Kolkata: You may have seen some of the clippings in Shatranj Ke Khiladi. They are newspaper reports on the 1857 Mutiny diligently collected by one Briton, G C Urmston, 150 years ago. He cut out pieces from newspapers across the world, including The Times of India, and put them in a scrapbook. Satyajit Ray used this scrapbook extensively for his film. Now, as India celebrates 150 years of the first war of Independence, scholars are waking up to this rare treasure trove of impartial reporting on the Mutiny, some-thing so refreshingly different from East India Company records. One of the country's first antiquarians, Nirmal Chandra Kumar, bought the scrapbook at a Sotheby's auction in London in 1960. He had to fork out a princely £100 for it. It was from him that Ray borrowed the scrap-book for Shatranj Ke Khilari.
Aloke now owns the scrapbook, which contains hundreds of newspaper clippings on the uprising since it broke out in Barrack pore in April 1857 till the revolt was crushed the next year Not many knew such a treasure trove was around, but now Mutiny scholars across the world are contacting Aloke to look at the scrapbook.
University of Austin history Professor Robert Hardgrave wants to study the clippings, as does Sarah Smith of Oxford University. They have both written to Aloke and feel that this will help them take a relook at the Mutiny. "G C Urmston lived part of his life in this city and maintained interest in developments here even after he went back to England. He was 40 when the Mutiny broke out and it stirred him because he sympathised with the Indian cause on many issues — as is evident from the notes he scribbled throughout the scrapbook," said Aloke. While official British records condemn the Mutiny, newspapers across the world did not think so. A clipping from an Austrian newspaper clearly identifies with the spirit of the up-rising and how deeply religious sentiments were hurt over animal fat in cartridges covering bullets.
Mutiny scrapbook a treasure trove.
Kolkata: Many of the clippings in Nirmal Chandra Kumar's Mutiny scrapbook praise the ingenious methods adopted by the sepoy, like spreading messages from one part of the country to another by scribbling notes on chapattis.
Other than the TOI, the scrapbook has material from The London Gazette, St James Chronicle, The Age (Australia), Cellesche Zeitung (Germany), Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung (Germany), Wiener Zeitung (Austria), Lahore Chronicle and Friend of India. TNN
Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey I TNN