Spectre of Violence : The 1857 Kanpur Massacre

The massacres of 1857 at Satichaura Ghat and the Bibighur in Kanpur have been recounted with horror by historians and commentators.

On 27 June, rebels publicly slaughtered over 300 men, women and children of the 'master race' at the ghat.

On 15 July, a group of women and children who had survived were killed at the Bibighur.

Two days later, General Havelock reclaimed Kanpur and Colonel James Neill decimated the rebel population.

This sequence of violence has held sway over Indian and British imaginations for generations.

In many ways, the numerous retellings of this massacre are symptomatic of the way in which the events of 1857 have been reconstructed. What was the impulse for such an extreme display of violence?

Were the happenings at Satichaura part of a conspiracy hatched by Nana Saheb?

Why did the rebels accept him as their leader instead of choosing one from amongst themselves?

Did rape precede the Bibighur massacre? Was the ruthlessness of the British counterattack an outcome of the belief that British women had been dishonoured and had to be avenged?This illuminating study by Rudrangshu Mukherjee, an eminent 1857 historian, analyses the nature of the violence, locating the massacres in the upheaval which overtook north India in the early nineteenth century.

The absence of rebel accounts and chronicles, he argues, inhibits a telling of their version of the story.

What is available are the contemporary accounts of British survivors, diaries of British loyalists and depositions as part of the official report prepared by the British.

By reading these sources 'against their grain' and by examining the manner in which the evidence was stitched together, Spectre of Violence brings to light fresh directions of enquiry into the drama of power and dominance that lies at the heart of the events of 1857.