A London-based historian is keen to send back a skull of Alum Bheg, a soldier who was blown to pieces by the British during the 1857 uprising. Senior lecturer in British imperial history at Queen Mary, University of London, Kim A Wagner was given the skull by the family that took over Kent pub, The Lord Clyde. The artifact had been at the pub for quite some years, along with a 170-word note that identified the skull as being of Alum Bheg's, a havaldar of the Bengal Native Infantry.
Wagner researched and found that Bheg was one of the many unknown soldiers who died during the uprising, and a blast with a cannon in Sialkot, when the unit was stationed there. The research was published in November last year in the book The Skill of Alum Bheg: The Life and Death of a Rebel of 1857.
“My main aim with writing the book was to tell the world about the existence of Alum Bheg because nobody knows about him and also ultimately to repatriate him to India. But that is quite a long and elaborate legal process. The book is an invitation to Indian authorities. He died in Sialkot in today’s Pakistan, but he is most probably from Kanpur. In any case, there is not much interest in the 1857 uprising in Pakistan. He was a Muslim and probably doesn’t fit the Indian narrative, identified more with Mangal Pandey, but I am keen for it not to be politicised.”
Bheg was probably involved in the killing of British individuals based in Sialkot, as the note along the skull suggests. The 46th Bengal Infantry Regiment had revolted on July 9, 1857 at Sialkot’s military cantonment. “Despite the considerable historiography devoted to the Indian uprising, the outbreak at Sialkot has not attracted any real attention, from either British or Indian scholars, and is only mentioned in the most cursory fashion, if at all,” Wagner said.
