MARCH OF THE TITANS - A HISTORY OF THE WHITE RACE
Chapter Forty Seven
The Well of Bibighar: Whites in India
Amongst the first Whites to enter India were the ancient Indo-Aryans who penetrated the Punjab valley around the year 1500 BC. Their demise has already been recounted, absorbed into the mass of native Indians, their only legacy the caste system in India; a few very high caste White looking Indians; and their corrupted religion, Hinduism.
The next Whites to enter India arrived after the voyages of exploration: a momentous series of events was then set in motion, the racial after effects being felt to the end of the 20th century and beyond as millions of Indians spread out from their homeland to settle in all corners of the earth: none of this would have happened had the Whites not penetrated India in the 17th century, interrupting the isolation of this part Second and part Third World continent.
The Portuguese and Dutch
The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, was the first White to reach India by sea, throwing anchor off the harbor of Calicut in May 1498. De Gama established friendly relations with the local Indian ruler, and secured a monopoly of Indian trade for Portugal which lasted for a century.
However, Portugal lost its position of pre-eminence in Europe after it absorbed hundreds of thousands of Black slaves, and by the early 17th century, the Dutch had replaced Portugal as the main trading nation with India, through the Dutch East India Company.
The English Establish Missions
The English then also entered the Indian trade, operating, like the Dutch, through a private firm known as the English East India Company. The English had initially no intention of establishing colonies in India, but after successful negotiations with local Indian rulers, established a tiny trading post at Surat in 1612. The Portuguese launched one final attempt to drive the English out: in November 1619, a Portuguese fleet attacked a number of English ships off the Indian coast: they were defeated by the British.
In a number of later engagements, the Portuguese were continually defeated, and thereafter the Portuguese finally vanished as a factor in the Indian trade market. The Dutch, already entrenched in Indonesia, then also launched a military attempt to drive the English out of the East: this too failed and by 1700, the British had established themselves as the pre-eminent trading nation in the Far East.
Indian Cities Established by the British
The British East India Company continued to expand its interests in India, continuously ensuring that it had the co-operation of local Indian rulers, who also benefited greatly from the introduction of superior White technologies and infrastructure.
The British established a base in Orissa in 1633, founded the city of Madras (now known as Chennai) in 1639, obtained trading privileges in Bengal in 1651, acquired Bombay (now known as Mumbai) from Portugal in 1661, and established Calcutta in 1690.
French seize Madras
During the first half of the 18th century, the French, who had been sending isolated ships to India since 1675, started establishing bases in the East, threatening British dominance on the sub-continent. The ongoing wars in Europe between Britain and France, and in particular the War of the Austrian Succession, fought from 1740 to 1748, saw French forces attack and seize the British founded Indian town of Madras in 1746. The town was returned to the British at the end of the war in Europe, but the conflict set the stage for a major British push into India.
The Seven Years' War 1756-1763
The outbreak of the Seven Years' War in Europe in 1756, saw the French in India squaring up once again to the British East India Company: this time however, the French had taken care to ensure that they had secured alliances with some local Indian princes against the British.
The Black Hole Of Calcutta
One these Indian rulers, Newab of Bengal, armed with French weapons, captured the town of Calcutta from the British on 30 June 1756. The tiny British garrison of 146 men surrendered: promised safe passage, Newab forced all of them into a tiny underground dungeon, where all but 23 of them died overnight of suffocation. This act gave rise to the expression the "Black Hole of Calcutta".
Robert Clive
An employee of the English East India Company, Robert Clive, then took control of the British forces in India, and in 1757, a tiny White British army smashed a vastly numerically superior Nonwhite army at the decisive Battle of Plassey (1757). Clive's victory laid the foundation of nearly two hundred years of British rule in India, as thereafter British rule was extended, either directly or through the acquiescence of native princes, throughout the entire subcontinent.
By 1818, it was master of the most of the country: some provinces were under direct British rule, while others remained under Indian rule, albeit with British supervision.
British Government
The British parliament, rightly concerned that a private company was now effectively running a country of millions, enacted laws in 1773 and 1784, which gave the British government the right to appoint governors and determine policies followed by the British East India Company: and so the rule of India passed more directly into the hands of the British Foreign Office.
This system of dual control lasted until 1858, when the events of that year caused the British government take complete control of the country, only relinquishing it in 1948, when India was granted independence.
The Building of India's Infrastructure
Thousands of White British men and women went to India, not to establish permanent settlements but to run the "Raj" or Empire in India, and to drag India into the modern technological age. The result was that the country was in a few years transformed: the White British built railway lines, telegraph wires, bridges, roads, irrigation systems and postal services and masses of other essential infrastructures on the sub-continent.
Not only did British rule introduce White technology, but a number of important social reforms were also put in place: the British forbade the practice of suteem (in which widows burned themselves alive on the funeral pyres of their deceased husbands); and the practices of killing female children and slavery.
The British also created the first Indian police force, with one of their most famous successes being the breaking up of a vicious criminal Mafia type gang known as the Thuggee (hence the English word thug); and the British also built the first schools in India.
The Sepoys
During the course of this empire building, the British, like the Romans before them, started using locals as soldiers. All volunteers serving freely of their own will, these local Indians became known as Sepoys, and were divided up into three major army groups: the Bengal Army stationed in Delhi, the Bombay Army and the Madras Army, the last two being stationed in the towns bearing their names.
By 1857, these Indian Sepoys in the Bengal Army alone numbered some 150,000. At that stage there were some 23,000 White British troops in India - scattered all over the subcontinent, and therefore not present in any one area in numbers above 2000.
Sikh Resistance
From time to time certain Indian tribes resisted the slow British advance: in 1845, the Sikhs of Punjab, attacked isolated British outposts, inflicting heavy casualties but ultimately being defeated. Two years later they again attacked the British at Chilianwala, where they killed a large number of Sepoys and White officers. The Sikhs were however decisively beaten in 1849.
The Grease of Ammunition Packs
In January 1857, the rumor spread through the Sepoys in the Bengal army that the new ammunition issued to them had been packed in a grease which had been derived from cattle and pigs (there was apparently truth to this rumor). To open these packets under combat situations, the soldiers had to tear them open with their teeth - and this would contravene the religious dictates of the Hindus Muslims alike, to whom cattle and pigs were respectively sacred or not to be eaten.
The Devil's Wind
In May 1857, some 85 Sepoys were placed under arrest by their White officers for refusing to open their ammunition packs - this act of defiance soon spread to almost all the Sepoy Bengal army. Soon the White British officers had a fully fledged racial rebellion on their hands, made more serious by the fact that for once the Nonwhites were now armed with the latest White weaponry which included cannons they had seized from their barracks.
The Massacre of the Whites in Delhi
Quickly turning against their White officers, thousands of Sepoys launched an attack on the British army outposts in Delhi. Hundreds of White soldiers, their wives and children were killed in Delhi alone, often with the active assistance of formally loyal Indian servants. Within a day, all of Delhi was in the hands of the Sepoys, armed with their British issued guns.
The White British soldiers found themselves unable to rely on any of the Indian soldiers whom they had previously used as proxies to control India, and were besieged along with their families in a number of fortified emplacements around Delhi.
One British detachment took control of the ammunition dump inside the city, and only when they were about to be overwhelmed, did they blow it up - the explosion was felt 100 miles away and hundreds of Sepoys were killed in the blast. Through a careful withdrawal, the White British soldiers only lost three men in the blast, and the survivors managed to escape in the resultant confusion, to a British fort to the north of the city.
The Massacre of the Whites in Jhansi
The anti-White massacres and riots then spread throughout north central India over the following weeks, with the isolated White detachments being slaughtered in an uncompromising anti-White racial war. One of the most noted of such massacres was staged in the tiny kingdom of Jhansi in June 1857.
The territory of Jhansi had been annexed by the British four years earlier when the local king had died, and now his widow took her revenge: all the Whites in the kingdom were lined up in three rows and stabbed and clubbed to death, the women last of all so that they could watch their men and children being killed, with all the intricate details being dutifully recorded by the Jhansi themselves for posterity.
Cawnpore
Besides Delhi, the other two most important areas of rebellion were Cawnpore and Lucknow, both in the state of Oudh. In Cawnpore, some 1000 White British soldiers, their wives and children took refuge from the Nonwhite mobs in a fortified magazine in the city near the Ganges River, hoping to hold out for a relief column they had been promised from other British outposts.
The Nonwhites laid siege to the Cawnpore magazine for 20 days. Without any water, the defenders could not hold on, and on 25 June 1857, they surrendered. The survivors, now only numbering around 400, were promised safe conduct out of the city, and they were taken to the Ganges, where a number of boats had been drawn up to carry them away.
It was, however, a ruse: as soon as they reached the river the Sepoys opened fire on the remaining Whites: all but three of the men were killed and the survivors, which then included 73 White women and 124 White children, were taken prisoner by the Nonwhites and held in part of the buildings of the emplacement, known as the Bibighar.
All of a sudden, when the chance came to kill Whites, the Hindu and Muslim troops no longer had any objections to opening the grease smeared cartridges with their teeth.
Whites are murdered by Sepoy Indians, Cawnpore, 1857.
The Massacre of the White Women and Children at the Cawnpore Bibighar
On 15 July 1857, the three surviving White men were then dragged out and shot before a large crowd of Indians who had clambered onto the walls of the compound where the Whites were being held prisoner, to watch the spectacle. The Nonwhites then returned for the women: but even though many were desperately sick with disease, they struggled hard: the narration is taken up by Indian witnesses who were later captured by another British force :(Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny of 1857, Andrew Ward, John Murray, London, 1996).
"The double doors at the end of the courtyard were flung open again and the ladies ordered out. But they refused to move and tightened their grips on the verandah pillars and on each others arms and waists, trying to keep from crushing their weeping children underfoot . . . the Sepoys declared it impossible to separate them or drag them out of the building and backed out of the yard . . .
"Someone suggested that they secure the doors from the inside, and several women ran over and tearing strips of cloth from their gowns, frantically bound the door handles together. A few ladies raised their quaking voices in a hymn . . .
"Now the jemadar (senior Indian officer) ordered his men to stand outside the doors and windows on one side . . . at a signal from the jemadar, his men thrust the barrels of their muskets through the window shutters along the one wall . . .
"With a great cry the women and children tried to move across the courtyard to the far verandah and seek cover behind the pillars and the tree, but here was hardly any room. The courtyard was only sixteen feet wide, the verandah five feet and the long room ten feet, so most managed only to compress themselves up towards the opposite verandah, while the remainder, including some of the sick and orphaned children, crouched helplessly on the courtyard ground.
"Twenty Sepoys aimed their muskets into this wave of bodies and opened fire at point blank range. The first volley pared some of the foremost layer of women and children away, and may have wounded a few beyond. The Sepoys backed away from the smoking windows and a second squad moved in to take their places.
"By now many of the survivors of the two volleys had probably found cover in the sleeping rooms beyond the pillars . . .
"A little before sunset Sarvur Khan (one of the rebels) appeared . . . trailing four companions, each with a tulwar (scimitar) in his hand. Two of his recruits were aproned Moslem butchers; both tall, one dark, pockmarked and stout. The other two appeared to be of low caste . . .
"As they approached, the onlookers resumed their places along the compound wall. Inside, some of the women dragged the dead to one side and tried to tend to the wounded. A few soldiers' wives and daughters were determined to fight . . .
"Now they could hear the bolt sliding back . . . someone heaved against the doors and the cloth strips between the handles began to strain and break. The doors burst open and slapped against the walls.
"Stepping out from under the dark shadow of the mulsuri tree, the burra memsahib (the leading White woman) opened her mouth to speak. Sarvur Khan felled her with one stroke.
"Fearful shrieks rose from the courtyard . . . Closing the doors behind them, the five men fanned out and worked their way forward, slashing at the straggling wounded crawling along the floor.
"From behind a pillar Mrs. Jacobi suddenly lunged forward and knocked one of them down with one blow . . . his comrades came to his rescue. First they hung her daughter Lucy on a hook by her chin and then silenced her mother by cutting her throat.
"They knew that stabbing was inefficient, that hacking at their victim's necks would be the quickest way of accomplishing their mission. If the ladies protected their necks with their arms, then their arms would simply be severed as well; the effect was the same, they would bleed to death. Slashing right and left at all who were standing, chopping downward at the fallen with their heavy blades, the five proceeded methodically, spreading a pool of blood . . .
"Others tried to dodge the men's swords by ducking into the doorways and around the pillars, and so often did Sarvur Khan strike the walls that he broke two swords and twice emerged to fetch new weapons from his fellows . . .
"Though the shutters of the doors and window remained open, none of the women or children tried to escape out of the building, surrounded as it was by Sepoys and Indian onlookers.
"The few defiant boys were cut down quickly, as was every child who tried to make a run for it through the phalanx of swordsmen. Mothers kept pulling their children close to them and pushing them back into the corners of the building, and in the sweltering heat and the crush of bodies, children suffocated to death under their dying mothers' skirts.
"It took something less than an hour for the chorus of wailing to die away to a few individual voices, and even these were stilled. Mrs. Probett may have died in a counterattack . . . for her body . . . like Mrs. Jacobi's . . . was left that evening tied to a pillar. . ."
The Well of Bibighar
By the morning of 16 July 1857, news of the previous day's massacre had spread through the entire city of Indians: thousands assembled to view the carnage. The eyewitness account continues:
"Around eight in the morning the crowd parted to make way for a burial party of scavengers . . . by now they were masters of this sort of thing . . . (they) had already amassed a small fortune from the plunder and disposal of English bodies at Sati Chowra and Savada House (where the White men of Cawnpore had been executed) . . .
"But . . . the mission today was unusual: the bodies were not to be dumped into the Ganges this time but down an irrigation well some forty feet south of the Bibighar. The cavity of the well was nine feet wide and fifty feet deep, three steps led up to the rim . . .
"The veteran scavengers set to work, dragging the uppermost bodies out . . . but suddenly, stepping into one of the sleeping chambers, (they) made an alarming discovery: three or four of the ladies and perhaps as many children sitting huddled in the shadows, still alive after a night of lying on the floor saturated with the blood of their late friends and companions and surrounded by their mangled bodies.
"The burial squad backed away . . . and hurried off to the Old Cawnpore hotel (headquarters of the rebels) for further instructions . . .
"(When they) returned, two of the women rushed passed, stumbling over the low sill of a side window and running into the yard . . . they lunged straight to the lip of the well and jumped in, one after the other, falling some fifty feet to the bottom.
"The children, all aged between five and six years, followed the women out into the courtyard but only ran around the well . . . where else could they go? . . . At first they were chased but the shrieking children eluded them . . .they decided to let the children run themselves out while they went about their business. . .
". . . (T)hey brought out the bodies of the dead and near dead, grabbing many of them by the hair and dragging them through the grass. Those whose clothes were worth taking were stripped before they were rolled over the rim (of the well) . . .
"Several severely wounded women were still breathing when they were dragged out. Three could even speak . . .
"As the burial party continued to drag corpse after corpse through the bloody grass and dump them into the depths of the well, it became obvious that at this rate not all the dead were going to fit in. So they went to work, severing with their swords the stiffening limbs of the dead and tucking them into the interstices of the half choked well. . .
"At last came the time to dispose of the children . . . the children kept running round until they at last were caught and flung alive into the well . . ." (Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny of 1857, Andrew Ward, John Murray, London, 1996).
Lucknow
At Lucknow, the White British troops were similarly besieged, but had taken great care in the drawing up their provisions, and were able to hold out for four months until they were relieved by a British force from the south.
White Revenge
The British had in the interim recovered from the shock of the speed of events, and although they did not yet know of the events at Cawnpore, they drew together a small but powerful column and raced north to relieve what they still thought were the various British encampments holding out: they relieved Lucknow, but what they found at Cawnpore caused their hardest soldiers to break down and weep, particularly when messages scrawled in blood were found on the walls of the Bibighar, scribbled by the dying victims as last messages to their loved ones.
By June 1858, the last of the Sepoy rebels had been captured, and a terrible revenge exacted upon hundreds of them: although none were put to death as cruelly as they had killed the White women and children, in many cases a public display of their execution was made. While the majority were shot by firing squad, a fair number were strapped to the barrel ends of cannons and blown to pieces in the open.
The British execute captured Sepoys by tying them to the ends of cannons and blowing them to pieces.
The British covered up the well at Bibighar and erected a mausoleum on the spot, which still stands to this day.
The memorial over the well at Bibighar, built by the British.
The major result of the Sepoy Mutiny was that the British Parliament in 1858, enacted legislation, termed the Act for the Better Government of India, which transferred the administration of India from the East India Company to the British government. In 1876, Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India.
Political Ferment
Despite the improvements in the infrastructure, the vast masses of Indians remained destitute, as they had been since the time that the Indo-Aryans had first encountered them 3500 years previously. This poverty combined with a lingering hatred of the Whites and White colonial rule, led to the growth of an Indian nationalist movement which, by the end of the 19th century, had started using terrorist attacks on Whites in India as a means of exerting political pressure on the British to leave.
The British reacted with a series of repressive laws which only served to alienate even more Indians, and then finally tried to introduce some measure of local government with the 1909 Indian Councils Act. This did however not alleviate any of the growing political problems which where increased by the emergence of a militant Muslim faction prior to the First World War.
The Amritsar Massacre
A wave of riots spread through India, causing the British to suspend all civil rights in a series of laws known as the Rowlatt Acts which provided for martial law in areas disturbed by the riots. A large protest by Indians turned violent in Amritsar, Punjab in April 1919, causing a local military unit, under the command of British officers, to open fire: over 400 casualties were inflicted and the Amritsar massacre became a rallying point for the Indian nationalist movement.
Independence
India was finally to achieve complete independence in 1949, splitting into a Hindu and a Muslim state - both of which barely qualify as Second World countries, even though in small areas, the ancient Indo-Aryan, and later European, influence still lingers.
Large numbers of nationals from both these states emigrated to Britain and North America, the consequences of which are discussed in the ultimate chapter of this book.
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