees Indians as ‘extremely talented people’, as examples of intellectual brilliance, but simultaneously as ‘indifferent, passive, easily subdued by foreign conquerors’. He is greatly concerned about how the ‘principle of liberty and individual ability’ would evolve among Indians and whether they would form a nation without the caste system. In China he sees other possibilities, since he believes that the Chinese are only interested in material enjoyments. He forecasts in anguish the events after the possible British victory in India. Providence is a category in Kemény’s thought, which justiﬁ es and connects the changing with unchangeable. He describes the collision of the timeless (India) with modernity (Britain), though Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 providence does not justify the violence and injustice committed by the British in India. Kemény idealises British institutions and constitutional monarchy. He contrasts Britain with the Austrian monarchy in the

31 Pesti Napló, December 6, 1857. 32 Ibid. 33 Pesti Napló, December 24, 29 and 30, 1857. 34 Ibid. 108 Margit Köves

period following the freedom struggle when it was not ready to rule Hungary on the basis of a constitution. But he is far from supporting Britain’s role, instead highlighting the history of British–Indian relations, the exploitation of India’s wealth, the arrogance of British offi cers, the hierarchy in the army and the excesses committed by the British during the mutiny. The reporters of Pesti Napló do not consent or disagree; their view of history and the specifi c position of Hungary forced them to accept British intervention. They saw history as tragedy for Indians and for Hungarians, but hoped that the future would resolve confl icts. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Hungarian Responses 109 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 110 Sarah Lemmen , January 30, 1858. Illustrirte Zeitung Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ‘Flucht der Sipoys bei Entsetzung der Residenz von Lacknau durch Sir Colin Campbell am 18. November’ (Sepoys Fleeing during the Relief ‘Flucht der Sipoys bei Entsetzung Residenz von Lacknau durch Sir Colin Campbell am 18. November’ (Sepoys Fleeing during the of Lucknow by Sir Colin Campbell on 18 November), in Czech Representations of India and the Rebellion 111

7 Czech Representations of India and the Rebellion, 1850–1930 Sarah Lemmen

In the 19th century, a common image of Czech self-representation was of being oppressed by the German-ruled Habsburg empire. Self- descriptions such as the ‘Indians of the Habsburg Monarchy’ can be found as reference to the Czech nation in various writings of the 19th century.1 Even though this slogan refers to native Americans, not to the people of India, it emphasises nevertheless the urge to identify with oppressed or colonised peoples and can be read as a metaphor for the alleged parallel fate of the Czech nation. The Czech society was not one that had especially strong ties with India. Still, India had been a signiﬁ cant point of reference in the history of Czech literature and political discourse.2 The Indian rebellion of 1857 became not only a major focus in the Czech newspapers of the time, but was also written about in the years and decades to come. The aim of this essay is to reﬂ ect on the changing

1 Cf. the examples given by Oldrˇich Kašpar, ed., Tam za morˇem je Amerika. Dopisy a vzpomínky cˇeských vysteˇhovalcu˚ do Ameriky v 19. století (Across the Ocean is America: Letters and Memories of Czech Emigrants to America in the 19th Century), Pardubice: Kora, 1992, p. 153; Josef Polišenský, ‘Tschechische und deutschböhmische Auswanderung’ (Czech and German-Bohemian Emigration), Bohemia, 2001, 42: 27–38, here p. 29; Ivan Pfaff, Cˇeská prˇináležitost k Západu v letech 1815-1878. K historii Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 cˇeského evropanství mezi vídenˇským a berlínským kongresem (Czech Belonging to the West in the Years 1815–1878: On the History of Czech Europeanism between the Congresses of Vienna and Berlin), Brno: Doplneˇk, 1996, p. 227. 2 For an overview on Czech–Indian relations, see M. Krása, ‘Cˇesko- indické vztahy v pru˚beˇhu veˇku˚, (‘Czech–Indian Relations in the Course of Time’), in J. Strnad, ed., Deˇjiny státu˚ Indie (History of India), Prague: NLN, 2003, pp. 861–87; M. Krása, ‘Pocˇátky známosti Indie v cˇeských zemích’ (‘The Beginnings of an Interest in India in the Bohemian Lands’), Sborník historický, 1971, 18: 149–81. 112 Sarah Lemmen

representations of the Indian rebellion in Czech society during the period from 1857 to the 1930s. In the Czech view, the preoccupation with exotic, far-away places such as India, Egypt or China became, and that is my basic assumption, a necessity in the course of the 19th century. Due to increasing worldwide connections since the second half of the 19th century, nation-building processes had to cope with much greater geographical dimensions than before.3 It became necessary not only for imperial powers, but also for ‘small nations’ to deal with foreign regions on a global scale. I will ﬁ rst develop some general ideas on the relationship of post- colonial approaches and ‘small’ European nations, that is, nations without a nation-state, and, second, apply these ideas to the Czech case in the middle of the 19th century. In a third step, I will analyse Czech representations of the Indian uprising, which cover three time periods: the direct reaction to the uprising in 1857 in newspaper articles, two encyclopaedias published in the following decades, and a novel from the interwar period. This will enable me to also discuss the possible changes of interpretation of the Indian rebellion.

I Historians of east central European history rarely come across debates on post-colonialism in the context of their work. This is easily explained by the missing colonial striving of these central European nations which, until 1918, did not even have a nation- state, a prerequisite to obtain colonies in the ﬁ rst place.4 Rather, the region has been interpreted as being itself colonised.5

3 Both Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds, Das Kaiserreich transnational. Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914 (The German Empire in a Transnational Perspective: Germany in the World, 1871–1914), Göttingen: Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004; and Sebastian Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Globalisation and Nation in the German Empire), Munich: Beck, 2006, discuss this observation for the German case. 4 Not only the ‘small’ east central European nations, but also the Habsburg monarchy, one of the most powerful European empires of the time, has been left out in the ‘classical’ works of post-colonial studies. This is done so explicitly by Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism, London: Vintage, 1994, p. xxv. 5 As noted earlier, the self-description as being ‘colonised’ can be found in the Czech discourse of the time, but was also vivid in other parts Czech Representations of India and the Rebellion 113

However, the concept of Orientalism has not completely passed by the study of eastern Europe. Based on this concept, eastern Europe too, including east central Europe, has been identifi ed as a construct of the west. Eastern Europe was considered by western Europeans since the 18th century as not quite Europe, but not yet Asia, or ‘Europe but not Europe’.6 If the relationship between the west and the Orient was one of domination and subordination, so was the relationship between western Europe and eastern Europe, even if to a lesser degree. Any kind of representation of these regions was infl uenced by this dichotomous relationship. While this approach offers certain parallels between the Orient and eastern Europe in their quality as objects rather than subjects, which would in turn support the Czech notion of being the ‘Indians of the Habsburg monarchy’, it does not refer at all to the relationship between eastern Europe and the Orient, but remains within the frames of subject–object, of ‘inventor’–‘invented’. This interpretation of ‘in-betweenness’, as ‘Europe but not Europe’, might also be useful when considering the perceptions of the Orient by eastern European countries. On the one hand, the Czech national discourse, albeit non-colonial, adopted some fundamental assumptions of European colonial discourse. The idea of the non- European world coined by this discourse is refl ected, for example, in the scientifi c division into history for so-called ‘civilised peoples’ and ethnology for so-called ‘primitive peoples’. The institutionalisation of a dichotomous division of the world was independent of actual

of the region, as R. Detrez has shown for the Balkans at the turn of the century. Raymond Detrez, Colonialism in the Balkans: Historic Realities and Contemporary Perceptions, published on May 15, 2002, at www.kakanien. ac.at/beitr/theorie/RDetrez1.pdf, accessed on July 15, 2007. From a different Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 point of view, post-colonial theories have been recently applied on east central Europe especially to ﬁ nd new ways of describing the Bosnian– Austrian relationship after the annexation of Bosnia by the Habsburg monarchy. Cf. Moritz Czáky, Johannes Feichtinger, Ursula Prutsch, eds, Habsburg postcolonial: Machtstrukturen und kollektives Gedächtnis (Habsburg Postcolonial: Structures of Power and Collective Memory), Innsbruck: Studien-Verlag, 2003, as well as the associated discussion on ‘Kakanien revisited’ at www.kakanien.ac.at. 6 Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994, p. 7. 114 Sarah Lemmen

colonial possessions. On the other hand, the Czech society lacked certain features that seemed necessary for colonialist perceptions, such as direct inﬂ uence or colonial power relations.

II I would like to look now at the Czech national discourse of the mid-19th century, with its basic quality as a ‘small nation’. As con- ceptualised by the Czech historian Miroslav Hroch, a ‘small nation’ is a nation without a nation-state. This ‘smallness’ was an important part of the Czech self-understanding of the time. The Bohemian lands, that is, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, were part of the Habsburg monarchy since the 16th century. By 1800, the Czech language had almost disappeared from public life and was used only by the lower classes. The language used in administration, education and trade was German, the upper classes were German-speaking. When at the turn of the century a small circle of intellectuals focused on promoting the Czech language and culture, they developed a clear distinction between the ‘Czech oppressed’ and the ‘German oppressors’. The self-representation of the Czech nation as a ‘small’ and ‘oppressed nation’ became current. The focus was extended to other ‘small nations’ inside and outside Europe with which the Czech nation could be compared or from whose experiences ideas could be drawn about how to accomplish greater sovereignty. National uprisings were broadly reported on and sometimes even actively supported, such as the Polish uprisings of 1830 and 1863 or the Irish uprising in 1848.7

III 1857

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 In the Habsburg monarchy, the Indian rebellion in 1857 came at a time which was still greatly affected by the failed revolution of 1848.

7 Cf. as an introduction Václav Žácˇek, Ohlas polského povstání r. 1863 v Cˇechách (Reception of the Polish Uprising of 1863 in Bohemia), Prague: Orbis, 1935. Cf. also Miloš Rˇ ezník, Za naši a vaši svobodu. Století polských povstání (1794-1864) (For Our and Your Freedom. A Century of Polish Uprisings [1794–1864]), Prague: Argo, 2006. Czech Representations of India and the Rebellion 115

An authoritarian neo-absolutist regime had been installed, which inﬂ uenced the 1850s in every respect. Political persecution, strict censorship, police measures and harsh oppression of any national meetings dominated this period. A civil society was hardly existent. Most print media were shut down. Therefore, not surprisingly, the main Czech newspaper in the 1850s was loyal to the government. However, this newspaper, the Pražské noviny (Prague News), covered the Indian rebellion to a great extent. The ﬁ rst detailed article on the Indian rebellion was printed on July 3, 1857. From then on, the newspaper took it as a very serious matter and devoted on an average an article every second day to the rebellion. It quickly became the single most covered event in the ‘foreign news’ section. Given the sheer number of articles published, it seems safe to say that there was a great public interest in the events in India. Compared to Bohemia, the major German-language newspaper in Prague, Pražské noviny carried about a fourth more articles on the uprising during 1857. Without any correspondents in India, Prague journalists were dependent on other news sources — and therefore relied heavily on British newspapers drawn from a broad spectrum. The articles mention such diverse English newspapers as The Times, The Morning Post, or The Globe, as well as newspapers from India. It is striking how strictly the newspapers stuck to the English interpretations of the events in India. Most of the time, the articles gave an overview of different interpretations of English newspapers, often even directly quoting, without so much as giving a second opinion. This left little room for independent interpretations by the Czech journalists. While the reports represent a kind of summarised version of the English press, it is noteworthy which aspects were transmitted. Brutal atrocities from both sides were conveyed in every detail, as also troop manoeuvres and the defence and fall of single bastions. The fate of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 individual British generals was reported as if they were known to the Czech readership and the accurate names of certain troops and battalions were provided. The British generals were all depicted as ‘brave’, ‘fearless’, and ready to die for their country. Only very few names were introduced from the Indian side, among them Nana Sahib, who was described as pure evil, as a ‘treacherous and cowardly murderer’, and was perceived as not only bloodthirsty and cruel, 116 Sarah Lemmen

but also dishonest.8 On the other hand, the refusal to act against one’s religious beliefs as the cause for the outbreak of the rebellion was seen as just and understandable, despite all its brutalities. One should not forget that for the newspaper Post, which was frequently quoted, the ‘uprising’ was provoked by coarse injustice against the Indians.9 At the same time, the reports focused not only on British victims of the uprising, but on ‘Europeans’ in general. The murder or successful escape of Europeans in India was an important part of the news. On September 20, 1857, there was a reference to a ‘European army’ that was fi ghting against the rebels.10 It was also the ‘whole of Europe’, that was anxiously waiting for news from India.11 The argument of a common European fate or even Europeanisation was drawn further: not only the Europeans living in India were threatened, but India or even the whole of Asia became a threat for all of Europe. The Indian uprising stopped being a purely British dilemma, but became a ‘European problem’. This becomes especially clear in an article published on September 15, when several European governments reportedly sent fi nancial support to Britain. The Czech newspaper translated it as an act of support by ‘all civilized nations’, the list of which included Italy, France and the German lands.12 It is left unclear though, whether the Bohemian lands were considered part of this ‘civilized world’. Not even the Czech editors took a stand on this question. Only rarely was the British situation refl ected upon from a Czech viewpoint, when, for example, at the end of August the readers were reminded that in such a situation at least, the British were not to be envied for their possessions overseas.13 The interpretation changed from ‘mutiny’ or ‘rebellion’ to ‘brutal rebellion’, from ‘unrest’ of the ‘rebels’ to ‘uprising’ and then to ‘general uprising’. By the end of the year 1857, the term had become ‘Indian war’, and the rebels had turned into ‘enemies’. Generally, the description of the rebellion became more threatening with the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 passing of time.

8 Pražské noviny, September 8, 1857, p. 2. 9 Ibid., July 4, 1857, p. 2. 10 Ibid., September 20, 1857, p. 2. 11 Ibid., September 19, 1857, p. 2. 12 Ibid., September 15, 1857, p. 3. 13 Ibid., August 26, 1857, p. 2. Czech Representations of India and the Rebellion 117

The news coverage on the Indian rebellion was very much dependent on British reports. The interpretation, closely in line with British perceptions, gives London the role of a ‘gateway’ through which information was fi ltered and fi nally reached the Czech lands. While it is diffi cult to judge the impact of censorship, the detailed coverage nevertheless indicates a great interest in the rebellion. One of the reasons for such a fi erce focus on the rebellion might have been the still vivid memories of the failed revolution in Vienna and Prague in 1848. Apparently, other nations, such as the Bulgarians, who were also affected by strict censorship, offered more critical refl ections on the British in India.14

1880s–1900s With the introduction of a new constitution in the Habsburg monarchy in 1861, the situation in the Czech lands changed to a great degree. Reduced control by the government at all levels, which included less censorship and police surveillance, encouraged the development of the Czech national movement, new print media and a growing civil society. This new atmosphere also stimulated Czech academic scholarship, which, in turn, enabled the publication of the ﬁ rst two Czech encyclopaedias. Both were published in the second half of the 19th century and count as milestones of the Czech national movement. Both received a great authority in the Czech national discourse. The ﬁ rst Czech encyclopaedia, Riegru˚ v slovník naucˇný, was published in the years 1860–74. The volume containing the article on ‘India’ was published in 1865, only eight years after the outbreak of the rebellion of 1857. Already, the interpretation of the rebellion had somewhat shifted. The uprising was a central — if short — theme of the article. The ‘Mutiny of the Sepoy’, as it was referred to here, was called the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ‘single most important event in the history of British-India’.15 The outbreak of the rebellion received a new connotation.

14 This is at least suggested by M. Krása, Looking towards India, Prague: Orbis, 1969, p. 81. 15 Indie (India), in František Ladislav Rieger, ed., Slovník naucˇný (Encyclopaedia), volume 4, Prague: Kober a Markgraf, 1865, pp. 36–41, p. 41. 118 Sarah Lemmen

While the cartridges that were distributed by the British and supposedly contained animal fat were seen as the trigger of the rebellion, the ‘real cause’ was supposed to be the ‘unpolitical reign of the British as conquerors’.16 Unlike the newspaper coverage of 1857 that viewed the rebellion primarily as an outburst against the breaking of religious rules, the encyclopaedia offered an interpretation along national lines and employed concepts of political sovereignty. A further shift in interpretation can be seen in the second encyclopaedia, the Ottu˚v slovník (1888–1909), which published the volume on India in 1897. Even though the rebellion received plenty of space, it was portrayed here as not so important. On the one hand, it was referred to as ‘turmoil’, ‘revolt’, and even ‘revolution’, on the other hand, meagre participation and support by the broad population was emphasised. The ‘population’, according to the entry, ‘stayed altogether passive’ and the regional rulers, with the exception of Nana Sahib, ‘did not join the rebels’. A depiction of the rebellion as overall harmless in nature was further emphasised by the statement that ‘by the end of 1857, the fate of the uprising was already sealed’.17 While the article of the older encyclopaedia was based solely on British and one German source, the second encyclopaedia already referred to four books in Czech. This also indicates the beginning of professional studies on India in the Czech lands, which was developing at around the same time. An ambiguous stand can be attributed to the Czech geologist Otokar Feistmantel, who had spent eight years in Calcutta, from 1875 to 1883. As a gazetted offi cer in British service, he had been integrated into the colonial structures, which provided him a secure position. Taking part in the Czech discourse on India, his arguments refl ect a stronger colonial, pro-British standpoint. He published some of his travel experiences in his book called Osm let ve Východní Indií (Eight Years in East India) in 1884. While most of the book Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 is dedicated to his travel accounts, he adds a surprisingly ill-fi tting chapter on the deeds of the British in India. Feistmantel referred to British rule in India as ‘necessary’, since Indians supposedly were

16 Ibid. 17 Indie Východní (East India), in Jan Otto, ed., Ottu˚v slovník naucˇný (Otto’s Encyclopaedia), volume 12, Prague: Otto, 1897, pp. 591–98, p. 597. Czech Representations of India and the Rebellion 119

not able to rule themselves. According to Feistmantel, the British treated the Indians very well.18 This implies the acceptance of the idea of a civilising mission, in which the British make a sacriﬁ ce for the sake of the Indians, while the Indians get the beneﬁ ts. With this argument, Feistmantel relates to some arguments which the British press had already carried in 1857, that the British were the only ones capable of such a task. Why was it so important for Otokar Feistmantel to point out the ‘especially kind’ treatment of the British? In fact, he was referring to ‘an article’ that he had read in a Czech magazine some time before, which mentioned British exploitation and Indian hardship.19 We can assume that this interpretation was a more generally accepted one for Feistmantel to take it so seriously and to contradict it as an eminent authority. This (in his eyes) false picture had to be corrected.

Interwar Period The third time period I would like to look at is the interwar period. With the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, the Czechs became — rather unexpectedly — a nation with a state. Having become a political subject in international relations, contacts with and knowledge of foreign countries and regions became increasingly important. A diplomatic network was created worldwide, economic relations were strengthened. Ties with India were also intensiﬁ ed.20 Economic ties between India and Czechoslovakia increased, the most important and notable entrepreneur being Tomáš Ba’ta, who went to India in 1931 to build factories and even the small town of Batanagar in 1936. In 1929, the Oriental Institute was founded, its task being academic engagement with India, the strengthening of cultural and economic ties between both countries, and the pro- motion of Czech–Indian cultural associations.21 Well-known Indian

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 writers such as Rabindranath Thakur held readings in Prague and were successfully published in Czech.

18 Otokar Feistmantel, Osm let ve Východní Indií (Eight Years in East India), Prague: Vilímek, 1884, p. 111. 19 Ibid. 20 Cf. Krása, Cˇesko-indické vztahy v pru˚beˇhu veˇku˚, pp. 861–87. 21 Cf. M. Krása, ‘Indo-Czechoslovak Societies. Historical Roots and Early Prospects’, Archív Orientální, 1990, 58: 20–32. 120 Sarah Lemmen

Though the Indian uprising had been fi ctionalised in other languages as early as 1859, as mainly the British production of more than 100 ‘mutiny-novels’ show, in the Czech case it was not until the 1930s that this event made it into fi ction.22 The growing attention towards the fate of the Indian nation became the most visible in words in 1933, with the publication of the novel Veˇrní prˇátelé. Povídky z boju˚ Indie o samostatnost (Faithful Friends: Stories from the Struggles of India for Independence).23 This is the fi rst ‘genuine’ Czech piece of fi ction (or any written document in general) that is dedicated solely to the uprising of 1857. Already the title offers a clear statement of the events of 1857 as a political struggle for freedom. While this suggests a great change in interpretation, it does in fact correlate with the growing interest in the Indian national movement since the early 1900s. The increasing reports on events in India turned the focus on the national struggle, implying also similar fates and parallels between the Czech and the Indian case. From this ‘nationalised’ point of view, the interpretation of the rebellion of 1857 along national lines is only consistent. The story itself, an adventure novel aimed at young readers, places the Czech character, a poor young orphan, at the centre of an event that is observed on a global scale.24 After a prelude in Bohemia, where the three main characters, a Czech, an Englishman and an Indian boy, meet for the fi rst time, the story is set mostly in India during the rebellion of 1857. In this setting, the three young men meet again as soldiers. When the Czech man becomes the captive of the Indian prince, a prison warden, who becomes his guardian at the

22 Astrid Erll, Prämediation–Remediation. Repräsentationen des indischen Aufstands in imperialen und post-kolonialen Medienkulturen (von 1857 bis zur Gegenwart) (Premediation–Remediation: Representations of the Indian Uprising in Imperial and Post-colonial Cultures of Media [from 1857 until Today]), Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2007, p. 2. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 The popular German three-volume novel on the ‘Indian mutiny’ by John Retcliffe, ﬁ rst published already in 1858–59, was translated into Czech only in 1929. 23 Josef Tichý, Veˇrní prˇátelé. Povídky z bojuº Indie o samostatnost (Faithful Friends: Stories from the Struggles of India for Independence), Prˇerov: Spolecˇenská knihtiskárna, 1933. No reliable information on the author is available. He is not even listed in the voluminous and thorough Lexikon cˇeské literatury (Dictionary of Czech Literature), Prague: Academia, 1985. 24 Erll, Prämediation–Remediation, p. 4. Czech Representations of India and the Rebellion 121

same time, tells him that the Indians had ‘no reason and no right to kill him’, since he was ‘no son of the island that our oppressors call home’.25 In this story, the Czech nation becomes an innocent nation, which could do no harm, even if working for the British army. In the fi nal battle, the three young men fi ght on opposite sides. While the British and the Indian are willing to risk their lives, the Czech boy mediates between both sides and manages to save the lives of all three of them. This novel offers several levels of interpretation. First of all it connects the Czech fate with that of the Indian and British and therefore lets the Czech nation (in the form of a boy) partake in grand and important historical events, if only in fi ction. The title already shows a change in interpretation: it was not an uprising anymore, or a mutiny, but a struggle for ‘independence’, and received a positive connotation in the Czech context. The innocent Czech boy, from a poor background, was after all the moral hero in a global event. The young man, as representative of the small Czech nation, is described as trusted by his friends and respected by his enemies. While he disregarded criteria such as social strata, religion or nationality, he believed in virtues such as honesty and loyalty. The standpoint of the Czech boy is clear: for him the Indian national struggle for freedom is a legitimate cause. Still, he condemns the violence used to achieve this goal. The belief in the right of all nations to be independent is upheld, a belief strongly propagated in the Czech lands in 1918. On the other hand, the British empire and its conduct in India is never basically questioned. The proclamation of the English queen as empress of India is interpreted as a promise of ‘freedom and justice’.26 While in British literature the ‘Indian mutiny’ acquired its signifi cance as a crisis and turning point in the history of the British empire, in this Czech novel it rather provided a setting for the Czech hero to display his virtues. A greater historical contextualisation is missing.27 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 IV Let me come back to my initial remarks: Assuming that there is a certain ‘Czech perception’ of the Indian uprising, the question would

25 Tichý, Veˇrní prˇátelé, p. 69. 26 Ibid., p. 86. 27 Erll, Prämediation–Remediation, p. 7. 122 Sarah Lemmen

be: Is there a relationship between not being a colonial power and the perceptions of colonial events, just as one is assumed for colonial powers and their perception of (their own) colonies? The interest in India grew constantly in the Czech society. The Indian case can be seen as an example of the processes of globalisation: the concern with India produced representations of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ which were part of the nationalisation process. At fi rst, in 1857, the press of this ‘non-dominant nation’ was dependent on news from the European powers, including their interpretations. London was the gateway through which the Czech society was informed about the events in India. It can be assumed that when reporting on colonial events, the press referred mostly to the concerned colonial capital. Therefore, the ‘gateway’ did not always have to be London, but could also be Paris, for example. Not a genuine British, but a colonial viewpoint dominated in the Czech newspapers of the time when writing about non-European regions. With regard to the 1880s, I suggested a difference in interpretation between those who wrote about India from home and could use it as a metaphor for their own situation, and those who had adopted a ‘colonial viewpoint’ during their stay in colonial structures in India. The novel from the interwar period does not so much draw parallels between Czech and Indian history, but rather defi nes both British and Indian aims as at least in part understandable and reasonable. The Czech fi ctional character becomes the mediator, the one ‘in between’ the colonial and colonised, or between the European and non-European. Let me end with an outlook into the year 1969, when the Czech Indologist Miloslav Krása published a book in English on Czech– Indian relations called Looking towards India. It was meant for an

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Indian audience. The dominant interpretation of Czech–Indian relations in this book is the alleged parallel development of Czech and Indian history and their struggle for independence. The rebellion of 1857 is interpreted here as the ‘ﬁ rst Indian war of independence’.28 The contributor of the foreword, Tara Chand, summarises the tenor of this book perfectly, when he writes: ‘The narrative . . .

28 Krása, Looking towards India, p. 82. Czech Representations of India and the Rebellion 123

demonstrates the close resemblance between the political fortunes of India and Czechoslovakia. . . . India was for nearly two centuries the victim of British imperialist exploitation, as Czechoslovakia was an appendage of Austro-Hungarian imperialism and Hitlerite tyranny.’29 The alleged parallel fate of the Czech and Indian nations, both anti-imperialist and repeatedly oppressed, found its continuous representation throughout the 20th century. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

29 Chand, Tara, ‘Foreword’, in Krása, Looking towards India, p. 5. A similar statement can be found in J. Pilát, ‘Tradicˇní prˇátelství Cˇ eskoslovenska a Indie’ (Traditional Friendship between Czechoslovakia and India), Nový Orient, 1962, 17(1): pp. 123–25. 124 Rashmi Joshi

8 Buˇlgarska Dnevnitsa: A Bulgarian Response to the Uprising Rashmi Joshi

The concern of the present essay will be to show how the 1857 uprising was refl ected in the Bulgarian journal Buˇlgarska Dnevnitsa (The Bulgarian Diary), edited by the Bulgarian national leader, Georgi Stoıˇkov Rakovski. He wrote profusely on the uprising and tried to draw the attention of his fellowmen towards this event. Unlike the European Renaissance, the Bulgarian Renaissance was not preoccupied with the renewal of classical culture; instead it combined its Enlightenment with European Romanticism and directed its energy towards modernisation of Bulgarian culture and economy and restoration of Bulgarian independence. The birth of the national states of Serbia, Greece and Italy infused the desire for political independence in the hearts of the Bulgarian thinkers and leaders. This national spirit and secular outlook is refl ected in the literature and journalism of this period. Georgi Stoıˇkov Rakovski was a Bulgarian revolutionary, an important fi gure of the Bulgarian National Revival and a crusader against Ottoman rule. He was also a well-known writer. The credit of establishing some sort of organisation in the chaotic movement for national independence goes to him. He inspired the Bulgarian emigrants to organise themselves and fi ght for national liberation. He laid the foundation of Bulgarian revolutionary journalism and wrote on political and public affairs.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 He believed in liberty, equality and justice for all and expressed his views in a very lucid, convincing and argumentative style. The subjects he touched on were problems affecting not only his country but also international problems. Especially those problems which were concerned with freedom struggles were closest to his heart. Rakovski believed that besides armed struggle the media could also play a vital role in awakening the people and building public opinion. During 1857, his revolutionary activities compelled him to cross over to Romanian territory. He ﬁ rst went to Bucharest and then A Bulgarian Response to the Uprising 125

to Novi Sad. Novi Sad had developed during those days into a centre of cultural and democratic ideas. Here Rakovski found a sincere friend in Danilo Medkovich, a distinguished Serbian journalist, who succeeded in procuring permission for Rakovski to edit the Bulgarian version of the Serbian journal Srubski Dnevnik (Serbian Diary). This new responsibility was welcomed by Rakovski because it provided him an opportunity of fulfi lling his long-desired dream to voice the miseries and grievances of the Bulgarian people. The temperament of Rakovski was not prepared to accept the limitations imposed by the Srubski Dnevnik though he was given the freedom to choose the content from the Serbian journal and present it with his own interpretation. He wanted more space for the Bulgarian problems and events which refl ected the struggle of the common people. During this time the only well-circulated newspaper in Bulgarian was Tsarigradski Vestnik (Constantinople Newspaper), which had a monotonous style of presenting facts and was a pro-Ottoman empire and bourgeois paper. In contrast to this, Buˇlgarska Dnevnitsa addressed issues relating to the exploitation of Bulgarian people and championed the cause of nations fi ghting for their liberation and rights. The news about the Indian mutiny was of special interest to Rakovski because he identifi ed the struggle with his own national liberation struggle. He edited the journal from July 17, 1857 to October 16, 1857. However, when its 19th issue was under print it was confi scated before it could be circulated. The authorities dreaded the journal because of its wide popularity and the threat it signifi ed to the Ottoman authorities. Our present concern will be to analyse reports about the Indian mutiny that appeared in these issues edited by Georgi Stoıˇkov Rakovski. The major source of information for the Bulgarian journal was the British journals and newspapers. However, the reports in Buˇlgarska Dnevnitsa are not from the British point of view. Rakovski views the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 mutiny as a struggle for independence by the Indian people. The issue of July 17, 1857 includes two reports on India, the fi rst as the lead article on the front page and the second under the column ‘Asia’. They draw on reports published in The Herald, The Morning Post, The Times, etc. The lead article notes that the confi dence of the invincible British power has been shaken by the revolt in the army. The British are diverting forces from different parts of the world to India, but are practically dependent on the Indian army: 126 Rashmi Joshi

The biggest problem of the British in India is that they cannot rule even for an hour on their own or without the support of the local Indian army. Without the Indian soldiers all the public services will come to a grinding halt; revenue, law and order will stop functioning.1

Rakovski argues that, after such bloody events, in which several hundreds of British families have been murdered, it is obvious that the British and the Indians would regard each other as arch enemies. Neither love nor confi dence could exist any longer amongst them. Whatever existed earlier was already lost. The British would have to fi rst suppress the revolt and then reconcile with such a huge hostile population. It would be diffi cult for the British to protect their interests without help from local Indian armies. The article views the fi ght of the Indian people as justifi ed: ‘Ultimately, India must belong to the Indians and not to the British. Sooner or later this must happen.’2 Under the column ‘Asia’ Rakovski draws attention to the uncertainty about the outcome of the events in India: ‘There are all kinds of rumours circulating about events in Eastern India. Some say that it will favour the British while others regard it as bad for them.’3 Rakovski includes the views of the British media about the events. According to The Morning Post, the mutineers do not number more than 20–30,000 because a large number of them have fl ed. Only those rebels are dangerous who have weapons. This also includes the 10,000 rebels who are besieged in Delhi. The disquiet underlying such statements is suggested by the following references:

This pro-Palmerston newspaper hopes for a better outcome and writes that even though the British will incur heavy losses it does not mean to frighten England. On its part, ‘The Times’ is neither passive nor is it agitated over the issue. It wants the government to raise a huge army sufﬁ cient to deal with whatever unforeseen developments arise.4 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 The report concludes with a warning to the British: ‘For a long time intellectuals have warned that when the whole of India rises, it can wipe out the British. The ﬁ rst act of the prophecy has been

1 G. S. Rakovski, ed., Buˇlgarska Dnevnitsa, number 4, July 17, 1857, Novi Sad. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. A Bulgarian Response to the Uprising 127

executed now, and for the rest not to be executed is the responsibility of the British.’5 The next issue of the journal on July 24, 1857 reported the anxiety with which the British Press awaited news from India.

All the English newspapers are waiting for the news about Delhi and are eager to know if it has fallen or is still resisting the British troops. If it falls then all will report that the rebellion has been suppressed because Delhi is the centre of this revolt. And, if the latest post does not carry such news, then all papers will propose that under such circumstances, extraordinary measures are needed to be taken. The revolt in Delhi has strengthened steadily with more resistance.6

On July 30, 1857 another lead article on the front page highlights the threats faced by the British empire in Asia: ‘While Europe was resting and healing its wounds from the eastern wars, unexpected revolts and clashes have started in the East. First in Persia, later in China and presently in India, the gentle eastern people have risen to ﬁ ght.’7 And the report in the section ‘Asia’ of the same issue further emphasises these threats: ‘According to reports received from the island of Ceylon, situated south of the Indian peninsula, there are no British troops there. The Europeans fear that echoes of the revolutionary spirit from India have also penetrated here.’8 Rakovski quotes the July 7 edition of the German newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung (General Newspaper) to highlight the contradictory reports about the success of the British troops:

The British have captured Delhi and claim that 30,000 rebels have been killed there. The British have in their possession some very important letters in Calcutta from which they have discovered the conspiracy of the Mohammedans. On Sunday, they had planned to attack all churches and thus kill all the Christians in a single stroke. The Muslim priests had prophesied that the British Empire would

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 fall on 11th June. Otherwise the news for the British continues to be bitter as the rebellion spreads further and further. The rebels treat the Europeans very savagely. They cut the ﬁ ngers off the hands and the toes off the feet of their captives; they pluck out their eyes,

5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., number 5, July 24, 1857, Novi Sad. 7 Ibid., number 6, July 30, 1857, Novi Sad. 8 Ibid. 128 Rashmi Joshi

tie them to trees and burn them alive. From another part of India, Bombay, we are informed once again that Delhi has fallen. Nothing is certain, but at least this news is signiﬁ cant and contrary. Every incident is distressing for the Europeans, the British forces are no more than 100,000.9

The report also notes the fear aroused by the mutiny in the minds of other imperial powers of the region. The gruesome treatment of the Europeans by the native rebels is also reported, exemplifying Rakovski’s belief that oppression could drive even a gentle and mild people to react strongly. The vast economic stakes of the British in India are sketched out:

The revenue touches 17–18 million pound sterling; the expenditure is about 16–17 millions. The whole land is either directly under the Governor-General or under the three residencies of Bengal, Madras, Bombay or the rulers of Agra. There are other states which are partly ruled by others. The directly ruled territories measure around 800,338 and the indirectly ruled ones around 508,422 British square miles; together they measure around 1,309,200 British square miles. One eighth of the total population consists of followers of Islam. The relations between the British and the territories under their rule are different. None of these territories are allowed to have any Europeans or Americans in their services without permission from the British; either they have to accept the British army, or pay an annual allowance to it; or they have to associate the British in every matter. Where there are no treaties about mutual relations the British seize that territory whenever they have any need of it and use it for their own purposes.10

The issue of August 6 carries a very short report on India that focuses on the punishment inﬂ icted by the British on the arrested rebels and the hypocrisy of the British newspapers: ‘Besides many other punishments, they put them before the cannons and kill them. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 If the Russians behaved like this with their rebellious Crimean Tartars what would have been the reaction of the British and their honourable journalists?’11

9 Ibid., column ‘Asia’. 10 G. S. Rakovski, ed., Buˇlgarska Dnevnitsa, number 6, July 30, 1857, Novi Sad. 11 Ibid., number 7, August 6, 1857, Novi Sad. A Bulgarian Response to the Uprising 129

The issue of August 14, 1857 focuses on the continuing failure of the British to recapture Delhi:

Delhi has not yet fallen . . . the British have very little hope of conquering it because it is well-fortiﬁ ed and the British troops here are few. They cannot capture it by betrayal or any other means, they can only achieve their goal through assault. But they do not have the required number of soldiers and other military equipment. Consequently, the British have withdrawn their troops from Delhi.12

In the same issue Rakovski quotes the proclamation of the rebels in which they warn that ‘the British intended to convert them to Christianity’. He then quotes The Times, which insists ‘that it is the Indian army which has rebelled and not the people’. He mentions the support which the British are collecting as well as reports in a French journal that Lord Palmerston had documents which revealed how Russia has instigated the Indians.13 On August 21, 1857 there is reference to the British having received their ﬁ rst help of 1,500 European soldiers and that Delhi continues to offer resistance.

The position of the British is not yet good, but with their high spirits, they hope to succeed if help from Europe reaches. In Delhi, the rebels are better placed. Their ratio is one to two, for every British cannon they can strike with two cannons. They are also in control of the biggest Indian arsenal.14

Reports from The Times about atrocities of the rebels against women and children and the support of Russia are also mentioned in this number. Besides this, the report in The Times also states that the rebellion is led by Muslim Maulvis and Brahmins. The heading ‘Late News’ brings a report which underlines the desperation of the British: ‘A secretary of the English Lord Commissioner has come Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 to Montenegro and appealed to the king to send Montenegrans to ﬁ ght in India . . . ’15 The issue of August 28, 1857 reports the steady spread of the mutiny, the warfare between the rebels and the British troops, news

12 Ibid., number 8, August 14, 1857, Novi Sad. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., number 9, August 21, 1857, Novi Sad. 15 Ibid. 130 Rashmi Joshi

about the success of the British troops in some areas and the tough resistance put up by the rebels in other areas. Rakovski writes about the revolutionary ﬁ re that has touched different parts of India:

News from Bombay covers events up to 18th July. From Delhi we have news up to 4th June till which date it had not fallen. The British have only 2000 soldiers whom they can use in the attack on Delhi. . . . The British suffered miserably against the mutineers in Agra and have lost around ﬁ ve hundred soldiers. In Punjab and in Sialkot the mutineers have revolted and killed the local bishop and others, though they were defeated later on. There was rebellion in Hyderabad too, which was quickly suppressed. In short, the ﬂ ames of the mutiny were spreading to other parts of India.16

The desire of the British for retribution is baldly stated: ‘Delhi must be razed to dust, in such a way that it does not recognise itself again.’17 Whatever the as yet uncertain outcome of the conﬂ ict, it is seen as a turning point with far-reaching consequences:

when two powers are bitterly hostile to each other as the British and the Indians there will be still more anger and ugly incidents. The defeated side will be miserable. If the British win the Indians will be subjected to greater slavery than ever before; if the Indians win, the British will lose their reputation of being a strong and powerful nation.18

On September 4, 1857 there is further news of the rebels’ success in holding Delhi: ‘Delhi is still in the hands of the rebels. Since two days the British have surrounded the city but have still not been able to penetrate; . . . the rebels have managed to receive aid in abundance. . . . The British could not do anything to prevent it.’19 The British, according to the report, have accepted that the natives ﬁ ght bravely. The ﬁ rst help for the British has also arrived from Europe — around 2,000 soldiers.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 On September 11, 1857 Rakovski publishes a report sent by a correspondent of Allgemeine Zeitung: ‘There is a report from Calcutta of 8th June; since the paper claims that every word that it writes

16 Ibid., number 10, July 28, 1857, Novi Sad. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., number 11, September 4, 1857, Novi Sad. A Bulgarian Response to the Uprising 131

is authentic we hold it responsible for everything reported.’20 With this reference, the author disclaims any individual subjectivity while reporting on the further spread of the mutiny and the defeats suffered by the British troops at many places:

the mutiny has progressed a great deal and the Europeans may be defeated if they do not receive immediate help. The north western parts have been lost. . . . Delhi has become another Sevastopol. . . . The troops have retreated from Lahore and Multan, the whole of the Deccan is revolting, the mutineers are marching towards Benaras, Chittagong and Burma, the whole of Karnataka has risen, the province of Bombay is also restless.21

Even though the report sounds incredible, Rakovski chooses to include it. The second part of the news refers to the valour with which the rebels are ﬁ ghting, a kind of resistance which the British have never faced before, and to Europeans found ﬁ ghting on the side of the rebels: ‘they have arrested two Europeans, who were also with the rebels. There are ten more of them in the service of the Delhi King.’22 Finally, the impact of the news in Europe is noted:

the Irish papers are rejoicing about the misfortunes of the British and desire the victory of the Indians. The Irish people have been subjugated by the British and always in conﬂ ict with them mainly because of their faith; the Irish are Catholics while the British are Protestants. The French Catholic paper ‘Universe’ has prophesied doom for British rule in India because the British are not Catholics.23

The issue of September 18, 1857 also includes a report by Rakovski on the mutiny in India. The two main sources which Rakovski uses for information are Allgemeine Zeitung and The Times. Apart from the clash between the two, Rakovski also reports on the impact of the mutiny in England: Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 the people are passionately following the events in India . . . one cannot imagine the desperation with which people read the evening newspapers in London. The journalists were mobbed by people in the streets ﬁ ghting to get the latest edition . . . it is difﬁ cult to describe

20 Ibid., number 12, September 11, 1857, Novi Sad. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 132 Rashmi Joshi

the reaction of the public to the events in India. In the beginning they were thunderstruck and have hardly recovered from their ﬁ rst fears. . . . The days are gone when a handful of Britons could chase away the entire Indian army.24

Rakovski also reports the havoc caused by cholera to the British troops, and how even meek people had succeeded in shaking the conﬁ dence of British society at home. In this way he sees hope for his own enslaved people, who were also suffering from the oppression of the Ottoman empire. On September 25, 1857 Rakovski notes that ‘the English Press is trying to prove that there is no danger in India. Initially, they reported that the rebellion was limited to one place only’.25 Refuting the view that it was only a mutiny, he blames the British for the situation:

It is not true that only the soldiers have revolted in India. In the Behrar region people have revolted, as they have in Indore and the masses between the Yamuna and the Ganges had revolted long ago. One should not be surprised at this. The British themselves provided grounds for the disaffection among the Indian people; before this no Englishman had envisaged that any minor matter could cause India to revolt.26

The issue of October 2, 1857 reports about the worries of the British and the ongoing battles in various parts of India. Rakovski writes that the British fear a general Muslim revolt during Muharram. He also feels that the revolt is on the decline because, as reported by the British, the rebels have no discipline and no good leaders. In the issue of October 9, 1857 Rakovski reports that the situation in India is still uncertain. He again mentions the pleasure of the French and Irish with the discomfort of the British. He publishes a report from the journal Iniver about the tortures which the British Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 inﬂ icted upon the Indians: ‘they tie people to their horses’ tails; they hang them upside down from the trees and whip them; they chop off their hands, tie them to a tree and pierce their ﬂ esh with hot iron rods’.27 After further descriptions of barbaric torture Rakovski

24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., number 14, September 25, 1857, Novi Sad. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid., number 16, October 9, 1857, Novi Sad. A Bulgarian Response to the Uprising 133

justiﬁ es Nana Sahib’s cruel treatment of the Europeans: ‘If we consider the reports of “Iniver” about the manner in which the British punish the rebels, then we ask the British, whom should they blame, themselves or Nana Sahib?’28 Thus, Rakovski supports the rebels and considers the events in Kanpur as a backlash of British oppression. On October 16, 1857 Rakovski gives a vivid description of the vast Indian territory to his readers: ‘The British rule over a territory in India which is as big as Austria, Turkey, France and Belgium taken together. Bengal alone is as big as the whole of European Turkey taken together and its population is four times more.’29 He then quotes another British newspaper, Social News, which rebuked the British in an ironic tone for concealing facts from the public:

We should be grateful to the ministry of information for skillfully concealing the grim situation in India and presenting it outwardly as a happy situation by even resorting to lies and creating the impression through false dispatches of order and control. For a few days the world has been under the impression that the British have improved their situation signiﬁ cantly in India. Lucknow is no longer threatened and there is no fear of any revolt in Madras, Bombay and Central India. However this desire has been transformed and the earlier worries have returned.30

Rakovski also criticises the hatred expressed by The Times against the natives and its calls for the extermination of the rebels. The newspaper according to Rakovski only sought retribution: ‘According to this newspaper whosoever speaks of justice must be crazy, a hypocrite, stunned and threatened. One who speaks of mercy must be good for nothing. . . . This is the opinion of one of the most reputed English newspapers — the voice of the English government.’31 The next issue of Buˇlgarska Dnevnitsa was conﬁ scated by the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Austrian authorities to satisfy the Ottoman rulers who were not pleased by the news and views being published. Rakovski was arrested and was about to be handed over to the Turkish Pasha in

28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., number 6, July 17, 1857, Novi Sad. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 134 Rashmi Joshi

Belgrade, but because of his own vehement protests and the support of some good friends he was expelled from the country and sent to Wallachia. Rakovski’s sources of information on the Indian mutiny, as already mentioned, were the British and European media, but he used them cleverly. It is noteworthy that none of the issues of Buˇlgarska Dnevnitsa edited by him mention the greased cartridges, which were, as widely reported in the media, the supposed reason for the outbreak of the mutiny. Instead, he speaks of the economic stakes of the British empire, the battles between the rebels and the British army, the treatment and feelings of the two sides and other aspects of the conﬂ ict. Another feature which strikes the present reader is the chrono- logical order of events as presented in Buˇlgarska Dnevnitsa. The issues were published between July 17, 1857 and October 16, 1857. If we throw a cursory glance at the events related to the Indian mutiny one cannot fail to notice the absence of some important events in the reports by Rakovski. Apart from the issue of the greased cartridges, which he seems to have deliberately left out, important events that are missing include the hanging of Mangal Pandey, the collective disobedience by the 3rd Light Cavalry and their public parade and punishment. This may be the case since the sources of his information were mainly the British media and occasionally some other sources. Rakovski, however, developed his own outlook on the Indian mutiny. For him this was the struggle of an oppressed people against the rule of a handful of Europeans, who did not share their culture and were exploiting the riches of their land. He saw in it his own hopes for the Bulgarian struggle for national independence. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 The German Discourse on India 135

Part II: Fact and Fiction Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 136 Anil Bhatti Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

‘Nena Sahib, nach einem Oelgemälde von Beechy’ (Nana Sahib, after an Oil Painting by Beechy), in Illustrirte Zeitung, October 31, 1857. The German Discourse on India 137

9 Retcliffe’s Nena Sahib and the German Discourse on India Anil Bhatti

The fateful events in India, singular in the history of mankind, and perhaps only comparable to the violent and continuing uprisings of mercenary soldiers in old Carthage, have animated in all those of a thoughtful disposition the interest in that eternally strange land and its inhabitants. For the civilized (sic) European, India has suddenly moved signiﬁ cantly closer, a mutual inﬂ uence of both the worlds, especially the intellectual struggle innate to Christian nature, will come to the fore and familiarize us with those related tribes.1

In studies of the German discourse on India emphasis is usually placed on the remarkable academic reception of ancient India in the German imagination. But the general German reading public in the 19th century was also interested in the contemporary British colony of India. Apart from the historian Leopold von Orlich, the redoubtable Baron von Hügel had travelled through India from 1830 to 1836 and had published an inﬂ uential account of Kashmir and Ranjit Singh’s empire later.2 Hügel, like Victor Jacquemont

1 Leopold von Orlich, Reise in Ostindien, in Briefen an Alexander von Humboldt und Carl Ritter (Journey in East India, in letters to Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter), Dritte durchgesehene Auﬂ age, Mit 10 Holzschnitten (3rd edition with 10 wood engravings), Leipzig: Gustav Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Mayer, 1858, p. v. 2 Carl Freiherr von Hügel, Kaschmir und das Reich der Siek (Kashmir and the Empire of the Sikhs), Stuttgart: Hallberger, 1840–1844 (four volumes). Cf. Anil Bhatti, ‘Europäische Erinnerungen am Indus. Carl von Hügel als Forschungsreisender in Indien’ (European Memories on the Banks of the Indus: Carl von Hügel as Research Traveler in India), in Doris Bachmann- Medick, ed., Übersetzung als Repräsentation fremder Kulturen (Translation as Representation of Other Cultures), Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1997, pp. 98–112. 138 Anil Bhatti

and others, belonged to a growing number of research travellers whose accounts are valuable historical documents today. In Hügel’s case the attitude to British colonialism is characterised by a special feature of the German colonial discourse in which the historical exclusion from the business of Empire leads to a highly developed claim to greater competence in matters of colonialism. Hügel, who was an admirer of British colonialism, criticised the British in India for their concentration on narrow commercial gains whereas the matter of empire consists in including cultural domination. Neglect of cultural competence, Hügel hints, can lead to bad governance. Hügel’s well-meaning critique of British insensitivity was articulated more than a decade before the Indian uprising generated an unprecedented interest in Indian affairs on the European continent. It was this interest, articulated in press coverage (for instance, in Marx’s writings) which created a reading public for imaginative appropriations of the theme. Contemporary India and the preparation and defeat of the ‘mutiny’ from 1857 to 1859 is the subject of the extraordinary popular novel Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien by Hermann Ottomar Friedrich Goedsche (1815–78) writing under the pseudonym ‘Sir John Retcliffe’.3 His name is hardly known outside the circle of German readership, but many may recall the reference in Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum to

a certain Hermann Goedsche, an insignificant Prussian postal employee who published false documents to discredit the democrat Waldeck. Then, under the name of Sir John Retcliffe, he began writing sensational novels, including Biarritz, 1868. In it he described an occultist scene in the Prague cemetery, very similar to the meeting of the Illuminati described by Dumas at the beginning of Giuseppe

3 Sir John Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien: Historisch- politischer Roman aus der Gegenwart. Englische und deutsche Original- Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Ausgabe (Nena Sahib or the Uprising in India: Historical-political Novel of the Present Times. English and German original edition), edited by Christoph F. Lorenz, Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Olms-Weidmann, 2005, 3 volumes, reprint of the 1865 edition, ﬁ rst published 1858–59. The most reliable study of Retcliffe’s novels remains Volker Neuhaus, Der zeitgeschichtliche Sensationsroman in Deutschland 1855–1878. ‘Sir John Retcliffe’ und seine Schule (The Contemporary-historical Novel of Sensation in Germany 1855–1878, ‘Sir John Retcliffe’ and His School), Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1980. The German Discourse on India 139

Balsamo, where Cagliostro, chief of the Unknown Superiors, among them Swedenborg, arranges the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. In the Prague cemetery the representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel gather, to expound their plans for the conquest of the world. 4

The Prague scene was reprinted in 1876 in Russia ‘as if it were fact, not fi ction’ and becomes part of the familiar world of Eugène Sue, Alexandre Dumas and other popular 19th-century novels of crime, murder, intrigue, conspiracy and plans for world domination in which Jesuits, Templars, Jews and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion abound and which are now so popular again. Goedsche was a political journalist with the ultra-conservative Berlin newspaper, the Kreuzzeitung (Cross-paper), specialising in what we would now call yellow journalism. He made it his business to defend the Prussian monarchy and attack parliamentarianism, liberalism, political Catholicism and social democracy.5 His style of writing, which combined wild fl ights of the imagination with a taste for the sensational, stood him in good stead when he took to writing novels. Goedsche became a highly successful writer of popular novels and tales in which horror, sensation, conspiracy are artfully combined with contemporary political events. Among other writers of popular fi ction, Karl May was indebted to him. Goedsche’s pseudonym ‘Sir John Retcliffe’ was of course supposed to suggest that an English diplomat of aristocratic origin was drawing on private knowledge, fi rst-hand experience and the secrecy of political back rooms to provide authentic insights into international affairs and intrigues. Set amidst ongoing events in political hotspots, the novels were published as ‘historical-political novels of the present times’. They covered events distant and near, the Crimean War, the Indian mutiny, the Italian campaign of Napoleon III and Vittorio Emanuele against the Habsburgs, the French expedition to Mexico, and various other wars, uprisings, revolutions, political intrigues and power Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 struggles. Taken together the thirty-fi ve volumes published from 1855 to 1880 present a kind of panopticon of ‘world history’ as seen through the author’s eyes.

4 Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum, London: Picador, 1990, chapter 95, p. 489. 5 Volker Klotz, Abenteuer-Romane. Sue, Dumas, Verne, May, Ferry, Retcliffe (Novels of Adventure: Sue, Dumas, Verne, May, Ferry, Retcliffe), Munich: Carl Hanser, 1979, p. 120. 140 Anil Bhatti

While these novels were not translated and the author is hardly known today, they were not only bestsellers at the time of their publication. They were reprinted several times, though the later editions were also signifi cantly revised and shortened in a manner that reduced the ‘historical-political’ content. Other writers also tried to cash in on Goedsche’s popularity by adopting his pseudonym. Still others picked up the one or the other fi gure from Goedsche’s gallery of extravagant heroes and heroines and spun a somewhat different tale around them. This seems to be particularly the case with Nena Sahib, for not only the ever popular fi gure of ‘the Nena’, but other less important fi gures in the novel appeared in various fi ctional manifestations right up to the 1940s. Nena Sahib was his second novel and probably the one that became the most popular. It is part of a series of three interlinked novels beginning with Sebastopol (with the Crimean War as the scene) and ending with Villafranca (with Italy, Napoleon III and Vittorio Emanuele against the Habsburgs in focus). Spread over three volumes and over 1,400 pages, Goedsche’s novel brings together many individual stories located across the globe which reach their dramatic denouement in the uprising in India. The narrative is interspersed with extensive digressions that provide the historical background and the justifi cation, as it were, for the ‘international’ support to the uprising. The logic behind Retcliffe’s novel is familiar from 19th-century novels of conspiracy. Conspirators from many parts of the world representing regions that have suffered under the British come together to support the Indian mutiny in order to overthrow the unjust British rule. Gathered around Napoleon’s empty grave in St Helena (the remains had been shifted to the Invalides in Paris in 1840) their leader Captain Ochterlony proclaims:

India, Holland, Ireland, France, Greece and even the German, on Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 whose shorelines England has built its stronghold, not coincidence but divine providence has led us all to this grave, to its most awesome enemy, us, who have suffered most from it. The signs of God lay down the future fate of men. Come now, let each one of us lay down at this grave his indictment against the tyrants of the earth and join forces in a holy oath of vengeance against England! 6

6 Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien, volume 1, p. 505. (All translations are either the author’s or by Shaswati Mazumdar.) Subsequent quotes mention volume number and page references. The German Discourse on India 141

The uprising in India is thus conceived as an uprising of all nations that have suffered at the hands of England. But one of the important motives is that this uprising is betrayed by the measureless transgression embodied in Nena’s tiger nature. Civilisation is but a thin veneer which rapidly dissolves under crisis. It is remarkable how Retcliffe nevertheless remains within the parameters of the traditional European discourse on India in spite of the topicality of his subject matter. India was the cradle of mankind, the fount of wisdom, at a different plane from modernity. It was a paradise which, however, one entered paradoxically only at peril to oneself. Retcliffe retains this and speaks of India as the ‘Motherland of all nations . . . ’7 The motive of an earthly paradise is emphasised. One of the conspirators, the German Dr Walding, reaching India sees

in the mild light of the morning sun and in the middle of the desert, a paradise as marvellous as possibly imaginable, a magical image out of an oriental fairy tale with all the wondrous splendour of tropical vegetation.8

But every paradise has as complement a hell. Walding’s journey takes him to the secret cave of the Thugs, where he witnesses scenes of human sacriﬁ ce:

The victim’s body twitched hither and thither and jerked ﬁ nally to the right, upon which the Chief-Guru of the assembly declared that he had earned the grace of the goddess and that the ceremony could begin. A howl broke out following these words, so rabid and bloodcurdling that Walding thought he saw before him a legion of unleashed devils. The war cries of the American savages, the shrill death cries of the crew of a sinking ship, the enraged clamour of a people in the frenzy of rebellion was nothing when compared to these shrieking, terrifying

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 sounds. A wild delirium, a madness seemed to have gripped the sullen crowd, and a sight emerged before the eyes of the doctor which was even beyond the depths of hell in Dante’s imagination.9

7 Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien, volume 2, p. 1. 8 Ibid., p. 38. 9 Ibid., p. 97. 142 Anil Bhatti

Walding witnesses a hell which exceeds all imagination. It is characteristic of India that Paradise and Hell exist together. This relationship is disturbed by the entry of colonialism which throws, as it were, every natural order out of gear. The sections in which Retcliffe’s narrator speaks about colonialism and the role of the East India Company are characterised by a remarkable ambivalence. India, the narrator tells us, has become ‘private property of a mercantile speculation’, the fundamental tendency of which is only the ‘highest possible dividends’, or ‘exploitation’. At the mercy of an offi cialdom whose arbitrariness is boundless and never punished, ‘civilised by taxes from its old traditions, its customs and its beliefs! — suppressed and ruled with the bayonets of its own sons! — oriental life and thinking, enslaved by English laws: — this is India!’10 We thus have a strong criticism of the British as the proverbial nation of shopkeepers and exploiters. But this is rhetoric since underlying it is an anthropological stance based on a Darwinian view of the strong overcoming the weak: ‘the right of the stronger is the only law, the single guiding principle of nature.’11 An inherently peaceful Indian civilisation, with a rich cultural heritage lies now emaciated after centuries of conquest.12 The British, by implication, fulfi l the task of history. And the criticism, implicit and explicit, consists in suggesting that they are not equal to the historical task (Auftrag). This form of cultural criticism becomes part of the ambivalent German discourse on colonialism in the 19th century. It ignores the logic of capital and is ambivalent about the role of power in colonial conquest. But it reinforces the position criticised so trenchantly by Marx and Engels in German ideology, where the ‘narrowly national outlook’, which lies at the basis of the ‘alleged universalism and cosmopolitanism of the Germans’ is emphasised.13 It is no coincidence that it is through the fi gure of Dr Walding, the German, that this ideology is articulated. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

10 Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien, pp. 131–32. 11 Ibid., p. 137. 12 Ibid., p. 135. 13 Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, ‘Die deutsche Ideologie’ (The German Ideology), in Marx-Engels-Werke, Berlin: Dietz, 1969, volume 3, p. 457f. (‘borniert-nationale Anschauungsweise’ . . . ‘vorgeblichen Universalismus und Kosmopolitismus der Deutschen . . . ’). The German Discourse on India 143

The English are guilty of avarice, unbelievable cruelty and sadism. The criticism of the English is articulated in the manner of Orientalist discourse by the sirdar of the Thugs lamenting the fate that has befallen the land of the Hindus:

A hundred years — just a drop in the ocean of our history — have gone by, and their feet have gone up to the mountains of the Himalayas, and the Hindustanis have become their slaves. The ﬁ elds that we till, the trade that we carry out, only bear fruit for them, our sons are their soldiers, our religion, our customs are targets of their ridicule, foreigners rule us and sit on the thrones which our forefathers occupied. Misfortune! Misfortune! Where can one ﬁ nd justice among those who let caprice and avarice rule in their own country?’14

Liberation from the colonisers is articulated through a curse: ‘Cursed be the Farangis!’15 But the British in Retcliffe’s discourse have in any case sinned through their own indefensible exploitation of an innocent people. The motive of colonialism as a self-inﬂ icted curse was particularly articulated in Johann Gottfried Herder’s later writings from ‘Adrastea’ (the epithet for the Goddess Nemesis). In his ﬁ ctitious Gespräche über die Bekehrung der Indier durch unsre Europäische Christen (1802), Herder emphasises the discrepancy between the enormous expansion of knowledge and the resultant broadening of horizons in Europe as a result of colonial enterprise on the one hand and the accompanying indefensible act of brutal colonisation and subjugation of the other.16 As a result of colonialism Europe gained access not only to material wealth but also to the treasures of knowledge. As recompense, however, colonialism brought misery to the colonies. Herder’s critique extends to the role of Christian missionaries and the entanglement between religion and exploitation. At the same time, however, Herder looks upon colonialism as a form Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

14 Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien, volume 2, pp. 375–76. 15 Ibid., p. 374. 16 Johann Gottfried Herder, Gespräche über die Bekehrung der Indier durch unsre Europäische Christen (Conversations about the Conversion of the Indians by our European Christians), in Adrastea, edited by Günter Arnold, Frankfurt/Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2000 (Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke (Works), edited by Günter Arnold et al., volume 10). 144 Anil Bhatti

of unjustifi able interference in the course of world history leading to general corruption. Herder constructs a fi gure of civilisational guilt and retribution in order to emphasise his critique. An ‘evil genius’ has, as it were, in his words, possessed the European nations and the spirit of progress also corrupts the agents of colonialism as the propagators of progress. Herder’s plea for reticence and non- intervention tends towards a concept of tolerance which constructs a world of non-interfering cultural monads so as to maintain the purity of each. Its focus, however, is on preventing the self-corruption of the colonising agent. This model generates an ambivalent attitude to the status of enlightened emancipation admissible to different cultures since ‘non-interference’ and toleration also allow the possibility of the establishment of sub-systems of internal subjugation which are legitimised by their status as independent, different cultures. Arguably, Herder’s civilisational critique tends to develop a humanistic discourse of tolerance while allowing for its simultaneous subversion by generating zones of non-interference. Herder’s thought does not allow for the development of international lines of solidarity and there seems little room for concepts such as ‘shared history’. This leads to a structure of ambivalence in his attitude towards colonialism which allows for contradictory points to connect with the reception of his critique. Herder, it should be pointed out, emphasised that the beginnings of Europe lay in an unprecedented mingling of peoples and races. A primordial state of diversity, as it were. But the whole thrust of Herder’s thought was to then go on to affi rm that the historical retention of this diversity would be unnatural and therefore wrong. Assimilation and amalgamation are indeed the necessary and natural part of the pre-history of a historical process leading to increasing orders of complexity. But this is precisely why organisational solutions have to be found to deal with this process as one enters

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 the modern age. In Herder’s thought the most natural social order would be one which corresponds to a divine plan of nature. Since nature produces families in order to ensure the survival of the species, the most natural order was that of an organic family. Since the modern nation was to mirror this order the most natural state would be an organic state in which one people (Volk) with one national character would exist. It is this perspective which also leads to Herder’s anti-colonialism and his espousal of cultural tolerance. Because colonialism led to an unnatural expansion of states and The German Discourse on India 145

an unnatural and ‘wild’ intermingling of the human species and nations under one sceptre, it was, in Herder’s eyes, against the plan of nature. If there is such a thing as an enlightened and liberal philosophy of segregation, Herder’s thought would lead to it. In fact, multiculturalism essentially goes back to this principle of liberal segregation. I need not point out here how fraught with problems such a perspective is and how vulnerable it is to a distortion through notions of racial hegemony and ghettoisation. Herder looked upon colonialism as an unlawful interference in the autonomous development of a Volk. He opposed colonialism because of its effect of reducing cultural diversity and, as a consequence, leading to a degeneration of the colonising and colonised nations. Nemesis awaited those who in his theory transgressed the natural law of segregated development of the different races of mankind. Colonialism is this form of transgression and in Retcliffe’s novel the Rani of Jhansi, as it were, gives voice to a historical judgement pronounced on the transgressors by fate. But this puts those who act as proponents of some kind of anti-colonial struggle in an ambiguous position also. They can easily be accused of violating a natural order in which a curse has been pronounced since they anticipate the fulfi lment of this curse. This is Nena’s fault. Nena Sahib — the tiger — is supposed to play a key role in the conspiracy and in the struggle against the colonisers. But Nena, the ‘barbarian’, has been tamed by the love of his Irish wife. Nena is the tiger, whose wild nature has to be set free in order to realise the curse. He has to shed all signs of civilised morality. He fi rst considers himself a friend of the British and is concerned mainly with basking in the love of his Irish wife Margarete O’Sullivan. He does not wish at fi rst to support the mutiny. His ‘tiger nature’ is only unleashed after his wife is kidnapped and raped by the depraved Englishman Major Rivers who is also the British Resident. Nena becomes a Thug, passes the terrible initiation rites (to which Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 belong the ritual killing of the leader of the Thugs) and becomes the main Guru of the Thugs (described as a gang of murderers) in order to take up the ruthless and relentless struggle against the British. India was a paradise which was enslaved by colonialism (an enforced entry into the world market) and thus destroyed. The revenge for this destruction of its pristine quality is a reverse destruction of the colonisers. The basic point is the excessive nature of the retribution as compared to the original sin of colonialism. Nena Sahib is the instrument of this retribution. 146 Anil Bhatti

Retcliffe, of course uses all the tricks of his trade to literally revel in scenes of rape and murder. But he has to pretend to do so in the cause of truth so that the hypocrisy of morality, especially in the context of sexuality, is maintained. One can imagine the delighted shudder of horror with which his bourgeois readership must have read the drastic scenes of torture and sadism Retcliffe’s imagination conjures up. Describing the uprising in Delhi Retcliffe’s position is that of the voyeur in a window scene over whose shoulders the reader of the novel glimpses the horror of innocent Europeans being massacred by native barbarians:

We urge the women, who read this book, to skip the following scene, for it is too horrifying, too shocking for any human emotion and would deeply injure the very being of noble womanhood. And yet — however shocking, however repugnant it may be — it is not the product of a wild and excessive fantasy of the author — it is truth, terrible horrifying truth! This truth, this reality has forced the pen into the author’s hand so that he may describe it, and report on the fearsome vengeance as he has reported on the fearsome guilt.17

But though the English colonial power is itself guilty of exploitation and mishandling of the native population, the revenge is terrible beyond measure.

The moment of horrendous revenge had now come. The oriental never forgets a real or presumed insult — he waits his time and then, woe betide those, whom his hatred strikes.18

Therein lies Retcliffe’s typically Orientalist gesture in ascribing to the revolt an essential inability to exercise measure.

The terrible scene of the afternoon was repeated; while the men were covered with a hundred wounds as they fell, the women were deﬁ led Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 and then cruelly mutilated and murdered. A shotgun loaded with gunpowder was pushed into the body of another young and beautiful woman and the trigger pulled — this was accompanied by the jubilant screams of the murderers, those are the carpenter beetles, with which the English tax collectors torment their wives and daughters!

17 Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien, volume 3, p. 183. 18 Ibid., p. 185. The German Discourse on India 147

This was the ghastly revenge of a wild people, maltreated for a century by a nation that defends freedom and human rights across the globe!19

There is a significant logic behind Retcliffe’s construction. Conspirators from all over the world come to India to support the mutiny in order to destroy British rule but also in the interest of other powers like France. The tiger Nena Sahib is supposed to play a crucial role in this. He, the barbarian, has, however, been tamed by the love of a woman from Ireland, one of the areas of inner exploitation and occupation by the British. First the woman has to be humiliated before the wild nature of the tiger can again be restored. But Nena as a tiger is doomed to lose. Because, on the one hand the forces of civilisation are ultimately going to be stronger than the beast of the forest, and on the other hand his European allies will also have to distance themselves from his terrorism. They wanted a controlled raging of his elemental nature, predictable and in terms of a civilised codex in which fairness and protection of the civil population play a part. But Nena is not prepared to be an instrument in a game in which relations of power are merely changed in favour of a new grouping. He cannot be ‘managed’ and his terrorism is literally radical. By describing him as being demonically possessed, the novel nurtures the colonial myth which stamps every anti-colonial war as an outburst of wild nature pitted against the civilising mission of colonialism. It is only when colonialism and anti-colonialism are both part of the same logic of civilisation set against the wilderness of barbaric nature that a consensus considering distribution of power is possible. Nena breaks this consensus.

The Nena’s exterior appeared in these crucial moments completely changed.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 He had become ten years older. Between the brows there lay a deep fold of fearsome, ominous determination. Around the mouth was entrenched an ugly, evil sneer, an expression of cruel greed which raised the upper lip and let the sharp white teeth show through like the fangs of a predator.

19 Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien, volume 3, pp. 192–93. 148 Anil Bhatti

As already mentioned, the eyes were rigid and hard, but one saw that the veiled ﬁ re of passion could break through the cover any moment. The Nena was like a tiger, which has been stricken by the call of the hunter and raises itself from its lair to approach its enemies.20

Nena Sahib’s transformation can also be seen as a break with the precarious state of law. In a conﬂ ict over sovereignty, his lawlessness is the declaration of a ‘state of exception’ (in the sense in which the term is used around writings of Giorgio Agamben and his critique of Carl Schmitt’s thought).21 From being the incorporated member of the colonised world he becomes the renegade and therefore a throwback to the mysterious parallel world of the secret India of Thugs and the jungle. Retcliffe’s India is Paradise and Hell and its laws are the laws of the jungle. Women too are part of this. And here too the extravagant nature of the revenge is the crucial divisive point between civilisation and barbarism. The maidservant Auranya, punished for a minor offence by her English mistress, exacts terrible revenge ending in torture and murder. The only person who is protected from the machine of retribution is the wife of an English priest, Lady Hunter whose caritative work has earned her the love of the poorer population.

Now several people in the crowd recognised the lady, and the fame of her benevolence, her goodness and her charity had spread so far that the public cry: ‘Honour the holy one! Protect the Angel of Delhi!’ ran through the crowd and seemed to surround the lady’s head with a halo. 22

In the eyes of the Angel of Delhi however, the uprising is ‘the cause of cruelty and fanaticism’. As against this her friend the Italian Grimaldi, one of the original conspirators, who is in the service of the Rani of Jhansi looks upon the uprising as also ‘the cause of freedom Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 and independence’, although admittedly ‘the blood boiling under this

20 Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien, volume 2, p. 447. 21 Cf. Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, originally published in 1995. 22 Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien, volume 3, p. 166. The German Discourse on India 149

hotter sun drives them to cruel and abominable acts, seeing which the civilised human being would cover his eyes’.23 This ‘Orientalist’ view is further supported by Grimaldi’s comment:

The character of the Hindu is friendly, devoted and patient. But the consequences of a century of tyranny, of suffering of the kind I told you about the Maharaja of Bithoor (i.e. Nena) — this forced the lamb to become the tiger, as many other people in whose heads the hot passions of the tropics foment . . . blood fl ows differently even in the arteries of the children of Italy and of my own homeland, it is more powerful and fi ery than in the arteries of the sons and daughters of the cold north, and perhaps the time will soon come when there too the sword will fi nally and successfully be dipped in blood against foreign rule.24

It is not surprising that the only answer to this inherent con- tradiction between two allegedly essentially different peoples and their laws and characters is a universal form of Christian forgiveness:

‘May God the merciful forgive the indignity as well as the revenge,’ cried the lady — ‘it is true that as you sow, so shall you reap and the good and the just will perish in the battles of the evil and the corrupt’.25

Colonialism is a fall from grace; anti-colonial war as extravagant retribution is implicitly unjustiﬁ ed because justice would have been the measures to be taken by divine providence or history. Dr Walding, in the course of the novel, increasingly articulates the point of view of the observer who tries to place himself outside the dance of death in which the British and the Indians are locked in a deadly embrace. He curses Nena, calling him ‘Blind Barbarian’ precisely because he has arrogated vengeance to himself instead of letting providence punish the British for having transgressed the boundaries of their 26

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 culturally determined sphere of existence. Nena also reneged on the promise of free transit given to the residents of ‘Cawnpore’ and engineered a bloodbath in which Walding’s beloved is gruesomely killed. Walding accuses Nena of being a traitor and murderer.

23 Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien, volume 3, p. 399. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., pp. 399–400. 26 Ibid., p. 417. 150 Anil Bhatti

You are no longer a liberator of your fatherland but a traitor and murderer. The struggle for freedom is a holy one in all countries of the earth, — but you have desecrated freedom and deﬁ led the struggle. Srinath Bahadur — your luck has run out! Wade in rivers of blood, intoxicate your devilish heart on atrocities and horrors. — The avenger’s sword has been taken out of your hand, and victory eludes the lowly murderer! . . . Desecrator of a noble woman — murderer of another — destroyer of the beautiful and noble on earth — May you be cursed! May you be cursed! May you be cursed!27

Walding places the corpse of his English beloved, victim of the context of revenge generated by the uprising and the state of exception following it, next to the grave of Nena Sahib’s Irish wife, who was abducted and brutalised by the British Resident. Both women ultimately are victims of colonial and anti-colonial brutality. The redemptive role of women ﬁ gures is emphasised by Walding:

rest in peace, you women, one next to the other, till the day of resurrection follows the night of life, — you — the victims of two nations, of civilisation and barbarism, of sinfulness and vengeance! Rest in peace, and may the Lord God judge those who destroyed you.28

Anarkalli, the Indian temple dancer, who immolates herself with the body of the English offi cer she had loved, is also part of the intricate system of guilt and retribution in which all attempts to fi nd a union of souls is thwarted. The motive of a black and the white dove, symbolising the fl ight of the souls of those lovers who perish in the system symbolises in Retcliffe’s construction the dividing line between the British and the Indian sides.

Two doves rose up high — one black — the other white! — Will they meet on their ﬂ ight through the ether?29

The lines signifying differences which may be overcome elsewhere Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 at some other time are topoi in the repertoire of the novels of colonialism and are also part of this novel. Or, to put it differently, colonial domination destroys the possibility of free relationships across the colonial divide. By overcoming colonial domination the

27 Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien, volume 3, pp. 417–18. 28 Ibid., p. 416. 29 Ibid., p. 387. The German Discourse on India 151

base is laid for the possibility of a communication free from power and domination.30 Retcliffe’s unanswered question, the tantalising question, whether in the largeness of the inﬁ nite ether the doves can meet forgetting the harshness of the contemporary world, implies an answer in the negative. In other words, not yet, but perhaps in a different time and a different place. This anticipates the ‘not yet’ and ‘not there’ at the end of E. M. Forster’s Passage to India. Friendship between the Englishman Fielding and the Indian Aziz is not possible in the present. In the ﬁ nal scene of the novel, as an answer to Fielding’s question ‘Why can’t we be friends now?’ the horses they are riding swerve apart.

But the horses didn’t want it — they swerved apart; the earth didn’t want it, sending up rocks through which the riders must pass single ﬁ le; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn’t want it, they said in their hundred voices, ‘no, not yet,’ and the sky said, ‘No, not there.’31

But friendship, whether now or at another time and another place, is not the ultimate theme of Retcliffe’s potboiler. Nena disappears from the scene after being thus cursed. He and other European ﬁ gures from the novel reappear, sometimes elusively, in subsequent novels by Retcliffe. Retcliffe/Goedsche was concerned with the large canvas of international politics and intrigue. Churning up the world of colonial history, drawing on the repertoire of Orientalism and revelling in brutality and sadism, he produced a novel of adventure and sensation, a thriller, comparable to the writings of Eugène Sue and the later Karl May, and capable of holding its own against many contemporary bestsellers. It belongs as much to the imaginative appropriation of India in the German-speaking world of the 19th century as the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 better-known works of ‘higher’ literature and philosophy.

30 Free in the sense this has been articulated among others by Jürgen Habermas in his theory of communicative competence. 31 E. M. Forster, A Passage to India, London and New York: Penguin Books, 1989, p. 316, originally published in 1924. 152 Carola Hilmes

The Rebellion of an Indian Temple Dancer∗ Carola Hilmes

Anarkalli, die indische Bajadere (Anarkalli, the Indian Temple Dancer) — brought out in 1880 by the publishing house Enβlin und Leiblin — is one of the rare literary examples, almost completely forgotten today, of a German view on the rebellion of the sepoys in India in 1857. The short novel published in the series of Reutlinger Volksbücher, is probably an unknown counterpart to Sir John Retcliffe’s bestseller Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien (1858–59), the fi rst novel ever on the Indian rebellion.1 Nothing further could be found out about the author of Anarkalli, a certain H(ans) Brunner.2 What appears striking about the two India novels is the anti-British stance with its strong criticism of colonialism, which is combined with the conventional stereotypes of Orientalism. In the small counterpart to the well-known Nena Sahib, however, the focus is shifted to a female protagonist. In Brunner’s story the female fi gures have altogether a more important role than in the case of Retcliffe, whose three volume novel puts mainly male fi gures in the forefront. The substantial shortening of Brunner’s India narrative brings about a few drastic changes. Missing is thus the reference to the Thug

∗Translated from the German by Ranjini Mukherjee and Shaswati Mazumdar. 1 Sir John Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien, Historisch- Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 politischer Roman aus der Gegenwart. Englische und deutsche Original- Ausgabe (Nena Sahib or the Uprising in India: Historical-political Novel of the Present Times. English and German original edition), Berlin: Carl Nöhring, 1858–59. 2 Schenda mentions Hans Brunner once as an adapter of popular stories (see Rudolf Schenda, Volk ohne Buch. Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der populären Lesestoffe 1770–1910 (People without a Book : Studies on the Social History of Popular Reading Materials 1770–1910), Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 3rd edition, 1988, p. 480); John Retcliffe does not ﬁ nd any mention. Rebellion of an Indian Temple Dancer 153

sect, that plays an important role in Retcliffe and can be read as the rationalisation of the diffuse fear that Europeans have of the Indian population.3 It is merely the name of the eponymous heroine which might suggest an association with the terrifying goddess. However, whether Anarkalli was a member of the Thug sect remains open. Beyond this, there is no cause to compare the two novels in detail. Whether Nena Sahib functioned as a model for Anarkalli cannot be proven at this time, but the popularity of Retcliffe’s novel and the large similarities in the plot suggest that Brunner drew on it for his story.4 The conception and signiﬁ cant characteristics of the novel about the Indian temple dancer may illustrate the reception of the sepoy uprising in the German-speaking world.5 In this literary analysis gender critical aspects will play an important role, with a particular focus on the morally ambivalent message of this popular subject. The analysis of the continental European view on the Indian rebellion has only just begun.6 It has also not yet been included in a ‘cultural history under the sign of the colonial’.7

Point of Departure: Exploitation and Domination The novel Anarkalli, die indische Bajadere begins with a short introduction providing historical information about India, in which

3 See Kim A. Wagner, ‘The Protocols of Nena Sahib: The 1857 Fantasy of Hermann Goedsche’ (unpublished manuscript). Sir John Retcliffe was a pseudonym of Hermann Goedsche. Nothing has so far been published on Anarkalli as far as I know. 4 The archive of the publisher no longer has any documents. See also Heinz J. Galle, Volksbücher und Heftromane (Colporteur Novels and Pamphlet Novels), volume 3, Lüneburg: D. von Reeken, 2006. 5 See Anil Bhatti, ‘Retcliffe’s Nena Sahib and the German discourse on Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 India’ (in this volume). 6 I would like to thank Shaswati Mazumdar for suggestions and support for this essay. 7 See Axel Dunker’s review of Mit Deutschland um die Welt. Eine Kulturgeschichte des Fremden in der Kolonialzeit (With Germany around the World: A Cultural History of the Other in the Period of Colonialism), edited by Alexander Honold and Klaus R. Scherpe, Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 2004) in IASL-online http://www.iaslonline.de/index.php?vorgang_ id=1223 (accessed March 10, 2008). There is no reference to India in the compendium of Honold and Scherpe. 154 Carola Hilmes

the common stereotypes are evoked. ‘Even in ancient times India was regarded by the people of Europe as the most blessed of all countries, a magical land, which was entirely unknown to all of them.’8 The religious and the social systems are explained, as are the transmigration of souls and the caste system. Finally the cultural accomplishments and political fate of the countries are contrasted: ‘The ancient Indians have been one of the oldest people of culture’, which was subjected to immense suffering, however, because of ‘the brutal subjugation by foreigners’.9 Till 1858 the great land belonged to the East India Company, a society of merchants from London upon whom Queen Elisabeth had in 1600 conferred the privilege of exclusive trade with India.10 On one hand the introduction purports to provide factual information, on the other hand the historical events are critically commented upon. ‘The greatest injustice perpetrated by the East India Company was to rob the entire people of their land.’11 What this violent expropriation through an unjust tax system looks like is elaborated in the ﬁ rst chapter, which assumes a narrative tone. Depicted is a paradisical landscape in Madras through which a fakir clad in rags rides on an old camel. The following story is narrated from the perspective of this ‘strange fellow’, who is an Englishman in disguise as is presumed at the end of the story, who strongly denounces the ‘machinations of his countrymen’ in India.12 Explanatory notes on the wandering mendicants — they may be fakirs or dervishes according to their religious association — characterise the narrative as a historical political novel in which fact and ﬁ ction are mixed.13 But the informative aspect of the text is clearly overshadowed by its entertaining character. For the rest, the author works with a few typical situations and concentrates the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Hans Brunner, Anarkalli, die indische Bajadere, oder der Sepoy-Aufstand in Indien (Anarkalli, the Indian Temple Dancer, or the Sepoy-Uprising in India), Reutlingen: Enßlin und Laiblin, 1880 (Reutlinger Volkbücher Nr. 142), p. 3; all further quotations in the text refer to this edition. The copy is from the Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg. 9 Ibid., p. 4. 10 Ibid., p. 5. 11 Ibid., p. 6. 12 Ibid., pp. 8 and 24. 13 Ibid., p. 9. Rebellion of an Indian Temple Dancer 155

action only on a few persons. Signiﬁ cant is the black and white portrayal in which clichés of the Orient are evoked, as also cheap sensationalism achieved through sentimentalisation and graphic descriptions. This is seen in the focus on the fate of individual human beings, for instance, the ‘gruesome tortures’ during tax collection which are described in minute detail.14 The English administrator and his tax collector — an Indian of Muslim faith — are most brutal and arbitrary in their dealings. As this now unfairly affects a free farmer, he raises his voice in protest.

Down with the cursed rule of the Faringis! Wake up men! Pull yourselves out of your enduring and suffering! Remember the old glory of our land and defend yourselves against the tyrants, as I am doing!15

His call to resistance against the despotism of the foreigners with appeals to the glorious cultural traditions is in vain. The free farmer is tied, tortured and dispossessed. Apart from this his daughter, a pretty girl of thirteen, is humiliated by the administrator and sadistically mauled for refusing to be his sexual slave. The sexual appropriation of women is, as is well-known, part of the system of colonial exploitation. The voluptuous look of the English scoundrel, which the reader also follows with a frivolous shudder, falls on a hapless victim, whose pride cannot be broken by extreme torture, and who also cannot be saved by the father.

‘Away with the dog! Hold the beast away from me!’ Then he went back to the girl and put one of the ugliest twitching beetles in a nutshell and placed both on the most sensitive part of the girl’s body.16

The peak of this thrillingly dramatised episode is followed by an address to the ‘gentle reader’, in which the narrator conﬁ rms that such maltreatment really took place.17 Voyeurism is justiﬁ ed by reference Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 to historical reality. Such moral ambiguities are characteristic of this short novel, in which criticism of colonialism and Oriental fantasies,

14 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 14. 15 Ibid., p. 15. 16 Ibid., p. 18; one of the ‘most terrible timberman beetles’ (p. 17). 17 Ibid., p. 18. 156 Carola Hilmes

directed mainly at women, mix in a precarious manner. The young Zelima is saved by fortuitous coincidence. We meet up with her again very much later under the name Anarkalli. In the second chapter there is a change of scene. We fi nd ourselves in the princely state of Jhansi, an independent state at the time, where shortly an act of widow burning is to take place. Whereas in the event of tax collection, the moral judgement was clearly in favour of the indigenous people, here a genuine cultural confl ict is shown. From the European perspective the widow burning appears as a gruesome ritual kept alive by the ‘hypocritical, despicable Brahmins’ in order to ensure their own power over the people.18 The illustration of the violent dispossession of land and women in chapter one is completed in chapter two by the idea of the deceiving priests. To the physical and material dispossession is now added the religious and spiritual usurpation. Poverty, slavery and dependence — here too there is a sudden downgrading in the description — are shown as the common lot of the population, from which are excluded only the religious and political elites, which can include women only as exceptions. Their dependence is always twofold: they are subjugated by their own men, and also at the mercy of the foreign masters.19 The novel repeatedly shows how a particular strength can develop out of this position of subjugation. This holds true as much for the title fi gure as for the widow of the recently deceased prince, who resolves to follow the rites of the land and later, as princess of the land, joins the rebellion. But I am jumping ahead. Present at the planned widow burning are the English colonial rulers as well as the Indian elites. The three ladies — two young girls and the favourite wife of the deceased prince of Jhansi — are ready for sacrifi cial death. To the humanists of Europe they appear as victims and objects of exploitation of the leading religious caste which uses them for furthering their own interests and makes them

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 victims of the curious mass of onlookers. The cynics among the Europeans also draw pleasure from the spectacle. It is only at the last

18 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 27. 19 Jenny Sharpe, Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text, Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1993; Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation, London, New York: Routledge, 1992. Rebellion of an Indian Temple Dancer 157

moment that the English forbid the ‘brutal ritual’ and only by virtue of the courageous intervention of Maldigri, a major of the colonial army, can at least one of the women be rescued. But what appears to be a heroic act and a triumph of western civilisation is clearly an act of disregard for the customs of the land. That this colonial act is eventually legitimised through a love story between the saviour, who by the way is no friend of the English, and the saved is so exaggerated, sentimental and kitschy that this justifi cation appears to be contrived and not convincing. At least from today’s perspective a pulp novel of the 19th century can easily be read against the grain. Of course the Indian practice of widow burning is a controversial ritual which not only makes cultural difference visible but allows attempts at harmonious solutions to appear impossible. The ideological function of the Christian humanist ideal is clearly expressed in chapter two: ‘Cruel Christian, why do you keep me from dying for my faith and my people. Carry me back to the fl ames, so dishonour may not fall on Naria’s name.’20 The novel does not linger long over this dilemma.21 Similarly, the imposition of the will of the English on the Hindus, the order to ‘save the widows from coercion and the infl uence of the priests’, are no less controversial since religious motives — respect and the desire for cultural self- determination — become important for the future rebellion. With the widow burning in chapter two Brunner puts on display one of the most widely discussed aspects of the Hindu religion and uses it to point to those who are supposedly inciting the Indian rebellion. ‘Curse the Faringis! What right do they have to command in the land of the Hindu? Beat them down, these sons of fi lthy beasts!’22 The native princes do not follow the call of the Brahmins yet. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

20 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 32. 21 Surprisingly, there are some examples in German literature of the transﬁ guration of widow burning into an instance of unconditional love. For example, Karoline von Günderrode in her sonnet ‘Die Malabarischen Witwen’ (The Malabar Widows) (1806). See also Goethe’s ballad ‘Der Gott und die Bajadere. Indische Legende’ (The God and the Temple Dancer: Indian Legend) (1798). 22 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 30. 158 Carola Hilmes

Power and Passion: Intercultural Relations between the Sexes With Major Rivers in the third chapter we get to know the absolutely negative image of a coloniser who is up to his tricks as the regent of Kampur (Cawnpur) and Jhansi.

His arrogant, brutal character drew satisfaction from the slavish subjugation of the population, in the maltreatment and humiliation of the native Princes. All his base characteristics, lust, greed, ambition, could be fully gratiﬁ ed by the tyrannical power that is bestowed on the ofﬁ ce of the Resident. And he knew how to make the most despicable use of this power.23

This the novel illustrates by means of his behaviour towards women. Major Rivers in fact has a harem of particularly young women. This supposed adaptation to native customs completely perverts sexual relationships. Rivers’s shamelessness is only surpassed by his brutality. This highlights diffi culties of acculturation which are related to gender-specifi c aspects.24 The harem, a place forbidden to foreigners, is the quintessence of the Orient with its promise of unexpected pleasures. The erotic and exotic are localised here.25 The appropriation of this space appears therefore as specially challenging, though this also leads to a self- exposure of colonialism. The women are kept as sex-slaves — of this the text leaves no doubt — who have to extend their services to the friends of the major as well, which is certainly not in accordance with genuine Oriental custom. That the young girls gradually fi nd pleasure in their imprisonment and in this kind of work can be nothing but a male fantasy. Evidently the harem is confused here with a grand Oriental brothel, in terms both of its material and human resources.

23 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 36. 24 See Nancy L. Paxton, Writing under the Raj: Gender, Race, and Rape in the British Colonial Imagination, 1830–1947, New Brunswick, New Jersey; London: Rutgers University Press, 1999. Paxton deals with all important aspects in her fundamental study: the colonial harem, the temple dancer, chivalry and rape, the Rani of Jhansi, interracial marriage, etc. 25 See the popular scientiﬁ c portrayal Annette Deeken and Monika Bösel, eds, ‘An den süßen Wassern Asiens’: Frauenreisen in den Orient (On the Banks of the Sweet Waters of Asia: Travels by Women in the Orient), Frankfurt/Main, New York: Campus, 1996. Rebellion of an Indian Temple Dancer 159

Next to the legendary riches of the Indian princes, it was the harem and the sexual practices imagined within the harem, which aroused the fantasies about the Orient. This is not only so for popular ﬁ ction — Retcliffe’s India novel is similar — but also for romantic literature, for Lord Byron and Shelley, as also for the literature of aestheticism, for Gautier, Flaubert among others.26 Sexuality between members of different races in the 19th century was a theme covered with taboos, an explosive but nevertheless favourite theme. The link between a European male and a woman from the Orient could be more easily reconciled with the supposedly natural difference between the sexes, than the other way round. The precariousness of intercultural sexual relations between a man and a woman is played out in the novel in three or four instances. The rape of Indian women by the European rulers of the country and their accomplices is shown as illegitimate and despicable, a clear case. The titillation of the reader through the portrayal of such sexual encounters is calculated, which makes the narrator’s moral judgement implausible. The European hero who rescues the Indian widow from the funeral pyre and later pursues a happy relationship with her presents the positively connoted but also trivial variant of the love adventure which, however, does not last. More interesting and important for the further course of the story is the relationship of Nana Sahib to an Irish lady whom he sincerely loves. The relationship is legitimised through marriage which makes it different from the other relationships in the novel.27 For the Indian prince, the white woman is not a trophy. This intercultural marriage works as an ideal example of successful understanding, since it is based on mutual respect and religious tolerance. However, the harmonious relation between Nana Sahib and Margaretha does not survive as Major Rivers has Margaretha kidnapped and brought to his harem. This again demonstrates his malice and greed for power. It is therefore the colonialists themselves who hinder understanding Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 from taking place. Of course this insight is clouded by the fact that good and bad characteristics are attributed across the east–west divide.

26 Mario Praz, Liebe, Tod und Teufel. Die schwarze Romantik (Love, Death and the Devil: The Black Romanticism), Munich: dtv, 2nd edition, 1981. 27 There are no children born of the mixed race relationships in the novel and therefore no consequences for ‘race purity’ from the perspective prevalent at that time. 160 Carola Hilmes

Dishonoured and disgraced, Margaretha turns mad. Her rescue out of the harem as planned by Nana Sahib — and here we meet again the heroes of the previous chapter: the fakir and Maldigri — comes too late and Margaretha dies. This stroke of bad luck changes Nana Sahib fundamentally: the friend of the British turns into one of their bitterest enemies. With this the fourth chapter brings about a decisive change and a thickening of the plot. Nana Sahib joins the conspirators and is later responsible for the massacre in Kampur, as he has but one goal: revenge upon Rivers. His motivation to join the rebellion thus stems from purely personal reasons. Economic or even religious reasons which fi nd mention in earlier chapters now take a back seat. The goal to fi ght for justice which ought to have been the issue here turns into a goal of mere revenge, and therefore a legitimate reason for the rebellion is withdrawn. Politics turns into a fi eld of unbridled passions. The life of Anarkalli follows a different course. The colonial encounter shown in the title fi gure is not blessed by a lucky star. The Indian temple dancer had saved the life of Lieutenant Sanders several times but he takes the relationship as a mere affair and wants to marry a respectable English woman, Editha Highson. To her he explains: ‘How could you compare my love for you with such an affair that a man in a careless moment under this scorching sun might have started with an Indian temple dancer? She has never had a part of my heart.’28 What is explained here as cultural difference is in reality a question of different values for the sexual code of conduct of men and women.29 A typical instance of double morality, hypocritical and misogynous. Like Nana Sahib, Anarkalli joins the rebellion in which she also pursues goals that are purely personal. She remains steadfastly fi xed on Sanders. In order ‘to save a Faringi’ she even betrays ‘her brothers’.30

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 45. 29 The cover of the novel in the Reutlinger Volksbücher series illustrates the encounter of these three characters and thus points to a crucial scene. The engraving on the title page shows on the front right an Indian woman with her back to the viewer. The woman’s left arm stretches upwards aggressively with clenched ﬁ sts. Near her at the back on the left, we see an English couple, the lady’s arm linked to the ofﬁ cer’s. She keenly watches the Indian temple dancer who is determinedly trying to hold her companion at a distance with her hand. 30 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 49. Rebellion of an Indian Temple Dancer 161

Anarkalli’s exclusive position is characterised not only by her beguiling charm, or highly erotic attraction, but also by her determination and strength. ‘Wasn’t this slim lithe fi gure, weren’t these dark fi ery eyes, weren’t they those of Zelima, the daughter of the maltreated and dispossessed ryot?’.31 Already as a young woman she had become the victim of the British in two senses, but she could also prove her fearlessness and resoluteness. She could escape the sadistic and erotically connoted torture of the English administrator, a fi gure of the likes of Major Rivers, only by paying the price of being taken on as a servant of Lady Mallingham.32 The novel does not tell us how Anarkalli was able to free herself and become a celebrated temple dancer and prostitute. Here it throws away an opportunity to make use of erotic fantasies. The relation of the title fi gure with the mystic is also cut short, and we also get to know very little and only in retrospect about Anarkalli’s passionate relationship with Lieutenant Sanders. Unlike the Europeans who are presented as concrete fi gures, the Indian fi gures tread on lines of biographical development and psychological explanations, which make the fi gure portrayals more complex. The fact that Nana Sahib and Anarkalli are both victims and perpetrators questions a story with supposedly clear judgements. Such moral ambivalences clearly indicate that freeing oneself from the dialectic of master and slave is as impossible as a release from the vicious circle of revenge. Such an analysis would have rather alienated readers of popular novels of the 19th century. On the surface, Brunner’s literary version of the sepoy uprising confi rms a generally pessimistic world view that holds prospects of change for the better as impossible. Such a reading is in keeping with and

31 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 45; ‘ryots’ are understood here as free peasants. 32

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 The female colonialist acts out of sympathy, thus afﬁ rming the topos of the female as the ‘moral sex’ (Lieselotte Steinbrügge, Das moralische Geschlecht: Theorien und literarische Entwürfe über die Natur der Frau in der französischen Aufklärung, Weinheim, Basel: Beltz, 1987; English edition: The Moral Sex: Women’s Nature in the French Enlightenment, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Further events in the novel, however, make clear that sympathy is not an adequate reaction. The female ﬁ gures are shown to be overall morally better; Anarkalli’s problematic development into a dancer and prostitute, and ultimately to a rebel, is traced to the humiliation at the hands of the British and therefore at least partly pardoned. 162 Carola Hilmes

afﬁ rmative of so-called common sense. There lies, as is well-known, an important function of popular ﬁ ction.33

The Rebellion: Analogy of the Political and the Private The last two chapters deal with the outbreak of the sepoy mutiny which coincides in the novel with a ball at Nana Sahib’s palace where the prince demands justice; he demands from General Wheeler the handing over of Major Rivers. But the political events sweep over private affairs, this time in favour of the British. This story too is written from the perspective of the victors. The emotionalising of the event, which shows the Indian prince for the last time as a man of honour and representative of civilisation — a topos well-known at least since the Lettres Persanes — is pushed to the forefront. This is hardly contextualised historically with adequate explanation so that the historical events function merely as a backdrop. At the beginning of chapter six a very short, and moreover, religiously motivated explanation of the rebellion is added on and the events are raised quickly to the historical level of that time.

The uprising of the Sepoys had broken out simultaneously in almost all big cities. The last impetus was given by the Brahmins and the Mohammedan Mullahs, of which the former told the Hindus that the cartridges of the newly introduced Enﬁ eld riﬂ e were smeared with the grease of the cow, the cow being a sacred animal for the Hindus. The Mullahs on the other hand told the Muslims amongst the Sepoys that the cartridges were smeared with the grease of the pig, the pig being known to be an impure animal for the Mohammedans, and one should remember that the cartridges used to have paper caps which the soldier had to tear open with his teeth. Thus both Hindus and Mohammedans felt hurt in their religious beliefs.34 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

33 Heinz J. Galle, ed., Populäre Lesestoffe. Groschenhefte, Dime Novels und Penny Dreadfuls aus den Jahren 1850 bis 1950. Katalog zur Ausstellung in der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Köln von Heinz J. Galle (Popular Reading Materials: Groschen Novels, Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls of the Years 1850 to 1950. Catalogue of the Exhibition in the City and University Library of Cologne by Heinz J. Galle). Cologne: Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, 2002. 34 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 58. Rebellion of an Indian Temple Dancer 163

The brutality of the ‘insurrectionary war’ — here too Brunner’s choice of words is revealing — is diagnosed as ‘vengeance for the tortures’ which the English infl icted on the Indian people.35 Therefore, even women and children are not spared from this bloody vengeance. The siege of ‘Kampur’ and the massacre of the colonialists provide the backdrop of chapter six, in which the ‘horrors of revenge’ are shown. The attention from now is on Anarkalli, who fi ghts like ‘an evil demon’ on the side of Nana Sahib.36 The roles are not evenly divided between the temple dancer and the prince of Bithoor. While Nana Sahib reverently delays his campaign of revenge till the funeral ceremony of his wife is over, Anarkalli is shown as a woman driven by passion and appears increasingly like the fearful image of a cruel woman. Rejected and humiliated by the English lieutenant she now wants ‘to break his heart and see his eyes cry’.37 She does not plan to kill her lover. I will skip the details, which have something to offer again for a sadistic and self-righteously disposed reader, and concentrate rather on the end which culminates in a paradoxical ritual. The Indian temple dancer burns herself with her dead lover and performs thus a sati to the point of absurdity, for she is no widow in the fi rst place, and for the English offi cer the Indian funeral ritual does not hold relevance. Unlike Nana Sahib who has no success in catching Major Rivers, Anarkalli’s ritualistic self-sacrifi ce shows once again its ambivalent status. In this exotic form of death for the sake of love, there is a fusion of emotionally intense self-realisation and self- destruction. Paradoxically, the title fi gure thus asserts her victory. This ending is simultaneously linked, however, to a warning against romantic love and its fatal consequences. Common sense, which is what popular fi ction speculates with, emerges victorious. The last paragraph of the novel reports briefl y that the rebellion was suppressed and all the active participants had to fl ee. In this way the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 colonial order is restored. Anarkalli can be read as a femme fatale, a female type quite favoured in post-romantic literature, on whose populist effect

35 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 59. 36 ‘The Peischwa’ [Nana Sahib] had become a different person. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes ﬂ ashed an uncanny ﬁ re, and an icy, cruel line surrounded his mouth’ (ibid., p. 59). 37 Ibid., p. 60. 164 Carola Hilmes

Hans Brunner evidently places his bets with his shortened adaptation of the Nana Sahib story and her name as the title.38 The male fantasy of desire for the erotically attractive woman, who is often a foreign beauty, is usually combined with the fantasy of fear of the strong, militant woman who is out for brutal revenge. The ambivalences in this imagination of the female are evident; they add to the contradictions with which colonialism is represented.39 In place of critical analysis the novel offers humanistically coloured value judgements confi rmed further by stereotypes. The immoral behaviour of the Europeans does get denounced but by shifting the events to a private sphere, the novel loses analytical force. The precedence of European values is never really suspended. However, Brunner’s novel does reject the notion that the Indian rebellion was only a revolt of the sepoys. In Brunner’s novel the rebels include members of the ruling elite and the people, whose most prominent representative is Anarkalli. The clichés of the Orient, which are evoked above all by the Indian female figures and used to effect through the story of Anarkalli, display the calamitous tension between fascination and repulsion as two facets of the appropriation of the foreign Other. Superimposed upon these clichés are images of the battle of the sexes which are characteristic of European mentality of the fi n de siècle and which are merely exported in the concerned novels to the Orient. This mechanism of projection turns against the Europeans as a threat from the foreign. As a beautiful dancer, Anarkalli is in great demand and as an Amazon who fi ghts for her own needs, she is feared. When this private story is incorporated into the sepoy revolt of 1857 and becomes its driving force, then the same ambivalent patterns apply to the political events. In this respect the short novel is a revealing document of the history of mentality. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

38 Carola Hilmes, Die Femme fatale. Ein Weiblichkeitstypus in der nachromantischen Literatur (The Femme Fatale: A Female Type in Post- romantic Literature), Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990; Bram Dijkstra, Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhood, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. 39 Kamakshi P. Murti, India: The Seductive and Seduced ‘Other’ of German Orientalism, Westport, Connecticut, London: Greenwood Press, 2001. Rebellion of an Indian Temple Dancer 165

Reception: Distinctive and Ambiguous Features Hans Brunner’s literary adaptation of the sepoy uprising in India provides quite likely an extremely condensed version of the Nena Sahib trilogy (1857–58) of Sir John Retcliffe which appeared in a ‘New, cheap, popular edition’ in 1879 from the publishing house Kogge und Fritze in Berlin.40 In accordance with the guidelines of the Reutlinger Volksbücher, Brunner compressed the complex events into only sixty-four pages. (Page 43 onwards the size of the font is reduced and the number of lines is raised from thirty-eight to forty-eight per page.) In six chapters individual events are reported, the connection between which is not immediately clear in the fi rst reading. The epic expanse of Retcliffe’s narrative which creates high levels of suspense falls apart in Brunner’s novel. It is only in the second half of the novel that he attains a greater intensity by focusing on the title fi gure and bringing in the sepoy revolt.41 As in the ‘historical-political novels of the present times’ — a genre founded by Retcliffe — historical reality in Brunner’s novel also retreats behind its literary form and gives an idea about the prevalent clichés of the Orient as well as the ambivalent stance towards colonialism. That facts mix with fi ction is also valid for the English novels: ‘There is in fact very little difference between many historical accounts and the exposition of the conspiracy of 1857 in Mutiny- Novels.’42 While Retcliffe had tried to integrate the contemporary

40 Volker Neuhaus, Der zeitgeschichtliche Sensationsroman in Deutschland 1855–1878. ‘Sir John Retcliffe’ und seine Schule (The Contemporary-historical Novel of Sensation in Germany 1855–1878. ‘Sir John Retcliffe’ and His School), Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1980, p. 185. In his post-doctoral thesis Neuhaus mentions many imitators and followers of Retcliffe’s successful novels. The India theme is found, for instance, in Die Rose von Delhi, a social novel by Johanna Herbert, who published under the pseudodonym Egon Fels (ibid., p. 200); Egon Fels, Die Rose von Delhi. Roman aus der Zeit des Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 indischen Aufstandes unter Nena Sahib im Jahre 1857 (The Rose of Delhi: Novel from the Times of the Indian Uprising under Nena Sahib in the Year 1857), 4 volumes, Jena und Leipzig: Hermann Costenoble, 1866. Neuhaus does not mention Anarkalli. 41 It is very likely that Brunner used Retcliffe’s novel as a model as the similarity in the contents of the narrated episodes suggests. What legal and ﬁ nancial consequences might have followed could not be ascertained. 42 Wagner, ‘The Protocols of Nena Sahib’. See also Gautam Chakravarty, The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 166 Carola Hilmes

political events in his novels into a world model, after his death the sensational and adventurous elements were more strongly emphasised.43 This trend is followed by Brunner in Anarkalli (1880). He opts for melodramatic intensifi cation, fantasies of violence and the voyeurism of the reader. A stated apology to women readers for shocking them with such reports, as is sometimes found in Retcliffe, is not to be found in Brunner. However, he does not dispense with the hypocritical effect of occasionally addressing his readers in order to draw attention or intensify suspense.44 At the beginning of the novel a seemingly Marxist narrative position seems to be compatible with a Eurocentric perspective.45 Such double meanings become especially clear in the descriptions of the Indian women. While most of the Indian men bow under the European yoke without resistance, something which is explained with the cliché of the submissiveness of the Indians and their ability to endure suffering, Brunner repeatedly highlights the protest of the Indian women.46 This is not only the case with the title fi gure but also with the Indian widow who is rescued from the funeral pyre against her will and then is made a princess. Along with another princess she later joins the rebellion. Unfortunately, Brunner does not pay much attention to these fi gures of female rulers in the further course of events, instead placing at the centre Anarkalli, who, with her passion, is unpredictable and dangerous. With the rebellion of the temple dancer Brunner constructs the fearful image of the militant woman — the honorary title of Amazon is reserved for the princess of Jhansi — while simultaneously ensuring her erotic fascination.47 This double strategy reinforces race, class and gender prejudices. Other minor characters also hardly contribute to any differentiation in this basic constellation. The Islamic helper of the English

43 Neuhaus, Der zeitgeschichtliche Sensationsroman in Deutschland,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 p. 185. 44 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 18. 45 Wagner points out that Goedsche’s projection of the Indian situation shortly before the rebellion corresponds to some of the articles written by Marx and Engels. Wagner, ‘The Protocols of Nena Sahib’. 46 Anarkalli’s behaviour is described as follows: ‘Although the incident was utterly insigniﬁ cant and easily understood by the crowd on the river bank, the audacity of the woman compared to the usually so very humble and shy bearing of the Hindus in their dealings with their white masters roused in Miss Editha an inexplicable concern’ (Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 44). 47 Ibid., p. 54. Rebellion of an Indian Temple Dancer 167

as well as the old Indian bawd — a typical witch-like fi gure — all conform to clichés of colonialism, which combine in the case of the female fi gures with the misogynist notions of the time.48 Some of the violent sexual fantasies, for which Retcliffe’s novels are notorious, are taken over by Brunner. Apart from the scene with the timberman beetle — Anarkalli’s initiation scene for her rebellion — Brunner mentions that her English rival is put at the mercy of an African Hercules. Anarkalli ‘went up with Editha to a Herculean corporal, an ugly Moor, and handed over the captive as a slave to share his bed.’49 Although, unlike Retcliffe, the act of rape is not elaborated any further, Brunner still uses ‘a common Western stereotype concerning the sexual prowess of African men and interracial rape.’50 The Eurocentric domination is confi rmed with the suppression of the sepoy revolt and the victory of the colonialists over the rebels. To use this historical fact as a narrative legitimation is cynical, but Brunner does not hold himself accountable for this in his novel. Such ambiguities can be recognised easily from a contemporary postcolonial perspective.51 With Anarkalli, the female side of the sepoy revolt is brought into view.52 A critique of industrialisation and capitalism, of rationalism and liberalism, as are certainly to

48 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 40. Brunner thematises problems of collaboration only peripherally; the Sikhs are thus mentioned only once, when through the intervention of a ‘young Sikh chief’ (ibid., p. 58) the outbreak of the uprising is delayed. Here too the novel operates in a suggestive manner and shows itself as prejudiced. 49 Ibid., p. 63. 50 Wagner, ‘The Protocols of Nena Sahib’. 51 Todd Kontje, German Orientalisms, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. 52 For the strong afﬁ nity of writers to historical novels, see Kurt Habitzel and Günter Mühlberger, Gewinner und Verlierer. Der historische Roman und sein Beitrag zum Literatursystem der Restaurationszeit (1815–1848/49) Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 (Winners and Losers: The Historical Novel and its Contribution to the Literature System of the Restoration Period [1815–1848/49]). In: IASL 21 (1996), volume 1, pp. 91–123. Giving the abstract story a human touch was a motivation in many historical novels; see Carola Hilmes, ‘Die historischen Romane der Henriette von Paalzow’ (The Historical Novels of Henriette von Paalzow), in Marianne Henn, Irmela von der Lühe and Anita Runge, eds, Geschichte(n)-Erzählen. Konstruktion von Vergangenheit in literarischen Werken deutschsprachiger Autorinnen seit dem 18. Jahrhundert (Narrating [hi]story[ies]: Construction of the Past in Literary Works of German-speaking Women Writers Since the 18th Century), Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005, pp. 145–64. 168 Carola Hilmes

be found in Retcliffe’s novel — I can only refer to his anti-Semitic grounds — is missing in Brunner’s shortened version.53 Retcliffe’s fi xation on conspiracy theories centres in Nena Sahib on the Thug sect, of which the title fi gure is the leader. This aspect is hardly of any relevance in Anarkalli. For no particular reason the Thugs are mentioned just once and so the signifi cance of the chapatis — the mysterious bread of the revolt — remains unclear.54 In the course of the novel Anglophobia is linked to individual misconduct leaving no room for any serious criticism of colonialism. The converging of the political and the private, which emerges through the story of the title fi gure, emphasises a humanisation of history. Functioning as a parallel action to the rebellion the story of Anarkalli is hardly aimed at a critical reading. Such an escapist standpoint is typical of trivial, popular fi ction of the 19th century. In the adventure novels this seems all the more plausible, though politics simultaneously appears disguised as adventure. Since Germany in the 1880s had not yet emerged as a colonial power, Brunner’s book could be read as a warning against the dangers of colonialism whereby the subtext might term the lack of opportunity as a certifi cate of virtue.55 This moral superiority attained by swindle in combination with exciting stories of adventure and erotic fantasies of the Orient produces a hugely effective novel of popular fi ction. This kind of sensationalism with a human face was a recipe for success. This also refutes the theory of the special German path (Sonderweg) in regard to Orientalism put forward with reference to Herder and Goethe.56 Brunner’s novel projects

53 See Neuhaus, Der zeitgeschichtliche Sensationsroman in Deutschland, p. 118ff. See also the introduction by Umberto Eco to Will Eisner, Das Komplott. Die wahre Geschichte der Protokolle der Weisen von Zion (The Conspiracy: The True Story of the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion), Munich: DVA, 2005, pp. 5–7.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 54 Brunner, Anarkalli, p. 43. 55 See Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies. Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870, Durham, London: Duke University Press, 1997. 56 See Anil Bhatti, ‘“ . . .zwischen zwei Welten schwebend . . .”, Zu Goethes Fremdheitsexperiment im West-östlichen Divan’ (‘“. . . Hovering between Two Worlds . . .” On Goethe’s Experiment with Otherness in the West-easterly Divan’), in Goethezeitportal. Postkoloniale Studien (Age of Goethe Portal: Postcolonial Studies), article on the online discussion forum: http://www.goethezeitportal.de/index.php?id=1431, accessed March 1, 2008. Rebellion of an Indian Temple Dancer 169

harmonising tendencies between east and west but all intercultural and interethnic relationships between men and women fail. Possible fi gures of identifi cation like Nana Sahib are destroyed, confi rming the basic tone of pessimism. A way out of the vicious circle of power and violence is not shown. Injustice only calls forth revenge. This realism dispenses, however, with a self-critical corrective, it circulates conventional Orientalist clichés that link all that is threatening with the foreign and so exclude the Other. What is specifi c to the reception of the Indian rebellion in Germany is the fact that the all the historical information was from second- or third-hand sources; and Brunner’s India novel is full of contradictions. There is, for example, sympathy for the rebellion in India so that colonialism can be criticised as exploitation and an unjust, even illegitimate rule. The role of a foreign religion, particularly Hinduism, is shown to be important, although controversial. Brunner’s sympathy for the rebels, however, by no means combines with a call for the (sexual) liberation of the women. They are rather described very conventionally within the European Christian tradition, particularly in regard to the control and the fear of their sexuality. Scenes of violence and allusions to erotic fantasies thus serve as affi rmation of the existing order which also includes the relations between the sexes as supposedly natural and good. Superstitions and theories of conspiracy have no particular significance in Brunner’s novel, as opposed to Retcliffe. The irrational is embodied in Anarkalli, the Indian temple dancer whose eroticism is both evoked and held at a distance. The accentuation of the female fi gures — the title fi gure, but also the one saved from the pyre, the princess of Jhansi — mark a shift in the narrative into the emotional, leaving unused any possibility of an analogy between the political and the private. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 170 Flaminia Nicora , September Illustrirte Zeitung Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ‘Die Erschießung meuterischer Sipoys zu Firospur am 13. Juni’ (The Execution of Mutinous Sepoys at Firozpur on 13 June), in 5, 1857. Italian Narrative Responses 171

11 The Stirring Story of the ‘Cipays’: Italian Narrative Responses Flaminia Nicora

In 1857, when the ﬁ rst news of the Indian rebellion crossed the sea and swept the continent, all Europe took an interest in the events that shocked and mesmerised Great Britain. In Italy, as in most other European countries, newspapers and magazines started featuring regular reports of the Indian events just a few months after the uprising had broken out. The uprising was unanimously perceived as a critical phase of British and Indian history, a phase expected to have lasting repercussions on international policy. Apart from the press, which reported the events as they happened, politicians, historians, geographers, political scientists, and members of the newly established School of Oriental Studies engaged repeatedly with the uprising from 1858 onwards and all the way into the following century.1 A relatively high number of Italian books deal with the Indian rebellion, though most in fact are not entirely or speciﬁ cally devoted to the topic. The rebellion also caught the attention of several travel writers who, deliberately mimicking English visitors to India after 1857, indulged in historical digressions while recording their visits of famous mutiny sites such as Cawnpore or Delhi. At least one of

1 Several Italian authors wrote on India and the insurgency immediately

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 after 1858. Among them were Giuseppe Lazzaro, Gianbattista Crollalanza and Aristide Calani. Other works by Édouard de Warren and Ferdinand de Lanoye were available in translation. At a later stage, Clemente Corte, Virginia Vacca and several representatives of the School of Oriental Studies that had introduced Sanskrit and Arabic at Rome University conducted studies on Indian culture and history that included the period around 1857. Between 1900 and the Second World War, a number of travelogues mention the rebellion as a historical digression used to justify the signiﬁ cance of a visit to sites such as Cawnpore, Lucknow or Delhi itself. Among these travel writers are Enrico Bertarelli, Arnaldo Cipolla and Guido Gozzano. 172 Flaminia Nicora

them, the poet Guido Gozzano, has survived oblivion. The story of the ‘cipays’ — the Italian name for the sepoys — engaged the popular imagination, encouraging a few novelists to feature the rebellion more or less extensively in their works between 1858 and the 1930s: famous names include Aristide Calani, Emilio Salgari, Margherita Olliveri and Guglielmo Stocco. The present essay aims to circumscribe and outline this thin tradition of Italian historical novels, none of which were mainstream — although according to recent revaluations Salgari’s Le due tigri (The Two Tigers) may be a partial exception.2 Comparisons will be made with the British subgenre of the mutiny novel in an attempt to fi nd distinctive features in the few Italian narratives that staged the Indian rebellion. Political events in Italy, almost on the eve of independence, greatly affected the reception and the interpretations (fi ctional and non-fi ctional) of the Indian rebellion; but interest in the event extended much farther, at least until the Second World War, when again national issues threw light on the political signifi cance of the episode and its possible contingent uses. The fi rst news of the rebels had reached Italy only a couple of years before the war that would eventually free the country from Austrian rule and from absolutist local monarchies. The contrast between republican democrats — mostly followers of Mazzini’s ideals — and members of the moderate wing, supporters of the Piedmontese role in the cause for independence, triggered different responses: the former showed sympathy towards the rebels, while the latter maintained an attitude of deep-seated hostility, fostered by their fear of all large- scale popular movements, either in Italy or abroad. But by the dawn of the new century, as the newly unifi ed Italian nation discovered its colonial ambitions, the cultural climate had changed: British colonialism could at the same time appear as a despicable, selfi sh ‘scramble’, and as an inspiring model of territorial control, meant Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 to enlighten the darkness of the colonies with the ‘torch of western civilisation’. Later, Fascism rekindled antagonism towards Britain, which was seen as an unreachable and greedy rival in Africa and a staunch enemy of Mussolini’s dictatorial regime throughout the

2 Emilio Salgari, Le due tigri, Genoa: Donath, 1904; Emilio Salgari, The Two Tigers, London, Ontario: ROH Press, 2007. Italian Narrative Responses 173

Second World War. Once more the rebellion was evoked, injected into the hegemonic political discourse of the time mainly in the form of war propaganda, and remitted to public attention.

Pre-unitarian Narratives: An Anti-English Supporter of the Indian Rebels When Aristide Calani published his Scene dell’insurrezione indiana in 1858, the rebellion was still echoing in the papers.3 Italy was a mosaic of small kingdoms, dukedoms and courts, dismally broken under the uncomfortable burden of foreign dominance. Throughout the various Italian states, the press had provided enough information about the Indian events to ensure an interested and fairly com- petent reading public for Calani’s dense fi ctional account of the war overseas. The present and future political map of the whole peninsula depended heavily on major European powers, namely on France, Great Britain and Austria, all of which exercised their infl uence in order to defi ne the continental map to their political advantage. Although addressed to a somewhat restricted regional audience, most newspapers carefully monitored international politics, aware of the consequences that any change may have on Italian unifi cation. For one, Italian democrats were very critical of local oppressive monarchical regimes and of colonial subjugation, both seen as obstacles to the peoples’ rightful determination of their own destiny. In their eyes, the Indian rebels were a model for the whole world, Italy included. On the other hand, members of the moderate party, who hoped that Piedmont could lead the unifi cation process through diplomacy and without popular revolt, counted on British support. Accordingly, the moderate and conservative press were aligned with the British standpoint on the insurrection.4 The Crimean war had recently demonstrated how dynamic, or possibly cynical, the system

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 of alliances could be, as France and Great Britain had unexpectedly joined forces to prevent Russia from extending its sphere of inﬂ uence to the Ottoman empire. The Piedmontese contingent on the Black

3 Aristide Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana (Scenes of the Indian Insurrection), Milan and Verona: Stabilimento Civelli Giuseppe, 1858. 4 On this subject, see Liliana Delle Nogare, ‘Echoes of 1857 in Italy’, in P. C. Joshi, ed., Rebellion 1857, Delhi: NBT, 2007 (1957), pp. 346–55. 174 Flaminia Nicora

Sea (where Calani served as one of the offi cers) was indeed part of a diplomatic scheme concocted by Camillo Cavour at the expense of the Habsburg empire, in order to draw French and British attention to the Italian plight. In this context, the Indian rebellion, week after week a mounting challenge to British power, received sustained and serious attention from Italian public opinion. No less than the British, most Europeans were convinced that the control of the Indian colony was essential to preserve the status quo: a victory of the rebels could forever change the map of the world. The marquise Aristide Calani, a scholar and former offi cer in the French army during the colonial wars in North Africa, was not new to (pseudo)-historical accounts. A correspondent for the Piedmontese troops at Sevastopol, he had published a description of the Crimean war titled Scene della vita militare in Crimea in 1855, reprinted and enlarged in 1856. Similarly, his earlier Scene della vita militare in Algeria (1854) was about the war in Algeria where he had also fought.5 Calani followed a common 19th-century practice, whereby offi cers took to writing — especially about the colonial world or the military campaigns abroad — in the form of diaries, narratives or essays that recorded their own war experiences. Regarded by their readers as authoritative voices, these new writers provided information and entertainment to a public more and more interested in learning

5 Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana; Aristide Calani, Scene della vita militare in Crimea (Scenes of Army Life in Crimea), Naples: Stabilimento Tipograﬁ co, 1855; Aristide Calani, Scene della vita militare in Algeria (Scenes of Army Life in Algeria), Naples: C. Bouttraux, 1854. When he left his military career, Calani turned to journalism. After the uniﬁ cation of Italy, he published Il Parlamento del regno d’Italia (The Parliament of the Italian Kingdom), Milan: Civelli, 1860, a series of portraits

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 and biographies of the members of the ﬁ rst Italian Parliament. In 1866 he bought La Gazzetta di Torino (The Turin Gazette) and directed the daily newspaper until his death in 1897. His son kept the property, but not the direction of the paper, which was published until 1917. Founded in Turin on January 1, 1860 by Giuseppe Cesena and Augusto Piacentini, La Gazzetta was a moderate democratic paper supporting the process of national uniﬁ cation. Calani gave it a political line balanced between radicalism rooted in Garibaldi’s ideals and a more moderate attitude, but quite attentive to social issues. (F. Contorbia, ed., Il giornalismo italiano. I.1860–1901 [Italian Journalism I.1860–1901], Milan: Mondadori, 2007.) Italian Narrative Responses 175

about foreign countries and especially about the colonial encounter. Unlike Calani’s previous works, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana could certainly not rely on any fi rst-hand experience of the author, but the style of the report mimicked the rhetorical style of offi cers’ accounts and thus could easily lead readers to assume that the text was on the whole trustworthy. In fact Calani’s work on India must be regarded as a historical epistolary novel, rather than a historical account, since it mingles fi ction and documentary sources.6 While in Great Britain a huge number of diaries, reports, novels and other literary genres variously staged the rebellion, in Italy — as far as I know — this is the only fi ctional work fully focused on the insurrection and published while the events were still taking place. The writer takes up the common literary strategy of pretending to be no more than the editor of an authentic manuscript, consisting of a series of letters sent by two of the main characters, the French offi cers, Colonel Reumont and Viscount Gustave d’Arembert, to their ‘protector’, the Duchess of Lafaisantie, in Paris. The letters are meant to be a report to the duchess to inform her of their work at the court of Mirneh Rajah in the city of Mandore, while also outlining the phases of the rebellion from January 4 to November 27, 1857. The word ‘insurrection’ used in the title to refer to the sepoy war already betrays the author’s anti-British standpoint. But what is more striking is the ample space given in the narrative to the Indian point of view. In particular, the rebellion is described as a real war of independence, carefully planned and supported by several princes and rajas. We are informed that the French offi cers had been sent to India to boost local resistance against the English and to train the army of the Rajah of Mandore, a personal friend of the Parisian gentlewoman. There they meet Nana Sahib and witness an assembly

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 of the princes of northern India who are deliberately and collectively planning the insurgency. The ﬁ res of the rebellion are stoked under the Frenchmen’s satisﬁ ed eyes although their help amounts in fact to very little.

6 Fictionalisation may well have affected even his previous works. His account of the Crimean war is not written in the ﬁ rst person, but consists of the diary of an unknown young ofﬁ cer. 176 Flaminia Nicora

Calani reshapes the historical matter he deals with in accordance with the common 19th-century practice of extensive quoting, a practice that was possible in a period when the concept of copyright was still quite elusive. Large parts of his narrative would now be considered plagiarism. The letters largely consist of unacknowledged quotations from several sources. A major one is Édouard de Warren’s L’India inglese: Prima e dopo l’insurrezione del 1857, an essay translated from French into Italian in 1858 which records the author’s experiences in India, and provides a thorough analysis of the East India Company’s colonial policy together with an account of the rebellion from a French perspective.7 Although he occasionally mentions that he is quoting from de Warren, Calani takes a large number of passages from Cesare Sabbatini’s Italian translation with very minor lexical changes and inserts them into his narrative.8 Thus, his ﬁ ctional characters meet characters actually encountered by de Warren during his life in India or describe places de Warren had seen, even using the latter’s own words. Often, Calani brings together in the same letter sections and episodes from different chapters of

7 Édouard de Warren (1811–98), born of a French mother and English father, was educated in France. He was an army offi cer in the East India Company and spent several years in India, following his desire to study and write about the subcontinent. L’Inde anglaise: Avant et après l’insurrection de 1857 (British India: Before and After the Revolt of 1857), Paris: Hachette 1857 (original French edition), the third and enlarged edition of his book about India fi rst published in 1844 and 1845, covered the fi rst year of the rebellion, its causes and the country’s perspectives after the war. The book was also translated into Italian and German; Italian edition: Edoardo Warren, L’India inglese: Prima e dopo l’insurrezione del 1857 (British India: Before and After the Revolt of 1857), translated by Cesare Sabbatini, Naples: L. Padoa, 1858. 8 Édouard de Warren is explicitly quoted in a few cases, e.g., p. 74;

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 p. 543. For unacknowledged quotations see, for example: Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana, p. 92, de Warren, L’India inglese, p. 382; Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana, p. 103, de Warren, L’India inglese, p. 255–56; Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana, p. 173, de Warren, L’India inglese, p. 99; Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana, p. 299, de Warren, L’India inglese, p. 392; Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana, p. 327, de Warren, L’India inglese, p. 330; Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana, p. 331, de Warren, L’India inglese, p. 333. Although Calani certainly read French, his choice of words is so close to the Italian version of de Warren’s essay to suggest that he directly used Sabbatini’s translation, which was already available in 1858. Italian Narrative Responses 177

the original. Thanks to this ‘copy and paste’ work, Scene dell’ insurrezione indiana presents a great amount of information and precise data on a variety of themes and situations concerning India, the Company and the insurrection. Calani apparently embraced de Warren’s claim that British sources were not truthful or reliable, and thus turned to a number of other, mainly French sources: newspaper articles, ofﬁ cial public records, correspondence, and even literature on India, such as possibly L’India contemporanea (Contemporary India), an essay by Ferdinand de Lanoye translated into Italian in 1858.9 Although he may have reworked material provided by de Lanoye, dramatising it and adding a lot of ‘colour’, Calani’s views differed from de Lanoye’s especially with regard to the evaluation of Nana Sahib.10 In this respect, Calani was much more at ease with Félix Maynard’s De Delhi à Cawnpore. Journal d’une dame anglaise (1858), a source that allowed him to give emphasis to the episode of Cawnpore, as in most known recollections of the rebellion, but without adhering to the negative British judgement of the prince.11 Calani follows Maynard in endorsing a British point of view on the cruelty of the Indian mob, while also managing to clear Nana of the charge of betraying his own word.12 The text is quoted at length

9 Ferdinand Tugnot de Lanoye (1810–70) wrote about exotic countries like Egypt, India, Siam, Laos, Siberia, central African regions. L’Inde contemporaine (Contemporary India) was ﬁ rst published in Paris in 1855 and enlarged in 1858 (Paris: L. Hachette, 1855). It was translated into Italian in 1858 as L’India contemporanea (Contemporary India), Milan: F. Vallardi, 1858, translated by F. G. B. 10 This may be the case with the description of an elephant hunt, which is far more detailed and picturesque in Calani’s account and linked to the love story between Gustave and Mirneh Rajah’s sister (Scene dell’insurrezione indiana, pp. 392–404). De Lanoye’s description of an elephant hunt is more sober and brief (L’India contemporanea, pp. 484–85). Calani may

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 have however exploited other sources such as novels or travel writings. De Warren also describes tiger and hedgehog hunts. 11 Félix Maynard, De Delhi à Cawnpore, Journal d’une dame anglaise, pages de l’insurrection hindoue (From Delhi to Cawnpore: Journal of an English Lady, Notes from the Indian Revolt), Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1858. Maynard’s work focuses explicitly on Nana Sahib. 12 ‘On croit et on afﬁ rme en Europe qu’il à violé la capitulation conclue avec le général Veheler; on se trompe; nous avons été victimes d’une méprise, et non d’une parjure’, Maynard, De Delhi à Cawnpore, p. 290. Nana’s good intentions towards the English are repeatedly declared. See Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione, pp. 823, 825, 882. 178 Flaminia Nicora

(with some quotations ambiguously credited) and inserted into the novel’s plot.13 Some unacknowledged quotations from Maynard’s Journal are also inserted into Alisia Malcolm’s diary, another manuscript Calani pretends to have acquired from his French friends.14 Calani’s Scene alternates between the Frenchmen’s ‘letters’ and those sent by other characters (e.g., Ram-Mohun, Mirneh himself, a soubadar), and often quotes documents issued by Lord Canning and the British government, parliamentary discourses, Indian and European newspaper articles, data on the East India Company’s administration and revenues, and fi gures concerning the Indian states. The attempt is that of providing reliable information to his readers about the circumstances underlying the rebellion and to thus persuade them of the authenticity of the entire narrative.15 However, the historical reconstruction of the insurrection staged in Calani’s Scene is clearly fi ctional: despite the sound description of British colonialism in India, the narrative is altogether biased by the author’s political interpretation. The signifi cance of Calani’s novel does not lie in its literary qualities, but in the fact that it dramatises a radical reading of the rebellion, offering a perspective that proves quite original in several ways, especially when compared to the British and Anglo-Indian mutiny novels. Calani sheds light on the possible reasons of the rebels, vigorously supporting the idea that what was happening was a collective, political action: a revolution that advocated freedom for the people; a war that seemed somewhat national, even though it was waged across numerous small states. That is why we have, for instance, French and Indian characters who argue convincingly against the East India Company, or a Eurasian

13 The adventures of the protagonists in Delhi are narrated to Henry Pened (see Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana, p. 715; Maynard, De

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Delhi à Cawnpore, p. 190). 14 See Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana, p. 884 and Maynard, De Delhi à Cawnpore, p. 295. 15 Also, the historical accuracy of single details sometimes gives in to mistakes: for instance, Calani fails to notice that in 1857 Mendore had already been substituted in its role of capital city by Jodhpur, and the local rajahs supported the English during the rebellion. And he mistakenly has Ram-Mohun (here supposed to be Nana’s mentor) rather than Azimullah Khan sent to London in the so-called Maratha mission to advance Nana’s legal claims against the Company and more. Italian Narrative Responses 179

farmer like Henry Pened, representative of a minority never included in the stories about the rebellion. In Scene, the insurrection appears as the result of the efforts of Mirneh and Nana, supported by the two French offi cers, who are like secret agents at the service of France. The Cawnpore episode is not a synecdochic summation of Indian cruelty and treachery, as in most British mutiny novels.16 Nana Sahib is not held responsible for ordering the slaughter; he was unjustly deprived of command by some fanatical members of his army who wanted to exterminate the English. Despite its focus on the political interpretation of the rebellion, Calani’s work clearly aims at capturing a mixed audience, more generically intrigued by India. The story includes diverse but equally marketable features, such as exotic descriptions of places and customs, typical of travel writing, a very conventional love story between Gustave and the Rajah’s sister, Walhnao, and another unhappy one between Mirneh and Alisia, who dies. Formally distant from the British genre of the mutiny novel, Calani’s Scene dell’insurrezione indiana is decidedly out of tune with the English mythographic appropriation of the mutiny, to the point of almost setting up an alternative mythography of the rebellion. However, his angle is quite predictably distorted by Eurocentric assumptions. He never questions the legitimacy of the colonial presence, and the French are exempted from the severe criticism aimed at the British. Calani justifi es his approval of French rule by stressing the presumably benevolent attitude of the French towards India and qualifying their interest in Indian culture in terms of genuine passion rather than economic or political advantage. Quite naively, he implies that if the French, rather than the English, had prevailed in India, the former would have better fulfi lled the colonialist mission of improving the country. Calani empathises with the vanquished, both European and Indian: probably for personal

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 reasons (he was an ofﬁ cer in the French army), but possibly also for political reasons related to his assessment of the Italian national cause. The aspirations for freedom of both Indians and Italians are inextricably woven in his rendition of history. His enthusiastic appraisal of the rebellion seems to side with the more radical

16 Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988, p. 203. 180 Flaminia Nicora

viewpoint, though not with popular insurgency against the rule of the princes: he envisages for India the same progress he sought for Italy. The broad political assessment of the rebellion that Calani gives us in Scene eventually conforms to the ideals of an enlightened, aristocratic revolutionary. Ideally, he was willing to stand up for Indian princes as long as they complied with the multinational ideal of an equally aristocratic community, a community fully aware of the opportunity to advocate freedom for the people without in fact losing any ascendancy over them.

Post-unitarian Narratives: From Rebels to Mutineers, a more Ambiguous Support At the beginning of the new century, when the rebellion once again started to capture the interest of a few Italian novelists and translators, the attitude towards the uprising had changed significantly. Following the large-scale imperialist turn throughout Europe and the new colonial policy of Italy as a nation, the Indian events seemed to belong to a past that had now to be reassessed with detachment from the urgency and the uncertainties of previous views. The Sabaudian monarchy and the countless problems of a new national state that could hardly keep pace with other European countries had stiﬂ ed the revolutionary enthusiasm of the ‘Risorgimento’. And the uprising ceased to function as an expedient metaphor for the Italian political situation, where it had signalled either identiﬁ cation with the rebels or popular fears about the rebels’ brutality. By this time Italy had started nurturing colonial ambitions, to some extent in an attempt to compensate for a national inferiority complex, and looked at the British empire with mixed feelings. On the one hand the unapproachable rival was criticised for its greediness and violence; on the other it was inevitably regarded as a model to imitate, even

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 if on a dwarﬁ sh scale. A good example of the latter attitude dates back to 1900, when the Italian army published the Italian translation of Frederick Roberts’s Forty-one Years in India: From Subaltern to Commander-in-Chief (Quarantun anno in India. Da subalterno a comandante in capo), a detailed account of the British ofﬁ cer’s Indian experiences, including during 1857. This widely popular description of the military strategies applied during the rebellion and the Afghan war was made available to the Italian public with the conviction, explicitly mentioned in the ‘Translator’s Note’, that ‘not just English Italian Narrative Responses 181

readers can take advantage of these teachings’, since ‘wars fought in far away countries are taking more and more space in the life of European armies and they have speciﬁ c features’.17 During the opening decades of the new century, the few Italian novels more directly concerned with the uprising share this ambivalent attitude in dealing with British rule in India. Emilio Salgari’s Le due tigri (1904), Guglielmo Stocco’s Gli scorridori della giungla (1905–1932?) and Margherita Olliveri’s Malì: Episodio dell’insurrezione Indiana (1915) are all examples of juvenile adventure literature.18 The common imperialistic ethos that supported European colonial policy justiﬁ es the presence of the Indian rebellion in these narratives, without implying direct knowledge or imitation of the repertoire of

17 Frederick Roberts, Quarantun Anno in India. Da subalterno a comandante in capo (Forty-one Years in India: From Subaltern to Commander-in-Chief), Rome: Casa editrice italiana, 1900, p. ix. Originally published in London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1897, the ‘Translator’s Note’ mentions that in Great Britain the volume had gone through thirty-two editions, including a special one for the blind. The Italian translation includes detailed maps of the major battles and sieges, such as Cawnpore or Lucknow. 18 Salgari, Le due tigri ; Guglielmo Stocco, Gli scorridori della giungla (The Jungle Riders), Como: Società editrice Roma, 1900–1932?; Margherita Olliveri, Malì. Episodio dell’insurrezione indiana (Mali: An Episode of the Indian Insurrection), Turin: Libreria Editrice Internazionale della S.A.I.D. Buona Stampa, 1915. Emilio Salgari’s fl uvial production of juvenile adventure novels has recently been revaluated. Among his most famous works, the ‘Pirate Cycle’ focused on Sandokan. Guglielmo Stocco (1886–1932), editor of Il giornale illustrato dei viaggi, a magazine for boys, wrote several adventure and science fi ction novels under the infl uence of Salgari and Verne. The date of publication of Gli scorridori della giungla is not mentioned, but cannot be later

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 than 1932, when Stocco died; see Felice Pozzo, Salgari e dintorni (Salgari and Surroundings), Naples: Liguori, 2000, pp. 229–34. Margherita Olliveri was the author of a few novels. Malì appeared in a series called ‘Letture amene ad educative’ (Pleasant and Educational Readings), published by a Catholic printing house that guaranteed the moral quality of their works. The S.A.I.D. Buona Stampa (Anonymous Society for the diffusion of good print), inspired by Don Bosco’s Catholic pedagogy, particularly devoted its efforts to schoolbooks and instructive readings for youth. On the rebellion were also available in Italian: Jules Verne, La casa de vapor (The Steam House), Milan: A. Brigola e C., 1881; Félix Maynard, Da Delhi 182 Flaminia Nicora

British mutiny novels.19 Stocco’s and Olliveri’s stories are set during the rebellion, while Salgari’s only marginally touches upon it. Unlike in the case of Calani, these three novels are not directly engaged in a political assessment of the revolt. Adventure and moral fables sus- tain their narratives. Stocco and Salgari are undeniably anarchist in their masculine fascination with heroism, friendship and honour. They plunge their characters into an exotic country, dangerous and exciting, crowded with Thugs and tigers. Olliveri’s plot recovers some features of the British mutiny novel (e.g., Cawnpore and Nana Sahib are central, the young male protagonist contributes to the fall of Delhi), but she does not engage in the mythographic construction of national identity that one ﬁ nds in the English genre. On the whole, the kind of attention sporadically reserved for the episode by Italians is quite different from the substantial, ideological representation in the British narrative tradition.20 While for the

a Cawnpore: Episodio dell’insurrezione de’ cipai, translation by Ugo Flandoli, Modena: Tip. Immacolata Concezione, 1910 (Flandoli’s translation is also part of the series ‘Letture amene ad educative’ [Pleasant and Educational Readings]); Allan Grant, ‘Ram Das di Cawnpore’, a British short story published in translation in Il giornale illustrato dei viaggi (Illustrated Journal of Travels), Milan: Sonzogno, number 40, October 6, 1929, pp. 4–6. Also, Luigi Motta, author of more than one hundred juvenile novels written in the fashion of Salgari, published a saga entitled ‘The Indian Rebels’. There Motta describes the British rulers as arrogant oppressors, but the Indians, who proudly defend their liberty, are invariably characterised by all sorts of Orientalist stereotypes. Though Nana Sahib is mentioned in one of the titles, no precise historical setting is given for the rebellions featured. 19 British mutiny novels had not been translated into other European languages and it is unlikely they were read in the original. 20 Attention is sporadic if compared to the about one hundred ‘mutiny

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 novels’ in British literature. For an analysis of this subgenre see Shailendra Singh, Novels on the Indian Mutiny, New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann India, 1973; Bratlinger, Rule of Darkness; Gautam Chakravarty, The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Flaminia Nicora, Eroi britannici, Sepoys ribelli: l’Indian Mutiny nel romanzo anglo-indiano dal 1857 alla ﬁ ne del XX secolo (British Heroes, Rebel Sepoys: The Indian Mutiny in Anglo-Indian Fiction from 1857 to the End of the 20th Century), Turin: L’Harmattan Italia, 2005 (English edition: The Mutiny Novel: Literary Responses to the Indian Sepoy Rebellion, 1857–2007, Delhi: Prestige Books, 2009). Italian Narrative Responses 183

British the rebellion was an episode of their own national history, a cultural icon of heroism and an evidence of the right of the ‘master race’ to rule India, in Italy the rebellion was almost a pretext to set the narrative action in exciting eastern locations with the ideological potential offered by a dramatisation of confl ict. India epitomised the exotic, and the rebellion provided a relatively well-known mine of stereotyped roles, opposing black natives to white Europeans, patriotic heroes to mischievous rebels or oppressive rulers; characters and situations that, although distant from the political, passionate issues of the Italian Risorgimento, voiced an interest in the vibrant colonial world and embodied the ambitions of the Italian monarchy. The narrative features of the three novels demonstrate that the rebellion was part of a wider, Orientalist representation of the ‘other’, which corresponded to the creation of Italian national identity, at the same time revealing the gaps that set Italy apart from Great Britain. These works of fi ction attuned the symbolic values of the 1857 events to the specifi c conditions of the Italian peninsula, where imperialist aspirations had to cope with political and economic marginality and were bound to confi ne ambitions within the realm of imagination. Salgari, Stocco and Olliveri essentially saw the rebellion as a suitable subject for the entertainment and education of the youth, a subject where geographical (rather than historical) information about the east, and India in particular, could be seasoned with adventure and invested with sound moral values. Obviously unlike British novelists, but quite like Calani before them, Salgari and Stocco did not hide a certain pleasure in recalling a historical episode that dealt with the humiliation inflicted upon the feringees. This unsympathetic — while not openly critical — perspective on British colonialism, only vaguely touched upon in the novel by Olliveri, goes hand in hand with a favourable stance towards the French, who are depicted as more disinterested than the English, and really Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 keen on Indian culture. All novels feature French characters, which may indicate, as had happened with Calani’s Scene, admiration for French culture and an idealised vision of French colonialism, though not necessarily an exclusive reliance on French sources.21

21 Stocco explicitly mentions G. B. Malleson as a source for his description of the fall of Delhi (Gli scorridori della giungla, p. 284). 184 Flaminia Nicora

The narrative structure of the three novels is remarkably distant from the mythographic setup, or chronotope, of the British mutiny novel.22 Substantial differences can be found especially in the choice of the protagonists, who are never British, and in the use of the theme of rebellion to advance the plot. Salgari’s Malaysian Sandokan, Portuguese Yanez, and Indian Tremal-Naik join forces to fi ght the Thugs who have kidnapped Tremal-Naik’s daughter to sacrifi ce her to the red goddess. The Thugs’ intention to support the insurgents is marginal to the story. Even though the action reaches its climax with the recovery of Delhi, Sandokan’s enemies are not the rebels, but Kali’s followers, that is, the epitome of the exoticised other, depicted as pagan and bloodthirsty. In the same way, the novel’s positive characters are not the usual civilised British offi cers or civilians, but pirates engaged in a special mission in India to give an old friend their generous help. The historical, political thrust of their action is sacrifi ced in the name of pure adventure that does not serve the cause of any one nation. Salgari keeps his heroes above the two sides in the confl ict: they have been enemies of the British in Borneo, but are willing to side with them against the rebels, when the latter slaughter women and children for loot; they must defend themselves from the insurgents, who think they are spies, but, since they are not Europeans, they need the protection of a French offi cer to avoid being attacked by the British. Yanez would like to help the rebels, but Sandokan prefers to concentrate on Suyodhana, the Thug chief, for he is their foe in this situation, while the British are no longer enemies. The British and the Thugs are both enemies of the Malaysian Tiger because he rejects utilitarian interests in the name of a type of heroism that needs no historical or economical validation. One exception can be found in the description of the fall of Delhi, where the narrator openly denounces the reprisals of the British on the civilians as a degrading Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

22 The mutiny novels share a common structure, or chronotope, that can be summarised in the following sequences: 1) the present life and situation of the narrator who is about to start the story or of the protagonists; 2) ordinary life in the station before the mutiny; 3) newcomers from Great Britain move to the station; 4) hunting scenes; 5) the rebellion and the resistance of the British during the siege of the station; 6) the army rescues the protagonists; 7) revenge; 8) back to normal life, marriage; 9) the protagonists go back to Great Britain (Nicora, Eroi britannici, Sepoys ribelli, pp. 47–70) Italian Narrative Responses 185

instance of savagery, devoid of honour and justice. Ultimately, Sandokan and his friends are too detached from the ideological reasons to justify the darker consequences of imperialist politics. Although it lacks the energy of Salgari’s narrative, Stocco’s equally original selection of characters and plot construction upsets many stock features in the representation of the rebellion. The conventional viewpoint on the siege of Delhi is reversed, and Stocco’s story takes the Indians’ stance, though not exactly their part. In fact, the perspective is ridden with ambiguities. The British are cast in the role of enemies, while the positive characters are Portuguese, French and Italian. Unable to defend the city by themselves, the Indians are led by Don Paulo Cherubim de Carvào, a young Portuguese man who has married the Moghul emperor’s daughter. Yet Paulo heroically defends his family and his affections rather than the rebels’ cause, especially when he breaks through the English lines to rescue his little son, kidnapped by Mirza, an Indian minister willing to surrender the city to the British forces in an act of revenge against Paulo’s power and prestige at the court. The novel later unravels in the style of Salgari’s Le due tigri, as Paulo’s search for his son leads him to the Thugs who plan to use the child as a sacriﬁ cial victim. Eventually, when Paulo returns to Delhi to rescue his wife, he feels compelled to lead the Indian army once more, but the insurgents, misinterpreting his ride through the British lines as treason, reject his leadership. Stocco thereby absolves Paulo from responsibility for the fall of Delhi, and almost blames the ungrateful rebels themselves. The British, who are seen as usurpers, are ferocious but brave, while the Indians display military and political ineptitude, have a treacherous nature and though they are victims of the British, they still need the support of Europeans. Only the old Shah partially redeems his subjects’ ineptitude, proudly refusing to abandon his palace when Delhi is about to fall. Even the Portuguese, despite his

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 marriage with an Indian woman, fails to integrate with Indian culture: he proves indifferent to his wife’s Muslim religion and names his son after the Hindu name of Brahma. His antiquarian passion for the fourth Veda book — Atharva — betrays an Orientalist, museographic view of India, whose culture can be catalogued, interpreted and plundered by Europeans. Gassenet, Paulo’s rival in the search for the book, shows some sympathy for the rebels, but is not really involved in the conﬂ ict. History never supersedes imagination, the true engine of a novel 186 Flaminia Nicora

that, though far from condemning colonialism, at least questions its objectives. Stocco’s characters are not as generous and disinterested as Salgari’s, who oppose European philistinism in the name of heroism, friendship and loyalty. They are selﬁ sh adventurers, critical of, but only slightly better than, the British. The main characters in Margherita Olliveri’s novel are also not British. They include the Indian snake charmer Malì, mentioned in the title, and André and Berta Bourquien, the young children of a French indigo planter ‘renowned in the country for his immense wealth, no less than for his charity’.23

Unlike the majority of the Europeans who came to the country (India) to accumulate enormous fortunes and then go back as soon as possible’, generations of Bourquiens had lived in the Doab region, fought for the Indians and even married a princess and a noble Brahmin’s daughter.24

In fact, unlike the British sketched in mutiny novels, the Bourquien family will go back to their plantation at the end of the rebellion, and will involve in the enterprise the English lieutenant Algernon, who marries Berta. The friendly attitude towards old Malì and towards plantation workers in general does not signal endorsement of the rebels’ cause. The historical and political sides of the uprising are thoroughly anesthetised. Olliveri’s narration reduces the conﬂ ict to the level of moral discussion, with good and bad individuals facing one another and ultimately accepting differences of class and race as inevitable, if not altogether desirable. The fact that Olliveri sides with the French characters may read as a couched criticism of the British, but the author’s sympathetic attitude could more simply be ascribed to the ideological inﬂ uence of French Catholicism. In fact, Olliveri’s novel neither supports nor mentions the insurgents’ motives. Monsieur Bourquien disapproves of the rebels: his son

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 will ﬁ nally take part in the recapture of Delhi and his daughter will marry an English ofﬁ cer. Nana Sahib is not Calani’s wise prince, but embodies the treacherous brute found in traditional British lore about the mutiny, strengthening all the stereotypes about the Cawnpore episode. The protagonists — Malì, André and young Miana with his trained monkey — go to the rescue of Berta

23 Olliveri, Malì, p. 13. 24 Ibid. Italian Narrative Responses 187

(kidnapped by Nana, because of her noble Indian ancestry), who is doomed to become the wife of an Indian child prince. They must avoid not only hostile rebels, but also savage, primitive tribes living in isolated areas. During their journey, they cross forests inhabited by wild beasts, risk their lives among the dangers of exotic nature, and engage in a quest that extols the values of friendship, generosity and courage as required by all adventure novels, especially those set in the colonial world. The historical events in India in 1857 are a pretext for staging a colonial encounter that obeys strict Eurocentric rules in order to teach young Italian readers a moral lesson, condensed in the fi nal didactic message. After the rebellion has been quelled, the Bourquiens recoup their plantation, and live happily ever after, loved by their servants (including Miana who stopped training monkeys to become the family butler). Old Malì stays with them till the end of his days, and fi nally agrees to convert to Christianity, presumably urged in this by the good example and the charity of his new friends and benefactors. According to the novel, French-style colonialism, more humane than its British counterpart even in its missionary effort, secures peace and prosperity for India, while the rebels, always depicted as vindictive, cruel and greedy, deserve to be defeated in their illegitimate course of action. Only submissive Indians may be worthy of friendship and attention. Malì supports the idea that Europeans should behave according to Christian principles, while Indians should agree to occupy an inferior position to partake of the benefi ts of colonisation.25 While removed from the kind of political propaganda that inhabits the mythographic appropriations of the rebellion in British novels, Olliveri’s story still conforms to a very conservative view of India and colonial relations, not too different from the one adopted in Gli scorridori della giungla. Salgari’s Le due tigri, on the other hand, manages to focus on adventure with such forceful anarchy as to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 belie the limits of its own world view and hint at viable strategies of subversion. The didactic thrust of this juvenile ﬁ ction — jarring as it is to our critical sensibility — shows that the ideological ramiﬁ cations of the

25 The religious tone that sets Olliveri’s novels apart from Stocco’s and Salgari’s probably complied with the expectation of the printing house, that gave warranty of ‘ecclesiastical approval’. 188 Flaminia Nicora

colonial enterprise spread widely across western culture. However, the narrative construction of the 1857 rebellion also sheds light on the different nuances that are composed within the grand portrait of the European colonial episteme: national rivalries that enliven competition for colonial expansion; subtle changes in colonial policy that span decades. By the beginning of the new century, Calani’s radical perspective would seem out of touch with the agenda of practical politics enthusiastically embraced in Salgari’s, Stocco’s and Olliveri’s juvenile novels: their representation of the insurgency moves away from historical details to take on a different role. In time, the tale of rebellion would lose more and more of its libertarian, patriotic aims, to gather new, unchallenged consensus around colonial policies that even minor powers like Italy were starting to adopt with great zeal. In both cases, and without much concern for the real people involved, the Indian rebellion was made to serve the utilitarian needs of national politics. It was not only the British who indulged in the temptation to rewrite the history of India. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators 189

12 ‘Remember Cawnepore’: The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators Sharmistha Lahiri

Two incidents of violence at Kanpur in 1857, one at the Satichaura Ghat on June 27, the other at ‘Bibighar’ on July 15, compose the story of the ‘Kanpur Massacre’.1 The extreme act of aggression was a catalyst, perhaps as no other event of 1857, in its impact on colonial policy and race relations in British India and the construction of the imperial discourse.2 This essay explores the representation of the event in three Italian narrative texts in relation to the prevalent version. The primary sources on the massacres are patently one- sided, originating mostly from the British side: state papers, the letters of the ofﬁ cers, the accounts of the British survivors, the diaries of the loyalists and the depositions ﬁ ltered by the state machinery. Sources on the rebel side are not available; voices silenced by the trail of mass executions or not admitted to record, the other point of view thus cancelled out from historical memory in the ensuing ninety years of British rule. As Rudrangshu Mukherjee observes: ‘A position thus entrenched could hardly recognize in the massacres a show of rebel power; to do that would be to recognize the legitimacy of the rebellion.’3 In this context it would be worthwhile to

1 All emphases in quotations in this essay are mine. All translations from the texts by Persico and Calani are also mine. 2 Cf. Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Capital 1848–1875, New York: Vintage Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Books, 1996 (ﬁ rst published London, 1975), pp.124–25. India passed under the direct rule of the British crown by the Government of India Act, 2 August 1858. The policy of ‘Divide and Rule’ with its reliance more on the conservative elements of the society introduced social segregation and racial tensions. Hobsbawm writes: ‘After the end of Company rule the growth of a new community of expatriate British, accompanied by their wives, which increasingly emphasized its separation and racial superiority, increased social friction with the new indigenous middle strata’ (ibid., p. 125). 3 Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Spectre of Violence: The 1857 Kanpur Massacres, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998, p. 116. 190 Sharmistha Lahiri

compare the offi cial version with the accounts of writers from the non-English-speaking countries of Europe. Each of these texts represents a different narrative genre: Relazione sulla insurrezione dell’India britanna, a missionary report compiled by Ignazio Persico, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana, a historical fi ction by Aristide Calani, and ‘L’olocausto di Cawnepore’, a text drawn from the travel narrative, Verso la cuna del mondo: lettere dall’India by the poet Guido Gozzano.4 The fi rst two are contemporary accounts, published in 1858, and the third is an early 20th-century narration, written almost fi fty years after the event. The representational value of the episode implicates the Kanpur narrative from the very beginning. Indeed, it is curious to note how in the reports and accounts of the period the sense of tragedy at the loss of innocent lives was overpowered by the attempt to project it as a spectacle. The way the focus was turned on the details of the slaughter bordered on the macabre and betrayed an anxiety to implement the political function of tragedy. The ‘Kanpur massacre’ dramatically turned the tide of the revolt in favour of the coloniser. The variable depiction provides an insight into the relative elasticity of the narrative purpose and the points of intersection between history and anecdote. The point to note here is how the discursive site expanded to allow notions of race, gender and creed to be constructed as categories in the Indian colonial context. Notwithstanding the divergences from the British standpoint, the European gaze is clearly perceptible in the Italian accounts. The story of the Kanpur ‘holocaust’ has known evident exaggerations which owe their origins mostly to contemporary British reports.5 The violence of the Indians was

4 Ignazio Persico, Relazione sulla insurrezione dell’India britanna compilata da Monsignor Ignazio Persico, Cappuccino Vescovo di Grazianopoli e Vicario Apostolico dell’ Indostan (Report on the Insurrection in British India compiled Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 by Monsignor Ignazio Persico, Capuchin Bishop of Grazianopoli and Apostolic Vicar of Hindostan), Naples: Stamperia Cattolica 1858; Aristide Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana (Scenes of the Indian Insurrection), Milan and Verona: Stabilimento Civelli Giuseppe, 1858; Guido Gozzano, ‘L’olocausto di Cawnepore’ (The Holocaust of Cawnepore), in Verso la cuna del mondo: Lettere dall’India (Journey to the Word’s Cradle: Letters from India), edited by Alida D’Aquino Creazzo, Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1984, henceforward V. C. M. 5 See Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, New Delhi: Penguin, 1980, pp. 212–15. The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators 191

sensationalised to create a widespread feeling of moral outrage and used as a political tool to justify the wanton atrocities with which the rebellion was crushed. In the aftermath the British succeeded in tightening their hold over India. The position of the Italian writers is generally critical of the British cruelties, avarice and policy of exploitation. Yet, while bad governance is denounced, the legitimacy of the colonial principle is not questioned. The voice of the Italian narrator on the Kanpur episode is thus mediated by a dual pull between the European gaze on the Asiatic and the Italian response vis-à-vis the British. The site of the encounter is exceptionally visible in the narration of the Kanpur episode. To put the events in brief, the British garrison of General Hugh Wheeler in Kanpur, under siege for three weeks, agrees to the terms of capitulation offered by Nana Sahib in lieu of a safe passage by boat over the Ganges to Allahabad. On June 27, as the British embarked at Satichaura Ghat, they were attacked and massacred by the rebels. The survivors, around 200 women and children, were kept as hostages in a small house named Bibighar. By the middle of July, Nana Sahib was defeated by the British in three successive battles fought near Kanpur. On July 15 all the women and children hostages were killed, even as Nana Sahib left Kanpur. The Kanpur episode, by its shocking excess, was able to rouse public opinion against the rebels in the strongest terms. The Company offi cials, now fully backed by the home government, carried out a policy of terror with summary executions, savage reprisals and indiscriminate genocide on the civilian population, and snuffed out the rebellion by 1858. In his essay on the prose related to insurgency in colonial India, Ranajit Guha identifi es three types of discourse, the primary, the secondary and the tertiary, the distinction between each decided by the distance from the event, its fi liation and the distributive ratio of the indicative and the interpretative elements, adopting Barthes’s Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 terminology on the ‘functions’ and ‘indices’ of the narrative.6

6 Ranajit Guha, ‘The Prose of Counter-insurgency’, in Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society, volume 2, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. 3–4. For his notions and terminology Guha cites Roland Barthes, ‘Structural Analysis of Narratives’ and ‘The Struggle with the Angel’, in Image-Music-Text, translated by Stephen Heath, Glasgow: Fontana Press, 1977, pp. 79–141, and ‘Historical Discourse’, in Michael Lane, ed., Structuralism, A Reader, London: Jonathan Cape, 1970, pp. 145–55. Guha, ‘The Prose of Counter-insurgency’, Notes, p. 10. 192 Sharmistha Lahiri

To summarise Guha’s model, while the primary discourse is marked by immediacy and identifi es with the position of the government, the secondary discourse is relatively distant from the event and uses the raw material of the primary type to write the history of the event, thus adding a ‘before’ and an ‘after’, a context and a perspective to the event and narrates it as ‘a link in the continuum of the progress of empire’. The secondary author often adopts a more liberal and understanding view of the causes of the insurgency. In the end, however, he identifi es with the interests of the colonial state, suggesting remedies for improving the lot of the subjects to ensure the continuance of the empire. He does not view the rebel as the subject of his history. The tertiary discourse is narrated from absolute distance, in terms of both time and fi liation. It often uses detailed documentation as in the primary discourse, but interprets the event according to certain universal ideological parameters, which, as Guha critiques, often ignores the complexities of the specifi c rebel consciousness.7 While Guha applies these categories to British and Indian historiography of popular/peasant insurgency in the colonial period, we can extend their scope to the Italian texts on the rebellion. Ignazio Persico’s text belongs to the category which Ranajit Guha terms primary discourse. Persico writes what he saw and what he learned from the reports of his subordinates serving in other parts of the land.8 It is characterised by immediacy to the event and identifi es with the interests of the colonial administration. A Capuchin monk from Naples, he arrived in India in 1846 and was the Apostolic Vicar of Agra in May, 1857. He took shelter in the Agra Fort where European refugees fl ocked in large numbers from different centres of the rebellion. Persico left Agra Fort on December 26, 1857 after the siege of the Lucknow Residency ended in November. He reached Calcutta on January 20, boarded a ship on February 9 to return home, but met with a shipwreck near the coast of Ceylon on February 14 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 and reached Europe only at the end of March 1858.9 His report on Kanpur begins in a counter-insurgency narrative style:

After that it is time to mention the sad and deplorable facts of Kanpur, which took place when we were held under siege inside the Agra fort. We have been in our minds uncertain about the happenings till

7 Guha, ‘The Prose of Counter-insurgency’, pp. 1–40. 8 Persico, Relazione sulla insurrezione dell’India britanna, p. 2. 9 Ibid.: pp. 98–99. The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators 193

September 1857, for though various voices (rumours) were going round and many natives coming from there were talking about a general massacre, we still continued to wish that the rumour was not well founded, was at least exaggerated, the source seeming to be suspect. A despatch, however, reached Agra, which removed all our doubts on the terrible event. Still, for a good length of time there was an effort to hide the principal circumstances of the tragedy, but in the end the facts were revealed in entirety: facts which sent shivers to both the narrator and the listener, facts which will lead to a sanguinary epoch in the history of the Indian insurrection.10

He thus introduces the massacre as a source of rumour. ‘The iterative action of rumour’ writes Homi Bhabha, ‘its circulation and contagion, links it with panic — as one of the affects of insurgency.’11 The missionary report which belongs to the non-offi cial sector, Guha points out, falls under the same category of reports written by offi cials because missionaries, plantation managers, landowners, etc. are persons ‘symbiotically related to the Raj’.12 They view the revolt as a fanatic, unjustifi ed, irrational act on the part of people who are ignorant, obscurantist, swayed by blind religious prejudices, not western-educated and infl uenced easily by the instigators who lead them for their own interests. Persico begins by stating that the sepoys rose in mutiny in Meerut, refusing to use the new cartridges that were rumoured to be greased with animal fat which defi led the religion of both ‘Hindoo’ and ‘Musulman’ and observes: ‘this rumour was perhaps spread by design, almost a pretext aiming at a much deeper objective, as the events afterwards unfortunately were to show.’13 A usual ‘indice’ of counter-insurgency prose is to show the native rebel as a coward, who runs away when faced with danger, as opposed to the European soldier who fi ghts valiantly and shows

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 character by holding out heroically in the face of the greatest adversity. Persico describes how two boats that got away during the mayhem were pursued by the rebels:

10 Persico, Relazione sulla insurrezione dell’ India britanna, p. 75. 11 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge, second Indian reprint 2009 (ﬁ rst published 1994), p. 286. 12 Guha, ‘The Prose of Counter-insurgency’, p. 3. 13 Persico, Relazione sulla insurrezione dell’India britanna, p. 3. 194 Sharmistha Lahiri

One of the boats sunk, hit by a cannon shot, and the other not being able to proceed further, the two offi cers and the remaining fourteen or fi fteen soldiers decided to oppose strenuously till the end. So they disembarked and began to fi ght like lions, so much that at fi rst the hordes of sepoys got into disarray, they ran away , but returned later with a bigger number and surrounded those few Englishmen who were by then reduced to eight only. When they noticed they would not be able to resist against the multitude that hemmed them in, they ran and took shelter in a pagòde (temple), determined to fi ght till the last man. The sepoys however did not have the courage to face them directly and pull them out, they encircled the pagòde with dry leaves and straw and set it on fi re.14

Thus, while the British ‘fi ght like lions’, and are ‘determined to fi ght till the last man’, the sepoys who are only nameless ‘hordes’ and ‘the multitude’, fall immediately ‘into disarray’. They take recourse to cowardly, underhand tactics like setting fi re to the temple. Often Persico narrates an event based on hearsay, and not what he saw or experienced directly:

It is said that the fury displayed by the sepoys on the boats was extreme; that they attacked and killed persons with every kind of barbarism; that many young girls were thrown semi-alive into the river, and a number of young boys too were brutally killed and then thrown into the river.15

Here, as in Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s analysis of the diary of loyalist Nanak Chand as evidence: ‘two different sources of evidence — “I saw” and “I heard” — come to be imbricated — “I hear” or “I was told” take over where ﬁ rst-hand sight is no longer possible. . . . He took the credibility of his sources for granted.’16 Persico’s report read in this light offers nothing special, except a signiﬁ cant variation on the Bibighar episode. He mentions the well as a place of burial, rather than of incarceration or the abyss Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 of death:

The British women and children who survived, as mentioned earlier, the general massacre on the boats and were taken back to Cawnpore, were all kept conﬁ ned within a room and were subjected to every kind of privation, ill-treatment, taunts and insults; up to the point that a day

14 Persico, Relazione sulla insurrezione dell’ India britanna, pp. 79–80. 15 Ibid., p. 79. 16 Mukherjee, Spectre of Violence, pp. 102–3. The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators 195

before a column of British troops from Allahabad reached Cawnpore, all of them were barbarically killed, with every sort of torture, and indignities. The British soldiers arriving a day after the event at Cawnpore, found their dead bodies, mutilated, lying in a heap in the same room in which they were kept conﬁ ned. The ﬂ oor and the walls of the room were splattered with blood which was enmeshed with strands of women’s hair. The soldiers then buried the dead bodies in a nearby well, where subsequently a monument was erected with an epitaph which recorded the barbaric and inhuman manner in which they were made to die.17

The account faithfully reproduces the contemporary British narrative of the Kanpur massacres, the kind that we read, for example, in Charles Ball’s The History of the Indian Mutiny (1858), not questioning the evident exaggerations. But an important detail is at variance with the offi cial version. In Persico’s report the British soldiers found the dismembered bodies in a room, which they then buried in a nearby well. In the offi cial version of the well episode the native insurgents threw the dead bodies into the well and, even more heinously, they fl ung in even the few hapless victims who were still alive, thus leaving them to die in agonising suffocation, buried under the corpses. The British inscribed it for posterity in an epitaph placed on the memorial constructed on the site of the well. It reads:

Sacred to the Perpetual Memory of a great company of Christian people, chieﬂ y Women and Children, who near this spot were cruelly murdered by the followers of the rebel Nana Dhundu Pant, of Bithur, and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on the XVth day of July MDCCCLVII.18

Persico’s report raises an interrogative on the words ‘and cast, the dying with the dead’ found in the epitaph. The editorial history of Persico’s text is signiﬁ cant. The book in Italian mentions the savage acts of the Indian sepoys but not a Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 single of the British atrocities on the rebels or the civilian population. He explains in the end that he went to Europe to raise support for the reconstruction of the mission which was destroyed during the revolt.19 As it appears, the book acquired its ﬁ nal form in London. His reticence on the violence of the British is understandable in

17 Persico, Relazione sulla insurrezione dell’India britanna, p. 80. 18 Pramod K. Nayar, The Great Uprising, India 1857, Delhi: Penguin Books, India, 2007, p. 126. 19 Persico, Relazione sulla insurrezione dell’ India britanna, p. 103. 196 Sharmistha Lahiri

this context. Moreover, the book was published by the Catholic Press, and the norms of a missionary report required it to be devoid of political content and observations. The editorial history of Persico’s report, however, does not end here. A manuscript version of his book (written partly in English, party in French) shows that a large portion of the text was deleted in the print version in Italian, most importantly, the passages containing his independent observations.20 There he writes about Indian civilisation, its contribution in the fields of science, astronomy and medicine. Persico dwells on the complexities of Indian culture, philosophy and religion, and discusses the causes of the insurrection, holding the ineffectual British governance squarely responsible. There are oblique references to the massacre in the manuscript of Persico’s text. When read jointly with the Kanpur episode in the print version the two parts coalesce, complementing the report with a set of observations:

As you all have learned, regiment after regiment murdered in cold blood the offi cers who had led them to battles and to victory, and transformed by that deed of treachery from soldiers into assassins, these hordes of strange mutineers cast aside the commonest feelings of humanity and not merely assumed the barbarity of their ancient condition, but borrowed the ferocity of wild beasts to torture, to mutilate, to agonize, and to destroy. Without entering now into the details of the horrors of the revolt, suffi ce it to say that no insult, no indignity, no dishonour, was spared; that nothing which cruelty in its refi nement or in its grossness could devise or execute has been omitted from the black catalogue of committed crimes. Compassion, remorse, the ties of personal obligation, familiarity and friendship, lost their hold on these maddened contrivers of total extermination. Many crimes there have been too hideous for revelation, scenes of lawless license and unbridled brutality, of which no record has been kept, save in the reckonings of Him, who will one day bring to light the hidden things of darkness and amply repay them.21 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Persico’s idiom follows the code of the prose of counter insurgency in which mutineers are identity-less ‘hordes’, like primitive

20 Ignazio Persico, Relation de l’ Insurrection des Indes en 1857, par Monseigneur I. Persico, Evêque de Gratianople, et Vicaire Apostolique de l’ Hindoustan (Report of the Insurrection in India in 1857, by Monsignor I: Persico, Bishop of Grazianopoli, and Apostolic Vicar of Hindustan). 21 Persico, manuscript Relation de l’ Insurrection des Indes en 1857, the part in English, p. 9. The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators 197

tribes or animals, ‘strange’ to the ways of the civilised European. They reveal their true roots, assuming ‘the barbarity of their ancient condition’ and regress further into the order of animals — to ‘torture’, ‘mutilate’, ‘agonize’ and fi nally ‘destroy’ with the ‘ferocity of wild beasts’. Loyalty to the ‘offi cers who had led them to battles’ is the sepoy’s duty and he is expected to be grateful for being ‘led to victory’ against his own countrymen. It is characteristic of primary discourse, Guha points out, to assimilate the native insurgents with natural forces.22 The ‘strange mutineer’ is associated with the irrational and subhuman. The lexical choice of nouns and adjectives represents the uprising as militating against the norms of civilised society. These are the elements of interpretative language that turn the indicative language of mere report into sectarian representations.23 It is, above all, ‘treachery’ that ‘transformed’ the sepoys ‘from soldiers to assassins’. Here, the rebel agency or, as Homi Bhabha would put it, ‘the controlling mind’ of the rebel action has been reduced to treachery and conspiracy.24 References to the Kanpur massacres including some explicitly to Nana Sahib can be read in the observations of the manuscript: ‘no compassion . . . ties of personal obligation, familiarity and friendship’ refers to his earlier friendly relations with the European community, his assurances and the subsequent ‘volte face’, the massacres. Persico thus spells out the prevailing British perceptions about Nana Sahib — ‘no insult, no indignity, no dishonour’ was spared: he gives expression thus to the widespread rumour gaining ground that in Kanpur British women were raped before being killed. An enquiry instituted by the governor-general as to the veracity of this rumour established that no evidence of rape was found and the government eventually acknowledged that it was ‘an erroneous rumour’.25 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 22 Guha, ‘The Prose of Counter-insurgency’, p. 2. 23 Ibid., p. 9. 24 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p. 298. 25 ‘A Memorandum on Treatment of European Females etc’ submitted to Lord Canning in December, 1857. It is in William Muir, Records of the Intelligence Department of the Governance of the North-West Provinces during the Mutiny of 1857 (1902). See Nayar, The Great Uprising, p. 129; Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, p. 213; Mukherjee, Spectre of Violence, p. 15, cites India Offi ce Records and Offi ce, Home Miscellaneous, p. 725. 198 Sharmistha Lahiri

The incident is introduced in the print version in a hushed tone, as an episode shrouded in secrecy, a rumour circulating for some time but not quite believed. As Bhabha argues, rumour works as magic in generating panic which participates in a major way in the discourse of insurgency, for both the colonised and the coloniser. If the rumour of greased cartridges was followed by panic among the sepoys, the rumour of the ‘indignities’ suffered by the British women before being killed was followed by panic and a fear psychosis in the coloniser. The role of rumour, Bhabha says, is a hybrid space in which both the sides come together for a face-off confrontation, ‘the sipahis and the sahibs’, the subjects and the masters.26 ‘Persico’s narrative’, a ‘fi ne specimen’ of a missionary’s, point of view, as a critic opines, ‘cannot be held as a particularly useful source of information on the events’.27 However, as it appears here, the report raises a few pointers of a different nature. He mentions that initially only rumours were heard about a massacre, no defi nite communication was forthcoming till September, two to three months after the event. Even after that, Persico informs, the details were kept in the dark for long. While news of similar rebel atrocities in Meerut or Delhi was immediately available, why the inordinate delay in releasing the news on Kanpur? Could it be because the British government needed time to prepare the offi cial version of the episode? Thus, notwithstanding the complicity of Persico’s text with the interests of the colonial government, it inadvertently raises a signifi cant interrogative on the offi cial version. The discrepancy on the ‘well-episode’ in Bibighar as mentioned earlier adds to it. The text begins as a primary discourse as per Guha’s model, changes character and ends up in the secondary category. In conclusion, he recommends a change of guard in the British colony under the direct control of the British parliament to ensure a more effi cient and equitable administration, better organisation and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 discipline in the army, equal laws for the ruler and the ruled, conditions essential to avert a similar calamity. This change of register in the text is located in its editorial history, and the insertion of secondary discourse into primary material. Persico mentions in the Foreword that he lost all the papers and documents he had collected as material, in the shipwreck. Some ‘distinguished

26 Bhabha, Location of Culture, p. 296. 27 Giuseppe Flora, ‘An Italian Missionary Narrative of the Indian Mutiny’, Studies in History, 9, 2, n.s. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993, p. 1. The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators 199

persons’ persuaded him to write at least a summary account of the terrible upheaval in India to which he was a direct witness, and which destroyed the mission he had constructed with much effort. Thus, Persico fi nally decided to write his report. Christopher Hibbert notes that as per Monsignor Persico’s information, in his vicariate alone, the rebels had destroyed a cathedral, twenty-fi ve churches and fi ve nunneries.28 Aristide Calani’s text on Kanpur in his historical novel Scene dell’insurrezione indiana, read along with Persico’s report, presents another set of details that frame alternative perceptions of the massacre. Scene focuses on Kanpur as the event which proves to be a turning point in the life of its Indian protagonist Mirneh-Rajah and brings the story of his involvement in the insurrection to its denouement. Scene includes extensive quotations from two texts of 1858, Edouard de Warren’ s L’Inde Anglaise Avant et Après l’Insurrection de 1857 and Félix Maynard’s De Delhi à Cawnpore. Journal d’une dame anglaise.29 For the Kanpur massacres Calani quotes large tracts from Mrs Hornsteet’s journal in Maynard’s De Delhi, and adapts it freely to fl esh out the story of his English heroine, Alicia Malcolm. Calani prefaces these quotations with a letter from the ‘brahmin Ram Mohun’, former tutor and an aide of Nana Sahib, to Mirneh-Rajah, Nana’s friend and a confederate. Ram Mohun writes to explain Nana Sahib’s actions and absolve him of responsibility for the Satichaura Ghat massacre.

In order that His Majesty could be informed with complete honesty the entire course of those sad and deplorable events, for which unfortunately the British and above all English metropolitan press would like to put the blame on the illustrious and generous Peshwa of the Marathas, I cite here for your information the words of the above- mentioned lady, exactly as she had heard from Mrs. Hornsteet.30 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 28 See Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, Notes, p. 408, cites S. B. Chaudhury, Civil Rebellion in the Indian Mutinies (1857–1859), Calcutta: World Press, 1957, p. 260. 29 Edoardo Warren, L’India inglese. Prima e dopo l’insurrezione del 1857 (British India: Before and After the Revolt of 1857), trans. Cesare Sabbatini, Naples: L. Padoa, 1858. Félix Maynard, De Delhi à Cawnpore: Journal d’une dame anglaise (From Delhi to Cawnpore: Journal of an English Lady), Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1858. 30 Calani, Scene dell’insurrezione indiana, p. 741. 200 Sharmistha Lahiri

Before passing on the narration to Mrs Hornsteet’s journal, Ram Mohun speaks of the imminent danger to the cause of the rebellion, expressing fears that the British would undoubtedly use the massacre to defame Nana Sahib.

Naturally, in similar circumstances, and in the kind of struggle in which we are in, the enemy will not have any scruple at all in spreading calumny and put the blame on one of the leaders of this great national movement, so that this person is hated by every son of Europe. Since, in many of the principal states of Europe, the cause of the continuance of British domination in India is still confused with that of progress and civilisation, we can expect that every act of indispensable justice and legitimate defence shall be judged more than sternly across the ocean. We shall be lapidated that much more, as in the case of the recent deplorable circumstances, when the ferocious instinct and the unrestrainable impetuosity of the plebeian crowd, incited by the fanatics, thieves and assassins who entered into their ranks, was unbridled. The barriers being broken, they inveighed against the defenceless people whose life should have been considered sacred, since their protection had been guaranteed by the supreme leader who wanted them unhurt.31

Ram Mohun describes the Kanpur massacres as ‘sad and deplorable’, and holds the ‘British and above all English metropolitan press’ responsible for the attempt to implicate Nana Sahib. The statement that the ‘British domination in India is still confused with that of progress and civilisation’ does not critique or reject the notion of the civilising mission of the west, but stresses that the British are unequal to the task. The leadership’s actions in the war against the British are seen as just, dictated by the need for self-defence and to mete out justice to the guilty, that is, the British, for wantonly depriving Nana Sahib of his legitimate title and inheritance. The leadership is also distanced

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 from the massacres, transferring the entire responsibility to the people, the unchecked crowd. The next part of the sentence reads like a replication of Persico’s comments on the plebeian crowd, ‘the ferocious instinct and the unrestrainable impetuosity of the plebeian crowd, incited by the fanatics, thieves and assassins’, the popular insurgents identiﬁ ed similarly with natural forces — animalesque and unrestrained — and whose ranks have been inﬁ ltrated by ‘fanatics’

31 Calani, Scene dell’ insurrezione indiana, p. 742. The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators 201

and ‘assassins’, almost hinting at a conspiracy against Nana by his enemies. The need to maintain ‘barriers’ from the common crowd is hinted at as a condition of safety for avoiding situations which might get out of hand. Finally, the unquestioned authority of the ‘supreme leader’ is established, who did not break his solemn word, who ‘wanted them unhurt’. For had Nana Sahib not been called away at the last minute, writes his aide, he would have been present to personally supervise the safe departure of the British and reined in the untamed mass. Calani’s targeted readership is obviously European. Scene, anxious to register its stand against popular insurgency and radical movements, thus explicates its embedded category of counter-insurgency discourse. Calani’s inclusions and exclusions from the two texts (of de Warren and Maynard) are directed towards presenting the princes of India as the real leaders of the rebellion. Unlike de Warren, he exonerates Nana Sahib from a direct responsibility in either of the two massacres and quotes from Maynard’s ﬁ ction in which Nana Sahib is portrayed in a positive light: ‘Yes, I assert’, said Mrs Hornsteet, ‘that none of us there would have escaped death without the intervention of the most powerful of the leaders of the insurrection, Nana-Sahib . . .’32 By selecting Maynard’s version, Calani accepts the hypothesis shared by a group of historians that the Satichura Ghat was the result of confusion, not preplanned.33 Nana Sahib is not held responsible for the Bibighar incident either, for which Calani once again cites Maynard’s De Delhi, in which only the women who had been communicating with the British forces against rules were executed by his order. The massacre was the work of the ‘fearful wampourris’, a fanatical Muhammadan sect, and the result of the vengeance of the people who had heard about the mass killings and devastation of the countryside in Benaras and Allahabad by Brigadier Neill and Major Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Renaud’s troops while approaching Kanpur. Calani thus separates

32 Calani, Scene dell’ insurrezione indiana, p. 741. 33 According to this hypothesis, the Satichaura Ghat happened because of a confusion — a shot was heard in the distance from the direction of the entrenchment (accidental explosion of stored gunpowder in the trenches), which was taken by the sepoys present at the Ghat to be a sign of treachery of the British and hence the mayhem which followed. 202 Sharmistha Lahiri

the rulers from the common people though he gives reasons for their anger against British rule. A moderate-democrat, a journalist and ex-offi cer in the army of the monarchical state of Piedmont, Calani is pro-aristocracy and favours rule by the native princes in India just as he envisages a unifi ed nation state of Italy under the House of Savoy. Though he does not share the pro-English stand of the moderates he endorses the Italian moderate party’s deep distrust of radical movements and popular insurgencies. Calani’s Scene, pro- rebel and positioned against colonialism, cannot apparently be seen as prose of counter-insurgency, but by foregrounding the role of the Indian rulers as the only possible leaders who can lead the masses in the struggle for independence and keep under check the forces of disorder, Calani’s text dilutes its pro-insurrectional stance and partly takes on the idiom of counter-insurgency prose. Calani disrupts a few assumptions linked to the story of the Kanpur massacre. His Nana Sahib is a far cry from the cruel, depraved and treacherous fi end of the British accounts. He is a patriot, a fi ery spirit but not least humane, a generous host, and a leader of his men, whose anger is roused against the British for the mass killings in Benaras, Allahabad and Peshawar, which added to the wrath of his personal humiliation. Mrs Jardine’s journal provides information, corroborated by other sources (and partially by the account of one of the survivors, Mowbray Thomson in his The Story of Cawnpore [1859]) that Nana Sahib had arranged the boats with food and provisions for the British who, after three weeks of siege, had been dying more of hunger, thirst and disease than gunfi re. It begs explanation why Nana Sahib would organise provisions if he had planned to kill them at the bank itself. Without overturning completely the dominant version of the event, Scene introduces small deviations into the main storyline which 34

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 allow a different perspective. Calani’s account, in effect, contests the word treachery leveled against the Indian rebels, and speciﬁ cally Nana Sahib. The British were the ‘usurpers’ who invited catastrophe

34 The Kanpur killings, according to some historians, were a direct result of British atrocities on the civilians directed by Colonel Neill and Major Renaud, for example, in Allahabad and Benares, which were committed before the Bibighar incident. The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators 203

upon themselves by their own greed and cruelties. He does not write ‘mutiny’ but ‘insurrection’ and ‘national war of independence’. Calani’s portrayal of the Asiatic is no doubt Orientalist, but his Indian is a good Oriental. The character of Mirneh-Rajah is modeled on that of a European hero in a medieval romance, endowed generously with the spirit of chivalry, love and honour. He stands out distinct from the other native princes, having a European education, which Calani cannot help seeing as the distinguishing factor from the rest. He is not portrayed as an Oriental despot but as a modern leader of men. His palace becomes the centre of the assembly of princes. A national movement for independence is launched, in which interpersonal differences are composed, and patriotism and freedom from foreign domination made the goal, a situation comparable to Italy at that time. A displacement occurs here — from the familiar fi gure of the Oriental despot in European fi ction to the modern European leader of the masses. The third text, ‘L’olocausto di Cawnepore’ by Guido Gozzano, is again an example of literature by quotations. Guido Gozzano, one of the acclaimed Italian writers of his generation, visits India for two months in 1912, passes through Bombay and Goa, and sojourns in Ceylon. His travel accounts were written for periodicals and newspapers as Letters from India, many of which were published as a book in 1917 with the title, Verso la cuna del mondo (Journey to the World’s Cradle: Letters from India). ‘L’olocausto di Cawnepore’ fi rst appeared in the periodical La Donna on April 20, 1915. In his Letters from India Gozzano writes on many cities of India which he probably did not visit, his information sourced mostly from travelogues and encyclopedic volumes on India. As for ‘L’olocausto di Cawnepore’, he draws largely on Jules Verne’s narrative in La Maison à vapeur.35

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Alida D’Aquino De Creazzo in the ‘Introduction’, V. C. M., mentions Jules Verne’s La Maison à vapeur (The Steam House), Pierre Loti’s L’Inde (sans les anglais) (India [without the British]), Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1903; Angelo de Gubernatis, Peregrinazioni indiane (Indian Peregrinations), Florence: Tip. L. Niccolai, 1884; Paolo Mantegazza, India, Milan: Treves, 1884; Ernst Haeckel, Lettere di un viaggiatore nell’India (Letters of a Traveler in India), Turin: Unione tipograﬁ co-editrice, 1892; Theophile Gautier, Caprices et zigzag (Caprice and Zigzag), Paris: V. Lecou, 1852; Ferdinando De Lanoye, L’India contemporanea (Contemporary India), translated by F. G. B., Milan: F. Vallardi, 1858. 204 Sharmistha Lahiri

From his account one gets the impression, as Edoardo Sanguineti writes, that he came to seek an exotic, unreachable, fantastic India and was disillusioned to fi nd it too readily accessible.36 On the Kanpur massacre, Gozzano freely uses Jules Verne’s La Maison à vapeur, and repeats the tale told by the British, the cruelty of the sepoys, the perfi dy of Nana Sahib and the brutal killing of the innocent women and children in Bibighar, which he calls ‘be- be-ghar’. He is not bothered about the historicity of the details as much as giving a sensational story on the Orient with all the ingredients of a Gothic potboiler. Indeed, it is replete with images of exotic locales, colonial grandeur, marauding swordsmen, dark Asiatic males (resembling ‘the black slaves of Imperial Rome’), beastly and menacing, closing in on European women, the symbol of pure and vulnerable white femininity, followed by tragedy and death, and fi nally the angel (golden-haired children whose ‘skulls were smashed against a tree’) lying dead in the well.37 A wailing nanny (‘the poor woman was demented’), incoherent and cringing at the sight of her master in Bibighar is the only Indian female represented and demonstrates the traits of the stereotyped Asiatic female: voiceless, battered, submissive.38 Gozzano’s description is riddled with observations, which, when not quoting others’ books, is based on hearsay, subjective assessments and conjectures rather than facts. While describing the violence at Satichaura Ghat, he evokes the grotesque using the idiom of a Gothic thriller: ‘the sharks of the Ganges must have feasted on the white and tender fl esh of the British, as opposed to the dark and not so tender fl esh of the cipoys which they were to get in abundance after the British reoccupied Cawnepore.’39 The construction of racialised identities proceeds along a heightened projection of the black and white, colonised-coloniser, Asiatic-European binaries. Gozzano, in fact, puts the words Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ‘Remember Cawnepore!’ in the incipit and begins his piece thus:

36 Edoardo Sanguineti, Guido Gozzano: Indagini e letture (Guido Gozzano: Investigations and Readings), Turin: Einaudi, 1966, p. 158. 37 Gozzano, ‘Le grotte della trimurti’ (The Elephanta Caves), V. C. M., p. 5. 38 Ibid., p. 108. 39 Ibid., p. 109. The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators 205

Because of their anglomania, rivalry among the inﬁ nite number of castes and natural and moral interests India does not and cannot rise in revolt! God forbid if it could or wanted to! The blonde race knows what kind of blood runs in the veins of these people with that perpetual dazzling smile of a timid girl and the docile look from under those darkly shaded eyes!40

This initial remark sets the tone of his narration of Kanpur, a gory image of the paradox that India represents. Belying the innocence, the effeminate, childish smile and timid exterior, the Indian is capable of unspeakable violence. The pitiable state of the English women becomes stark when seen in contrast with their earlier condition of domination over the subservient native. Gozzano adds that when the order was given for killing the hostages, ‘The sepoys were hesitating, perhaps out of pity, perhaps cowardice, for one look from an English lady was suffi cient to make hundred natives cast down their eyes. The beasts killed without looking at the victims, fi ring through the openings . . .’41 His narration ends with a description of the atrocious method of reprisal ordered by General Neill and thus adds a conclusion to the story of Kanpur, which is missing in Persico and Calani. The Brahmins were forced to crawl and lick clean the blood off the fl oor of Bibighar and to eat beef before going to the gallows.42 The Muslim sepoys were made to eat pork and were sewn inside pigskin. The rebel sepoys were executed either by hanging or tied to the mouth of a cannon and blown off. On the savage nature of British reprisals, Gozzano mentions the indignation expressed by members in the British parliament and quotes Disraeli’s words: ‘Do not forget that we are not Turks or Brahmins but Christians!’43 Though appalled at the British atrocities, he condones them in view of the circumstances, which for him make their actions understandable, even forgivable: ‘Alas! life is not only to suffer but

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 also to make suffer! The history of the world imposes upon us this cruel duty: to do unto others the injury that is done to us . . .’44

40 Ibid., p. 103. 41 Ibid., p. 108. 42 Ibid., p. 109. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 206 Sharmistha Lahiri

He ends up extolling the virtue of the British who covered up the infamous well with a slab, put a sculpture of the Angel of Resurrection on top and erected a beautiful memorial garden in the surrounding area. Gozzano sees this eruption of the aesthetic on the site of the carnage as a generous act of ‘ineffable indulgence’, a rare example of evangelical spirit, pardoning the oppressor: ‘the Christian spirit of compassion has converted into a garden the place of massacre.’45 As Alida D’Aquino Creazzo observes succinctly, Gozzano apparently confuses here the reasons of the ‘oppressed’ with that of the ‘oppressor’.46 The sculpture of the angel by the Italian artist Carlo Marochetti was a gift from Lord and Lady Canning to remember the dead and as Enrico Bertarelli, another Italian traveler writes in 1909, no Indian was allowed to enter into the garden.47 According to Bertarelli, the angel with the head lowered and arms crossed at the chest expresses the spirit of resignation and the palm leaves held in the hands places the dead in the biblical category of Christian martyrs.48 Far from healing the wounds, by aestheticising the space of the massacre and making it exclusive, the British appropriated the memory of the incident to serve their cause. By denying access to Indians, the mourning was also not allowed a closure; it only extended the memory of the attrition, adding to the growing fi ssures between the rulers and the ruled. With the interval of close to fi fty years, the changing circumstances along with changes in views, ideals, interests are noticeable in Gozzano’s writing. As Nicola Labanca says, ‘The end of the ideals of Risorgimento and their transformation into imperial ones of conquest changed soon even sincere democrats’.49 After unifi cation Italy joined the colonial race in the ‘scramble for Africa’, got its slice in the Berlin Congress of 1884–85, and acquired Libya, parts Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 45 Ibid. 46 Creazzo, ‘Introduction’, in V. C. M., p. x. 47 Enrico Bertarelli, India: Impressioni di viaggio (India: Travel Impres- sions), Milan: Alfi eri & Lacroix, 1909, p. 130. 48 Ibid. 49 Nicola Labanca, ‘Studies and Research on Fascist Colonialism, 1922–1935, Refl ections on the State of the Art’, in Patrizia Palumbo, A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-unifi cation to the Present, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003, p. 57. The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators 207

of Somalia, Eritrea as colonies. The simile of ancient Rome replete with images of black slaves and patrician women in distress ﬁ lled Gozzano’s poetic imagination. Indian history provided the ideal locale for indulging in colonial fantasies and dreams of a distant empire. His Letters represent a romanticised, Eurocentric view of the British empire in India, and images accumulate in ‘L’olocausto di Cawnepore’ to transmit the imperial echo. The atmosphere of hallucination is foregrounded in the image of the well, the typical cave image of the Victorian Gothic tradition, as the abyss of horror and mystery. Gozzano, known for his iconoclastic views, social satire and modernism, his poetry of irony and liberal ideology, fails to appreciate the liberal cause when he comes to India. Here he stresses the idea of the civilising mission of the west. Here we see a separation of scale in gauging the suffering of the conqueror and the conquered and an aching admiration for the superior colonial prowess of England. It is historically almost established now that the sepoys, tortured and executed in mass by the British when they recaptured Kanpur were not the ones guilty of killing those women and children.50 Reports indicate that killers had been hired for the purpose, though at whose order is not yet known with any degree of certainty.51 According to Gianni Bonadonna, author of a recent Italian monograph on the uprising, the reconstruction of events was based almost entirely on information collected by British ofﬁ cials from loyalists in Kanpur: ‘Nothing is certain: the sequences, the details, the masterminds, the killers.’52 Though the British put the onus of responsibility for both

50 See ‘Synopsis of the Evidence of the Cawnpore Mutiny’, in Depositions Taken at Cawnpore under the Direction of G. W. Williams, printed with Narrative of the Events in the N.W.P. in 1857–58 (Calcutta, n.d), section on Kanpur, cited by Rudrangshu Mukherjee in Spectre of Violence,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 pp. 75–76, here, also refer to the Notes, the Events, 1, 27, 97, pp. 171–79. See also ‘Memorandum by Lieutenant-Colonel Williams, Military Secretary to Government, North Western Provinces, in G. W. Forrest, ed., The Indian Mutiny, 1857–58, Selections from the Letters, Despatches and Other State Papers Preserved in the Military Department of the Government of India, 1857–58, volume 3, Calcutta: Military Department Press, 1902, Appendix, pp. xlviii–xlix (reprinted in Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2000). 51 Ibid. 52 Gianni Bonadonna, Il vento del diavolo (The Devil’s Wind), Milan: Rizzoli, 1994, p. 220. 208 Sharmistha Lahiri

the massacres on Nana Sahib, no evidence has yet been found to link him directly with the events. Bonadonna writes: ‘In the midst of so many certainties of the British historians of the colonial period concerning “the demon of Kanpur”, we may accept today a benefi t of doubt.’53 Nonetheless, Nana Sahib’s political ascendancy during the revolt suffered a setback, even among Indians, as a result of the backlash of the massacres.54 To conclude, while Persico’s text begins as a primary discourse of counter-insurgency but converts into secondary in the fi nal part, both the texts of Calani and Gozzano belong to the category of tertiary discourse in view of the absolute distance from the event and the fi xed ideological parameters which inform their interpretation of the rebellion. In narrating the Kanpur massacres between 1858 and 1915, anecdote takes over history. In all three narratives, the depiction of violence implicates issues of race, gender and class. Binaries along racial lines support the narrative which proceeds by the logic of the oppositional tension between the Asiatic and the European. However, in both Calani’s and Persico’s texts, the Kanpur story shows up a number of deviations that disrupt the widely publicised factual account of the incident. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

53 Bonadonna, Il vento del diavolo, p. 223. 54 Nayar, The Great Uprising, p. 110. The ‘Massacre’ in the Voice of Three Italian Narrators 209 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 210 Alessandro Portelli

, December 5, 1857. Illustrirte Zeitung Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ‘Khanpur, vom Ganges aus gesehen’ (Kanpur, Seen from the Ganges), in Exoticism, Anti-imperialism and Ambivalence 211

13 Emilio Salgari’s The Two Tigers: Exoticism, Anti-imperialism and Ambivalence Alessandro Portelli

‘On the morning of April 20, 1857, the lighthouse guard at Diamond Harbour signalled that a small boat had sailed into the Hugly during the night, without requesting the help of a pilot.’ As the small praho sidles noiselessly upstream with its crew of bold Malayan pirates, Emilio Salgari’s Le due tigri (1904) begins to unfold a tale of adventure, mystery, exoticism and struggle that has held captive the imagination of generations of Italian youths (myself enthusiastically included!), and contributed to a lasting perception of, and fascination for, India’s image in Italian culture.1 Born in Verona in 1862, Emilio Salgari was the author of at least eighty adventure novels, set in faraway lands, from the Indian Ocean to Patagonia, from Oceania to the prairies of the American Far West, and every other imaginable faraway place on earth. His most popular works are arranged in ‘cycles’ or series, such as the series on the pirates of the Caribbean (centred around three dispossessed Italian noblemen who turn pirates and ﬁ ght the evil Spanish governor of Maracaibo) and that of the pirates of Malaysia, of which Le due tigri is the fourth instalment. Though his books were successful in terms of sales and audience, he was never out of debt due to dishonest publishers and bad management, and eventually committed suicide in 1911. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

1 Which is why I am using for reference a full-text children’s edition, which is the one I bought for my children as soon as they were able to read. I am also keeping Salgari’s spelling of the many Indian or Indian-origin words that are sprinkled across his text. All translations from the Italian original are mine. Emilio Salgari, Le due tigri (The Two Tigers), illustrated by Carlo Alberto Michelini, Milan: Mursia, 1970. 212 Alessandro Portelli

‘If one has never seen the jungles of the Sunderbunds one cannot have the least idea of that dreary landscape’.2 The irony is that not only had Emilio Salgari himself never seen the landscape of the Sunderbunds, but had hardly ever left the northern Italian triangle of Verona, Genoa and Turin. His books are constructed out of reference works, travel literature and the power of imagination. Yet, at least by the lights of his time, they are usually remarkably accurate; part of their fascination lies, indeed, in the amount of information they consistently provide on the places and times to which he takes his readers. Thus, when I much later read Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, I couldn’t help doing so against the background of my memories of Emilio Salgari’s ‘thick’, though imagined, description of a landscape neither of us had ever seen:

A desert, even though lacking the merest spring of grass, is less sad than those muddy plains, covered by a thick vegetation which, however, has nothing of the gay, the picturesque — a vegetation that, though luxuriating, had an undefi nable tinge of something sickly seeping infective germs. And in fact, that sea of huge canes and parasitical plants is yellowish. One hardly ever sees a spot of bright green, because the lovely dark- leaved mangifers, papal, nim, tara that characterize the plains of Bengal and Central India seem to fi nd themselves ill at ease in the swamps of the Sunderbunds. The plants are all exceedingly tall and they grow with prodigious speed because the land is very fertile, but as we said they are sick, and project an infi nitely sad aura that deeply strikes the man who dares enter that vegetable chaos.3

The Malayan pirates, led by the ‘Tiger of Malaysia’, Sandokan, and his trusted Portuguese ‘little brother’ Yanez, are sailing to Kolkata (of course, spelled Calcutta) at the behest of their Indian friend Tremal Naik. Tremal Naik’s four-year-old daughter, Darma,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 has been kidnapped by the Thugs, an evil sect of Kali adorers, stranglers and man-killers, to replace her mother (a white woman) as the goddess’s living image in their temple buried deep under the ground of the Sunderbunds. Keeping an old promise, Sandokan and his crew are on their way to help Tremal Naik retrieve his daughter

2 Salgari, Le due tigri, chapter 11. 3 Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide, London: Harper Collins, 2004, p. 87. Exoticism, Anti-imperialism and Ambivalence 213

and, in the process, to destroy the evil sect and its cunning chief, Suyodhana, the ‘Tiger of India’. After they land by the cover of night, Sandokan and Yanez are led by Tremal Naik’s faithful and heroic servant Kammamuri to their friend’s residence. Once there, they ask Kammamuri whether the English police have done anything to save the child, perhaps by going into the Sunderbunds to ﬁ nd her.

— They refused, claiming that they had did not have enough men to organize a search party strong enough to succeed. — Does the government of Bengal have no more soldiers? — Sandokan asked. — The Anglo-Indian government right now is too busy to concern itself with the Thugs. The insurrection spreads more and more, and it is threatening to wipe out all English possessions in India. — Is there an insurrection in India? — Yanez asked. — And it grows more terrible by the day, sir. The cipayes [sic] regiments have rebelled in several places, at Merut, at Delhi, at Lucknow, at Cawnpore, and after executing their ofﬁ cers that gather under the ﬂ ags of Tantia Topi and the beautiful and brave Rani. — Oh well — said Sandokan, rising and walking somewhat excitedly around the table — since neither the police, nor the government of Bengal are able to deal with the Thugs at this time, we’ll take care of them, won’t we, Yanez?4

Until the last chapters of the book, the rebellion is not mentioned again. Indeed, this initial conversation seems to serve the purpose of allowing the struggle between the two tigers to go on unnoticed by, or independently of, the British occupation of the country. In the wilderness of the Sunderbunds, but also in a mysterious and anarchic night-time ‘black city’ Kolkata, the Malayan pirates and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 their friends, and the ruthless followers of the Tiger of India, are able to conduct their own war without interference from outside and from above. Thus begins to unfold a story of adventures that, as all such stories, is also a travel narrative and an exploration of the space and the

4 Salgari, Le due tigri, p. 23. Here, as throughout the essay, I retain Emilio Salgari’s original spelling of personal and place names in India. 214 Alessandro Portelli

society in which it takes place. Salgari does not mind interrupting the narrative at key points to supply information about Indian customs and culture, or about the natural environment. Long dialogues between Sandokan and Tremal Naik are included, in which the Indian explains to the Malaysian the beliefs of his religion and the mores of his society. It is indeed a pity that Edward Said never had a chance to discuss Emilio Salgari, because the sort of Orientalism displayed in his work, and in this particular novel, is indeed rather interesting and unusual. On the one hand, Emilio Salgari subscribes to, and reinforces, a number of images about the otherness of India, as a metonymy for what is most unknowable and mysterious about the east. No wonder that the fi rst chapters of Le due tigri are set in a night-time Kolkata, dark, replete with ambushes and disguises. Indeed, the very landscape of the Sunderbunds is also a metaphor for this impenetrable world. The dark maze of streets and alleys in Kolkata is the urban version of the overarching metaphor of the jungle — indeed, the fi rst book in the Malaysian pirates cycle is I misteri della giungla nera.5 Much of India’s customs and beliefs are often described in ways that make them appear either childish or barbarous or weird. The central image, of course, is the cult of Kali, the four-armed goddess in whose name the adepts kill, torture, kidnap. A chapter is dedicated to an episode in which Sandokan and his cohorts save a widow from being burned on the funeral pyre. There are long conversations between Tremal Naik and Sandokan on religious and ritual matters, from the avatars of Siva to the subjects of reincarnation in which the Malayan pirate is intrigued and amazed by such practices and beliefs. And yet, the careful detail with which either the narrative voice or its surrogate Tremal Naik describe these cultural traits betrays a fascination, an involvement, an impulse to fi nd out and disseminate

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 knowledge about this faraway world and culture, that go much deeper than the initial reaction. Salgari consistently conveys the sense of a high Indian culture and civilisation by remarking regularly on the beauty, magniﬁ cence and artistry of Indian architecture, sculpture, garb, manners. In the very culmination of the ﬁ nal battle between the English and the defenders of Delhi, he stops

5 Emilio Salgari, I misteri della giungla nera (The Mysteries of the Black Jungle), Geneva: Donath, 1895. Exoticism, Anti-imperialism and Ambivalence 215

the narrative for half a page to give the reader a description of the artistic and architectural marvels of Delhi, a city of ‘grand palaces of admirable architecture’, with the ‘marvellous’ imperial palace with its ‘highly valuable mosaics, elegant columns and marble baldachin’, ‘amazing arabesques’, marble ﬂ oors studded with precious stones’. ‘The makers of those marvels were not mistaken when they carved over the palace’s main gate: If there is a heaven on earth, this is where it is!’6 Ultimately, what prevails is a sense of wonder. If I may testify as a youthful and passionate reader and re-reader of this book, I came out of it with a passionate wish to go to India and see those wonders for myself. I never wanted to be the European Yanez; both I and my contemporaries and friends always wanted to be Sandokan, or at least Tremail Naik. More interesting is the fact that amazement, disbelief, wonder at these Oriental othernesses are not expressed by the European Yanez (always described as imperturbable, as if he had seen everything and could not be impressed), but by another Oriental, the Malaysian Sandokan. Thus, while we European readers are introduced to the mysteries of the black Oriental jungle, our guide is not a western explorer, but another Oriental. Actually, aside from attire and mannerisms, Sandokan seems most of the time somewhat aloof from his own cultural background and milieu (after all, he spends most of his time either at sea or on the rocky pirate island of Labuan). Yet, there is no doubt that he belongs to the east; thus, the impression one gathers from the reading is that there is not one Orient uniﬁ ed by its difference from us, but a plurality of peoples, customs, beliefs, languages with differences of their own. A Malaysian visitor may be as surprised and intrigued by this India as a youthful European reader. And indeed, India itself is plural: the evil Thugs on one side, the heroic Bengali Tremal Naik, his faithful and bold Maharathi

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 servant Kammamuri — and perhaps the most intriguing symbol of all, Tremal Naik’s tame tiger Darma, a full-blown character in herself, who bears the same name as his kidnapped daughter. The ambivalence, and its ultimate resolution, culminates in the ﬁ nal chapters. After Sandokan and his forces invade the Thugs’ underground refuge and temple and, through many dangers and vicissitudes, ﬁ nally manage to rout them, Suyodhana escapes with

6 Salgari, Le due tigri, p. 253. 216 Alessandro Portelli

a few survivors, and they learn that the Tiger of India is going north to join the insurgents in Delhi, taking with him Tremal Naik’s child. Thus, the moment the rebellion reappears in the story it is associated with the barbaric evil of Suyodhana and the Thugs. As Sandokan and his cohorts follow him towards Delhi, the ﬁ rst thing we hear about are the massacres perpetrated by the insurgents.

The news was extremely grave. All the Indian regiments had rebelled at Cawnpore, at Lucknow, at Merut, slaughtering their ofﬁ cers and massacring all the Europeans to be found in those towns, and the Rani of Jhansie had raised the ﬂ ag of revolt, after having the small English garrison executed.7

As in all of Salgari’s representations of India, however, horror and sympathy seem to mix inextricably. For one thing, we have already been told that the Rani is ‘beautiful and brave’. And the next sentence further complicates the ambivalence: ‘All the Bundelkund was in ﬂ ames and Delhi, the holy city, was already in the hands of the insurgents and ready for resistance’.8 The word ‘resistance’ already contains a subtle shift, suggesting heroism, a brave and doomed struggle against overpowering forces. In most of Salgari’s novels — most notably, the seminal I pirati della Malesia — the ones under siege are usually the good guys — the losers, or the heroes who win but still represent them.9

By early July, the city could be thought of as under siege, but the English achieved no appreciable success, and were always forced to step back under the furious and incessant attacks of the insurgents. . . . The long-awaited siege artillery had arrived and was being taken north to tear down the strong ramparts of the city that had so far tenaciously resisted the attacks of the infantry and the artiﬁ cers.10

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 In the early instalments of the Malaysian pirates cycle, Sandokan and his tigers’ crew are ﬁ ghting against the British domination of Borneo (just as the pirates of the Caribbean are ﬁ ghting against the Spanish empire). The fact that they do so out of resentment for

7 Salgari, Le due tigri, p. 213. 8 Ibid. 9 Emilio Salgari, I pirati della Malesia (The Pirates of Malaysia), Geneva: Donath, 1896. 10 Salgari, Le due tigri, p. 220. Exoticism, Anti-imperialism and Ambivalence 217

private injustice suffered at the imperialists’ hands is secondary to the fact that they are native people fi ghting on the side of justice against European invaders. Emilio Salgari was born a year after the proclamation of a united Italy independent from foreign domination. He grew up in the spirit of the wars of independence and liberation, and in the worship of the icons of those wars. In a penetrating 1982 book, semiologist Omar Calabrese noted clear connections between the iconography of Italy’s liberation hero Giuseppe Garibaldi and fi ctional heroes of popular and nationalist insurrections, from Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe to Emilio Salgari’s Sandokan.11 After all, his sympathy for pirates, whether of Malaysia or of the Caribbean, suggests that this writer is not automatically on the side of law and order. Thus, Salgari’s narrative of the rebellion hesitates between a sense of the terrible waste and destruction it generates (‘Villages burned by fi re: rural areas that must have been splendid, completely destroyed; corpses everywhere that caused the air to stink and attracted huge swarms of marabut buzzards, arghillah, red-kites, gypaety, insatiable devourers of carrion’), the even-handed admiration for heroism and military prowess (always by the besieged, no matter which side they are on:12 ‘Seeing himself assailed from all sides, the brave Lieutenant Willeughby, in admirable cold blood, set fi re to the powders blowing up more than fi fteen hundred besiegers and, in the confusion, managed to lead the women, the children and the old to safety’), and a sense of the ultimate justness of the rebellion. As Sandokan and his cohorts ask permission of the guard to enter the city, a rebel offi cial asks them:

— And you sir, why did you come here? Have you embraced our cause? — Yes and no — the Bengali replied. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 — Not a very clear answer, sir — laughed the cipai.13

11 Omar Calabrese, Garibaldi tra Ivanhoe e Sandokan (Garibaldi between Ivanhoe and Sandokan), Milan: Electa, 1982. 12 Gypaety is a species of vulture (scientiﬁ c name Laemobothrion vulturis gypaeti): an example of Salgari’s passion for exotic and scientiﬁ c words. 13 Salgari, Le due tigri, p. 221. 218 Alessandro Portelli

Yes and no may well describe the book’s stance at this point. On the other hand, Tremal Naik is perfectly poised for ambivalence: on the one hand, he is not a part of the rebellion, on the other hand he may identify with it as an Indian — and yet, his wife was English, and the daughter he is trying to save is half Indian and half white. When they are again interrogated as they attempt to enter the city, it’s hard to tell whether his answer is sincere or a tactical deception:

— Are you the ones who are asking permission to enter Delhi? — Yes — Tremal Naik replied. — To ﬁ ght and die for India’s freedom? — Against those who have oppressed us for centuries: the English.14

This is not why they are coming to Delhi: they are on a personal quest, their own worst enemy is with the insurgents (in fact, they are recognised by a Thug, arrested, and only saved fortuitously on the verge of execution), and they actually carry a pass from an offi cer with the English army (that will fail to protect them, when the English fi nally break into the city). For at least three chapters, Salgari keeps Sandokan and his cohorts on the margin of Delhi, literally on the threshold, neither in nor out, as if he could not resolve on which side of the ramparts to place them. He knows that, no matter what their intentions are, once they are inside Delhi they will necessarily become part of the insurrection. They fi nally ride their elephant through the city gates just as the English are preparing to retake the city thanks to their overwhelming artillery fi re. Even at this point, the ever-indifferent Yanez insists: ‘The English are no longer our enemy, let us be neutral.’ The rebellion and the siege are, to them, the background to their own war, and indeed they go through a number of confrontations and fi ghts with the Thugs right in the midst of the bombarded city. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Yet, at this point the attitude of the characters begins to diverge from that of the narrative voice. To Yanez, the English may not be ‘the enemy’; yet, they increasingly are for the narrator. Half a page later, we read: ‘the enemy was attempting a furious attack on the suburb of Kiscengange, which was however successfully repelled by the besieged’.15

14 Salgari, Le due tigri, p. 228. 15 Ibid., pp. 265–66. Exoticism, Anti-imperialism and Ambivalence 219

The title of the ﬁ nal chapter, ‘The Massacres of Delhi’ leaves no doubt. As ‘the city’s brave defenders’ try in vain to break the siege, the story rushes to its double climax: the ultimate victory of Sandokan over Suyodhana in a dramatic duel, and the tragic defeat of the defenders of Delhi. By now, there is hardly any ambivalence left in the book’s language:

Yes, it was the English, who, turning into thieves and murderers, had broken into the city looting and slaughtering the ﬂ eeing population and giving a right sad example of European civilisation.16

And at this point we realise that the luxuriating description of Delhi’s imperial palaces a few pages earlier was perhaps not just an Orientalist’s homage to exotic detail, but perhaps prepared the ground for the implicit contrast between the high civilisation that created those wonders, and the barbaric behaviour of the triumphant colonial army. The fury of the English makes no distinction, and massacres everything within reach of their swords. Thus, at this point, our heroes’ neutrality is out of the question, their offi cial passes are of no avail. ‘Let us run too,’ says Sandokan to his friends. As ‘seven or eight riders, their sabres bloodied to the hilt, broke upon them shouting, Kill! Kill!’ Sandokan, Yanez, Tremal Naik, and his newly retrieved little daughter Darma are also, though briefl y, a part of the fl ood of desperate refugees seeking shelter. And in the last page, ‘Conclusion’, Salgari fi nally decides which side he is on. He still identifi es moral outrage with European values, and savagery with (another) non-European people; but he knows that what is happening is a war of independence not unlike that fought by his own country at the same time, and that the repression is a horrible crime committed by his fellow Europeans.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 The massacres of Delhi lasted for three days, horrendous massacres that raised a howl of indignation not only in the European nations, but in England itself. The Indians, aware of the fate that awaited them, fought hand to hand desperately in the streets, the houses, the courtyards, and outside the walls, on the banks of the Giumna. . . . By the 20th, the city was entirely

16 Salgari, Le due tigri, p. 262. 220 Alessandro Portelli

in the hands of the English, and there followed frightful scenes and unheard-of mass slaughters, worthy of the savages of Polynesia and not of civilized people and of Europeans. Thousands and thousands were the Indians slaughtered by the soldiers drunk on blood and gin, who no longer respected either sex or age, and the whole city underwent a frightful looting. All the proud defenders of Indian liberty fell, after killing with their own hands their wives and daughters to keep them from falling into the hands of the victors. On the 24th, Sandokan and his comrades, with General Wilson’s permission, left the unfortunate city where thousands and thousands of corpses were beginning to rot in the streets and in the houses, and where the English kept on hanging and shooting the defeated.17 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

17 Salgari, Le due tigri, p. 264. Jules Verne and the Indian Rebellion 221

14 Lost in Translation: Jules Verne and the Indian Rebellion Swati Dasgupta

Jules Gabriel Verne is among the most-translated authors in world literature. According to UNESCO, Lenin and the Bible had to their credit, for many years, the highest number of translations; next came Agatha Christie and then Jules Verne. Shakespeare was further down in the list. The latest UNESCO data show Verne in the fourth place, after Walt Disney productions, Agatha Christie and the Bible. As far as it has been possible for me to ascertain, Verne’s stories have appeared in some form or other in at least twelve Indian languages: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.1 I have read quite a number of Verne titles in a fi ve-volume Bengali omnibus devoted to him. The stories are severely abridged, and leave no scope for doubt that the translation is not from French but from English.2 Author of such widely read science fi ctions as Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne was born in Nantes, France on February 8, 1828. Books from his prolifi c pen continued being published posthumously long after his death on March 24, 1905. At the age of thirty-six Verne signed a contract with his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel binding himself to hand over two books for release every year. The object of these novels was to constitute, according to his publisher, family

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 learning: learning which was to be serious yet interesting, learning which was to be pleasing to the parents and beneﬁ cial for the children. Verne’s imaginative stories started appearing serially in

1 See Garmt de Vries’s website http://www.phys.uu.nl/~gdevries/ languages/languages.cgi; accessed February 25, 2005. 2 Cf. Manabendra Bandopadhyay, Jules Verne Omnibus, Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing, 1994. 222 Swati Dasgupta

Le Magasin d’éducation et de récréation (The Magazine for Education and Recreation). In his stories he wrote about contemporary topics: whether it was the invention of the submarine in 1800, explorations undertaken in Africa and the adventures of Dr Livingstone and Stanley in the second half of the 19th century or whether it was the Indian mutiny of 1857 against the British. However, many readers of Jules Verne in English are still not aware that a kind of insidious and indirect censorship cast on foreign publications in the British-ruled days still constricts their reading of books on the Indian mutiny of 1857. In his 1872 English translation of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Mercier Lewis (a pen name of the Reverend Lewis Page Mercier) evidently considered Nemo’s ideals and politics pernicious.3 He left out the famous passage about Nemo’s portrait gallery of heroes, he omitted Nemo’s denunciation of the rapacious British treatment of Indian pearl divers. He, in fact, deleted so much of Verne’s original, that by the time he reached the subject matter of Verne’s Chapter 11, he just called it Chapter 10. Consequently, the important caption of Chapter 11 in Verne’s book, ‘The Nautilus’, is missing from Mercier Lewis’s translation. Maybe, the ‘complete and unabridged’ Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea published by Wordsworth Classics in 1992 was also taken from the Mercier translation.4 Nowhere in the book is the translator’s name mentioned, so I cannot really tell. But what I can say is that even this book does not have Verne’s Chapter 11. Part I of the Wordsworth Classics book has only twenty-three chapters in lieu of the twenty-four that Verne’s French original has. And the length of each chapter is also considerably shorter than in the original. That is how they managed to ﬁ t the text of a nearly 600-page book into 288 pages. Yet it claims to be ‘complete and unabridged’! It is interesting to read the translation of what Nemo said about the Indian pearl divers, the passage which was missing from Mercier’s

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 translation. These pearl divers, says Nemo, work in fisheries which belong to ‘the most industrialized people in the world, the English’.

3 Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, translated from the French by Lewis Mercier, London: Sampson Low, 1872. 4 Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1992. Jules Verne and the Indian Rebellion 223

‘Those poor fi shermen can’t stay long underwater. When the poor fellows climb back on board, the water coming out of their noses and ears is tinted with blood. I believe the average time under water that these fi shermen can tolerate is thirty seconds, during which they hastily stuff their little nets with all the pearl oysters they can tear loose. But these fi shermen generally don’t live to advanced age: their vision weakens, ulcers break out on their eyes, sores form on their bodies, and some are even stricken with apoplexy on the ocean fl oor.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, (the fi rst person here is Professor Aronnax, Nemo’s captive guest.) ‘it’s a sad occupation, and one that exists only to gratify the whims of fashion. But tell me, Captain, how many oysters can a boat fi sh up in a workday?’ ‘About 40,000 to 50,000. . . . In 1814, . . . divers worked just twenty days and brought up 76,000,000 oysters.’ ‘At least,’ I asked, ‘the fi shermen are well paid, aren’t they?’ ‘Hardly, professor. In Panama they make just $1.00 per week. In most places they earn only a penny for each oyster that has a pearl, and they bring up so many that have none!’

‘Only one penny to those poor people who make their employers rich! That’s atrocious!’5

These lines tell us very clearly what Verne thought of the British and why they were not willing to scrupulously translate him. Many readers who depend only or mainly on English translations were for long years and very often even now are deprived of an adequate acquaintance with every aspect of Verne’s views of British imperialist glory. Fortunately, faithful translations of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, such as the one by William Butcher, have come to the market in very recent years.6 Butcher has all the lines that had been distorted in translation or not translated at all. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

5 Jules Verne, Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea), Paris: Livre de poche, 1994, pp. 303–4, translated by F. P. Walter, see http://jv.gilead.org.il/fpwalter/2/02.html; ﬁ rst published in the original French in 1869. 6 Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, translated with an Introduction and Notes by William Butcher, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 224 Swati Dasgupta

In his Nautilus, Nemo had a gallery of portraits of heroes — ‘great men of history who had spent their lives in perpetual devotion to great human ideals: Thaddeus Kosciusko, the hero whose dying words had been Finis Poloniae; Markos Botzaris, to modern Greeks the reincarnation of Sparta’s King Leonidas; Daniel O’Connell, Ireland’s defender; George Washington, founder of the American Union; Daniele Manin, the Italian patriot; Abraham Lincoln, dead from the bullet of a believer in slavery and fi nally, that martyr for the redemption of the black race, John Brown, hanging from his gallows as Victor Hugo’s pencil has so terrifyingly depicted.’7 This gallery led Professor Aronnax to start wondering how and why these people inspired Nemo. ‘Was he a fi ghter for oppressed peoples, a liberator of enslaved races? Had he fi gured in the recent political or social upheavals of this century? Was he a hero of that dreadful civil war in America, a war lamentable yet forever glorious . . .?’8 Aronnax could have reasonably inferred from some hints in Twenty Thousand Leagues that Captain Nemo (alias Prince Dakkar in another of Verne’s books, The Mysterious Island) was one who wanted to liberate enslaved races, in this case India from the British. Evidently therefore this paragraph was deliberately omitted by translators in the British Isles in the heyday of colonialism. True to his word to his publisher Verne set up a furious pace of research and writing and kept delivering two completed manuscripts of his Extraordinary Voyages every year. This was an astonishing performance. Verne had to keep in mind not only the time required for revisions of outpourings which included quite some scientifi c calculations but also publisher Hetzel’s concerns for saleability. It seems that the Verne we know is a Verne who has passed through the Hetzel sieve. Yet Pierre-Jules Hetzel is responsible for at least one change which he forced on Verne. It was an objection from Hetzel that transformed

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Captain Nemo from an originally contemplated Pole to an Indian. Initially, Verne’s narrative was inﬂ uenced by the 1863 uprising of Poland against Tsarist Russia. The Poles were quashed with a violence that appalled not only Verne, but people all over Europe.

7 Verne, Vingt mille, p. 400. 8 Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island, unabridged translation from the French by Sidney Kravitz, http://jv.gilead.org.il/kravitz/3/16.html. This translation was sent to me by Kravitz himself on a ﬂ oppy. Jules Verne and the Indian Rebellion 225

As originally conceived, Verne’s Captain Nemo was a Polish nobleman whose entire family had been slaughtered by Russian troops. Nemo builds an amazing futuristic submarine, Nautilus, and con- ducts an underwater campaign of vengeance against the imperial oppressors. But in the 1860s France was very careful not to offend the Tsar as an ally in any way. Verne’s publisher Hetzel pronounced the book unprintable, since a Pole fi ghting against Russian oppression would severely restrict the sale of his books in the Tsar’s vast domain. Verne was unhappy with his publisher’s advice: ‘But to be frank, I regret my Pole, I had got used to him, we were good friends and what is more, it was more straightforward, more sincere,’ he says in a letter dated July 29, 1867 to Hetzel.9 Yet he reworked the political content in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, devising new nationalities for Nemo and his great enemies. Most of the information about the reworked Nemo was revealed in The Mysterious Island which has pages reading like a sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. But even there, Nemo’s last words were ‘God and my country’. This was a change introduced by Hetzel. In Verne’s manuscript, Nemo simply says one word: ‘Independence.’10 This Captain Nemo is perhaps the most intriguing and the most- loved science fi ction hero of all times. My parents tell me that they were thrilled by the maker and commander of a magnifi cent but lethal submarine called Nautilus when they read about him in children’s literature in the 1920s or 1930s. They were greatly enthused in those days when this enigmatic protagonist revealed his identity as Prince Dakkar, an Indian, and a leader of the sepoy mutiny of 1857 which some people call the fi rst war of Indian independence from the British. Adding what they had learnt at school, they deduced that Verne’s Prince Dakkar, later Captain Nemo, was Indian history’s Nana Sahib. But they do not remember having come by anything Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 like this even in their adult days:

9 Olivier Dumas, Piero Gondolo della Riva and Volker Dehs, eds, Correspondance inédite de Jules Verne et de Pierre-Jules Hetzel (1863–1886) (Unpublished Correspondence between Jules Verne and Pierre-Jules Hetzel [1863–1886]), 3 volumes, Geneva: Slatkine, 1999, volume 1, p. 62 (translation author’s). 10 L’Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island), volume 2, Paris: Livre de poche, 1994, p. 821. 226 Swati Dasgupta

Prince Dakkar hated. He hated the only country where he never wished to set foot, the only nation whose overtures he constantly refused: he hated England and more so because up to a point he admired it . . .’ So it was that this Indian typifi ed in himself all the fi erce hatred of the vanquished against the conqueror. The invader would not fi nd mercy in the invaded land. The son of one of those sovereigns from whom the United Kingdom would only expect nominal obedience, this prince from the family of Tippu Sahib, raised on the idea of vindication and vengeance, having an irresistible love for his poetic country burdened by English chains, never wanted to set foot on this cursed land to which India owed its enslavement.11

This is from Verne’s pen, translated into English by an American, Sidney Kravitz, in 1992. Before that, the translations of The Mysterious Island did not include these lines. Verne wrote many such passages. Some could have read them in French, but how many would they be? Questions about such omissions have arisen from very recent researches on Verne. The issue can be seen from another interesting side too. Those who have read The Mysterious Island in English may remember this paragraph:

Captain Nemo was an Indian, the Prince Dakkar, son of a rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkhand. His father sent him, when ten years of age, to Europe, in order that he might receive an education in all respects complete, and in the hopes that by his talents and knowledge he might one day take a leading part in raising his long degraded and heathen country to a level with the nations of Europe.12

But this is not what Verne wrote. Scrupulously translated, the French original reads:

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Captain Nemo was an Indian, Prince Dakkar, the son of a rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkhand and a nephew of the Indian hero, Tippu Sahib. His father sent him to Europe when he was

11 Verne, The Mysterious Island, translation by Kravitz, see note 8. 12 Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island, translated by W. H. G. Kingston, 3 volumes, London: Sampson Low, 1875, online version available at http://jv.gilead.org.il/pg/milnd/3/16.html, accessed February 16, 2005. Jules Verne and the Indian Rebellion 227

ten years old in order that he receive a complete education with the secret intention that he would ﬁ ght one day with equal arms against those whom he considered to be the oppressor of his country.13

Take another line from the Bantam Edition of 1970, in English, of The Mysterious Island:14 Referring to Captain Nemo, or Prince Dakkar as we now know him to be, it says, ‘This artist, this philosopher, this man was however, still cherishing the hope instilled into him from his earliest days.’15 The original line in French is not so brief. I quote in translation, ‘This artist, this scientist, this man had remained Indian in his heart, Indian by his desire for vengeance, Indian by his hope of one day reclaiming the rights of his country by driving out the foreigner and restoring its independence.’16 W. H. G. Kingston was another Englishman who distorted Verne in translation. Anyone reading his translation will come across the following passage:

In 1857 the great sepoy revolt broke out. Prince Dakkar, under the belief that he should thereby have the opportunity of attaining the object of his long-cherished ambition, was easily drawn into it. He forthwith devoted his talents and wealth to the service of this cause. He aided it in person; he fought in the front ranks; he risked his life equally with the humblest of the wretched and misguided fanatics; he was ten times wounded in twenty engagements, seeking death but ﬁ nding it not, but at length the sanguinary rebels were utterly defeated, and the atrocious mutiny was brought to an end.17

Fortunately, Kravitz’s translation gives us the faithful translation:

In 1857, the great Sepoy revolt erupted. Prince Dakkar was its soul. He organized the immense upheaval. He put his talents and his riches to the service of this cause. He sacriﬁ ced himself. He fought Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

13 Verne, The Mysterious Island, translation by Kravitz. 14 Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island, New York: Bantam Pathﬁ nder Edition, 1970. 15 Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island, Kingston’s translation abridged by Lowell Blair, Bantam Books, 1970, p. 36. 16 Verne, The Mysterious Island, translation by Kravitz. 17 See http://jv.gilead.org.il/pg/milnd/3/16.html; accessed February 16, 2005. 228 Swati Dasgupta

in the front lines, he risked his life like the humblest of those heroes who had risen up to free their country; he was wounded ten times in twenty encounters but could not ﬁ nd death when the last soldiers of the ﬁ ght for independence fell under English bullets.18

But if the Kingston English translation has omitted some lines it has also added some of its own. One such paragraph which does not fi gure in Verne’s original: ‘Instigated by princes equally ambitious and less sagacious and more unscrupulous than he was, [and here he obviously refers to Prince Dakkar], the people of India were persuaded that they might successfully rise against their English rulers, who had brought them out of a state of anarchy and constant warfare and misery, and had established peace and prosperity in their country. Their ignorance and gross superstition made them the facile tools of their designing chiefs.’19 Verne was distorted with abandon by his English translators. There was no copyright in those days. Translators like the Reverend Lewis Page Mercier and W. H. G. Kingston made a plaything of Verne. Mercier’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea was a translation of Verne’s Vingt mille lieues sous les mers minus nearly a third of it. The clergyman was not well up in science — the hallmark of Verne’s stories — nor, it seems, was he fully conversant with the French language even though that was the language he spoke at home. Nor could he share Verne’s sympathy for the victims of the rampant imperialism of those days. Kingston rewrote Captain Nemo’s famous account in The Mysterious Island of his own life, revealing himself as the leader of the sepoy mutiny of 1857 in India. Readers of Verne in English have depended for long only on such translations for their acquaintance with his writings and have missed much of what Verne wrote about India. In fact, India fi gures in at least fi ve of Verne’s famous Extraordinary Voyages: Twenty Thousand Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

18 Online version at http://jv.gilead.org.il/kravitz/3/16.html. The same passage with minor changes may be found in the updated published version of Kravitz’s translation: The Mysterious Island, translated by Sidney Kravitz, edited by Arthur B. Evans, with an introduction and critical materials by William Butcher, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001, pp. 509–91. 19 Verne, The Mysterious Island, Kingston’s translation, http://jv.gilead. org.il/pg/milnd/3/16.html, accessed February 16, 2005. Jules Verne and the Indian Rebellion 229

Leagues under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days, The Mysterious Island (in two volumes), The Begum’s Fortune also known as The 500 million of the Begum, and The Steam House (also two volumes: The Demon of Cawnpore and Tigers and Traitors).20 Captain Nemo fi rst appears in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, but reference to his identity there is tangential. We get his full astonishing portrait, as he chose to draw it himself, in The Mysterious Island. Around the World in Eighty Days has interesting episodes like the saving of a sutty from a funeral pyre by voyagers passing through the country and the buying of an elephant by Phileas Fogg to use as a means of transport. In The Begum’s Fortune, the cost of founding two colonies, opposite to each other in all respects — one dedicated to peace and equality and the other seeking power to dominate others — comes from the inheritance of the fortune of an Indian Begum. In the fi fth book, The Steam House, Verne used the sepoy mutiny as an exciting backdrop for the journey of four Europeans across India in a steam-powered mobile palace shaped like a huge elephant. One of these Europeans, Colonel Edward Munro’s principal reason for coming to India was his mind for revenge against Nana Sahib. When Munro was stationed in India during the rebellion, his wife was one of the many British massacred by Nana. This novel is a work of fi ction closely intertwined with the Indian rebellion of 1857. A whole chapter of this book is missing from most available English translations. An English version of La Maison à vapeur or The Steam House came to the market towards the middle of the last century in the Fitzroy edition. The translator, I. O. Evans regarded himself a Verne fan. Yet, there was a big gap. In his introduction Evans says that Verne devoted a ‘whole chapter’ to the Indian mutiny and its suppression and it was so ‘tendential’ (sic) that his original translators in a footnote disavowed responsibility for its ‘facts or sentiments’. What did Evans do with this chapter? He omitted it

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 entirely and explained in a footnote that it ‘holds up the story and lacks in interest’.21 What was the allegedly superﬂ uous chapter all about? Verne, in that chapter, looks at both sides of the mutiny. He

20 Jules Verne, Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days), Paris: Livre de Poche, 1979; Jules Verne, Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum (The Begum’s Fortune), Geneva: Éditions Bellerive, 1991. 21 The Steam House, Fitzroy edition, translated by I. O. Evans, London: Hanison, 1959. 230 Swati Dasgupta

ﬁ nds that the English exacted the fullest revenge for all the cruelty perpetrated by the sepoys. Translations of The Steam House published before the Fitzroy edition are almost impossible to ﬁ nd these days either in the market or in the libraries. Following are some extracts from the expunged chapter (translated by me from Verne’s original for the private website of the free international Jules Verne Forum).22

On the 15th of July, a second massacre at Cawnpore. On that day, several hundred children and women — and among them Lady Munro — were killed with a cruelty beyond comparison by the order of the Nana himself, who called upon Muslim butchers to assist him. Horrible killings, after which the bodies were dumped into a well which has remained legendary . . . The English generals also responded to these massacres with vengefulness . . . but it was really horrible. One column commanded by Colonel Nicholson attacked a native regiment which was marching towards Delhi. It did not take long to attack, defeat and disperse the rebels and one hundred and twenty prisoners were sent back to Peshawar. All were indiscriminately condemned to death but only one out of three was to be executed. Ten canons were arranged in the parade ground, a prisoner was tied to the mouth of a gun and the ten guns were fi red fi ve times, covering the plain with a hideous debris in an atmosphere reeking of burning fl esh.

According to Eugène de Valbezen, almost all the tortured victims died with the heroic indifference which the Hindus knew so well how to preserve in the face of death.23 ‘Captain Sahib,’ said a ﬁ ne sepoy,

22 See http://jv.gilead.org.il/forum/private/dasgupta. For those who are interested in reading uncensored Verne, http://jv.gilead.org.il/ is the site

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 to go to, as Dr Zvi Har’El has put most of Verne’s books online and also the English, Polish and Russian translations of many of them. For Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, he has not only included the French and F. P. Walters’s faithful translation into English, but also W. H. G. Kingston’s highly censored version. Unfortunately, for The Steam House, he only has the French version. 23 Valbezen was the French consul general and minister plenipotentiary in Calcutta. To the French the term ‘Hindus’ was until recently synonymous with Indians. Jules Verne and the Indian Rebellion 231

some twenty years old, while nonchalantly caressing the instrument of death, to one of the ofﬁ cers who superintended the execution, ‘there is no need to tie me up. I do not wish to escape . . .’

At Cawnpore, after the massacre, Colonel Neil forced the convicts, before going to the gallows, to lick clean with their tongues, in proportion to their castes, every remaining bloodstain in the house where their victims had perished. This was, for the Hindus, dishonour preceding death.24

If the chapter on the ‘sepoy mutiny’ remained untranslated, there were other lines too which went missing or were distorted. Towards the end of the book, in the chapter ‘Face to Face’, Nana Sahib has turned the tables and taken Colonel Munro prisoner and has tied him to the mouth of a canon to blow him up the following day at dawn. That is when, writes Verne, ‘For more than an hour he was subjected to the base insults of Dacoits and Indians. It was as if the Sioux of North America had surrounded a prisoner tied to the torture post.’25 I. O. Evans, however, replaces ‘Dacoits and Indians’ with the words ‘savage men’ and totally omits the line about the Sioux. The Sioux were among the most determined ﬁ ghters against the Whites in the plains of North America. Evans withheld from his English-speaking readers — and, as a consequence, from readers in other languages translated from the English version — the comparison made by Verne between the Indians and the Sioux. Jules Verne never came to India. But he scrupulously read many reports that were written on the mutiny, then he chose his own stand about the event. In this case his main source of information was the

24 Evans may have omitted these lines in his translation, but some of the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 islands in the Andamans are, even after sixty years of India’s independence, still named after these Englishmen. There is a Neil Island named after this Colonel Neil, a Sir Hugh Rose Island named after the man who pursued Rani Lakshmi Bai to her death, and a Havelock Island, named after Sir Henry Havelock, noted for his recapture of Cawnpore from rebels. Jules Verne, La Maison à vapeur (The Steam House), Geneva: Éditions Bellerive, 1991, pp. 36–37 (translation author’s). 25 Ibid., p. 81; Verne, The Steam House, I. O. Evan’s translation, part 2 titled Tigers and Traitors, Fitzroy edition, London: Arco Publications with Hanison, 1959, p. 154. 232 Swati Dasgupta

Consul General Valbezen, who, in his book Les Anglais et l’Inde or The English and India, wrote extensively on the British in India.26

A dark skin became an object of hatred and disgust to European eyes. Native servants, so useful, so indispensable, and some of them so devoted to their masters, were grossly abused and ill treated on the slightest pretext. The soldiers, who gave no quarter in battle did their best to torment the prisoners under their charge. A usual and favourite amusement was to strike the captive sepoys with the butt-end of their guns or the fl at of their sabres, and worse still, to force them, by threats and brutality, to eat pork or cow’s fl esh. The offi cers, who presided over the court-martial, were blinded by passion. It was a matter of certainty that every accused person would be condemned, and the sentence was invariably death. ‘Make short work of Delhi’ was the last laconic message telegraphed by the Governor-General to the Commander-in-Chief before the wires were cut.27

In order to weave an interesting yet informative story, Verne wrote his fi ction in the backdrop of an important political, scientifi c or geographic development. Valbezen wrote not only of the British treatment of Indian sepoys, but also of Nana Sahib’s role in the mutiny and of his fi nal disappearance. This reference may well be what fi red Jules Verne’s imagination into turning Nana Sahib into Prince Dakkar and Captain Nemo:

‘Since then no certain trace has ever been found of this Asiatic Nero, though several times the report of his capture has caused great excitement in the public. . . . An individual, supposed to be Nana Sahib, was taken captive, and the fact caused the greatest excitement in England. We borrow the details of this strange story from The Times: On the evening of October 21, a letter written by Nana Sahib’s secretary was brought to Maharaja Scindia. In it Nana Sahib stated that he was applying to Scindia as a brother, that after wandering several years in the desert he had returned to Hindostan, and now Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 placed his life in his hands.28

And so Verne decided to write the story of Nana and his brother Balaji Rao, their role in the 1857 mutiny and the disappearance of

26 Eugène de Valbezen, Les Anglais et l’Inde (Nouvelles etudes) (The English and India [New Studies]), 2 volumes, Paris: Plon, 1875. 27 Ibid., p. 364. 28 Ibid., p. 363. Jules Verne and the Indian Rebellion 233

Nana. To enliven the story for his readers he added Colonel Munro whose wife perished at the hands of the Nana and who came to India, not to see the beautiful country like his fellow travellers, but to seek revenge. Verne has really shown both sides of the story: of the English and of Indians. But his English translators thought it wiser not to acquaint their readers of everything that Verne wrote. In Jules Verne’s time the British and the French were the main rival colonial powers. Explorations and colonisation were instrumental, maybe indirectly, in popularising adventure novels. Many writers gave detailed and interesting details about the explorers and colonisers, their activities, their successes as well as failures. Jules Verne was one of those writers who wanted to acquaint the French readers with all that was happening in strange faraway lands. While writing about the exploits of the European colonisers what has been Verne’s methodology? Did he simply list the events and leave the readers to take their own decisions on the merits of the explorations and colonisations or did his personal views show up in his writings? Verne’s eighty odd novels have eighty-nine English protagonists over twenty-ﬁ ve novels, eighty-ﬁ ve Americans in twenty-six novels, eighty-two French in thirty-six and twenty-seven Scots in ten. Other nationalities are much fewer. He represents the British in Australia as conquerors who considered the native inhabitants savages and thought that killing such creatures was not a crime. Killing the natives helped them in colonising the country. Their attitude in Australia was atrocious, says Verne, and so also in Africa and Asia. In New Zealand the Maori population was annihilated. Verne was of the opinion that British colonisation resulted in the disappearance of several Polynesian and Marquisian peoples. Other than these systematic killings, Verne describes the ruthless massacres of civilians by the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 British during the Indian rebellion of 1857. A detailed description of the ill treatment of Ceylonese pearl divers was Verne’s way of highlighting British oppression in colonised countries. Yet Britain was proud of its achievements. Maybe, Verne admired, albeit grudgingly, the British up to a point for their ability to conquer much of the world, more than the French. Yet he shows his dismay at the extent of British colonisation when he says that ‘after the Gibraltar of Spain, the Gibraltar of Aden, the Gibraltar of Perim, the English hope to found the Gibraltar of the Gulf of Persia, . . . [and that] 234 Swati Dasgupta

these tenacious Saxons will fi nally gibraltarise all the straits of the world.’29 The admiration for the British shows up when one of his protagonists, acting as the author’s spokesman, says: ‘If I weren’t English, I would have wanted to be one.’30 Verne talks of French colonisation as almost a necessary antipode to the English domination. In one of his novels he writes: ‘Since British infl uence extends to the areas on the north-east of this vast ocean, it is good that French infl uence counterbalances it in the regions of the south-east.’31 It is understandable that Verne talks very little of French colonialism in his books. His views as a Frenchman aside, writing against French colonial policies would have spelt doom for his writings in France.32 He does, however, talk about Tunisia under French protectorate. But he avoids the colonial issue and criticises instead a project to carve out an ‘inland sea’ inside Tunisia. Verne’s views on colonialism can be best seen in his novel Master of the World where he declares that no country is good enough to dominate other nations and that the ultimate coloniser will be a scientifi c invention, ‘neither French, nor German, nor Austrian, nor Russian, nor English, nor American’.33 Science will dominate the world, and under it all the nations will live united. They will devote themselves to science in order to serve evolutions and not revolutions. Verne ends on a note of disappointment that unfortunately the nations were not yet mature enough to form this union.

29 Translated from the French Miriﬁ ques aventures de Maître Antifer (The Wonderful Adventures of Master Antifer). Can be viewed at http://jv.gilead.org.il/zydorczak/ant04.html; accessed June 20, 2006. 30 Translated from the French text Voyages et aventures du Capitaine Hatteras (Travels and Adventures of Captain Hatteras), Paris: Librairie

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Hachette, 1966, volume 1, chapter 12, p. 118. 31 Jules Verne, L’Invasion de la mer (Invasion of the Sea), Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1978, p. 168 (translation author’s). 32 Verne’s publisher Hetzel refused to publish an anti-Russian book written by Verne and forced him to change the nationality. Verne then changed the oppressors in the book, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, from Russian to British. 33 Translated from the French Maître du monde (Master of the World) available at http://jv.gilead.org.il/zydorczak/mimond03.html; accessed March 21, 2006. Jules Verne and the Indian Rebellion 235 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 236 Suchitra Choudhury Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

‘Insurrection de l’Inde (1857) — Troupes anglaises se défendant dans les rochers contre la cavalerie des insurges’ (Insurrection in India [1857] — British Troops Defending Themselves behind Rocks against Insurgent Cavalry), in Histoire Populaire Contemporaine de la France, Paris: Hachette, 1865. Jules Verne and British ‘Mutiny’ Fiction 237

15 ‘A Great Insurrection’: Jules Verne and British ‘Mutiny’ Fiction Suchitra Choudhury

Gautam Chakravarty’s assertion that ‘nineteenth century globalisation justifi ed multiform violence through self serving, self- congratulatory high talk about civilizing and racial missions while expropriating subject peoples’ illustrates contemporary critical awareness that ‘history’ sometimes ought to be taken with a pinch of salt — or, depending on the current fashion, even with a pinch of snuff.1 While historical sneezing (or an occasional polite clearing of the throat) has now shifted its expectations to the domain of fi ction, it is still enlightening to study the history of a rebellion or war through the eyes of a third party ‘neutral’ nation. The ways in which history engages with imaginative fi ction are revelatory, especially in current scholarship where fi ction becomes the domain of history and history is debated in terms of being ‘fi ctional’. Chakravarty has rightly pointed out about 19th-century Britain that ‘it would be impossible for a nation to engage in warfare for a century without a public culture that sanctioned war as the legitimate . . . policy’.2 Several boys’ adventure stories as well as romantic novels used the events of 1857 as a backdrop to etch out the national/chivalric roles that British offi cers were imagined to follow. Patrick Brantlinger comments that ‘the sheer quantity of Victorian writing about the Mutiny seems inversely proportionate to its quality’, perhaps Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 as ‘great literature does not mix well with calls for repression

1 I would like to thank Stuart Scott and Sandip Talwar for advice in writing this essay. 2 For this and the earlier quotes, see Gautam Chakravarty, The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 1. 238 Suchitra Choudhury

and revenge’.3 Evidently then, as contemporary critics of literature argue, British ‘mutiny’ fi ction cannot be considered simply in terms of being literary but must also be debated in terms of its construction effecting a wider location or dislocation of history and popular mythmaking. This essay is a close study of the historiography of the 1857 rebellion in the colonial arena — in English and French spheres of knowledge as history permeated into fi ction. Against a general selection of British ‘mutiny fi ction’, I examine references in Jules Verne’s La Maison à vapeur or its English translation titled The Steam House (1881) for a comparison of the historiography of the rebellion inscribed in 19th-century British novels.4 My choice of this work is signifi cant primarily on two accounts. First, it is a science fi ction (or SF) text; and second, it is a translated text, from French to English. In seeking to scrutinise the extent to which Jules Verne uses his generic, and authorial powers to provide a real ‘alternative world’, I suggest that the presence of texts such as Verne’s, altered the ‘mutiny’ market, revising our understanding of ‘mutiny’ fi ction as a whole. This essay is a study of our understanding of science fi ction with its different ‘horizons of expectation’, intersecting with discussions of the politics of translation and their areas of reception. In evaluating these concepts, this study also interrogates the divergences in the depiction of Nana Sahib in British and French fi ction respectively. I conclude with a brief investigation as to the reasons why the French mode of writing appears to be so singular in comparison with British fi ction’s recapitulation of 1857 and its aftermath. Throughout this essay my use of the term ‘mutiny’ fi ction has consciously eschewed any pejorative connotations doubting the strength and purpose of the rebellion. Brantlinger states that at least ninety fi ctional works exist using 1857 as a setting: the number is possibly more. Several popular

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 British novelists tried their hand at it — including household names such H. Setton Merriman, Flora Annie Steel, G. A. Henty

3 Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988, p. 199. 4 Jules Verne, The Steam House: The Demon of Cawnpore and Tigers and Traitors (2 volumes), translated by Agnes D. Kingston, London: Sampson Low, 1880; reprinted as The End of Nana Sahib: The Steam House and Tigers and Traitors, Fredonia Books: Amsterdam, 2003. Jules Verne and British ‘Mutiny’ Fiction 239

and Gordon Stables. Dickens himself wrote ‘The Perils of Certain English Prisoners’ basing the story on the events of 1857.5 Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four employed the ‘mutiny’ as a hurly- burly adventure against which chilling homicides take place.6 Most of these imaginative works depict a benevolent Raj, an India divided on religious lines, and an ungrateful people who rose up against their ‘kind’ masters. High panegyric is acclaimed for British offi cers who quelled the ‘mutiny’ irrespective of their ‘excesses’. G. A. Henty’s Rujjub the Juggler and In Times of Peril; George Manville Fenn’s Begumbagh, or Gordon Stables’s On to the Rescue, among others, revisited 1857 to inscribe their versions of imperial heroism.7 From mid-century onwards, British boys’ novels constructed the idea of an imperial race and encouraged its adolescent readers to the spirit of adventure, simultaneously with serving one’s country — in the shape of colonial officers.8 The narration directly addressed them as adolescents. H. Rider Haggard, for instance, addressed them as ‘Dear Lads’ constructing a gendered readership, and Stables addressed them as ‘young reader’ often claiming to teach them ‘history’. Most ‘mutiny’ fi ction did not address the validity or the justifi cation of the rebellion; they served merely to showcase the heroism of the victor race. During and after 1857 — ‘the red year’ or the ‘terrible year’ as it was sometimes called — British reportage summarily said the discontent rested with the native soldiers only, thus validating the nomenclature of

5 Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, ‘The Perils of Certain English Prisoners’, Household Words, 1857, p. 19. The story is set in central America. 6 Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Sign of Four’ in The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Novels, edited by Leslie Klinger, New York: Norton, 2006, volume 3, pp. 209–381. 7 G. A. Henty, Rujjub the Juggler, 3 volumes, London: Chatto and Windus, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 1895; G. A. Henty, In Times of Peril: A Tale of India, London: Hurst, 1899; George Manville Fenn, Begumbagh: A Tale of the Mutiny and Other Stories, London: Chambers, undated; Gordon Stables, On to the Rescue: A Tale of the Indian Mutiny, London: Shaw, 1895; see also Flora Annie Steel, On the Face of the Waters, London: Heinemann, 1896; H. S. Merriman, Flotsam; or the Study of a Life, London: Longmans, 1896; Rudyard Kipling, Kim, London: Campbell, 1995 (ﬁ rst published 1901). 8 See Joseph Bristow, Empire Boys: Adventure in a Man’s World, London: Harper Collins, 1991. 240 Suchitra Choudhury

the ‘mutiny’. The rest of the people who joined this uprising against British rule were identifi ed as ‘fi ends’, or ‘murderous fi ends’ who kill and loot — bad characters completely devoid of any political views or opinions. Of course, to say that the discontent was only with a segment of the army and not the civil population suggested a largely beneficial Raj, the world portrayed in these fictions. Emphasising British bravery and valour, at best a benign empire putting to rest troublesome children, British writers aimed to revitalise the ‘united’ kingdom of Great Britain with stories of pluck and gallantry. The ‘vulgate of European expansion’, these fi ctional works aimed not only to impress but to enthuse generations of proposed or active colonial offi cers at the Queen’s service. In fact, one critic calls Henty the ‘recruiting offi cer for a generation of schoolboys’, reiterating the close connection between fi ction, history and contemporary society.9 Jules Verne revisits the fi ctional discursive fi eld of 1857 in The Steam House much in the same manner that British fi ction does, that is, by specifi cally quoting from a historian within the fi ctional work.10 Nonetheless, Verne’s recounting of the ‘mutiny’ is very different from those of British writers. Verne calls 1857 ‘a great insurrection’ among other received names.11 Whilst most ‘mutiny’ novels such as On the Face of the Waters, Flotsam, On to the Rescue, through to Kipling’s Kim narrate British agents successfully dis- guising themselves and penetrating rival camps, Verne’s novel opens with the dramatic description of the movements of Nana Sahib disguised as a ‘fakir’ who merges smoothly with the crowd while they discuss excitedly about an immense reward over his capture.12 As one old enemy makes plans to conduct a possible seizure of the Nana, he is killed instantly. Chakravarty specifi cally draws attention

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Turnbaugh Roy, ‘Images of Empire: G. A. Henty and John Buchan’, Journal of Popular Culture, 1975, 9: 734–40, p. 736. Quoted in Astrid Erll, ‘Re-Writing as Revisioning: Modes of Representing the “Indian Mutiny” in British Novels, 1857–2000’, European Journal of English Studies, August 2006, 10(2): 163–85, p. 168. 10 Verne quotes from Eugène de Valbezen, Les Anglais et l’Inde (Nouvelle études) (The English and India [New Studies]), 2 volumes, Paris: Plon, 1875. 11 Verne, The Steam House, p. 8. 12 Ibid., p. 1. Jules Verne and British ‘Mutiny’ Fiction 241

to British fi ction’s inability to imagine resistance.13 In Verne’s text this discursive aspect is reversed, as the narration not only opens with Nana Sahib, but also assigns more fi ctional space to Nana than to the vengeful counter insurgent Colonel Munroe. Astrid Erll has scrutinised the various levels of the social graph which turn historical events into myth, to the collective production of a cultural memory. Fictionalising history is often one way in which history steps into the realm of ‘popular memory’ or myth. Even in recording history, several techniques are employed to manipulate the sympathy of the reader. Patrick Brantlinger gives us a fi ne reading of the narrative techniques in certain history books that sought to manipulate the reader’s excessive sympathy with the colonised.14 Verne’s novel, in contrast, opens with a narration on a proposed rebellion. In rewriting the history and the aftermath of the rebellion Verne obliquely testifi es to the various instances of British ruthlessness: ‘[Nana Sahib] was going to be hanged next day at sunrise without a trial just like Tantia Tope, his celebrated comrade in revolt.’ Both the admission of ‘injustice’ or the praise for Tantia Tope is something entirely absent in ‘mutiny’ fi ction. The text also reminds its readers of the atrocities committed by the British in the name of quelling the rising. Verne tells us ‘in one day twenty eight rebels were blown from the canon’s mouth — a fearful sentence many times afterwards carried out during the Mutiny of 1857’.15 For Verne, the historic fi gure of Nana Sahib serves to make acceptable a universe constituting massive feats of imagination such as the Behemoth or the Steam House. The Behemoth may not seem like impossible today but for its contemporary readers it was as strange as it was powerful. It has been pointed out that Verne often uses familiar fi gures to lend credibility to his otherwise incredible universe. Andre Winandy has stated that ‘By introducing in the unfolding narrative an authenticated character from a previous Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 story with an identity and life of his own, with whose past and stature the reader is familiar, the interior distance which separates the make believe world . . . from the authentic world of the reader

13 Chakravarty, The Indian Mutiny, p. 157. 14 Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness, see p. 201; see also the long note, p. 293. 15 Verne, The Steam House, p. 22. 242 Suchitra Choudhury

is dramatically narrowed.’16 Winandy’s analysis of 1969 indirectly points to the establishment of what in recent years Stanley Fish would call a ‘reading community’, where ‘categories of readers are linked together by a common experience and expectation of reading, and by common social, political, ideological or cultural objectives or bonds rather than by physical proximity’.17 However, this concept for analysis will be complicated when considering a translated text such as The Steam House. Recent studies have expanded the notion of the ‘reading community’ to include a sense of nationhood.18 British consumption of 1857 novels, poems, eyewitness accounts established a fi rm ‘reading community’ with national/racial overtones where the mutineers were projected as ‘budmashes’, ‘murderers’, ‘looters’ and ‘despicable cowards’. These depictions placed the reader in a specifi c psychological and cultural setting in which the notion of the British being an ‘imperial race’ dispensing justice to naughty subjects was an accepted truth. However, Verne’s The Steam House effectively provided a counter discourse on the Indian uprising, available within the ‘mutiny’ fi ction market. Verne’s (translated) text was published around 1880–81 when such works were really being written and consumed. With translations, the original French ‘reading community’ changed as did its area of reception, and the body of readers, along with its national/ethical associations. What was acceptable with French readers registered a discordant note on English soil. As the text changed the nation for its area of transmission, the loyalties also changed. Given its transformed readership it was no longer cool to be anti-British. And Verne’s novel certainly diverged from British views in several ways.

16 Andre Winandy and Rita Winandy, ‘The Twilight Zone: Imagination and Reality in Jules Verne’s Strange Journeys’, Yale French Studies, 1969, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 43: 97–107, p. 102. 17 Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980. Kate Jackson, quoted in Christopher Pittard, ‘“Cheap, Healthful Literature”: The Strand Magazine, Fictions of Crime, and Puriﬁ ed Reading Communities’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 2007, 40(1): 1–23, p. 2. 18 Lynda Nead, Victorian Babylon: Peoples, Streets, and Images in Nineteenth- Century London, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000, quoted in Pittard, ‘Cheap, Healthful Literature’, p. 2. Jules Verne and British ‘Mutiny’ Fiction 243

In sharp contrast to British writers, Verne’s The Steam House contains direct critiques of the counter rebellion. The ‘mutiny’ is no longer the gloriﬁ ed site of British valour but rather a culpable scene of war crimes:

At Allahabad horrible slaughter was made, not among the sepoys, but in the ranks of the humble population . . . At Lucknow 2000 sepoys were shot . . . and a space of 120 square yards was strewn with their dead bodies. At Cawnpore, after the massacre, Colonel Neil obliged the condemned men, before giving them over to the gallows, to lick and clean with their tongues, in proportion to their rank of caste, each spot of blood remaining in the house in which the victims had perished. To the Hindoos this was preceding death with dishonour.19

Verne’s depiction draws attention to the reprehensible details of counter insurgency. In addition, the novel depicts an India where revolts are possible, and justifi ed. Lines such as those quoted above defl ated the construction of the brave sacrifi cing colonial offi cers working away in far away climes and countries like India, serving the Queen and their country selfl essly. Verne involves the reader in discussions of fair and unfair:

At the beginning of the year 1859 it was estimated that more that 120,000 native ofﬁ cers and soldiers had perished, and more than 200,000 civilian natives, who paid with their lives for their participation — often doubtful — in this insurrection. Terrible reprisals these; and perhaps, on that occasion, Mr. Gladstone had some reason on his side when he protested so energetically against them in parliament.20

In Conan Doyle’s Sign of Four, Jonathan Small tells us how ‘one

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 month India lay as still and peaceful, to all appearance as Surrey or Kent; the next there were two hundred thousand Black devils let loose . . .’.21 British ﬁ ction made it normative that the British were ruling peacefully, well without any resistance or complaint from Indians. In sharp contrast, Verne validates several Indian conﬂ icts

19 Verne, The Steam House, p. 44. 20 Ibid., p. 45. 21 Doyle, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Novels, p. 345. 244 Suchitra Choudhury

against foreign rule. In The Steam House, Balao Rao tells us, ‘In 1827, ’37 and ’47, there were risings in India. The fever of revolt has broken out every ten years.’22 Barely any British fi ction writer would have referred to the political climate of the day in fi ction. In a review in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine during the heyday of these novels, Hilda Gregg disapproved of any writer who dragged in controversies of the day, such as the ‘New Woman’ discussion, preferring a tale only of heroism.23 Gregg also strongly objected to any less than heroic construction of the British character as witnessed in Flotsam, or Rujjub the Juggler, pre-closing any meaningful discussion with the reader. The depictions of Nana Sahib provide key locations for studying intersections of historiography and fi ctional constructions. Nana Sahib was the standard treacherous villain in ‘mutiny’ fi ction. Manohar Malgonkar’s Note in Devil’s Wind describing the Nana as ‘the man who emerged as the Arch-villain from the so-called Indian Mutiny . . . a monster to frighten children with’, ‘infamous, dastardly, despicable, crafty demon, barbarous butcher and arch assassin’, was no exaggeration.24 Brantlinger’s analysis of the rationale in colonial discourses is perspicuous: ‘Nana Sahib’s treachery serves as a reductive synecdoche for the entire rebellion — one that is its own instant explanation, transforming politics into crime and widespread social forces into questions of race and personality. The mutineers . . . are in turn reduced to Nana Sahib’s alleged deceitful lustful bloodthirsty impulses.’25 In Jules Verne’s The Steam House, notwithstanding that the Nana is remembered on the basis of having killed a British offi cer’s wife, he is portrayed in powerful terms that suggest political motive and strength. Verne drew Nana Sahib from the cultural memory of England and overturned that construction. Dangerously close to organising a huge rebellion to overthrow the British, his presence is considered a potent threat to the British

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 empire: ‘Woe betide those who fall now into the power of Dandou

22 Verne, The Steam House, p. 59. 23 Hilda Gregg, ‘The Indian Mutiny in Fiction’, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, February, 1897, p. 228. 24 Manohar Malgonkar, The Devils’s Wind: Nana Saheb’s Story, A Novel, (ﬁ rst published 1972), New Delhi: Penguin, 1988, p. ix. 25 Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness, p. 203. Jules Verne and British ‘Mutiny’ Fiction 245

Pant! Englishmen have not seen the last of Nana Sahib!’ narrated Verne, ‘Nana Sahib! . . . was there once more, fl ung like a haughty challenge at the conquerors of India’.26 Overturning the trope of ‘treachery’ that defi ned Nana Sahib in British fi ction, Verne’s novel recounts a case of three princes of an Indian king’s family who surrendered unconditionally to a British captain. Verne tells us, ‘Yet halfway through, Hodson stopped the cart which contained the prisoners, ordered them to stand and shot them all three with a revolver’.27 Verne quotes that ‘this bloody execution by the hand of an English offi cer excited the highest admiration throughout the Punjab’.28 Here the loose cavalry or what came to be known as ‘Hodson’s Horse’ is not mentioned, but the reference complicates the allegory of ‘treachery’ present in British ‘mutiny’ fi ction. The cruelty and duplicity that defi ned the ‘Oriental’ in ‘mutiny’ fi ction becomes in Verne’s text an attribute of the British. Such is the stark contrast of historiography in Europe and the history of the ‘mutiny’ in England that the English translator, A. D. Kingston, feels compelled to add a note to the translated The Steam House: ‘The translators beg to say that they are not responsible for any of the facts or sentiments contained in this account of the mutiny’.29 The balance between fact and imagination, between imagination and artistry, is crucial for historical fi ction. In this regard it is important to note that several ‘mutiny’ novels strongly felt a need to be believed, and to be credible, to articulate a claim to truth.30 Against this trend, it also bears recall that science fi ction texts are not ultimately dependent upon the constraints of history. Invention is the key characterising element of science fi ction. Therefore, it is all the more noteworthy that the translators of The Steam House, despite its production and distinctness as an SF text, fi nd an obligation to assert their difference of opinion in the matter. Several editions of Verne’s novel in translation have been titled Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 after Nana Sahib: The Demon of Cawnpore, Tigers and Traitors, and the text used in this essay, The End of Nana Sahib — subtitled as

26 Verne, The Steam House, p. 16. 27 Ibid., p. 43. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., p. 44. 30 See Steel, ‘Preface’, in On the Face of the Waters, p. 1. 246 Suchitra Choudhury

The Steam House, all of which invoke not the Behemoth but rather the main threatening ﬁ gure of 1857 in the western imagination.31 The physical presentation of printed texts, in the form of its cover and title are important markers to the book as a social artefact.32 The reader-consumer is not just interpellated, but also imagined, through the covers of a book. Verne’s English language titles reveal an attention to the English preoccupation with 1857. With such examples we may be sure that the English translated versions additionally highlighted 1857 rather than the colossal engine. But this literary ‘jet lag’ altered responses. Having traversed one audience — the French — to the other reading public, the English, the title changed in accordance with appeal. In such a market Verne’s text looked towards belonging to the canon of the already familiar, and perhaps popular, ‘mutiny’ literature. But even though the text existed within the English-reading arena, the event of the uprising that Verne inscribes in the translated novel, is one in which the British show up rather adversely. They are no longer the sacriﬁ cing, just, imperial race guided by reason and justice, but rather a cornered race driven both by prejudice and revenge. Events of 1857 feature in one other of Verne’s works — The Mysterious Island. Nemo was originally Polish in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, but in Mysterious Island he is given an Indian parentage. Nemo’s enemies were Russian in the earlier novel but Verne’s publisher, Hetzel had proscribed it as he did not want to upset the Russian government.33 Verne states in The Mysterious Island:

31 The hardcover ‘Fitzroy edition’ of 1959 was edited by I. O. Evans. In this edition, volume 1 of The Steam House was titled The Demon of Cawnpore, and volume 2, Tigers and Traitors. Verne’s La Maison à vapeur, translated into English by Agnes Dundas Kingston, was originally published by Sampson Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Low in two volumes in 1881. Most editions are directly based on this. 32 Jerome McGann, ‘The Socialization of Texts’, in David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery, eds, The Book History Reader, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 39–46, p. 44.; Gordon N. Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914, New York and Oxford: The Pierpont Morgan Library and Oxford University Press,1976. 33 Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island, translated by Sidney Kravitz, edited by Arthur B. Evans, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2006 (ﬁ rst published 1871–75), note, p. 650. Jules Verne and British ‘Mutiny’ Fiction 247

In 1857, the great sepoy revolt broke out. Prince Dakkar [captain Nemo] . . . organized the immense uprising. . . . He sacriﬁ ced himself . . . he risked his life like the humblest of those heroes who had risen up to free their country.34

He further described how the ruling powers came close to losing their empire:

Never had British rule in India been in such danger. If the sepoys had received the outside help which they hoped for, the United Kingdom’s influence over and domination of Asia would have perhaps ended.35

Much like The Steam House, and much unlike British fi ction, the narration is sympathetic to the Indian cause — without any paternalistic chauvinism bearing the Sahib’s cross. The rebels are not ‘budmashes’ or fi ends’ but they are ‘heroes’ who ‘sacrifi ced’ themselves. What Verne began in the personifi cation of Captain Nemo was completed more than a decade later in The Steam House. Both Nemo and Nana Sahib had a burning hatred for British rule, and the British empire is seen as dangerously frail. We do not see any explicit comments on expansion in the context of 1857, but the party of Europeans are able to glide through India easily. It may be worth speculating that even though colonial ambitions do not surface in The Steam House, hunting acts as a surrogate replacement throughout. If ‘mutiny fi ction’ presents an India easy to guide through and conquer, for Verne’s novel India is a virgin land just waiting to be ‘taken’ or ‘exploited’ — a hunting ground where human beings with fatal weapons casually wage unequal wars with animals.36 In India, originally hunting was an eastern tradition of the Rajas that Europeans adopted with much pleasure.37 For the Rajas it was a spectacle of luxury and terror at the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 34 Ibid., pp. 590–91. 35 Ibid., p. 591. 36 See Stables, On to the Rescue, and the guide through the aforementioned map: ‘. . . in there, you know, is Burmah, where the rubies come from, and where the sacred white elephant was said to live. We conquered and annexed the country, found the ruby mines, and captured the white elephant, which wasn’t white after all, and Burmah is now British territory’, p. 135. 37 A. D. Choudhuri, ‘When India was Their Happy Hunting Ground’, in ‘Raj Nostalgia Series’, The Times of India, New Delhi, June 8, 1989. 248 Suchitra Choudhury

same time, exhibiting the power and ruthlessness that characterised the ruling authority. Hunting is unambiguously a metaphoric corollary to conquest and expansion. At one level, the theme of The Steam House is as much about hunting animals as it may be about hunting down Nana Sahib at his penultimate refuge. This locates the French in a ‘European’ way to perceive India as a land ready for exploitation and to dazzle the Indian people with technology, be it with a rifl e, British railway or the fantastical Behemoth. In an indirect comment Verne seems to hint at the superior status of European men in controlling India. In Mysterious Island Cyrus Smith had said to Nemo, ‘you have fought against progress’.38 Jules Verne’s comments on 1857 in The Steam House may stand out as extraordinary in the British ‘mutiny’ fi ction market, but back home in France it was not so extraordinary to talk of British ruthlessness in their colonies. By the time Verne was writing, France was gearing herself up with a colonial culture that on the one hand celebrated French colonialism, and on the other, hated the British: ‘a stable French colonial identity in opposition to the Other.’ Verne is not the only one who interpolated 1857 in his fi ction. Martyn Cornick has recently thrown light on French adventure story writers and India.39 In Alfred Assollant’s novel Aventurees merveilleuses, mais authentiques, du Captain Corcoran, the British are represented as devious colonisers, subjecting Indians to ruthless economic exploitation orchestrated by the East India Company.40 Captain Corcoran says that there are only two principal races in the world: ‘Seigneur, il y a dans ce vaste univers deux especes d’hommes . . . dues races principales . . . sans compter la votre-.c’est le Francasise e l’Anglaise’, as they fi ght over India. The wish fulfi lment occurs in an adventure story written by Colonel Emile Driant named La Guerre Fatale, or the war against global colonialism.41 The last scenes depict a Peace Congress being held in Paris, where all nations are present and a new world map is Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

38 Verne, Mysterious Island, p. 595. 39 Martyn Cornick, ‘Representations of British Colonialism in French Adventure Fiction, 1870–1914’, French Cultural Studies, 2006, pp. 137–54. 40 A. Assollant, Aventures merveilleuses mais authentiques du capitaine Corcoran (The Fantastic but Real Adventures of Captain Corcoran), Paris: Hachette, 1867, volume 1, p. 166, quoted in Cornick, ‘Representations of British Colonialism’, p. 143. 41 Cornick, ‘Representations of British Colonialism’, p. 147. Jules Verne and British ‘Mutiny’ Fiction 249

redrawn. While France stands powerful and colony confi dent, Great Britain is shorn of all her colonies, reduced now to ‘Petite Bretagne’. France’s long and traditional rivalry with Britain is clearly inscribed in the fi ctionalised worlds of the French novels quoted here, against which Verne’s inscription of 1857 is not extraordinary. Concluding, it is important to recognise that though the French novel is more liberal in portraying India as seething and volatile with the possibility of more eruptions, Verne does not concede to an open revolution in spite of his novel being a science fi ction. History in fi ction is a site where popular and commonplace ideas are refl ected and mythologised. History books, enjoying a different and more limited readership than that of fi ction, can hardly assume such levels of ideology. The way in which Nana Sahib does not live to see Indian independence in The Steam House is comparable to some other French fi ction inspired by the slave revolution in Saint Domingue, such as Victor Hugo’s Bug Jargal, and Prosper Merimee’s Tamango, based partly on Toussaint Louverture, the heroic slave leader at Saint Dominigue.42 The French had their own genre of boys’ adventure novels too — in which the British were a pet hate subject.43 Verne’s novel written in France, for an assumed French readership would have pre-supposed an anti-British stance, given the traditional love-hate relation going down centuries, as well as the aggressive self-fashioning of France as a colonial culture.44 Science fi ction is generally considered to be a potentially anti- establishment genre providing ‘alternate realities’. Verne’s novel was not historical fi ction, and he could not have been contested for a happier ending for 1857 in India, but Verne elected not to be too imaginative as far as international politics was concerned. Nonetheless, Verne’s reading of 1857, read alongside ‘mutiny’ fi ction is revisionary. He seems not to be travelling the vast plains of India but also its history. Employing a fusion of fact and imagination he

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 creates an India ripe for a second rebellion after 1857. Even if Verne’s

42 See William B. Cohen, ‘Literature and Race: Nineteenth Century French Fiction, Blacks and Africa 1800–1880’, Race and Class, 1974, 16: 181–205. 43 See Cornick, ‘Representations of British Colonialism’ for a detailed discussion on the subject. 44 See Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992. 250 Suchitra Choudhury

science fi ction does not have the potential to be anti-imperialist and anti-establishment, he certainly unsettles the British from their location of power. The dilemma of history and fi ction in historical novels can tell us a great deal about the way a nation views itself.45 While Britain viewed itself as an aggressive and successful imperial power at the turn of the 20th century, and exhibited as such in her literary output, a dissenting cacophony of voices from her rival nations was also part of the ‘mutiny’ fi ction market. As facts and fi ction, imagination and reality blend, we may take the opportunity to ask ourselves in the present day if historical fi ction may be an invention, and if science fi ction instead inscribes our history better. Verne did not envisage political independence for any colonial outposts. Nonetheless, that does not hinder him from depicting India as a country seething with the possibility of a rebellion — a possibility not considered openly probable in British ‘mutiny’ fi ction. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

45 See Brian Hamnett, ‘Fictitious Histories: The Dilemma of Fact and Imagination in the Nineteenth-Century Historical Novel’, European Historical Quarterly, 2006, 36(1): 131–60. The Rebellion in a 19th-century Indo-Portuguese Novel 251

16 The Rebellion in a 19th-century Indo-Portuguese Novel∗ Everton V. Machado

A doctor, a publicist, an author of works on economic and historical subjects in Portuguese as well as in French, Francisco Luiz Gomes (1829–69) is regarded as the prototype of the 19th-century Goan intellectual. A staunch upholder of Liberalism and Catholicism, he was elected as a member of the Portuguese parliament at the age of thirty. His unique and only incursion into the realm of literature, Os Brahamanes, published in Lisbon in 1866 by Typographia da Gazeta de Portugal, is the fi rst novel of Indo-Portuguese literature.1 We believe that this was not only the fi rst work of fi ction to attack the Hindu caste system but also the fi rst anti-colonial novel in the history of modern literature. Nevertheless, if we consider Os Brahamanes as an anti-colonialist novel, we must bear in mind that it exalts the Portuguese model of colonisation, while criticising the British colonisation of India. The story of Os Brahamanes takes place in Faizabad, in the ancient territory of Oudh, around 1857, the year of the famous rebellion of the sepoys.2 The revolt of 1857 is the key to understanding the novel, as well as its author’s thoughts on India. Only a careful reading of

∗Translated from the French by João Pedro Vicente Faustino and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Manjulata Sharma. 1 We shall use here the French translation by L. De Claranges Lucotte published in serial form in Le Courrier de Lisbonne (The Lisbon Courier) (weekly) from January 17, 1870 to June 27, 1870. In regard to Indo-Portuguese literature, we refer to the work of Vimala Devi and Manuel de Seabra, A Literatura Indo-portuguesa (Indo-Portuguese Literature), Lisbon: Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 2 volumes, 1971. 2 The action takes place while the administration of India was still in the hands of the East India Company. It was not until after the uprising that India came under the direct control of the British crown. 252 Everton V. Machado

the text, grounded in the historical events and ideas of the century, may reveal the connections between the famous insurrection and the Goan author’s work. At fi rst, the threads of Gomes’s plot seem completely discon- nected to those of the rebellion. The long digression leading up to it, and the fact that it appears very late in the narration, does not help clarify to the account. A reader who is not aware of the history of India would fi nd it very hard to situate the drama being narrated. Also, the unfolding of the plot of Os Brahamanes is directly related to the opinions expressed by the author in regard to the origins of the sepoy mutiny. The mutiny would have been carried out by Shiva, while a true revolution would have to be, according to the author, an affair concerning Vishnu. We should note that even if the ideas that Francisco Luiz Gomes upholds in his book spring directly from western culture, his invocation of Hindu mythology is no less signifi cant in order to legitimise the project he had for India.

Who are these Brahmins? Robert Davis, an Irishman living in England, is summoned to India to manage his uncle’s estate. His crippled uncle, Mr Davis, is the wealthy owner of a tobacco plantation. Shattered by his wife’s demise and separation from his ﬁ ve-year-old daughter who had stayed back in London, Robert is a bitter and ill-tempered man and does not like India. He had only accepted his uncle’s offer to take charge of the family business because he is in debt and this was necessary to secure his daughter’s future. He had no time to waste on Indian customs, nor had he the patience to study and learn them. Disdainful of the indigenous people, his ignorance of local traditions leads him one day to a violent altercation with the Brahmin Magnod, who happened to be his uncle’s right-hand man in matters Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 concerning the management of his estate. Not unlike Robert, the Indian’s appearance in the novel is shown in a harsh light; endowed with ‘the perceptiveness inherent to his caste’ and ‘foolish pride’, Magnod appears to be ‘tormented by the sense of honour and distinction’.3 He is fanatically rigid in matters concerning religion, defending the principle of caste distinctions with all conviction.

3 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, January 17, p. 3. The Rebellion in a 19th-century Indo-Portuguese Novel 253

The author uses his portrait of the Brahmin in order to attack the varna vyavastha by way of Christian propaganda:

God had given the Brahmins the sole privilege of that rehabilitation from the Original Sin, which Christianity extends to all creatures as their right, and which it promises to all those who are distraught as the biggest hope for the future and the sweetest consolation in the present.4

Robert is indifferent to the domestic helpers of the house, who are from simple lower castes. Towards Magnod, an intelligent man, Robert opts for an attitude of derision. He calls the Brahmin a gentleman of colour, with which the issue of racism is inserted into the narrative. In Gomes’s book, the characters Robert and Magnod are two faces of the same coin. The author places the feeling of superiority of the Hindu priestly caste (towards other castes) on the same footing as that of the British colonialists (towards the colonised). The Brahmins, who lend the novel its title, are members of the Hindu priestly caste, and are comparable to the Europeans, who treat non-Europeans as ‘pariahs’.5 To ﬁ ght against the perverse effects inherent in the attitude of these two types of Brahmins in Indian society, it would be necessary, according to Gomes, to employ not only the weapons of human charity and compassion taught by the religion of Christ, but also the universal principles of the French revolution (liberty, equality, fraternity). This message is revealed to the reader in the novel’s prologue. The ideas present in Os Brahamanes can be traced to the combining of the ideals of 1789 and religious faith as put forward by 19th-century European intellectuals (namely, those who had been connected with the movement of liberal Catholicism founded in France during the 1830s by Felicité de Lamennais). We could even argue that Francisco Luiz Gomes might very well have taken part in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 the romantic movement which Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre refer to as ‘réformateur’ (reformist). Amongst the ‘réformateurs’ (reformers) were Lamennais herself, as well as writers such as Victor Hugo and Alphonse de Lamartine, two of the giants of French romanticism who greatly inﬂ uenced this young Goan writer.

4 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, January 17, p. 3. 5 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, May 23, p. 1. 254 Everton V. Machado

The ‘réformateurs’ were liberals who might today be designated as ‘progressistes’ (progressive men), ‘in the wider sense of people oriented towards change and the future’.6

The Clash between Two Types of Brahmanism But let us turn once again to the novel Os Brahamanes, which will allow us to better understand the Goan writer’s ideas. We have mentioned two types of Brahmins. The author develops in his work a hard-fought battle against the caste system and the abuses of colonial power, but the plot’s main driving force is none other than the clash between these two types of Brahmanisms, personiﬁ ed in the narrative by the Irishman Robert Davis and the Indian Magnod. While having dinner with friends in his family’s bungalow, Robert sends for Magnod. Magnod says he cannot come, but the servant who had been charged with the task of delivering the message wickedly informs his master that Magnod did not want to come. Robert becomes furious and orders two hamals, lower-caste servants, to bring him the Brahmin, by force if necessary. With his clothes in disorder and foaming with rage, Magnod is dragged to the dinner hall. By then all is lost for him: Magnod has been touched by members of an inferior caste and, to make things worse, during his altercation with Robert, the latter throws a plate of beef at him. In this way, Magnod, soiled, loses his Brahmin status. It is only after this unfortunate incident that Robert’s friends (who know India better) explain to him the reason for Magnod’s refusal: Brahmins never come near Europeans while they are having dinner. Having lost his caste, Magnod abandons his wife and children and takes refuge in a forest with the intention of taking his own life. The wife of the ex-Brahmin, Bima, believing him to be dead and unable to bear the burden of shame, commits suicide, a slight allusion by the author to the custom of sati.7 It is Robert who, while going Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 to Magnod’s house in order to beg pardon for his behaviour, ﬁ nds

6 Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre, Révolte et mélancolie: le romantisme à contre-courant de la modernité (Revolt and Melancholy: Romanticism as a Counter-current to Modernity), Paris: Payot, coll. Critique de la Politique, 1992, p. 102. 7 Bima had even worn the white sari of mourning, as prescribed in the tradition of widows. The Rebellion in a 19th-century Indo-Portuguese Novel 255

Bima’s body hanging from a rope. Beneath her, her two children sleep peacefully, holding on to a dog. The police and a multitude of curious people arrive on the scene. Brother Francis of St Catherine, a Portuguese missionary who witnesses the event, does not hesitate for a single moment and, advancing towards the group of people who encircle Bima’s body and the two children, tells the police that he will take care of them. Stricken by guilt, Robert promises to help the priest. The children are baptised according to Catholic ritual as Thomas and Emily. Thinking of their education, Robert sends them to stay with his daughter Helen in London, who we know since the beginning of the story has been cared for by the Hartmann couple. As for Magnod, he does not kill himself and, continuously thinking of taking revenge on Robert, ends up becoming a Thug, a professional assassin, who belongs to a sect devoted to the goddess Kali. Nonetheless, the metamorphosis of the ex-Brahmin does not end here: later on, he will reappear under the guise of a Jewish man who will buy off Robert’s gambling debts and blackmail him. After that, during the rebellion of the sepoys, he heads the movement in Faizabad, and ends up killing one of Robert’s relatives. He escapes from prison and attempts to kill Robert, until ﬁ nally, repenting for his bad deeds, he converts to Catholicism. Magnod will never be condemned for the assassination he perpetrated.

An Abject Passion The book’s plot and the solutions to the problems raised in it have a direct relation with the Indian rebellion of 1857. The episode in which Robert and Magnod quarrel, where the latter ends up losing his caste, is undoubtedly an echo of a central episode in the uprising of the sepoys. What provoked the uprising was equally a case of debasement. The British had introduced a new riﬂ e for the sepoys

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 which had cartridges that needed to be bitten open by the men before loading the weapons. It was believed that the cartridges were greased with certain animal fats, which were considered unacceptable by the sepoys. The controversy gave some grounds to a rumour that the British intended to make the indigenous soldiers lose their caste, ‘before forcing them to convert to Christianity’.8 This event was

8 Claude Markovits, Histoire de l’Inde moderne, 1480–1950 (History of Modern India, 1480–1950), Paris: Fayard, 1994, p. 338. 256 Everton V. Machado

an eye-opener as far as the hatred of Indians towards the British was concerned. Something similar happens in the novel. Robert’s action of insulting Magnod results in the latter becoming an outcaste, and his disgust for Robert coming into the open. Magnod rebels against Robert and, after having hesitated to kill himself, decides to take revenge on Robert. Magnod’s rebellion against his master is analogous to the sepoys’ rebellion against the British. The ex-Brahmin ends up joining the mutineers. Magnod, with his avenging attitude represents the mutineers in the novel. Thus, Gomes clearly deﬁ nes the rebellion as an act of ‘vengeance’.9 From this point of view, did Magnod have something similar to Nana Sahib, who is considered to be responsible for one of the most well-known atrocities committed during the rebellion? Nana Sahib was a ‘descendant of the Peshwas [high dignitaries] from Maharashtra, whose participation in the massacre of women and children in Cawnpore brought him a place of honour in the demonology of Victorian England’.10 Gomes’s distrust of princes leads him to compare the members of the sect of Kali to Nana Sahib: ‘the thug is a bandit and a pygmy, like Nana’.11 The author doesn’t hesitate to state that the rebellion had degenerated into ‘an ambush by thugs’ and thus reduces the importance of the indigenous rebellion.12 This statement is clearly signiﬁ cant, for we know that Magnod had become a Thug before joining the sepoys. Besides this, we cannot resist reading a subtle allusion in the assassination of one of Robert’s relatives, the attempt on Robert’s life during the rebellion, Magnod’s escape from prison, and the

9 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, June 27, p. 1. 10

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Claude Markovits, ‘L’Inde britannique ou “le joyau de la couronne”’ (British India or ‘the Jewel in the Crown’), Clio. Pour découvrir les mondes et ses cultures (Clio: Discovering Worlds and Cultures), available at http://www. clio.fr/bibliotheque/l_inde_britannique_ou__le_joyau_de_la_couronne_.asp, May 2001, accessed May 12, 2008. 11 Brother Francis of St Catherine, the ‘narrative double’ of the author, ‘did not approve of the English regime in India’ but he ‘preferred it to the despotism of the nababs and rajahs’ (Le Courrier de Lisbonne, March 7, p. 1). Also see Le Courrier de Lisbonne, January 31, p. 2. 12 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, June 20, p. 3. The Rebellion in a 19th-century Indo-Portuguese Novel 257

fact that Magnod goes unpunished, to the fact that Nana Sahib disappeared at the end of the mutiny, and thus was never brought to justice for the massacre at Cawnpore.13 Before the rebellion, Nana Sahib also served the British, just as Magnod had served the Davis family before his perdition. Nana Sahib had felt great hatred due to the fact that his pension as a peshwa had not been paid by the British, and Magnod’s hatred of Robert grew day by day.14 When the sepoys rebelled in Cawnpore, it was expected that Nana Sahib would send reinforcements to the British in order to protect the European and Eurasian population, but, as in the case of Gomes’s Brahmin, pride got the better of Nana: he had not forgotten that he was the heir of a peshwa.15 Nana Sahib, according to the author of Os Brahamanes, ‘was well below Toussaint’.16 This Toussaint, we believe, is Pierre-Dominique Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803), an indigenous man from Haiti who was the leader of the local revolution, and who fought during his lifetime for the respect of human rights in his country.17 His aims for the struggle against the colonisers were very different from Nana’s. For the author, the Indian rebellion of 1857 was not the work of Washingtons or Franklins, but of Caligulas and Neros, such as Nana.18 Nana was led to ﬁ ght the British out of a desire for revenge, like the sepoys who, according to Gomes, had reduced the rights of freedom and equality of the Indian people to a mere matter of caste susceptibilities. The writer thus appears to be telling us that

13 According to Jean Biès, Littérature française et pensée hindoue: des origines à 1950 (French Literature and Hindu Thought: From its Origins to 1950), Paris: Klincksiek, 1973, p. 249, ‘at the end of 1858, the rebellion was contained: more than a hundred thousand Sepoys had been killed as well as two hundred and thirty thousand natives. Nana Saib and his brother Rao were hiding in Nepal: the greatest culprit was never punished’. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 14 James McCearney, La Révolte des Cipayes. Empire des Indes 1857 (The Sepoy Revolt: The Indian Empire 1857), Paris: Jean Picollec, 1999, p. 57. 15 Ibid., p. 146. 16 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, June 20, p. 3. 17 About Toussaint Louverture, see Aimé Césaire, Toussaint Louverture: la Révolution Française et le problème colonial (Toussaint Louverture: The French Revolution and the Colonial Problem), revised and expanded edition, Paris: Présence Africaine, 1961. 18 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, June 20, p. 3. 258 Everton V. Machado

the uprising of the sepoys was not — to use the words of the French poet Lamartine — the result of ‘a high ideal’, but of ‘an abject passion’.19 On the one hand, the author ﬁ nds it legitimate to rise against the injustices perpetrated by the colonisers upon the indigenous people and their customs; on the other hand, he ﬁ nds that these very customs, however condemnable, are what keeps the colonised from taking their destiny into their own hands. It is in ‘the hatred between castes, the antagonism of the [diverse] religions’ of India, as well as a ridiculous ‘Brahma of several faces and many arms’ that the reason for the failure of the sepoy rebellion can be found; ‘a single religion, a single dynasty, a single caste and India would have been invincible’.20 India in 1857 lacked that which, according to Lamartine, is always the basis of any revolution: as in the revolution of 1789 and 1848 in France,

it is a moral idea which shakes the world. That idea is the people, the people who liberated themselves in 1789 from servitude, ignorance, privilege, prejudice . . . the people who liberated themselves in 1848 from the oligarchy of a few . . . the acknowledgement of the rights and interests of the masses with the government.21

It is truly this meaning which we can ﬁ nd in the following statement by Gomes:

the sound which resounded on the peaks of the Himalayas and the canon which blasted on the walls of Delhi were not able to wake up that giant which has slept in India for centuries and which is called, within the human heart, Right, and, in the public sphere, Revolution . . .22

Rebellion, that was the Sepoy; the revolution would have been the people, the rebellion was revenge, the revolution would have Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 been the idea.’23

19 Alphonse de Lamartine, Historie de la Revolution de 1848 (History of the Revolution of 1848), Paris: Perrotin, 1849, volume 1, p. 6. 20 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, June 27, p. 1. 21 Alphonse de Lamartine, Histoire de la Révolution de 1848, pp. 3–4. 22 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, June 20, p. 3. 23 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, June 27, p. 1. The Rebellion in a 19th-century Indo-Portuguese Novel 259

Vishnu and not Shiva To justify his opinion, Francisco Luiz Gomes even used Hindu mythology. If the rebellion was ‘vengeance’, it was equal to Shiva. If the revolution ‘had been the idea’, the fulﬁ lment of the Right (the rights of man), of Justice itself, it would have been equal to Vishnu. The irradiation of these two myths on the plot of Os Brahamanes com- pletes Gomes’s discourse.24 Why would Shiva be the rebellion incarnate and Vishnu the revolution? Perhaps we could ﬁ nd the answer to this in the writings on Hindu philosophy by Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950), who some decades later made observations about the French revolution taking into account philosophical ideas inherited from Hinduism. Aurobindo saw in the ‘rage of revolutions’ Rudra (Shiva’s dark side, personifying violence and battle) accomplishing the divine design’ against oppression.25 The action of the French revolution would have been led by the destructive goddess Kali, by means of her ‘macabre and terrible dance’.26 This dance was witnessed, throughout Europe, at the time of the Napoleonic invasions: Napoleon ‘did not come for France, but for humanity, and even in his downfall he served God and prepared the future. . . . He awakened the spirit of nationalism in Italy, Germany, and Poland. . . . He compelled Europe into accepting the necessity of political and social reorganization.’27 That awakening was made possible by Shiva himself, who interrupted Kali’s bloodshed: ‘It was only when she realised that she was stepping on Mahadeva [another name given to Shiva], the god expressed

24 ‘Irradiation’ is the suggestive power of a text through a simple reference to myth or to the ideas which that same text conveys. It is a term used in mythocriticism. For the criteria used in this method, see Pierre Brunel, Mythocritique. Théorie et Parcours (Mythocritique: Theories and Approaches),

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Paris: PUF, 1992, pp. 72–86. 25 Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo et l’avenir de la Révolution Française (Sri Aurobindo and the Future of the French Revolution), Paris: Buchet/ Chastel, 1989, p. 47. 26 ‘Like Vishnu, he delegates his power to çaktis or “energies” which emanate from him and are personiﬁ ed as women’. Louis Renou, L’hindouisme (Hinduism), 14th edition, Paris: PUF, coll. Que sais-je? number 475, 2001, p. 42. Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo et l’avenir de la Révolution Française, p. 47. 27 Ibid., p. 64. 260 Everton V. Machado

in the principle of nationalism, that Kali reconsidered, rejected Napoleon, the powerful Rakshasa [grand power], and dedicated herself peacefully to her mission: to consecrate nationality as the outer shell within which fraternity may be organised safely and on a large scale’.28 According to Gomes, Shiva is solely symbolic of destruction, represented by the atrocities committed during the rebellion of the sepoys. The regenerative dimension of the Shiva myth, which is not only of destruction (he incarnates also the creative function; if he is mostly ‘identiﬁ ed with death’, he possesses no less ‘a regenerative aspect’), is not taken into account by Gomes, while in Aurobindo it is essential (Shiva’s intervention in stopping Kali).29 In Os Brahamanes we are further away from the idea of the God Shiva as connected with nationalism, more so because the awakening of a national awareness in the Indian intellectual milieu did not take place until after the 1870s.30 Gomes is bound to the image of Shiva as a ‘criminal’ God; this is not contradicted by the evolution of Magnod during the narrative, his action as a sepoy and the reduction of the rebellion of 1857 to an ‘ambush by thugs’.31 The criminal Magnod is truly the one character who represents the rebellion of the sepoys in the story. India lacked a real revolution, resulting from lack of awareness on the part of the Indian people about their right to freedom and equality; such a revolution ‘would have been the bland Vishnu’.32

28 Ibid., p. 48. 29 Renou, L’hindouisme, p. 42. 30 Markovits, ‘L’Inde britannique ou “le joyau de la couronne”’, pp. 430–36. 31 Elizabeth Chalier-Visuvalingam, (‘Le roi et le jardinier: Pachali Bhairava de Kathmandou’ (The King and the Gardener: Pachali Bhairava

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 of Kathmandu), SvAbhinava, available at http://www.svabhinava.org/pacali/ index.php, 2003, accessed April 7, 2008), deﬁ nes Shiva with that adjective when she evokes the puritanistic myth which tells of the decapitation of Brahma by Shiva, ‘which is the archetypal myth of the origin of Bhairava [Shiva’s terrible form] in India’. Luce Barazer-Billoret and Bruno Dagens, (Shiva: libérateur des âmes et maître des dieux (Shiva: Liberator of Souls and Master of Gods), Paris: Gallimard, coll. Découvertes, 2004, p. 47) even state that ‘India is one of the few countries where a supreme God is simultaneously a model criminal. It is in effect the case of Shiva […]’. 32 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, June 27, p. 1. The Rebellion in a 19th-century Indo-Portuguese Novel 261

This Vishnu ‘has mostly a benefi cial value’.33 In effect, in Indian mythology Vishnu incarnates justice itself, because he is the guardian of the dharma (in addition to the natural order, social duty and religious merits, this word designates justice), whose correct execution is assured by the God through his ‘incarnations’ (avatara) in order to ‘save the earth from great danger’.34 According to Aurobindo, it is Vishnu who incarnates the ‘kingdom of God within’, expressing and representing ‘externally the state of a society in a spiritual age’.35 This is not very far from what a romantic ‘réformateur’ such as Lamennais would wish for, he who was confi dent about the imminent return of the kingdom of God to earth and who took the evangelical message as an instrument for the reformation of society. The young Thomas, Magnod’s son, brought up in London, having returned to India and understood the true face of the society in which he was born, promises to himself nothing less than to fi ght so that the ‘kingdom of the earth’ could be ‘modelled according to the kingdom of heaven’.36 Continuing our ideas on Vishnu, we could say that the ‘irradiation’ of this myth is a structuring element within the narration of Os Brahamanes, through the theme of Right and Justice. This irradiation is already implicit in a chapter which appears thirteen chapters before the one dealing with the rebellion of the sepoys. The myth of Vishnu is associated with one of the most important Hindu religious symbols, the great Banyan Tree, which is consecrated to him.37 The banyan appears in Gomes’s novel at the time of a journey by the Davis family and incarnates the ideal of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity for the Goan author; the Banyan Tree is for him ‘the house of all those living, the temple of all religions, the auberge of all pilgrims, Noah’s Ark which God had built to serve as a refuge to all unhappy people’.38 This banyan would symbolise in Gomes’s novel the city Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 33 Renou, L’hindouisme, p. 38. 34 Ibid., p. 39. 35 Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo et l’avenir de la Révolution Française, pp. 139–40. 36 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, May 9, p. 2. 37 About some of the sacred trees of India, see William Joseph Wilkins, Mythologie hindoue (Hindu Mythology), translated from English by Jean- Laurent Savoye, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006, pp. 339–41. 38 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, May 2, p. 3. 262 Everton V. Machado

of God, the ‘new Jerusalem’ seen in the book of the Apocalypse, the tree of life placed in Paradise whose fruits shall be eaten by the victorious ones (Apocalypse 2, 7). This is the ‘kingdom of justice’ of which Lamennais speaks in his book Paroles d’un croyant.39 Such a ‘city’ acquires nonetheless, within the context of the rebellion of the sepoys and colonialism in India, a secular meaning.

The Foundation of a City The Gomesean idea of the ‘city’ is the one of Rousseau’s ‘social contract’. According to Pierre Burgelin, ‘the social contract is the founding act of a city’, the proposal of a foundation of ‘a fair society’, and ‘what arises from this contract is the law’.40 The revolution which Gomes expected in northern India was not necessarily the withdrawal of the English. In spite of the harsh manner in which the author depicts in his book the relation between colonised and coloniser, as well as the letter he addresses to Lamartine on January 5, 1867 calling for the independence of India, Gomes ends up giving England itself the solutions to the problems brought about by the rebellion of the sepoys.41 He does not suggest to the British that they should ﬁ nally leave India, but that they should civilise it through two powerful means: Christianity and education.42 Only the Christian religion would be able to end the segregation caused by the caste system, unite all the people in the same élan of fraternity and force the superstitions which caused the perdition of the population to become backward. Education, in turn, would

39 Félicité de Lamennais, Paroles d’un croyant (Words of a Believer), introduction and notes by Louis Le Guillou, Paris: Flammarion, coll. Nouvelle bibliothèque romantique, 1973, p. 142. 40

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Pierre Bourgelin, in the introduction to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social (The Social Contract), edited by Pierre Bourgelin, Paris: Gallimard-Flammarion, 1992, pp. 11–12. 41 The letter from Gomes to Lamartine is reproduced in Luciano Cordeiro, Segundo livro de crítica: arte e literatura portugueza d’hoje (Second Book of Criticism: Contemporary Portuguese Art and Literature), Porto: Typographia Lusitana,1871, pp. 294–97. 42 Wasn’t converting the indigenous to Christianity already the desire of the English, at least of the Evangelicals and utilitarians who from the 1830s onwards saw their inﬂ uence increase in the control of India? The Rebellion in a 19th-century Indo-Portuguese Novel 263

allow Indians to discern the issues of the ‘city’ and thus accomplish their political rights: as Pierre Burgelin points out, always taking into account Rousseau’s ‘social contract’,

politics implies ﬁ rstly the education of the citizen. Only enlightened men will not let themselves be duped by insidious propaganda, they will be passionate in love for their country; only they will be able to establish a fair society. As long as we are incapable of this effort, we shall remain slaves.43

The concern for Gomes was to turn Indians into full-ﬂ edged citizens, within a social system in which they would be able to become ‘all equals through convention and the law’.44 If Magnod’s conversion at the end of the story is an example of the necessity of Christian religion in India, his children Thomas and Emily, through their individual stories, take equal part in the solutions advocated for India in the wake of the revolt of the sepoys, because these young Indians have been raised as Europeans.45 All things considered, the real issue for the Goan writer was the greed of the East India Company; after the rebellion of the sepoys that forced the Crown to assume direct control, Gomes wrote that ‘England fortunately understands what her mission in India is. The company no longer exists. It is the government which governs. It is no longer about mercantile speculation; it is about the future of one hundred and ﬁ fty million men.46

Conclusion Francisco Luiz Gomes’s vision of the colonial problem in India was shaped by his own situation in Portuguese India. If he suggested that England should turn the Indians who lived on land it controlled Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

43 In the introduction to Rousseau, Du contrat social, p. 18. 44 Ibid., p. 47. 45 At the end, the author is able to accomplish in his book what the English themselves had not been able to achieve with their stratagems to cause the sepoys to lose their cast, that is, to convert. 46 The Company sought not to meddle in the Indian customs and practices. It was only interested in making proﬁ t in India. Le Courrier de Lisbonne, June 27, p. 1. 264 Everton V. Machado

into English citizens and Christians, it is because the Portuguese had turned Indians like Gomes, from Goa, into Portuguese citizens and Christians. In what concerned Christianity, Portugal was for Gomes the nation that had established — more than any other — the words of the Gospels.47 We are all aware of the Christian-centric character of the Portuguese maritime expansion, which was always emphasised by the Portuguese. The adoption of Christianity, as an experience lived by the author himself in Goa, would — he believed — allow fraternity to be brought into the relationship between colonised and coloniser, as well as ending the segregation inﬂ icted by the caste system. This was as much an illusion as the absence of prejudice in the midst of the Portuguese colonies was a myth (spread by the ‘lusotropicalism’ of the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre, which had its source in the ‘fraternal Christianity’ of the Portuguese).48 In Goa, Christian egalitarianism had to adjust itself to the caste system, which was never abolished even among those who converted to Catholicism. Even the admission to convents and religious brotherhoods in Goa was made according to caste. The racial cri- terion was no less important a fact to consider.49 The writer’s desire to see the Indians under British rule become citizens is also linked to his personal experience in Portuguese India. In his letter to Lamartine, after having advocated the independence of India, he writes (appearing to demand independence for British India but not for Portuguese India) the following: ‘happier than my countrymen [that is to say the Indians of British India], I am free — civis sum’. It is not surprising that an indigenous man like Gomes, having the right to sit in parliament, would feel a full-ﬂ edged

47 Le Courrier de Lisbonne, May 23, p. 1. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 48 On this subject, see Cláudia Castelo, ‘O modo português de estar no mundo’: O luso-tropicalismo e a ideologia colonial portuguesa (1933–1961) (The Portuguese Way of being in the World: Luso-tropicalism and Portuguese Colonial Ideology [1933–61]), Porto: Edições Afrontamento, coll. Biblioteca das Ciências do Homem, 1998. 49 See Charles R. Boxer, Relações raciais no império colonial português 1415– 1825 (Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire 1415–1825), 2nd edition, translated from the English by Sebastião Bras, Porto: Afrontamento, 1988, p. 67. The Rebellion in a 19th-century Indo-Portuguese Novel 265

citizen in a system which usually places the individual which it subjects ‘outside history and the city’.50 He knew nevertheless that the right of the indigenous people to be represented in parliament did not guarantee them in any way the administrative and economic autonomy of the colony (Gomes fought for such autonomy in parliament). In addition, such a privilege was not given to Hindus, who were also deprived of the right to work in public administration. That being said, we would not be completely wrong if we considered Os Brahamanes as an anti-colonialist novel: it is anti-colonialist in the sense that Gomes demonstrates and criticises severely the harmful effects of colonial practices in terms of human relationships and of a people’s culture. In effect, the novel constitutes a critique of an inhuman colonialism embodied by the British regime through an apology of humanistic values incarnated by the Christocentric vision of Portuguese expansion. The author ends up by legitimis- ing the presence of England in North India, provided that it adopts Portuguese values as its own. In brief, Gomes wanted to put an end to the colonial wrongdoings by using the same tools that served as the justiﬁ cation for colonial enterprises around the world: the desire to ‘civilise’. For him, there was in that respect no ambiguity, because his intention was precisely to remind the Europeans of the civilising goal that they had lost on their way and in face of their ever-growing greed (he condemns effectively England’s ‘mercantile speculation’). It is in that sense that we must understand his desire for a universal implementation of the principles of 1789; these, in spite of the discourse of the west, seemed to the writer to be conﬁ ned to the metropolis. It would probably be appropriate to contemplate here whether Os Brahamanes is an anti-colonialist novel but not an anti-imperialist one. Edward Said clearly distinguishes between both adjectives. In his work Culture and Imperialism, he states that ‘a general imperialistic Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 and Eurocentric framework was implicitly admitted’ within European humanism, and that liberal anti-colonialists opted ‘for the human stance, which forbid one from being too hard on the colonies and slaves, without however . . . reconsidering the fundamental

50 Albert Memmi, Portrait du colonisé précédé de Portrait du colonisateur (Portrait of the Colonised Preceded by the Portrait of the Coloniser), new edition, Paris: Gallimard, coll. Folio actuel, 2006, p. 111. 266 Everton V. Machado

superiority of the western man, or, for some, of the white race.’51 Francisco Luiz Gomes was clearly a liberal anti-colonialist fi ghting in his book against the abuses perpetrated by the coloniser, but without reconsidering the moral superiority of the west. Two things might explain such an identifi cation of the ‘assimilated’ Francisco Luiz Gomes to the European way of thinking: fi rst, the fact that the Catholic Goan society of his time was trying to assert the identity of the coloniser out of an instinct of survival in the face of other religious communities; second, the typical predisposition of the colonised in the face of his cultural obliteration operated by the coloniser.52 As Albert Memmi observes, ‘the fi rst attempt of the colonised is to change his condition by changing his skin. A tempting and nearby model offers and imposes itself to him: precisely the one of the coloniser’.53

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Edward W. Said, Culture et Impérialisme (Culture and Imperialism), translated from English by Paul Chemla, Paris: Fayard/Le Monde diplomatique, 2000, p. 339. 52 See Hélder Garmes, ‘Introdução’ (Introduction), in Hélder Garmes, ed., Oriente, engenho e arte — Imprensa e literatura de lingua portuguesa em Goa, Macau e Timor Leste (Orient, Creativity and Art: The Portuguese Language, Press and Literature in Goa, Macau and East Timor), São Paulo: Alameda, coll. Via Atlântica, 2004, p. 11. 53 Memmi, Portrait du colonisé précédé de Portrait du colonisateur, 2006, p. 136. The Rebellion in a 19th-century Indo-Portuguese Novel 267 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 268 Balaji Ranganathan , March 27, 1858. Illustrirte Zeitung Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 ‘Die Campbells kommen! Scene aus der Belagerung von Laknau, nach einem Gemälde F. Goodall’ (The are Coming! Scene from the Siege of Lucknow, after a Painting by F. Goodall), in The Uprising and Anglo-Indian Society 269

17 Francisco Luiz Gomes’s Os Brahamanes: The Uprising and Anglo-Indian Society Balaji Ranganathan

This essay seeks to examine the 1857 uprising and Anglo-Indian society in an exploratory way through the world view of the Portuguese who were present in India at the time. The novel Os Brahamanes by Francisco Luiz Gomes was published in 1866.1 The novel broadly examines the following areas of Anglo-Indian society.

1) Old Anglo-Indian habits, assimilation and colonialist attitudes. 2) The creation of ‘difference’. 3) The cause of the uprising and the reasons for its failure.

I The assimilation of Indian culture displayed in Os Brahamanes through the character of Davis residing in Faizabad points to old Anglo-Indian habits. The novel mentions the presence of the palanquin bearers, the hookah burdar, the umbrella bearer, the butler, the storyteller, the divan, the masseur and the Brahmin. These cultural markers bring out the early habits of Anglo-Indian society before the hard-line attitude of ‘difference’ took over British society.2 The hard-line shift in attitudes is seen in the behaviour of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Davis’s nephew and heir Robert. He represents the new attitudes within Anglo-Indian society which viewed the entire process of assimilation in the preceding century as something that was ‘not

1 Francisco Luiz Gomes, Os Brahamanes (The Brahmans), Lisbon: Typ. da Gazeta de Portugal, 1866 (original Portuguese edition); Francisco Luiz Gomes, The Brahmans, Bombay: Sindhu Publications, 1971 (English edition). 2 See Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 66–113. 270 Balaji Ranganathan

done’. Moreover, the Utilitarian view dominated the entire process of governance and the mode of presenting the self.3 There was a systematic movement under the infl uence of Enlightenment rationality to modernise Indian society. Modernity destabilised the earlier assimilation within Indian culture which had characterised Anglo-Indian society in the 17th and the latter half of the 18th centuries in India. This hardening of attitudes of the white offi cers is seen in the account of Sita Ram Pandey, a mutiny narrative by a sepoy who had taken part in the action against the mutinying sowars.4 There are a few doubts as to the authenticity of this narrative as it was translated and published in English. Still, it depicts the problems that were recorded by a number of British army offi cers who recognised the breakdown in the old order where there was a greater assimilation of the Indian sepoys with the British. This hardening of attitudes brought out a greater sense of alienation between the Indian population and the British administration. Robert faces the problem of confronting the mutiny in his own home and is spared. He is cut with this attitude of ‘difference’ and hates the entire indigenisation of the British culture. The remorse and change that arise in Robert in the wake of the consequences of his insulting Magnod, the Brahmin, is the attitude of romantic liberalism depicted by Gomes which dominated the latter half of the 19th century after the mutiny. The Portuguese on the other hand had brought the population on the Indian west coast under the Catholic banner and had enforced it with the inquisition in Goa. They kept to the agenda of creating a Catholic population by overt force.

3 There is an excellent discussion on the liberal ideology of the 19th century in Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 4 See Sita Ram Pandey, From Sepoy to Subedar: Being the Life and Adventures of Subedar Sita Ram, a Native Ofﬁ cer of the Bengal Army, Written and Related by Himself, translated and published by Lieutenant Colonel J. T. Norgate Lahore: [n.p.], 1873. The mutiny narratives use the term ‘sowars’ for the Indian infantry soldiers. It is an anglicised term for the Hindi word ‘sawaar’ or ‘riders’. See Sir Henry Yule, Hobson-Jobson; A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, edited by William Crooke, London: J. Murray, 1903, p. 857. The Uprising and Anglo-Indian Society 271

The old Anglo-Indian attitudes were dominated by the Whig ideology of institutionalising of interests and counterchecks that held the East India Company, the board of directors in England and the parliament together. This was also the time when the affairs of the East India Company in India were fl ourishing, be it mercantile trade or conquests. The marked tendency of the 18th-century British was to place Indian beliefs and customs within the larger Grecian and Roman framework.5 This brought about a closer awareness and contact with Indian cultural habits which is personifi ed by the old tobacco planter, Davis, in the novel. This 18th-century Orientalism functioned through bodies and institutions and led to institutionalised histories, antiquity studies and religion. The presence of Brahmins was in keeping with Warren Hastings’s agenda of ‘useful knowledge and the state’, and the collaborative indological effort which culminated in the formation of the Asiatic Society with William Jones in 1784. Hence there were studies in jurisprudence, culture and antiquities. Much of this was institutionalised by the British, and earlier by the Portuguese, in their attempts to construct grammars and lexicons in the south Indian languages. The Brahmin as the central protagonist in this novel is an acknowledgement of varna in India. The British did not tamper with caste overtly. They recognised the Brahmin within the larger construct of their search for their Aryan heritage and roots. This also led to the large induction of Brahmins into the Bengal infantry as a search for ‘legitimisation’ of their rule in India. The composition of the Bengal infantry was the recognition of varna and jati and at the same time it was the acknowledgement of the larger European question of Aryanism and Aryan roots which was increasingly getting racist with ethnological and philological studies. The Brahmins with their caste status signifi ed the higher end of the Aryan spectrum with their linguistic control over Sanskrit and social status. This at the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 same time enforced the belief that the forgotten Aryan heritage which

5 An example of this can be seen in the anniversary discourses of Sir William Jones and the Asiatic Researches and much of the subsequent Orientalistic publications. See Lord Teignmouth, The Works of Sir William Jones. With the Life of the Author, London: Printed for John Stockdale, Piccadilly and John Walker, Paternoster Row, 1807. 272 Balaji Ranganathan

was a piece of European history was saved in India in the form of varna and Sanskrit scriptures.6 This is a consistent belief in all the 19th-century Oriental research in England and Europe. Robert, who is the inheritor of Davis’s fortune, with his sense of ‘colonial difference’, displays the secularism of the Enlightenment and the utilitarian ‘difference’ which ran as the counter to the Orientalist notion of ‘despotism’. He displays an overt hatred to all the assimilatory cultural markers that surround his uncle Davis and it results in the scene where he drags Magnod to the dining table and throws a plate of beef at Magnod. This resultant loss of caste and the suicide by his wife leads Magnod to become an outcast, then a Thug; later Magnod commands the sepoy regiment during the events of 1857 at Faizabad. Gomes brings out the problems of caste and religion which characterised the uprising. He brings out the hardening of British attitudes and the problems of the breakdown of the older indigenous structures which were unleashed by the Enlightenment and informed by a wave of liberalism and which opposed institutionalisation in favour of a universalist development in education, law and religion.7 In the novel, Robert breaks Magnod’s caste but is seen to be repentant as he takes the charge and responsibility of Magnod’s children who are sent to England for an education within a secularised Christian framework. As converted Christians they face speciﬁ c social problems like the East Indians. The Romantic Movement which had spread through Europe earlier saw the inherent innocence within human nature. Gomes, who was specially inﬂ uenced by the Romantic Movement and the doctrine of Liberalism of a universal human nature, institutes a change in the behaviour of Robert to bring out the inherent qualities that led him to bring up the coloured children as his own with a responsibility for their education. Still, the breakdown of caste caused by him at the beginning of the novel Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 translates into the sepoy uprising by the end.

6 A wider discussion on the subject has been made by Thomas Trautmann, Aryans and British India, New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2004. 7 See Macaulay’s 1835 Minute in Thomas Babington Macaulay, Minute on Indian Education, reprinted in Selected Writings, edited by John Clive and Thomas Pinney, 1835, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1972. The Uprising and Anglo-Indian Society 273

II Emilie and Thomas are the Christianised children of Magnod. They have been brought up by Freir Francisco and Robert Davis. The problems of their Indian Christian status become clear through the relationships between Helen and Thomas and Richard and Emilie. Thomas is refused Helen’s hand on account of his being a Christian convert and not equal to the natural British status. Richard plays with Emilie’s affections primarily because he is a rake and he does not hold himself accountable to a converted Christian. I will not go into the larger problem of evangelism in India but rather concentrate on the hierarchical problems within Christianity in India and the resultant elitism or the Brahminisation of Christianity itself. The problems of East Indians and their hierarchical relationship to the converted Indian Christians were offset by the relationships of both these groups to the natural British. The East Indians, who included part Dutch, Portuguese or French parentage, and the converted Indian Christians were denied a social position as Christians within British society; the British administration institutionalised ‘difference’ towards these Christian communities and along with this a larger ‘difference’ in relation to India, its castes, communities and sects. In this sense the notion of race and difference cut across not only the sub-Christian groups but was also instituted across the non- Christian communities. The missionary societies in India on the other hand held a different view; as part of their evangelical quest they established schools and societies which combined a liberal education and morality in the syllabus and sought to establish a universalised Christian society.8 The different afﬁ liations within the churches also decided the sense of ‘difference’. The natural increase in the East Indian population and the evangelical missions clamouring for a less secular education brought about an identity crisis not only among the East Indians Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016

8 See Grant’s observations in Charles Grant, Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, Particularly with Respect to Morals; and on the Means of Improving it, Written Chieﬂ y in the Year 1792. Printed as appendix 1 in Report from the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company 1831–32, pp. 3–92. Facsimile reprint, Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary papers, volume 5, Colonies: East India, Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970. 274 Balaji Ranganathan

and the sub-Christian groups but also in Indian society as a whole. The breakdown of the old feudal Mughal institutions, land reforms, secularised education and the movement towards a casteless society, as symbolised in Macaulay’s 1835 Minute on Indian Education, saw its resultant effects in the Young Bengal Movement and the Indian society. This attitude of a secular Liberalism also translated into the induction of lower castes into the Bengal infantry and the resultant threat to the upper-caste infantry sepoys.9 The phobia of the loss of caste and religion translated into the wholesale slaughter of Christians regardless of the ‘tensions’ and ‘difference’ within the church itself at the disturbed stations during the uprising; this is seen in the case of Magnod who loses caste on account of Robert and is forced to move all over the territory as an outcast, a fugitive Thug, who becomes a ‘pandy’, a mutineer, at the end of the novel. The divisions within the church and its problematic hierarchy were not noted during the uprising by the sepoys in the process of slaughter and the same attitude was exhibited by the British in their quest for the control of India. Community identities were seen to be of a singular nature, a sepoy remained a sepoy regardless of religion and a Christian remained a Christian. The differential status of the sub- Christian groups is seen only in the numerous wills and testimonies present in the archives as also the petitions for a natural British status to enjoy the hierarchical beneﬁ ts. Gomes does not mention the death of any Christian during the uprising in the novel but institutes the murder of Richard, the deﬁ ler of Emilie, by Magnod the Brahmin. Being Emilie’s father Magnod takes revenge and being a Brahmin he also heads the sepoy mutiny at Faizabad. Gomes mentions that there was elitism or Brahminisation within Anglo-Indian society which worked against it and made it lose the trust of the people. In retrospect, Gomes brings out the inherent paradox within the Anglo- Indian self-portrayal. The society was the mirror image of the varna

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 which introduced class and race in place of caste and dictated social codes within Anglo-Indian society.

III Gomes analyses the uprising in chapter sixteen of the novel. He mentions that the revolt was headed by the ‘Caligulas and the Neros

9 See Saul David, The Indian Mutiny, London: Penguin, 2003, p. 82. The Uprising and Anglo-Indian Society 275

when there were expected the Washingtons, the Franklins and the Tells. Nana Saheb fell far below Toussaint’.10 Gomes mentions that the ‘insurrection degenerated into a revolt, and the revolt into a raid of Thugs’.11 He argues that the uprising was put down because it was a revolt and

neither the din which had resounded on the heights of the Himalayas, nor the cannon that had thundered on the walls of Delhi had been able to rouse that giant which sleeps in India his sleep of centuries . . . The revolt was the sepoy; the revolution would have been the people; the revolt was revenge; the revolution would have been the idea: the revolt was the cruel Vishnu; the revolution would have been the mild Shiva.12

Gomes points to the limited nature of the uprising as a revolt and not a revolution. It was not a pan-Indian event. After the fall of Delhi, Lucknow and Kanpur, Tantia Tope had moved towards Pune but he failed to ignite the revolution in the south. The regiments in the south were not affected by the events in the north unlike at the time of the earlier uprising at Vellore, which again had been a localised phenomenon. Indian geography in the 19th century still viewed the north as Hindostan, the Mughal dominion. The Deccan came under Mughal control much later under Aurangzeb and it had not forgotten the excesses of the two decades of war initiated by him. Moreover, the Nizam of Hyderabad did not support the rebels during the uprising and was ﬁ rmly with the British. The ending of the novel is where Magnod disguised as Sobal the banker confronts Robert during the uprising at Faizabad and prepares to execute him until Freir Francisco arrives to tell him the truth about his children and the repentance of Robert. Gomes’s message, articulated through Magnod’s response, is one of frank forgiveness, a powerful message of peace between communities

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 and nations. It is a romantic ideal informed by the upheavals of the Napoleonic invasions and the breakdown of the feudal order in Europe. He also displays romantic paciﬁ sm, the dread of war and the human excess that accompanies it. There was a public outcry against the excesses of the uprising within British society after the

10 See Gomes, The Brahmans, p. 174. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., pp. 174, 175. 276 Balaji Ranganathan

event which led to the annexation of India by the British Crown in 1858 and the abolition of the East India Company. Gomes fi rmly blames the downfall of the uprising on the rivalries of India’s different dynasties and castes. He advocates the need for a single religion, caste and dynasty for India to have been successful during the uprising. This is in keeping with his universalistic liberal beliefs as Gomes also blames the inherent class consciousness for the increasing problems within India: ‘Impartial men, who care for liberty and not for races, desire India for India and detest all despots, be they called Nawabs or Clives.’13 He recognises the use of force by the Portuguese themselves when they converted a portion of the population to Catholicism by the ‘fi res of the inquisition’. His advice to the British at the end of the chapter is to take a lesson from the Portuguese experience of the power of overt coercion as it would be impossible to coerce a hundred million inhabitants of India. Instead of coercion, he advocates ‘the powerful instruments of civilisation’, which are the Christian religion and education, and the use of ‘tact’ and not ‘force’ in the conversion of lower castes to Christianity. The details of the 1857 uprising are surprisingly missing in the novel. There is no mention of Lucknow or the Kanpur massacres. There is also no mention of the details of the uprising at Faizabad. The lack of details points to the romantic construct that the uprising quickly took within the European imagination. The uprising begins to get constructed as a sensational ‘other’ as seen in the development of mutiny fi ction throughout the continent. While British mutiny fi ction was a natural outcome of the experience of trauma during the uprising, the uprising also saw its refl ection in French and German. The need to fi ctionalise began with the commoditisation of the event. The uprising becomes an important cultural marker in this sense. Fictionalisation catered simultaneously to the demand for sensation and for accounts and descriptions of the mutiny. The com-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 modifi cation of the event by means of sensationalising led to the huge output of mutiny fi ction, which at the same time produced in fi ctional form the historiography of the event. Historiography proper cannot be equated with fi ction but in a way the shadow of history looms over and constructs fi ction. Historically speaking, the British made a clear case of documenting the history of the uprising. The urge to document points to the cathartic effect of the uprising which in turn brought out the major

13 Gomes, The Brahmans, p. 175. The Uprising and Anglo-Indian Society 277

moral and physical preoccupations with notions of British superiority. The writings underline the sense of disbelief at the role of India and the Indians during the uprising. Added to the personal sense of grief that overrode the killings on both sides, both the parties were shocked by the ferocity that was involved in the event. The idea of British invincibility got lost in the process of regaining India. The subject demanded inquiry and interrogation and this saw the phenomenal output through diaries, histories and ﬁ ction. It appeared to be a personal dialogue by the colonial nation which, having undergone trauma, needed to seek its catharsis through the medium of writing. This explains the exceptional output within the area. The notion of British superiority is based on the idea of difference. The colonialist attitudes which were informed by liberal attitudes in the 18th century and lasted until 1820 saw a hardening within the same liberal stance. The focus changed with the role of Charles Grant, T. B. Macaulay and James Mill.14 They belonged to the hard- line Anglicist school and their role within the Anglicist-Orientalist controversy is well documented. Their writings bring out a different type of liberal hardening which sought to empower natives but within a colonial paradigm within which was posited the sense of British superiority against the native ‘Other’. The humanistic vision of Gomes needs to be interrogated. He did not approve of fundamental evangelical policies which oversaw the Portuguese domain. Did he feel that the Portuguese regime was threatened by a similar uprising? The Portuguese had taken over Goa in 1510. They had faced mass insurrection. The ﬁ rst insurrection was in the village of Cuncolim in 1583. Five Jesuits had lost their lives and their bodies were dumped in a well which is the site of the St Francis Xavier Cathedral today. The memorial is very reminiscent of the Bibighar well episode at Lucknow. This is one of the unrecognised uprisings which took place against the Portuguese.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 By the time the 1857 uprising took place, the Portuguese were a spent force in India. Probably what Gomes realises is that the policies that informed 19th-century British India and its people also constructed and shaped former colonisers and their colonial policies.

14 See James Mill, The History of British India, London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1817. The soft liberalist attitude exhibited by Edmund Burke and the Orientalists across the world changed with Mill’s publication of his history. Also see John Keay, The Honourable Company: A History of the East India Company, London: Harper Collins, 1991. 278 Vijaya Venkataraman

18 El dragón del fuego: A Dramatic Representation of the Revolt Vijaya Venkataraman

El dragón del fuego, a play in three acts and an epilogue and divided into nine scenes, was ﬁ rst staged in the Teatro Español in Madrid on March 16, 1904.1 Written by the highly renowned Spanish playwright of those times, Jacinto Benavente — winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922 — this play was neither very well-known nor has it been studied by critics or scholars. It would be reasonable to assume that this work is a representation of a modernist’s approach to an exotic theme and did not attract the attention of Spanish critics or spectators of those times because of the ‘fantastic’ treatment of the theme. A proliﬁ c and successful playwright, Jacinto Benavente’s plays address a host of issues, ranging from a scathing criticism of the aristocratic classes, the political problems facing Spain during the period, the debate of Europeanisation and autochthonism that raged in Spain, the provincialism in the rural countryside, to social and political Darwinism in the discussions around imperialism and colonialism. At the same time, Benavente was criticised by other writers of his time for taking ambivalent stands on most of these issues and for preferring to tread the middle path. This could be due to the fact that he was aware that his popularity and success as a playwright depended largely on the very classes that he took up the cudgels against. However, Benavente’s contribution has been recognised for experi- Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 menting with a new form of theatre characterised by a ‘desire and need to break free from traditional moulds and create an art in tune with the new times; in fact [his theatre] aspires for naturalness in

1 Jacinto Benavente, El dragón del fuego, Obras completas (The Dragon of Fire: Complete Works), volume 2, Madrid: Aguilar, 1943. All translations from the text are the author’s. A Dramatic Representation of the Revolt 279

form, and complexity and [is] rich in nuances in content’.2 Though Benavente’s importance as a dramatist is generally attributed to the fact that his theatrical form was a reaction against the kind of melodramatic high theatre that was in vogue in late 19th-century Spain, critics have pointed out that his plays too cater to the same taste as they are replete with complicated intrigues and crossed loves that are resolved most predictably. It can be said that Benavente did not seriously question the theatrical establishment of his times but preferred to write on a host of contentious themes from within the framework of accepted norms during those times. It is in this context that we could look at the play El dragón del fuego in order to see how an important event of world history like the rebellion of 1857 was represented by Jacinto Benavente for Spanish audiences. The action of the play takes place in an imaginary Asian country Nirvan, ruled by King Dani-Sar, against the backdrop of a crushed rebellion led by the king against its foreign rulers from the imaginary European country Silandia. Although the rebellion is helped by a rival imperial power, Franconia, it fails and Nirvan is declared a protectorate of Silandia. The weak King Dani-Sar, a secret admirer of the white men, meekly accepts the supremacy of the Silandians. His problems are further exacerbated by a revolt within his ranks as he is accused of allowing the ‘impure’ foreigners to intervene in the internal matters of the country. The king’s younger brother Durani, once the hope of the people, is also unacceptable because, on his return from Silandia, he has become ‘impure’ in manner, in his style of dressing, and even believes in the superiority of European civilisation. Amongst the ofﬁ cials who represent Silandia in Nirvan are the general, Mr Morris, a representative of Silandia’s mercantile interests, Colonel Estevens and Captain Lake, representing the armed forces, and their wives and a pastor, representing ecclesiastical interests. They Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 2 Federico de Onís, Jacinto Benavente. Estudio literario (Jacinto Benavente: Literary Study), New York: Instituto de las Españas en los Estados Unidos, 1923, p. 17. C. Christopher Soufas, Jr., in his article ‘Benavente and the Spanish Discourse on Theatre’, Hispanic Review, Spring 2000, 68(2): 147–59, p. 148, suggests that ‘the most characteristic view of him is as an ambitious, accommodating dramatist more concerned with theatrical success than dramatic content’. In the same article, he quotes Cecilia García Antón who considers Benavente as an acquiescing ‘victim’ of the audiences of his times (ibid.). 280 Vijaya Venkataraman

hatch a plan to overthrow Dani-Sar and to coronate Prince Durani. The Silandians see in King Dani-Sar an ally of Franconia, and believe that it is Prince Durani who would be of real help in protecting the commercial and evangelical interests of Silandia. Prince Durani, on the contrary, is not interested in ruling the kingdom but expresses his deep admiration for Silandia’s grandeur and power. He also displays an inadequacy to infl uence either his brother or the people of Nirvan as they no longer respect him, considering him impure and contaminated by contact with foreign lands. But the offi cials of Silandia are desperate in trying to convince the reluctant Prince Durani that he is the ‘chosen one’ and that he should, if the need arises, rebel against his own brother, the king. The other characters that play a prominent role in the unravelling of the action are the king’s so-called advisers, who form a part of his court, and include the ‘fanatic and ferociously ambitious’ Jhansi, the king’s father-in-law, who is shown to be working at the behest of the rival power Franconia, Mamni, the queen of Nirvan, Dani- Sar’s wife and Jhansi’s daughter, who hates her husband the king for handing over his kingdom to Silandia and accepting the status of a protectorate, Nagpur, the ‘cunning and treacherous’ high priest who constantly presses Dani-Sar to carry on the revolt against Silandia, and Sita, Jhansi’s younger daughter whom Prince Durani loves and wants to marry, but who becomes a pawn in the hands of the king’s advisers in the plot to create a rift between the two brothers. The people of Nirvan, under the leadership of the priest of the pariahs Dhulip, believe that neither Dani-Sar nor Durani are capable of protecting the real interests of Nirvan and that the sighting of ‘the dragon of fi re’ in the skies is a signal from the gods that Nirvan is sacred land that needs to and will be saved from the clutches of the white men. Jhansi, Nagpur and Mamni join hands and enlist the help of the people of Nirvan to fi ght against Dani-Sar, who is believed to have ordered his soldiers to rise in rebellion only so that Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Silandia’s army could use this as a pretext to intervene and gain complete control over Nirvan. They also believe that the soldiers in Dani-Sar’s army, consisting of Muslims and Nirvanese, trained by Silandia’s offi cials, are unhappy over the weapons (the grease used in the ammunition is believed to be that of cows and pigs) and this can be used to motivate them to rebel against the Silandians as well as Dani-Sar. Paradoxically, Dani-Sar is caught between the Silandians and his own people. The king calls for an intervention of Silandia’s army to protect him in the face of the revolt of the soldiers of Nirvan. This further A Dramatic Representation of the Revolt 281

estranges him from his own people and his so-called advisers. Sita is persuaded to sacrifi ce her love for Prince Durani and to marry Dani-Sar. The Silandians also have a role to play in this plot as they too encourage the king to take another wife as his fi rst wife has not borne him any children. This plan is carefully plotted and executed by Jhansi, Nagpur and Mamni, who also ensure that the messages of peace sent by the king to his brother never reach him. Meanwhile, Dani-Sar has organised a hunting expedition in the forests of Sindra and has invited the offi cials of Silandia. Privy to this information, Nagpur reveals his plan to Jhansi — that of sending the soldiers of Nirvan to the forest to attack the Silandian offi cials and of attacking the Silandian soldiers in the city. This would ensure that the Silandians are completely exterminated. In the meantime, Silandia has been able to improve its position in Europe by selling some of its company’s stocks to Franconia’s Jewish bankers and forging an alliance of mercantile and commercial interests. The offi cials of Silandia bribe Nagpur to serve their interests and while Jhansi, Mamni and the other rebels lie in wait in the forest to massacre the white men and their puppet, the king, Nagpur warns the offi cials of what to expect in the forest. In the forest the rebels of Nirvan realise too late that Nagpur has betrayed them. Caught between the rebels in the forest on the one hand and the Silandians on the other, who have declared Durani the king of Nirvan, Dani-Sar is kept captive in the forest while Durani is made the king of Nirvan. Finally, after more intrigues, Dani-Sar is persuaded to send a peace missive to his brother, promising him marriage with his lady-love, Sita. This is to entice him into the forest. On the way to the forest the prince is captured by the rebels and blinded. The naive and helpless Dani-Sar waits for the Silandian army to come to his rescue. The Silandian army comes to the forest, captures Dani-Sar and imprisons him as the rebels escape to save

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 their lives, leaving Dani-Sar to his fate. In the Epilogue, Dani-Sar is kept under arrest in a hotel in Silandia, like a caged animal in a zoo, and he realises that he has been cheated very badly by his own people as well as the white men he so admired. Brought to Silandia as proof of the generosity and goodness of the Silandian rulers, he is now asked to return to Nirvan, as a vindication of their benevolence. He refuses to return so as not to comply with the plans of the Silandians. The treacherous Nagpur once again takes charge of ensuring Dani-Sar’s return to Nirvan. The bitter king decries the Silandians and their role in Nirvan and laments 282 Vijaya Venkataraman

the inability of the Nirvanese to be united in their fi ght against the outsider. In the fi nal scene, the dark skies of Silandia are illuminated with fi recrackers, celebrating Dani-Sar’s return to Nirvan and glory to Silandia, but Dani-Sar sees in them the dragon of fi re, a symbol of glory to Nirvan and destruction to the foreign enemies. Having given a detailed description of the plot of the play, we now move on to discuss some questions that immediately arise in the reader’s mind. Can the play be read as a ‘realistic’ account of the rebellion? If so, what could be the reasons that motivated Benavente to devise such a plot? Finally, what does this tell us about representations of India or concretely the ‘First Indian War of Independence’ in Spain? The play is generally considered a ‘satire against imperialism and colonialism’ — the broad objective being that of exposing the designs of an imperial power from Europe to subjugate an Asian country ostensibly with the aim to ‘civilise’ it but the real reasons being economic exploitation.3 Why did Benavente write a play against the backdrop of the rebellion of 1857? What were the sources that Benavente tapped in order to write this play? Was Benavente’s play an attempt to engage with issues within Spain and in Europe in the context of the 1898 Cuban War of Independence and the various agreements being signed in Europe, among them the Anglo-French Entente in 1904, over the colonial redistribution of Africa and other important developments that were taking place in Europe? It is not easy to answer all these questions, given that the materials available are not easy to access and also because, as we have already said earlier, the play itself was not one of his most successful ones and there is hardly any information available on its reception amongst the Spanish audience of those times. However, the aim of this essay is to probe some of these questions and to provide tentative answers. Let us fi rst look at the representation of the revolt in the play. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 First, there is no doubt that Benavente seeks to represent the rebellion as he understood it. Realistic or otherwise, he obviously had access to some sources that were not sympathetic to the British

3 Guadalupe Gómez-Ferrer Morant, ‘El discurso de Benavente en la etapa ﬁ nisecular’ (Benavente’s Discourse at the End of the Century) Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea (Notebooks of Contemporary History), 2003, Special Issue, 25: 85–100). A Dramatic Representation of the Revolt 283

colonial powers.4 Although there is no mention of any dates or names or places in the play, Nirvan can be taken for India, Silandia for England, Franconia for France and Suavia for the Dutch (Franconia and Suavia are described as rival powers). The other characters too are easily recognisable although Benavente uses names of cities for some of the important actors of the rebellion. It is easy to recognise Bahadur Shah Zafar in Dani-Sar. Queen Mamni represents the childless Rani of Jhansi, who was stripped of her dominion, and her ambitious father is named Jhansi. Nagpur, the priest, represents Nana Sahib. In the Epilogue, when Dani-Sar is kept imprisoned in Silandia, a reporter discloses that ‘he is sent by his newspaper on a special paquebot, on special trains, with the specifi c mission of fi nding out all about king Dani-Sar . . . because the Government of Silandia is interested in hiding the truth; and other European powers are interested in uncovering it’.5 He further adds that if he is not allowed to see the king, he would be forced to confi rm the general opinion all over Europe that Dani-Sar was being subjected to harsh ill-treatment. The maître of the hotel argues that this is an effort on the part of the enemies of Silandia to malign it and then goes to great lengths to ‘prove’ that Dani-Sar is being taken such good care of that he does not wish to return to his own country. In his novel The Last Mughal, William Dalrymple writes that ‘Zafar himself was put on show to visitors, displayed “like a beast in a cage”, according to one British offi cer’.6 Moreover, he was visited by The Times correspondent, William Howard Russell, who was sceptical of all the charges levelled against the ‘dim, wandering eyed, dreamy old man with a feeble hanging nether lip and toothless gums’ as he described Zafar.7

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Critics point out that Benavente was not favourably inclined towards any revolution, social or political, and tended to represent an Anglo-Saxon world view, but this does not seem to be true in the case of this play. See J. M. Rodríguez Méndez, ‘Un autor para una sociedad’ (An Author for a Society), in Revista de Occidente (Journal of the Occident), number 41, Madrid: Fundación José Ortega y Gasset, 1966, p. 224. 5 Benavente, El dragón del fuego, p. 404 . 6 William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal, Delhi: Penguin Books, 2006, pp. 4–5. 7 Ibid., p. 5. 284 Vijaya Venkataraman

The widespread idea that the uprising was not a popular rebellion but a result of the hurt religious sentiments of the Indian soldiers owing to the greased cartridges is echoed in the play when Nagpur discusses the plan against the Silandians with Jhansi:

Jhansi: These are troops instructed by the Silandian offi cials. Amongst them there are Nirvanese and Muslims; wayward people, without faith or country. Nagpur: What does it matter! They will resist obeying them. The new weapons given to them by the Silandian offi cials are not to their liking. Amongst these despicable people there are some believers. The weapons need to be well-greased for their maintenance. The Silandian troops naturally use cow and animal fat. For the believers, all that comes from a living being is sacred and can only be used in sacrifi ce to God.8

Although the dominant idea in colonial historiography during the second half of the 19th century was that the mutiny resulted from hurt religious sentiments and was a jihad against the Christian colonisers, this is not refl ected in the play. Rather, the soldiers are portrayed as mercenary and ‘despicable’ and ‘believers’ in a barbaric religion that accepts human sacrifi ce as a religious practice. Furthermore, the theme of imperial rivalry is refl ected throughout the play. In the fi rst act, the Silandian offi cials, while discussing their commercial interests, constantly allude to the anti-Silandian campaign carried out by their European rivals. All their actions are clouded by the ever-present fear of how the events would be refl ected in Europe.

General: Our king knows, as the whole of Silandia proudly recognises, how the civilians have behaved in this critical period. (To Madame Morris) You must have gone through horrible times. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Madame Morris: It was frightening. More than these people who, despite their ignorance and fanaticism, understand that we never did any harm to them, it was the allied troops that evoked fear, moved by their desire to humiliate Silandia rather than the desire to appease Nirvan. . . .

8 Benavente, El dragón del fuego, p. 355. A Dramatic Representation of the Revolt 285

As you know, Franconian troops have shamed Europe this time. General: In Franconia it is believed that ours behaved more shamefully. Stevens: And in Suavia, that all have behaved shamefully except theirs. Francis: If we would not have set the example. . . . We prevented the pillaging of the Royal Palace. Colonel: The destruction of temples. Francis: The killing of women and children.

General: Europe will learn the truth, although our enemies try very hard to falsify it.9

In the Epilogue too the maître and the reporter discuss the criticism that Silandia was facing in Europe.

Reporter: And will King Dani-Sar remain in Silandia for long? Maître: I request you, please don’t ask me anything . . . Reporter: Excuse me . . . only one question. . . . Is it true that King Dani-Sar is very ill because of the cold in Silandia? Maître: Calumnies of the European Press! Look at the thermometer: 36 degrees. This is the constant temperature maintained in this room. Reporter: And is it true that he consumes drinks and narcotics? Maître: Calumnies! It is all libel. I assure you that His Majesty is the happiest person on earth and Silandia for him is the paradise of his religion, which you know is one of the most pleasant paradises.10

The third aspect of the rebellion that is echoed by many historians

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 is that the revolt did not succeed because of the internal differences of the participants who were unable to forge a ‘national unity’. This is projected through the ﬁ ght between the two brothers vying for power. Prince Durani has been fed on the ideas of progress and civilisation. According to the ‘natives’, he is blinded by western ideas and has become contaminated and hence is unﬁ t to rule the

9 Benavente, El dragón del fuego, pp. 342–43. 10 Ibid., p. 405. 286 Vijaya Venkataraman

country. The colonial rulers do not see any difference between the two brothers, except that Dani-Sar has lost their trust by seeking the help of the rival power Franconia. They persuade Prince Durani to seize power from his brother though the Prince tries to assure them that they have nothing to fear from the King.

General: Not from him but from Franconia. They seated him on the throne so that they would not have to ﬁ ght a war against us. They forced him to marry, against his wishes, the daughter of the ferocious, fanatical and ambitious Jhansi who made Nirvan rise in revolt, driven by hatred towards the foreigner.11

Jhansi and his daughter Mamni become the leaders of the rebels. They hate both the king and his brother, but they are so ‘ambitious and fanatical’ that they fail to understand the designs of the Silandians. Nagpur, the priest, turns a traitor and is instrumental in helping the colonial rulers crush the rebellion, kill Durani and imprison Dani-Sar. Naming some of the characters in the play after cities — Nagpur and Jhansi — could be seen as the symbolic representation of the different centres of the uprising. The fact that Jhansi’s daughter, the king’s wife, is unable to bear children due to which the king wants to take a second wife, could be a reference to the Rani of Jhansi and the reactions to the Doctrine of Lapse promulgated by the British. Further, the country where the play is located is called Nirvan. Benavente could not have been ignorant of the meaning of nirvana. Was he referring to the ‘paradise’ that the colonisers were destroying, the ‘paradise’ that India was for the west, or was it simply an exotic element introduced to attract the viewers? The ‘dragon of ﬁ re’ appears as a constant motif in the play. It is sighted in the skies of Nirvan at the beginning of the play by the people of Nirvan and Dhulip, the priest of the pariahs. It is a sign of destruction of the enemies, of hope for freedom from the coloniser. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 It is a signal from the gods and for the people of Nirvan a symbol of hope. Queen Mamni sees in the dragon freedom from the coloniser as well as the coloniser’s puppet embodied in her husband, and Dani- Sar, while in imprisonment and as his end nears, realises that the dragon is the symbol of freedom from colonial domination. Thus, it not only is a symbol of resistance to colonialism but also a symbol of retribution against the oppression of the colonisers.

11 Benavente, El dragón del fuego, p. 348. A Dramatic Representation of the Revolt 287

From the aspects that have been discussed here, it is possible to arrive at an understanding of Benavente’s project on writing about the rebellion in India. First, it is clear that he puts forward a strong critique of the British attitude towards its colonies. Unlike some of the writings appearing in the Spanish press, which largely relied on French sources, Benavente does not argue that the British neglected the moral and spiritual well-being of their subjects and that the failure of the British colonial enterprise lay in the fact that they con- centrated on economic exploitation and let the natives carry on with their ‘monstrous’ religious practices. In fact, Benavente does not portray the natives of Nirvan as a fanatical, monstrous or barbaric group of people, rather it is the Silandians who wish to convince the viewer that these are a barbaric people and racially inferior to the Europeans. But the Silandians do not convince with their argument as they themselves are portrayed as mercenaries who do not care for anything more than their commercial interests. Why did Benavente choose to write a play about the rebellion? Was it a political motive, inspired by the stories of the atrocities of the colonial powers in India? Was he inﬂ uenced by other writers of his times, like Jules Verne, Emilio Salgari or Rudyard Kipling, whose works were translated into Spanish and had become popular, and to which Benavente might have had access? Or was Benavente’s play a response to the debates within Spain on ‘the virtues of colonial enterprise’ that had accentuated in those years following Spain’s ‘loss of colonies’ in the Americas? Benavente’s play, written nearly ﬁ fty years after the 1857 uprising in India, can perhaps be read from three perspectives: a) in the context of the loss of the Spanish colonies in 1898, which provoked a huge debate within Spain over the desirability and usefulness of colonial enterprises; b) as a critique of British imperial policies and c) as part of the image of India and in the context of the play, the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 politics of representation of the 1857 uprising in Spain. The loss of colonies in 1898 resulted in a massive outcry in Spain and this was reﬂ ected in the literature that was written during this period. Though Benavente was writing in this period, he is not always included in the group of writers known as ‘The Generation of 98’. The main reason for this was that his plays were not thematically in consonance with the anxieties of this group of writers who wished to infuse fresh blood into the tired veins of the country through a psychological analysis, through introspection. This introspection took various forms; among others, praise for the Spanish countryside, 288 Vijaya Venkataraman

a nostalgic yearning for the ‘lost paradise’, extolling the virtues of purity (casticismo), a deep-rooted patriotism and defence of Spain against the attacks from its European neighbours. Though Benavente dealt with many of these issues in his plays, he always maintained an ambivalent position and was even sharply criticised for this by other writers of his times. If we look at Benavente’s text from the perspective of Edward Said’s arguments on Orientalism, of it being rather than expressing a ‘certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is manifestly a different (or alternative and novel) world’, would it be correct to conclude that Benavente, despite the best of intentions, falls prey to an Orientalising discourse?12 It is generally accepted by scholars that 19th-century Europe did not engage with the contemporary Orient but with one that was in the past: a distant, romantic, mythical and exotic Other. However, Benavente, on the threshold of the 20th century does try to engage with contemporary issues in the Orient and attempts a critique of colonial discourse, despite the fact that some representations of the Orient offered by him fall within the ambit of the clichéd debates of ‘civilisation versus barbarism’, to which he could not have remained impervious as they were central to discussions in late 19th- and early 20th-century Spain on the colonial projects in Latin America.13

12 Edward Said, Orientalism, London: Penguin Books, 1991 (ﬁ rst published in 1978), p. 12 (emphasis in the original). 13 Throughout the play, the Nirvanese leaders like Jhansi, Nagpur or even Mamni are portrayed as ‘bloodthirsty’ and driven by a pathological hatred towards the Silandians and without any clear vision of how to organise the rebellion. The people of Nirvan, in the ﬁ rst scene of the play, lament the presence of the foreigner in their lands as an insult to their

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 land, their women, their children and their gods. Dhulip, the priest of the pariahs, reminds them that the foreigner could intervene only because of the lack of unity amongst them. Moreover, losing the struggle is seen as divine chastisement and can only be atoned by invoking the ‘dragon of ﬁ re’. The debate on ‘civilisation and barbarism’ in 19th-century Latin America between Sarmiento and José Marti has been discussed by the Cuban critic Roberto F. Retamar in his book Calibán y otros ensaysos (Caliban and other Essays), Havana: Casa de las Américas, 1971. As discussed in the article on the view of the revolt in the Spanish press in this volume, ‘civilisation’ and ‘barbarism’ came to be regarded in racial terms only in the 19th century in the context of colonial enterprises. A Dramatic Representation of the Revolt 289

About the Editor

Shaswati Mazumdar is Professor of German Studies at the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi, where she has been teaching since 1978. Her research interests and publications are in the areas of India in German literature, comparative cultural studies of the German-speaking world, Europe and India, and, more recently, the responses in Europe to the Revolt of 1857. This volume is the ﬁ rst book-length publication resulting from a research project initiated by her in 2007, during the 150th anniversary of the Revolt, with the support of the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR), New Delhi. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 290 Vijaya Venkataraman Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Notes on Contributors 291

Notes on Contributors

Anil Bhatti was Professor at the Centre of German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, until his retirement in 2009. He has been Visiting Professor in Kassel, Tübingen, Graz and Vienna, besides currently being President of the Goethe Society of India. His main research interests are in the German literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, comparative literature and the theory of literature, as well as in comparative culture studies between Europe and India/Asia. He has published widely on these areas and is the co-editor of Jewish Exile in India (1999, with Johannes Voigt); Reisen, Entdecken, Utopien: Untersuchungen zum Alteritätsdiskurs im Kontext von Kolonialismus und Kulturkritik (1998, with Horst Turk); and Kulturelle Identität: Deutsch-indische Kulturkontakte in Literatur, Religion und Politik (1997, with Horst Turk).

Chiara Cherubini teaches European History at Richmond University, London. Her current research interests include the history of national cultural identity in the colonial and post-colonial eras. She has been working on the images of Italians ‘abroad’ as migrant workers, travellers, colonisers, explorers, geographers, missionaries, etc., and on images and descriptions of the world ‘outside Italy’, before and after unifi cation. In particular, she is now focusing on the parliamentary debates on colonialism and emigration which took place during the fi rst years of life of unifi ed Italy.

Suchitra Choudhury studied and taught English at the University of Delhi. Her MA thesis from the Open University, UK, focused on ﬁ ction based on the 1857 Rebellion. She is currently a PhD Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 candidate researching on ‘Representation of the Kashmiri Shawl in British Literature’ at the University of Glasgow. Her most recent publication Empire in a Box: Lumsden’s ‘Toy Books’ in Glasgow is forthcoming in 2011.

Swati Dasgupta teaches French at the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi. After an MPhil from the University of Delhi and a DEA from the Sorbonne, Paris, she 292 Insurgent Sepoys

completed her PhD on the subject of ‘Europeans outside Europe in the works of Jules Verne’. She is now working on the reactions in the French press to the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Nicola Frith is currently Lecturer in French at Bangor University in the UK. She completed a PhD at the University of Liverpool on French-language representations of the Indian Uprisings, entitled ‘Competing Colonial Discourses on India: Representing the Indian “Mutiny” (1857–58) in French- and English-Language Texts’. Her research analyses the rivalry between French and British imperial systems and their competing discourses through the British colonial crisis of 1857–58, and explores how 19th- and 20th-century French writers sought to redress (on an imaginative level) French histories of colonial marginalisation.

Carola Hilmes is currently Extraordinary Professor at the Goethe- Universität Frankfurt/Main, Germany. She has taught German and comparative literature at the Universities of Frankfurt/Main und Giessen. She has been Visiting Professor in Essen, Innsbruck, Lodz, Vechta und Bayreuth and Humanities Fellow at the Lafayette College in Easton, PA. Her research interests are in gender, the theory and history of autobiography, travel literature, imagology and reception of myths, poetology, intermediality, European avantgarde movements and contemporary literature in German. Her publications include Die Femme fatal: Ein Weiblichkeitstypus der nachromantischen Literatur (1990); Das inventarische und das inventorische Ich: Grenzfälle des Autobiographischen (2000); and Skandalgeschichten: Aspekte einer Frauenliteraturgeschichte (2004). She has also co-edited a number of publications, including Projektionen — Imaginationen — Erfahrungen. Indienbilder in der europäischen Literatur (2008).

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Rashmi Joshi is Associate Professor at the Department of Slavonic and Finno-Ugrian Studies, University of Delhi. She completed her PhD from the Sofi a University St. Kliment Ohridski, Bulgaria. Folklore, literature, translation and comparative literature are her special fi elds of interest. She has several research papers and literary translations to her credit. Her translations of selected tales from the Panchtantra were published in Sofi a, Bulgaria. She is presently working on a project related to the ‘Image of India in Bulgarian Literature and Culture’. Notes on Contributors 293

Margit Köves teaches Hungarian at the Department of Slavonic and Finno-Ugrian Studies, University of Delhi. She has been Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research, the Indian Council of Philosophical Research and the Indian Council for Social Science Research, all in New Delhi, working on Hungarian responses to India in the 19th and 20th centuries, and on the literary theory of Georg Lukács. Her publications include Buddhism among the Turks of Central Asia (2009), and as co-editor, Contributions on Lukács: Papers of the 1985 Delhi Seminar (1989) and Resistible Rise, A Fascism Reader (2005). She has also published translations of Hungarian literature in Hindi, Abhineta ki Mrityu (2001), Das Aaadhunik Hungari Kavi (2008) and Gezababua by János Háy (2008, with Girdhar Rathi).

Sharmistha Lahiri is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi. She is the editor of Inhabiting the Other: Essays on Literature and Exile (2001), and the co-editor of Romanticism and Modernity: Conceptions of Art, Society and Politics in the Modern World (2007). She has published studies on contemporary Italian literature and essays on Elsa Morante, Giacomo Leopardi, Natalia Ginzburg, Luigi Pirandello and Dario Fo. Her research interests include ‘Italian Responses to the Indian Rebellion of 1857’.

Sarah Lemmen is a researcher at the GWZO Leipzig, Germany, an interdisciplinary institute specialising in the culture and history of East Central Europe, since 2006. She studied history and Slavonic studies at the universities of Leipzig and Prague. Her research interests include: Czech history of the 19th and 20th centuries; transnational and global history; nation-building in East Central Europe; history of travel and travel writing; as well as gender studies and women’s history. Currently, she is completing her PhD thesis Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 on representations of the non-European world in Czech society, 1890–1938. Based on Czech travelogues, mainly about Asia and Africa, the project explores the construction of the Czech national Self in relation to the ‘exotic Other’.

Everton V. Machado teaches Brazilian literature and culture at the Université Lumière Lyon 2, and is also a researcher at the Centre for Comparative Studies of the Faculty of Letters, University of 294 Insurgent Sepoys

Lisbon. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the Sorbonne (Université de Paris IV). His current research focuses on European orientalism and Indian literature written in Portuguese. His publications include Joaquim Heliodoro da Cunha Rivara, 1809–1879 (2009, with Gina Rafael and Luís Farinha Franco).

Vibha Maurya is Professor of Hispanic Studies at the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi. She specialises in Spanish and Latin American literatures, and literary and translation studies. She is the editor of Encountering the Indian: Contemporary European Images of India (1999) and the co-editor of Cervantes and Don Quixote (Proceedings of the Delhi Conference on Miguel de Cervantes) (2008) and of the special number on Pablo Neruda of the Hindi literary journal Tanav (December 2003). She is well known for her translation of important literary works from Spanish into Hindi, such as Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (La Mancha ke Shoorvir ki Gatha, 2006) and The History of the Siege of Lisbon by José Saramago (Lisbon ki Gherabandi ka Itihas, 2000).

Flaminia Nicora is Associate Professor of English and Postcolonial Literature at the Bergamo State University, Italy. Her research interests include the English novel, Shakespeare and post-colonial anglophone literature, with special regard to identity construction, multiculturalism and the historical novel. She is the author of Il dibattito sul romanzo in Gran Bretagna: gli anni sessanta e settanta, (1993) and Eroi britannici, Sepoy ribelli: l’’Indian Mutiny nel romanzo anglo-indiano dal 1857 alla ﬁ ne del ventesimo secolo (2005), which also appeared in English in 2009 (The Mutiny Novel: Literary Responses to the Indian Sepoy Rebellion 1857–2007).

Alessandro Portelli is Professor of American Literature at the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. He is the author of The Death of Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (1991); The Text and the Voice: Writing, Speaking, and Democracy in American Literature (1994); The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue (1997); The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome (2003); and They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (2010). Besides essays on African–American literature, Mark Twain, Woody Guthrie, labour Notes on Contributors 295

history, and anti-Fascism, he has also edited a number of records and multi-media presentations on oral history and American and Italian folk music.

Balaji Ranganathan is Associate Professor at the Department of English, K. S. K. V. Kachchh University, Bhuj, Gujarat. His research interests are in the areas of oriental studies, historiography and archaeology. He has worked extensively with 19th-century British, French and German colonial records pertaining to language, literature, policy and the history of the period. His publications include Orientalism and India (2009).

Claudia Reichel studied history at the University of Leipzig (GDR) where she completed a PhD on the correspondences of Marx and Engels on the Indian Revolt of 1857–58, as a contribution to the historical–critical edition of the Marx-Engels-complete-works (MEGA). For the last ten years, she has been part of the academic collective working on the project of editing and publishing the MEGA volumes at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Berlin, and is associated with the publication of sixteen of the MEGA volumes. Currently, she is editing the articles of Marx and Engels published in the New York Tribune in the period 1856–58 and Marx’s notes from the 1850s for the MEGA volumes I/16 and IV/11.

Maneesha Taneja is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi. She completed her PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and has specialised in the ﬁ eld of translation studies. She has translated Pablo Neruda’s Memoirs (Haan Maine Zindagi Jee Hai, 2003) and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 of Solitude (Ekakipan ke Sau Saal, 2007) from Spanish into Hindi, and co-translated the novel Mirall Trencat by Mercè Rodoreda (Toota Aina, 2007) from Catalán into Hindi.

Vijaya Venkataraman is Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi. She completed her PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, on the Latin American historical novel. Her research interests and publications are in the areas of the Latin American 296 Insurgent Sepoys

testimonio, the Jesuit Missions in Paraguay, the Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos, Pablo Neruda’s poetry, and new forms of detective ﬁ ction in Hispanic Literature. She has also translated several articles and co-translated the novel Mirall Trencat by Mercè Rodoreda (Toota Aina, 2007) from Catalán into Hindi. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Index 297

Index

Action Party (Italy), 76 Bauer, Edgar, 30–32, 39, 41; Chartist Afghan war, 180; ‘Das Trauerspiel movement in England, 30; views von Afghanistan’ (The Tragedy on effects of Indian revolt on of Afghanistan), 34, 35 Britain, 39; views on Indian right Agamben, Giorgio, 148 to independence, 32; views on Agra, 86, 128, 130, 193; siege in rebellion in India: on European Agra Fort, 192 emigrants, 30; and effect on pub- Algeria, 70, 174 lic activities of refugees, 31 Allahabad, 191 195, 201, 202, 243 Belgium, 101, 133 Allgemeine Zeitung (General Benaras, 131, 191, 201, 202 Newspaper), 25, 26, 37, 126, Benavente, Jacinto, 9, 278, 279, 282, 129, 130 286–88; El dragón del fuego, 9, American War of Independence, 278–288 12, 50 Bengal, 25, 70, 86, 101, 128, Anarkalli, in Retcliffe’s novel, 150; in 133, 212, 213, 215, 271, 274; Brunner’s novel, 152, 153, 154, Bengal infantry, 271, 274; 156, 160, 163, 164, 166–69 Bengali soldier, 101; Bengali Anglicist–Orientalist controversy, zamindar, 25 277 Bentham, Jeremy, 83 Anglo-Indian society, 7, 269, 270, Bertarelli, Enrico, 171, 206 271, 273, 274 Beutner, Tuiscon, 29 anti-Dutch uprising, 35 Bhabha, Homi, 193, 197 Aryanism, 271 Bharatpore, Battle of, 99 Asia, 3, 29, 31, 35, 56, 75, 90, 113, Bibighar, 189, 191, 194, 198, 201, 116, 127; military conﬂ icts in 202, 204, 205, 277 Asia, 37 Billot, Frédéric, L’Inde, l’Angleterre Asiatic Society, 10, 271 et la France, 52, 56–58, 61, 62 Aurobindo, Sri, 259–61 Blanc, Louis, 31 Austria, 94–99, 102, 107, 113, 133, Boer war, 9 172, 173, 234; Austrian empire, Bombay, 101, 128, 130, 131, 133, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 72; Austrian monarchy, 107 203 Austrian–Hungarian Empire, 63, Bonadonna, Gianni, Il vento del 123 diavolo, 207, 208 Bonaparte, Joseph, 82, 83 Ba’ta, Tomáš, Batanagar, 119 Brahmanism, clash between two Ball, Charles, The History of the types of, 254–55 Indian Mutiny, 195 Brahmins, 74, 129, 156, 157, 162, barbarism, See civilisation versus 205, 252–54, 256, 257, 269–71, barbarism 274 298 Insurgent Sepoys

Brantlinger, Patrick, 179, 237, 238, 252, 253, 257, 258, 271–274, 241, 244 276; caste system, 74, 81, 107, British empire, 2, 23, 47, 64, 69, 70, 154, 251, 254, 262, 264; caste 180, 207; threat to, 244, 247, system in Hispanic-America, economic stakes of, 98, 128, 84 134; British colonial rule in Cattaneo, Carlo, 74; criticism of India, 1, 52, 73, 178 East India Company, 73; repre- British Indian army, ‘mutinous sentation of British colonial spirit’, 1, 2, 5 rule, 73 Brock, William, A Biographical Chakravarty, Gautam, 1, 7, 12, 165, Sketch of Sir Henry Havelock, 182, 237, 240 32, 33 Chartist movement, 6, 30, 31, 40, Brunner, Hans, 152, 153, 157, 95 161, 163–169; Anarkalli, die China, 9, 99, 107, 112, 127; Boxer indische Bajadere, oder der Sepoy- rebellion, 9; Opium War, 29 Aufstand in Indien, 152–169 Christianity, 25, 28, 61, 102, 129, Budapesti Hírlap (Budapest News), 187, 253, 255, 262–264, 273, 97, 99, 104 274, 276; Christian colonisers, Budapesti Szemle (Budapest Review), 284; Christian martyrs, 206; 97, 98, 102, 106 conversion to, 28, 68, 70, 77, Bulgaria: struggle for national 85, 86, 99, 187, 272, 273, mis- independence, 134; Bulgarian sionaries, 143, 273; principles, Renaissance, 124; views on 89, 93, 169, 187, 206; religious– moral discourse, 13 British colonialism in India, civilisation versus barbarism, 3, 6, 117 11, 13, 48, 88–90, 92, 148, Buˇlgarska Dnevnitsa (The Bulgarian 150, 288; civilisation, 29, 48, Diary), 6, 124–34 68, 69, 90, 98, 103, 105, 141, Bulyovszki, Gyula, 104, 105 142, 144, 147, 157, 162, 172, Burgelin, Pierre, 262, 263 196, 200, 214, 219, 276, 279, 285; barbarism, 61, 194 Calani, Aristide, 7, 171–179, Civiltà Cattolica (Catholic 181, 183, 186, 188–190, 199, Civilisation), 70, 71 201–203,205, 208; Scene della Clive, Lord, 33, 71, 276 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 vita militare in Algeria, 174; colonialism, 13, 20, 37, 39, 43, 44, Scene della vita militare in Crimea, 47, 61, 68, 77, 82, 83, 90, 142, 174; Scene dell’ insurrezione 143, 145, 149, 150, 153, 155, indiana, 7, 173–179, 190, 199 158, 164, 165, 167–69, 186, Calcutta (Kolkata), 69, 212–214, 202, 224, 234, 248, 262, 278, 230 282, 286; British, 25, 41, 47, 48, Canning, Lord, 26, 27, 99, 178, 52, 57, 68, 70–72, 91, 138, 172, 206; Clemency Resolution, 26 178, 183, 265; European, 143, caste, 23, 74, 75, 99, 156, 205, 231, 144; French, 48, 56, 61, 62, 89, Index 299

183, 187, 234, 248; German, Dinapore Uprising, 85 9; Spanish, 70, 82, 84, 86, 89; Disraeli, 99–101, 205 negative models of, 69; positive Dumas, Alexandre/Alexander models of, 70; civilising mission Dumas, 138, 139 of colonialism, 147; colonial discourse, 13, 44, 47, 56, 61, East India Company, 21, 37–38, 113, 138, 142, 191, 198, 244, 68, 99, 104,154, 176–178, 248, 288; colonial subjugation, 173; 251; abolition of, 276; admin- colonial wars in North Africa, istration and revenues, 178; 174; German discourse on, 142; brutal rule in India, 71; colonial post-colonial, 89, 112 policy, 176; economy and trade, Conan Doyle, Arthur, The Sign of 106; negative model of colon- Four, 239, 243 isation, 69 Corriere del Lario (The Lario Courier), East Indians, 272, 273 65–67, 69 Eco, Umberto, Foucault’s Pendulum, 138 Crimean war (1853–56), 19, 103, El Español (The Spaniard), 84 105, 139, 140, 173, 174, 175; Elisabeth, Queen, 154 Sevastopol, 131, 174; Sebastopol, Engels, Friedrich (Frederick Engels), 140 3, 6, 11, 23, 24, 37, 40, 142, Cuban War of Independence, 282 166, 295 Cuncolim, uprising against Enlightenment, 124, 270, 272, Portuguese rule (1583), 277 Erll, Astrid, 120, 121, 240, 241 Czech society: economic ties with Escenas Contemporáneas. Revista India, 119; interwar period of, (Contemporary Scenes: Journal), 119–21; national movement, 81 117; representations of Indian Estrada, Luis, 81–93; views on rebellion in, 111–19 British colonial policy and administrative system, 86–88; Dahn, Felix, ‘Die Campbells views on English policy of non- (Nach einer Anekdote aus dem intervention in religious affairs, indischen Aufstand 1858)’, 34 86 Dalrymple, William, The Last Europa. Chronik der gebildeten Welt, Mughal, 283 25 Darville, W., 52, 53, 58, 59, 60 Europe, 128, 129, European Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Deák, Ferenc, 95, 97, 98 army/soldiers, 116, 129, 193; Delhi, 22–24, 27, 28, 67, 80, 99, European nations, 71, 112, 101, 104, 106, 126–31, 146, 144, 219; European powers, 77, 148, 165, 171, 178, 182, 184, 122, 283; Europeans ﬁ ghting 185, 186, 198, 213, 214, 215, on the side of the rebels, 131; 216, 218, 219, 230, 232, 258, Europeans in India, 116, 186; 275; massacres in, 219; siege of, western Europe, 90, 113; 7, 126, 185, 216–19 eastern Europe, 2, 113 Die Gartenlaube, x Evans, I. O., 229, 231, 245, 300 Insurgent Sepoys

Faizabad, 251, 255, 269, 272; Ghosh, Amitav, The Hungry Tide, uprising at, 274, 275, 276 212 Fascism, 172 Goa, 203, 264, 270, 277; Catholic Feistmantel, Otokar, Osm let ve Goan society, 266 Východní Indií (Eight Years in Gomes, Francisco Luiz, 9, 251–53, East India), 118, 119 256–66, 269, 270, 272, 274–77; Fenn, George Manville, Begumbagh, Os Brahamanes, 9, 251–54, 239 257, 259–61, 265, 269; The Fontane, Theodor, 6; relationship Brahmans, 275 with England, 29; view of Gozzano, Guido, 9, 171, 172, Indian rebellion, 19–30, 32–35; 190, 203–8; ‘L’olocausto di ‘Das Mädchen von Lucknow’, Cawnepore’, 9, 190, 203, 207; 33; ‘Das Trauerspiel von Verso la cuna del mondo: Lettere Afghanistan’; 34 dall’India, 9, 190, 203 Forster, E. M., Passage to India, 151 Grant, Charles, 273, 277 France: Cevennes wars, 29; colonial greased cartridges, 52, 102, 134, culture, 248; colonial policy of, 162, 193, 198, 255, 280, 284 183; colonisation, 70; criticism Greece, 89, 106, 124, 140 of British rule in India, 88; Guha, Ranajit, 191–93, 197, 198 failure to colonise India, 44, 60, 61; French empire, 60, 61; Habsburg empire/monarchy, 111, French monarchy, 52, 83; inter- 112, 113, 114, 117, 174; ‘Indians imperialist rivalry, 83; response of the Habsburg Monarchy’, to Indian uprising, 92 109 Franchi, Ausonio, 65 Hastings, Warren, 29, 33, 86, 271 French Revolution (1789), 11, 50, Havelock, Sir Henry, 32, 231 53, 54, 58, 253, 258, 265 Henty, G. A., 238–40; In Times of Peril, 239; Rujjub the Juggler, Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 71–73, 174, 239, 244 217 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 33, Gazzetta di Cremona (The Cremona 168; Ideen zur Philosophie der Gazette), 67 Geschichte der Menschheit (1787), Gazzetta Piemontese (The Pied- 33; Gespräche über die Bekehrung montese Gazette), 71 der Indier durch unsre Europäische

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Geibel, Emanuel, ‘Der Christen(1802), 143; views on Campbellmarsch’, 34 colonialism, 143–45; liberal Germany: colonial power, 168; philosophy of segregation, 145 exclusion from empire, 138; cri- Herero uprising, 9 ticism of British rule in India, Holland, 83, 140 142, German labour movement, Hroch, Miroslav, 114 39; reception of Indian rebellion, Hügel, Baron von, attitude to 34, 152, 169; special German British colonialism, 137–38 path (Sonderweg), 168; views Hugo, Victor, 224, 249, 253; Bug about India, 25–26, 142 Jargal, 249 Index 301

Hungary: Age of Reform (1825–48), jihad, 284 97; constitutional monarchy Jones, Ernest, 6, 94 and institutions, 100–101; Jones, William, 271 Hungarian press after freedom Joseph, Emperor Francis, 105 struggle, 96–100; orientalism Joshi, P. C., 4, 5; Rebellion 1857, 4, and western civilisation, 103–5; 72, 94, 173 views on Indian uprising, Journal des Débats (Journal of 100; War of Independence Debates), 57, 87, 88, 92 (1848–49), 94 Hyderabad, 86, 130, 275 Kanpur (Cawnpur/ Cawnpore) x, 8, 44, 85, 133, 149, 158, Illustrirte Zeitung (Illustrated 171, 177, 179, 181, 182, 186, Newspaper), ix, x, xi, xiv, 80, 189–92, 195–99, 200–202, 122, 136, 170, 210, 268 204, 205, 207, 208, 210, 275, imperialism, 123, 179, 228, 238, 276; massacres in, 26, 160, 265, 266; imperialist rivalry, 163, 189–202, 204, 206, 208, 8, 83 230; siege of, 163, 181, 191, Indian War of Independence, 43, 202 122, 282 Karnataka, 131 indigenous sepoy, 74 Kemény, Zsigmond, 96–98, 100, Iniver, 132, 133 102–3, 105–7; view of history, insurgency, 52, 171, 175, 188, 98, 100; views about India and 191, 192, 193, 198; popular insurgency, 180, 192, 201; the rebellion, 102–3, 106–8 counter-insurgency, 192, 193, Khan, Azimullah, 178 201, 202, 208, 243 Kingston, A. D., 245 intercultural relations, between Kingston, W. H. G., 227–28 sexes, 158–62 Kladderadatsch (Crash: Humourous Ionic islands, 69, British colonial Satirical Weekly), ix, xi presence in, 72 Kossuth, Lajos, 31, 96 Ireland, 6, 140, 147, 224 Kreuzzeitung (Cross-paper), 6, Italia del Popolo (Italy of the People), 20–27, 29, 30, 103, 139 6, 64–65, 67–68, 71–72, 74, 75 Italy: colonial aspirations, 77, 180, L’Univers: Union Catholique (The

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 188, 206; colonial policy of, Catholic Union Globe), 47 180; national identity, 64; La Bilancia (The Balance), 68 public curiosity about India, La Ragione (The Reason), 65 67; uniﬁ cation (Risorgimento), La Sferza (The Whip), 65–66, 69 71, 180, 183, 202, 206, 217; Lanoye, Ferdinand Tugnot de Sabaudian monarchy, 180; (Ferdinando de Lanoye), 171, views on Indian rebellion, 64 177, 203; L’Inde contemporaine, 177; L’India Contemporanea, Jacquemont, Victor, 137 177, 203 jati, 271 Lapse, Doctrine of, 286 302 Insurgent Sepoys

Lazzaro, Giuseppe, xi, 171 Maynard, Félix, 7, 49, 177, 178, 181, Le Charivari (Hullabaloo), 55 199, 201; De Delhi à Cawnpore: Le Constitutionnel (The Con- Journal d’une dame anglaise, stitutional), 48, 49, 51 7, 49, 177, 199, 200, 218; Da Le Magasin d’éducation et de récréation Delhi a Cawnpore: episodio dell’ (The Magazine for Education insurrezione de’ cipai, 181 and Recreation), 222 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 64, 74, 76, Le Siècle (The Century), 47 172 Lewis, Mercier, 222, 228 Meerut, 5, 193, 198, 213, 216 liberalism, 77, 98, 139, 145, 167, Merckel, Henriette von, 27 251, 270, 272, 274; liberal anti- Merckel,Wilhelm von, 28 colonialists, 265, 266; liberal Merimee, Prosper, Tamango, 249 view of the revolt, 25, 26, 39, military mutiny, 21, 22, 38, 46, 47, 82, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105 48, 98, 99, 102 Liebknecht, Wilhelm, 19, 36–41; Mill, James, 46, 83, 277 German labour movement, 39 Money, Edward, The Wife and the Louverture, Toussaint, 249, 257, Ward; or, a Life’s Error, 7 275 Monmouth Rebellion, 28 Lucknow, x, xi, 24, 26, 32, 33, 34, Morris, James, 19, 35, 36 66, 105, 122, 133, 171, 181, Motta, Luigi, 182 192, 213, 216, 243, 268, 275, Mukherjee, Rudrangshu, 189, 194, 276, 277; Lucknow Residency, 207 26, 192; siege of, xi, 26, 33, 34, mutiny fiction/novel, 7, 8, 172, 181, 192, 268 178, 179, 182, 184, 186, 238, 247, 276 Macaulay, T. B., 33, 100, 272, 274, 277 Napoleon, 20, 82, 83, 139, 140, Madras, 86, 101, 128, 133, 154, 259, 260, 275 Madras, 86, 101, 128, 133, 154, nationalism, nationalist movements, Malgonkar, Manohar, The Devils’s 2, 5, 6, 13, 43, 71, 73, 75, 260; Wind: Nana Saheb’s Story, 244 in Bulgaria, 6, 124, 133; in Malta, British colonial presence Czech society, vi, in France, in, 72 47, 51, 54, 56, 113, 115, in Marmocchi, Francesco Costantino, Germany, vi, 259, in Hungary,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 L’Impero Anglo-Indiano, 67 vi, 32, 96, 99, 101 in India, 4, Marochetti, Carlo, sculpture by, 37, 40, 45, 47, 48, 52, 55, 57, 206 73-75, 78, 85, 98, 99, 101, 118, Marti, José, 91, 288 119, 260, 285, in Ireland, 32; in Martinati, Antonio, 72 Italy, vi, 32, 38, 63, 64, 70–72, Marx, Karl, 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 23, 77, 78, 259, in Latin America, 30, 36, 40, 41, 138, 142, 166, 84, 91, in Poland, 32, 259; in 295 Spain, 82; nationalist discourse, May, Karl, 139, 151 44, French, 56, 61, British, 56, Mayer, Arno J., 11 Czech, 111, 112, 115, 120; Index 303

nationalist uprisings, 112, 217; Poland: uprising in, 114, 224; small nations, 6, 110, 112 nationalism in, 32, 259 Neill, General, 202, 205, 210 Portugal, 264; Portuguese, 9, 70, Neue Preußische Zeitung, (New 184, 185, 212, 251, 255, 263–65, Prussian Newspaper). See 269–71, 273, 276, 277 Kreuzzeitung (Cross-paper) Pražské Noviny (Prague News), Neumann, Karl Friedrich, Geschichte 6, 115 des englischen Reiches in Asien, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 139 33 Prussia, 19, 28, 103 New York Daily Tribune, 2, 23 Pune, 275 Novi Sad, 125 race, 12, 13, 25, 26, 28, 85, 90, Olliveri, Margherita, 172, 181–83, 144, 145, 166, 186, 189, 190, 186–88; Malì: Episodio dell’ 205, 208, 224, 244, 264, 266, insurrezione Indiana, 181 273, 274; imperial race, 239, Orient, 98, 113, 155, 158, 159, 242, 246; sexuality between 164, 165, 168, 204, 215, 288; members of different races, 159; Orientalism, Orientalist, 33, 46, white supremacy, 13 103, 113, 143, 146, 149, 151, Rakovski, Georgi Stoıˇkov, 124–34 152, 168, 169,182, 183, 185, Rani of Jhansi, 8, 145, 148, 158, 203, 214, 215, 219, 245, 271, 166, 169, 213, 216, 231, 283, 277, 288; Oriental despotism, 286; Jhansi, 156, 158, 166, 169, 104, 105, 203, 272 280, 281, 283, 284, 286, 288 Orlich, Leopold von, 137 Raymond, Xavier, 57 Orsini, Felice, 72 rebels: no discipline and no good Osservatore Triestino (The Trieste leaders, 132; depiction of, 187; Observer), 66 motivation of, 178, 185, 186, Ottoman empire, 125, 132, 173, punishment of, 134; sympathy Ottu˚v slovník (Czech encyclopaedia), for, 169, 172 118 religion in India, 33, 46, 52, 67, 75, Oudh (Oude), 38, 106, 251 81, 86, 98, 100, 102, 114, 143, 154, 156, 157, 162, 205, 231, Palmerston, Lord, 22, 30, 103, 253, 280; religious differences, 126, 129 ix, 23, 73–75, 86, 87, 99; re- Pandey, Mangal, 134 ligious fanaticism, 87, 102; Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 Pandey, Sita Ram, 270 Hinduism, 157, 169, 185, 259; pariahs, 253, 280, 286, 288 Hindu mythology, 252, 259, Persico, Ignazio, 190, 192–200, 205, 261; Islam, 98, 103, 105, 155, 208; Relazione sulla insurrezione 185, Hindu–Muslim unity in dell’India britanna, 190, 192, rebellion, 23, 60, 106 Retamar, Roberto Fernández, 193, 195 89–91, 288 Peshawar, 202, 230 Retcliffe, Sir John (Hermann Pesti Napló (Pest Diary), 6, 94, 96, Goedsche), 138, 139, 140, 151, 98–108 153, 166; Nena Sahib oder die 304 Insurgent Sepoys

Empörung in Indien, 7, 137–151, Spain: ‘caste’ system in Hispanic- 152, 153, 168 America, 84; inter-imperialist revolutionary movements (1848), 2, rivalry, 83; La Gloriosa(1868), 20, 30, 36, 94, 96, 98, 99, 258 82; Latin American independ- Riegru˚v slovník naucˇný (Czech ence, 83, 84, 89, 91; Spanish encyclopaedia), 117 empire, 82, 92, 216; Vicalvarada Roberts, Frederick, Forty-one Years Revolution (1854), 82; views in India: From Subaltern to about the Indian revolt, 93; War Commander-in-Chief, 180 of Independence, 82 Russell, William Howard, 22, 283 Srubski Dnevnik (Serbian Diary), Russia, 12, 14, 20, 24, 103, 106, 125 107, 128, 139, 173, 224, 225; Stables, Gordon, 239; On to the Tsarist Empire, 25 Rescue, 239, 240, 247 Stocco, Guglielmo, 172, 181–83, Sahib, Nana (Nena Sahib) x, 8, 28, 185–88; Gli scorridori della 85–87, 115, 118, 133, 136–38, giungla, 181, 183, 187 191, 204, 208, 232–33, 238, Sue, Eugène, 139, 151 275; description of, 67, 104, 115, 238; disappearance of, Taiping Rebellion, 99 103, 257; cruel treatment of telegraphic service, 2, 65, 66, 101, Europeans, 132; as fictional 232 character, 140, 141, 143, Thakur, Rabindranath, 119 145–53, 159–69, 175, 177–79, The Edinburgh Review, 83 182, 186, 187, 199–202, 229–31, The Morning Post, 113, 124, 125 240, 241, 244, 245, 247–49, The Times, 3, 5, 29, 44, 45, 46, 256, 257, 283; Captain Nemo 48–51, 65, 66, 101, 113, 124, as, 225, 232; Kanpur massacres 125, 128, 130, 132, 283 (see also Kanpur) Thomson, Mowbray, The Story of Said, Edward, 46, 112, 214, 265, Cawnpore, 202 266, 288 Thugs, Thugee, 58, 60, 61, 141, Salgari, Emilio, 172, 181–88, 143, 145, 148, 151, 153, 168, 211–20, 287; Le due tigri, 172, 182, 184, 185, 212, 213, 215, 181, 185, 187, 211–20 216, 218, 255, 256, 260, 272, Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 274, 275

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016 91, 288 Satichaura Ghat massacre, 191, Tichý, Josef, Veˇrní prˇátelé. Povídky 199, 201, 204 z boju˚ Indie o samostatnost, 118, satyagraha movement, 95 119 scramble for Africa, 8, 206; Berlin Tocqueville, Alexis de, 11, 53, 54 Conference (1884), 8 Tope, Tantia (Tantia Topi), 213, sepoy mutiny, 21, 63, 101, 162, 241, 275 225, 228, 229, 231, 252, 274 Tsarigradski Vestnik (Constantinople Serbia, 124 Newspaper), 124 Social News, 133 Turkey, 95, 103, 132 Index 305

Valbezen, Eugène de, 230; Les Anglais 240, 242–49; Twenty Thousand et l’Inde (Nouvelles études), Leagues under the Sea, 221–23, 232, 240 225, 228–29 varna, 253, 271–72, 274 Volks-Zeitung (People’s Newspaper), Vasárnapi Újság (Sunday Magazine), 12 x, 97, 101, 104 Vellore, uprising, 22, 275, Warren, Édouard de (Edoardo Verne, Jules, 181, 203, La Maison Warren), x, 171, 176, 177, 199, à vapeur, 203, 204, 229, 201; L’Inde anglaise: Avant et 231, 238, 246; Tigers and après l’insurrection de 1857, x, Traitors, 229, 245; The Demon 49, 57, 176, 199; L’India inglese. of Cawnpore, 229, 245; The Prima e dopo l’insurrezione del End of Nana Sahib, 245; Les 1857, x, 176, 199 Cinq cents millions de la Bégum, Wheeler, General Hugh, 104, 162, 229; L’Île mystérieuse, 225; The 191 Mysterious Island, 224–29, 246; widow burning, 156, 157, 166, 214; Vingt mille lieues sous les mers sati, 103, 163, 254 (Twenty Thousand Leagues Young Bengal Movement, 274 under the Sea), 223, 228; The Zafar, Emperor Bahadur Shah, Steam House, 229, 230, 238, 283 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:14 24 May 2016