Picto Diary - 12 December 2019 (2) - Lucknow - The Residency

Above: The Residency. Lucknow, India. 12 December 2019.

THE INDIAN UPRISING (or Mutiny, depending on your historical perspective).

In May 1857 Indian soldiers of the British East India Company (EIC) Calcutta/Bengal Presidency army turned against their British Officers in Meerut, a military post forty miles east of Delhi. In seeming uncoordinated fashion, the rebellion spread first to Delhi, where the mutineers, after routing the British, managed to get the EIC puppet Moghul emperor to embrace their cause, to multiple locations throughout the north Indian Gangetic Plain. The revolt was not India wide as relations between soldiers and their officers in the EIC Bombay and Madras Presidencies remained stable.

Over the course of the rebellion, thousands, soldiers and civilians, died on both sides. Reprisals were brutal on both sides often involving wanton slaughter of women and children. Conflict lasted for seventeen months whereupon EIC troops regained control.

The EIC was an English joint-stock company chartered in 1601 by Queen Elizabeth. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with Mughal India and the East Indies, and later with Qing China. The company ended up seizing control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonized parts of Southeast Asia, and colonized Hong Kong after a war with Qing China.

In the 18th Century India was a polyglot of princely states, lands controlled by the Mughals, and lands directly under the control of the British (Bengal).
To accommodate trade throughout the sub continent, the EIC had to cut individual trade deals not only with the Moghuls in the north, but with the rulers, or heads of each principality.

The EIC was well organized. They set up three Presidencies...geographic trading Divisions, in each of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. The Governor General ran the whole operation from Calcutta . Each of the three Presidencies had autonomy to accomplish trading deals in their respective geographies.

The EIC's power grew over the years to assume quasi nation/state power and influence. By the turn of the Nineteenth Century, each of the three EIC Presidencies had its own standing army made up of British and Indian soldiers.

In the early Nineteenth Century the EIC filled the power vacuum on the Gangetic Plain left by the waning influence of the Mughals. The resident Nawabs (Mogul administrators from Persia) entered into treaty and trade agreements with the increasingly influential EIC to include, paid for by the Nawabs, an extensive Residency in Lucknow for a EIC functionary and numerous hangers on.

Christian missionaries came to India protected under the umbrella of the EIC.

Resulting from heavy handed trade requirements and growing Christian missionizing, there grew an unease amongst the peoples of North India that the EIC threatened their way of life and their religious beliefs.

It took the introduction of a new Enfield rifle to Indian soldiers of the EIC to trigger open revolt. Rumors began to spread in military units in Northern India that the paper cartridges, holding ball and powder, to issued with the new, muzzle loading, Enfield rifle were laced with animal fat...pig, offensive to Muslim soldiers and bovine, off limits to Hindu soldiers. Since the cartridges were to be opened using the teeth, soldiers feared that the British were trying to get them to violate their own religious tenets by consuming forbidden animal product. The Brits solved the problem by allowing the soldiers to grease their own cartridges, but, the atmosphere of distrust worsened.

That part of the Uprising/Mutiny that caught the imagination of Britons throughout the empire at the time was the five month siege of the EIC Residency in Lucknow.

Famously, three thousand Europeans and their Indian loyalists were besieged in the Lucknow EIC Residency during the uprising. Only one thousand had survived when the Residency was retaken by EIC troops five months later.

J.G. Farrell's Booker Prize winning novel, "The Seige of Krishnapur," which I read earlier in 2019 in preparation for today's visit, is a fictional account of the seige of the EIC Residency in Lucknow.

As I toured the Lucknow Residency today I was able to correlate the layout with the events described in the novel.

The Residency is a well preserved National Monument today. See image.

After the Uprising, the British government took over control of India from the EIC.

Throughout the next ninety years of British colonial control of India, Britain was haunted by the specter of the Uprising, fearing recurrence. The Brits increased the ratio of British soldiers in every unit. They turned to fill the ranks of the army with higher proportions of loyalists, such as Gurkhas and Sikhs.

The Amritsar Massacre, in 1919, no doubt resulted from a feeling by the Brits that they needed to be "heavy handed" in their dealings with restive independence demonstrators, fearing a repeat of the 1857 Uprising.

Above: Street demonstration. Lucknow, India. 12 December 2019.

Glad to see that the practice of sloganeering demonstrations continues in India. These guys were apparently employees of the local water authority angling for a pay increase.

As Operations Manager for Citibank's Calcutta branch in 1973, such demonstrations were directed at me, as a hundred or so union employees gathered around my fishbowl glass office sloganeering for up to two hours straight.

Go home Taylor!
Go home! Go home!
Withdraw charge sheet!
Withdraw! Withdraw!
In claw zindabad!
Zindabad! Zindabad!

To this day I'll occasionally wake up hearing these slogans rattling in my brain.

Note: Demonstrations are never far away in India. At this time, there are growing number of demonstrations throughout the country protesting India's new immigration laws which place restrictions on Muslim immigration. We haven't seen any of these demonstrations first hand, as yet.

Above: Saadat Ali Khan - II Tomb. Lucknow, India.

Saadat Ali Khan - II was the fifth (of ten) Nawab of Awadh. He ruled from 1798 to 1814. He was also the first "puppet Nawab" of the British. His father Nawab Asaf ud Dulla, builder of the Bara Imambara, which we saw this AM, ruled at the peak of Nawab power.

Zoom to see Drums, TIMDT, and Cyrus on tomb steps.

Above: Street scene. Lucknow, India. 12 December 2019.

Here we are on a walking tour, directed by Mr. Narayan (in image), of the Nawab's palace complex.

Cows, wandering throughout the city, are sacred in the Hindu religion. Mr. Narayan notes that all cows are owned by someone. They know how to get back to their owners at dinner time.

Above: Barbeque Nation. Lucknow, India. 12 December 2019.

Famous Lucknow kebabs aplenty... prawn, lamb, chicken, fish. Drums and I went alone to this place, recommended by Cyrus. We apparently didn't get the method down. After we gorged on kebabs and couldn't eat any more, we asked for the check. "Huh," said the waiter. "Don't you want to stay for the main course?"

Addendum:

So, the construction of the Bara Imambara was the model for the Boston “Big Dig”???

Ahn Rhee,
Larkspur, CA

Likely so, in its day.

Just a little correction on this is Asafi Imambara and mosque which you have written as Asifa and these are Shia monuments and not Sunni as mentioned by you.

Cyrus,
Lucknow, India

Thanks!