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This is the site of a very tragic incident of the 1857 uprising. The 'mutineers' brought much shame to their cause by this act of irresponsiblility and savage brutality. Even in a rebellion, it is the responsibility of the leaders to maintain a degree of ethics and decency. Their crime in this case can not be forgotten and the British were right in giving severe punishment to the 'mutineers' invoved in this incident.

It is my understanding that the sepoys ordered to shoot the women and children fired into the roof because they couldn't bring themselves to shoot them? That butchers et al, were then called in to kill them? Whichever way it was, it was horrible.

As far as I know, Lynn, the sepoys were the butchers themselves. Oh, it must have been horrible. Let us hope that this never happens to anyone, anywhere, and at anytime again. How can a man do such a thing to another human being?

@Asad Ahmed: The circumstances were exceptional and the tempers were high,there was absolutely NO leadership n the beautiful objective of the revolting mutineers kept them going, William Dalrymple writes in his famous book "The Last Mughal" as to how it were d mutineers who broke into the Diwan-E-khas of Red Fort in Delhi and forced the ailing old Emperor to take up the leadership ! @Lynne Hadley: The Jalianwala bagh massacre by General Dyer at Amritsar in 1919 was something worser than your understandings over here !

Isnt it strange that we conclude on a 100 years of history and the nature of millions of people by two or three tragic events...which could be best described as aberrations of human nature of either side. Events of the past should be best discussed 'without' emotion and events of the present should be best discussed 'with' emotion...that way we will refrain from settling scores with another people in another time ("Shekar") and psyche ourselves to get suitably angry about the present and go about making the right changes which is well within our power....

Pramukh, you are right in that the chaos that prevailed in 1857 was mainly due to a lack of leadership. The King was old and weak, the Princes (who led the defence of Delhi) were miserable young men who had been raised into debauchery and had no qualities of leadership, and the small Rajas were just not up to mark in terms of their resources. Also the communications were bad; the common method was through 'chapatis' or messages concealed under the garbs of fakirs and sadhus etc. This is what led to these unprecedented crimes. The lack of leadership was also because the Company already had control of all local administration (see Fanny Parkes book) and the King, Rajas, and Nawabs were mere paper tigers with no experience or authority. However, all this does not justify, or even rationalize, the brutal treatment of English women and children in Kanpur and Delhi. A successful rebellion requires sound moral leadership - and there was none available in 1857. Gandhiji provided just that at the time of independence in 1947. The tragedies that followed were not of his making. All crimes committed against civilians in Kanpur, Delhi etc and also in Jallianwala Bagh deserve equal condemnation. When an individual is being killed or mutilated for no obvious reason, it does not matter to him whether he is alone or accompanied by others in this fate. So, we should not go by numbers - rather, it is the act of savagery that should be prevented.

I firmly maintain that had the British women and children not got massacred at the hands of the mutineers the 'honourable' John company would have withdrawn from India.To entertain such a thought itself is heady that we could have been independent a full 90 yrs before our actual independence came about in 1947. It is indeed difficult to believe today that the 'twice born' , 'holier than thou' brahmins of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh considered their faith safer under a Mughal monarch than under the British ! Today this Brahmin lobby forms the backbone of the PAC and are the most vociferous critics of Muslis rule in India and attribute all that ails India to Muslims. What escapes me is that an old established democracy which prided itself on it's great educational institutions did not find colonialism evil ? What is even more intriguing is that well into the late 20th century also could this 'great' nation not find anything odd in apartheid ? For that matter even today the allied powers did not find anything odd in attacking Iraq ? Indeed Saddam had to be ousted from Kuwait which he had illegally occupied but beyond that what was the role of the Allied powers in Iraq ? Pray where are the weapons of mass destruction that George Bush tom-tommed about ? Was even one found? The former British PM shamelessly declared a few days ago that"WMDs or not we would have still invaded Iraq !!" Nothing has changed ladies and gentlemen whether it was the 19th or the 20th century there are no permanent enemies in politics only permanent national interests that guides foreign policies of governments.What is admirable is how the tables have turned.From being a colonial power that once ruled the 13 American colonies ,today the British have become an American stooge .And lo and behold their relations with their former colony remains as cordial as ever !!

Oh, Amritsar was horrible. Dyer was a complete pig.

Truly, nothing has changed...it seems to me that the only thing we have learnt from history, is how to make more effective weapons. I was horrified several years ago, to read about the neutron bomb, and how one of its so-called benefits was that it will kill people, but the contamination wouldn't be as devastating or sustained as that resulting from the cobalt bomb. Isn't that just sick? :-/

Some times I wonder if History is best forgotten. The world may have to be built anew. Hate and vengence will outlive all mortals?

Even the Mahabharata contains the story of gruesome murders of women and children in the Pandava camp after sun-down when the code of ethic (of war) required that all hostilities cease. There was no East India Company or the Princely States then.

Lynne and Shekhar: "The only thing we learn from history is that we never learnt anything from history." That is what a Stanford historian once told me. Therefore, we should not try to forget history (as Shekhar suggests) but learn from it. The likelihood of doing mistakes would then be greatly diminished. Perhaps.

Digvijay: Yes, I have read about the looting of the Qaiser bagh by the British soldiers and how one of them grabbed a precious pearl necklace while others picked up costly mirrors etc. Being unfamiliar with the city of Lucknow, I am curious as to how much of it was left in tact after1857.

Asad, I think that what Shekhar is saying is that so far we seem to have learnt nothing from past history? And the only way to fix up the mess, would be to build the world from scratch? Re: the looting...it was very organised on a military level...the looting of Delhi was extraordinary. And of course, civilians...whose own property had been destroyed...also joined in. I still laugh over the guy who bought a piece of glass from a chandelier, thinking that it was a diamond!! :))

@Digvijay Singh Kushvaha: Your suggestion is an unverifiable hypothesis. Conquerors do not give up heir acquisitions very easily. As for acceptance of colonialism, it is possible that people found it liberated them from the Feudal yoke, brought law and order and right to ownership etc. England, though an imperial power, was a democracy and there was nothing wrong in seeking dominion status. Neither was there anything wrong when the demand for full freedom was raised by the Indian National Congress. There is no way people who were opposed to untouchability in our homeland would support apartheid elsewhere. A Feudal system simply cannot support a society based on equality before Law for all and economy driven by Science and Technology and private ownership of means of production.

...Shekhar... It might be pushing the boundaries of credibility to describe Britain as a 'democracy' circa 1857... though progress was being made towards establishing democratic government at the time and 'reform' was on the air the franchise remained small... most men were not able to excercise a vote until the act of 1867 and women (excepting a tiny %) could not vote at all until after the first world war !! On a related matter - It often amuses me when I hear Indian folk here at the RBSI and elsewhere complain that the British did almost nothing to promote education in India in the 19th century, when in fact they did as much if not more there than they did in Britain itself... compulsory education was not introduced in England until 1870 and then was only for very young children, barely enforced and consisted of little more than learning how to read and write... it would not be until the early 20th century that education in Britain became more organised. Regards etc.

There can be no denying that modern education was introduced by the British in India and we should be thankful for that. That is not all - they also introduced railways, roads, built bridges, telephone and telegraph, judicial institutions, hospitals, effective government, taxation, rule of law etc. India would not be the same had the British not ruled it. Considering the present tyrranical forms of neo-colonialism, they were far more tolerant, generous and magnanimous. At Aligarh, where I grew up, most of the University buildings were named after the British, for example, Victoria gate, Strachey hall, Lytton library, Beck manzil, Simmonds Students Union etc. This was not merely to please the British (as some cynics might say) but they had actually donated large sums of money for the establishment of these facilities. Thank you.

...I am sure that many generations long dead appreciate your thanks Asad !... The business (pardon the pun) with the names of the various educational facilities that you mention is a good example of Victorian philanthropy - which in pre-Welfare State days was the primary source of funding for societal projects not directly funded by the British government - both at home and throughout the Empire... My own university, for example, Royal Holloway (London) is named after its benefactor, Thomas Holloway Esq. - a rather eccentric and slightly dubious , though very wealthy, purveyor of 'quack' medical potions - nevertheless he employed his fortune altruistically in keeping with the spirit of the age... this charitable influence, though perhaps not quite so apparent in India, nevertheless was surely felt there in many forms...

Visnushashtri Chiplunkar (1850-1882) of Pune, a noted Marathi thinker and an essayist and a contemporary of B.G. Tilak called the English language "Waghiniche Doodh" (tigress' milk). His plain question was "If you demand freedom you must become a tiger and unless you learn English, how can you become one?

British education was and continues to be a double edged sword. It divorced Indians completely from traditional systems of knowledge and indigenous learning. This is a continuing tragedy and a balance must be struck today. The advantages or otherwise of an English based education can be debated but the severing from traditional sources of knowledge will remain an un- mitigated disaster.

Yes, we have lost/severed our link with the past by losing alltexts and ability to read them. Yes, it is a disaster. But today in the world of modern sciences and globalised economy there is no alternative to English. Even the French feel their language threatened. For some strange reason, the English also feel their language is threatened because of so many other people - the Croats, the Russians, the Spanish, the Mexicans, the Latinos and ....... want to speak it. I wonder what Prof Higgins would have done in today's time. His radius of influence did not go far beyond the Soho square as he stood at the Covent garden..

... Shekhar... The English language is not under 'threat' - but I doubt that my Grandfather would be able to understand much of what is passed off as 'English' these days... there is a strong trans-atlantic influence - do ya no wot I mean ?.... Funnily enough (or perhaps not so funny, depending on your political/ historical persuasion ?) 'proper' English is probably better preserved in India than it is in England ! Now isn't that one for the books? Regards etc.

@ Shekhar Sathe I don't think its an either/ or situation. We must engage with the world in whichever language necessary (for me currently it is French!) at the same time learning and being in touch with our own. The more the number of languages one knows the better it is.

Agreed. It i not either or. It is both as in most cases. Polymaths and polyglots are rare. But I guess a historian has to be both. Perhaps RBSI can start a wing called RPSI.

In the Tamil language...P and B are the same. : )

:) so we are both !

Has any one heard about Brig Gen Neill's revenging operations? The acts of the army of 'retribution'...the mindless hangings of innocents after being made to lick the floor of the Bibigarh? That was far in excess of this horrible incident which was perpetrated by some persons crazed with opium...

There is a new twist to all this now...opium !!

...as if intoxication should in anyway excuse their horrific acts... ?

There is no credible evidence that the 'mutineers' were even half-crazed with opium when they committed these horrible crimes in Kanpur. Nor is there any evidence that there was any justification for Brig General Neill to order his men to shoot the one dozen villagers whose only crime was that they turned their faces away from the approaching column of Highlanders on the main road. Both actions were despicable; both were directed against innocent civilians, and one crime does not justify another.