“Russia holds an important position as a bridge between Europe and Asia. Her struggles in the cause of moral and social reform deserve the sympathies of the friends of religion in England, and, above all of the friends of the ryot in India, who see in Russia, the advocate of the principle of peasant proprietary which is beginning to operate now so much in the promotion of education and Bible education.”

This perspective was shared by Reverend James Long in ‘Hindu Patriot’ on 6 June 1864, in the aftermath of the indigo revolt which had convulsed Bengal. Rev. Long suffered at the hands of British government for publishing an English version of Nil Darpan, written by Dinabandhu Mitra, the dramatist who was his student at Christian Missionary Society school on Amherst Street in Calcutta. The report in ‘Hindu Patriot’ underscored the global impact of Nil Darpan, a play written in Bangla depicting the plight of indigo cultivators and the upsurge across Bengal against East India Company officials.

The play’s English title was ‘The Indigo Planting Mirror’. Rev. Long wrote, “I was surprised to find that the Nil Darpan case was known to many in St Petersburgh, and I was asked about it in various quarters. Full information about it had been given in the German missionary periodicals…I saw one of them in St Petersburgh which had devoted forty octavo pages to the subject.

I was asked lately to the house of a Russian gentleman, member of the Council of State: he invited to meet me some of the leading Russian nobles, who had been appointed by the Emperor to frame the laws for serf emancipation. We had a long and interesting conversation on the comparative state of the peasants in India and Russia.” Rev. Long was questioned about the legal case, his harassment and imprisonment in the Nil Darpan case; he gave a full account to his Russian hosts.

“When I had finished, they said the condition of the Bengal peasants was in various cases almost as bad as that of Russian serfs,” he wrote. ‘Hindu Patriot’ and its senior journalist Harish Chandra Mukherjee not only courageously supported indigo peasants but, like Rev. Long, faced humiliation and financial ruin fighting cases against the planters. In fact Harish Chandra’s words made history: “Bengal might well be proud of its peasantry. In no other country in the world is to be found in the tillers of the soil the virtues which the ryots of Bengal have so prominently displayed ever since the indigo agitation began…they have brought about a revolution inferior to none, in magnitude and importance, to that which has happened in the social history of any other country.”

It is to the peasantry of Punjab, and its leader Guru Ram Singh, to whom we now turn. In the aftermath of 1857, people of Punjab began a movement against the new political order initiated by the British, after they had divided and defeated the Punjab rulers. Called the Namdhari or Kuka movement, it called for boycott of everything which bore the stamp of the British government. When Guru Ram Singh became its chief, he established alternate administrative machinery, inspiring young men to be trained in arms and be ready for rebellion. He made people aware of their serfdom and bondage; they actively propagated civil disobedience, sowing seeds of struggles which were reaped in early 20th century.

One of the Kuka heroes is Gurucharan Singh who managed to reach Tashkhand (or Tashkent), bearing a letter from Guru Ram Singh. They were seeking Russian help to throw off the yoke of British imperialism. The journey of Gurcharan Singh from the heartland of Punjab to Tashkhand would have been a death-defying, perilous, and tortuous one. The possible route via Kabul and Samarkand, skirting high mountain ranges, or traversing them while braving the weather demonstrated his determination and the Kukas’ will to fight British imperialism.

What is equally baffling is that the letter he was carrying, appealing to the Russian Emperor for military help, was written in Gurmukhi! The Kuka rebellion was mercilessly put down by the British in 1871-72; rebels were blown up by tying them in front of cannons. British officers called this brutal murder ‘mercy killing’. The Russian connection emerges as it was the Russian traveller-artist Vasily Vereshchagin who, in the 1870s and 1880s, painted these historical scenes for posterity. Vereshchagin, born into a privileged landowning family of Novgorod province in Russia, spent years learning, working, painting and exhibiting his works on historical events and personalities in Paris, St. Petersburg, Munich and across the sub-continent.

He faced hostile reactions and controversies were raised about paintings depicting executions, especially ‘Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English’. His detractors argued that such executions had only occurred in the past, but even in the 1880s, it was a prevailing practice. Because of its photographic style, the painting appeared to present itself as an impartial record of a real event. In 1887 Vereshchagin defended himself in The Magazine of Art by saying that if there were another rebellion then the British would use this method again. In Germany, Austria and even homeland Russia, his exhibitions were banned or castigated.“It would be impossible,” Vereshchagin wrote, “to achieve the aim I have set myself, to give society a picture of war as it really is, by observing battles through binoculars from a comfortable distance. I have to feel and go through it all myself.

I have to participate in the attacks, storms, victories and defeats, experience the cold, disease and wounds. I must not be afraid to sacrifice my flesh and my blood, otherwise my pictures will mean nothing.” These heartfelt words are often quoted. In modern-day exhibitions, when ‘Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English’ is displayed, its caption reads, “People of Russia feel proud of the fact that Russia was perhaps the only country in Europe where the ‘right’ of the British to possess and rule India was called into question, where the ‘good deeds’ of the colonies were disputed.” In Russia there were a series of articles and essays by eminent intellectuals like N.G. Chernyshevsky, N.A Dobrolyubov and V.G Belinsky which condemned British atrocities in crushing the 1857 revolt. Their sense of responsibility, political commitment and moral vision played a critical role in the development of Russian literature; they are referred to as ‘revolutionary democrats’. The Russian connection now features in what is today Haryana where rebel jagirdar Rao Tula Ram showed his mettle not only during the revolt of 1857 but during the British orgy of destruction underway in later years.

“Along with three comrades, Rao Tula Ram secretly started for Russia, Iran, and Afghanistan to secure arms and money. The long journey broke his health and on 8 September 1862 he died at Kabul. The Afghan government gave him a state funeral. There is a memorial column in his honour at Kabul,” recorded the Government of West Bengal publication titled, India’s struggle for freedom ~ An album (1987). Along with Rani Lakshmi Bai, Tantia Tope, Jwala Prasad, Maulvi Ahmedullah of Fyzabad, Begum Hazrat Mahal and Kunwar Singh, Rao Tula Ram graces the large pantheon of rebel leaders and revolutionaries whose sacrifices are exemplary in the face of British imperial ruthlessness and political maneuvering.

In the thick of the 1857 battles, Rao Tula Ram and his family of braves not only raised forces to fight in Delhi for Emperor Bahadur Shah, they supplied necessary commodities and thousands of wheat sacks. He set up a workshop in Rewari for manufacturing guns and ammunition too. It is a challenge to modern knowledge to understand mid-19th century metallurgy, ballistics and forging techniques existing in the region of Rewari, Alwar, Narnaul, and Sikar.

The region, currently being archaeologically discovered and identified as later Harappan city-sites, has been renowned for mines, metal-work, armourmaking and sword smithy; though venturing into muskets, rifles and ammunition is altogether another ball game. Rao Tula Ram, in his fiery quest for ousting the British, was probably putting traditional furnaces and ironsmiths to work; undoubtedly, he deserves more gunsalutes for his indomitable courage than the number of guns produced by his men. Ties with Russia deepened in 1905 when the Swadeshi Movement brought together diverse social-political personalities and ideologies: Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita, the entire Tagore family, Aurobindo Ghosh, Anusilan Samity and Jugantar revolutionaries who were well-informed about upheavals in Russia in 1905.

When B.G Tilak was sentenced for sedition in 1908 and there was general hartal in Bombay for six days. In faraway Switzerland, V.I. Lenin wrote, “India’s working-class has already become conscious and have started political mass struggle, Since this is so, the days of the Russian type of British Government in India are rapidly coming to an end.” The end came decades later, meanwhile a whole new generation of leaders built their ties with Russia.

(The writer is researcherwriter on history and heritage issues and former deputy curator of Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya)