As I grew up, it came as a shock to learn that this outlook on British India was not universally shared. I remember being appalled that one of my fellow undergraduates at university suggested, in all seriousness, that 1947 should go down as one of the greatest years in world history because the Indians had finally got rid of the British. The British India I was familiar with was a place for heroes. Heroes more than heroines, admittedly, but there was some room for valiant ladies. One such would be the indomitable Lady Sale, who survived captivity at the hands of the Afghans in the ill-fated war of 1839-42 war, when an entire British column was wiped out during their retreat from Kabul. The heroes were also mainly British but, again, natives were not to be entirely excluded, loyal sepoys (soldiers of the British-led Indian Army) and, of course, Gurkhas were accorded some space in the pantheon. The first historical memoir I ever read was called From Sepoy to Subedar by Sita Ram. The author was a soldier in the Bengal Army of the British East India Company. He describes a life of adventure in a world that seemed as exotic and intoxicating as anything in fiction. The book’s final chapters deal with the ‘wind of madness’ that swept across India in 1857-8, when sections of the Bengal Army in which Sita Ram served, mutinied against British rule. The author was by this stage an old campaigner who had seen action all over India. Like many Indians, he remained loyal to the British and played his part in crushing what became a brutal rebellion. 1 Generally, however, heroes of age were cut from the same cloth: they were male and they were British. Among these was an Anglo-Irishman named John Nicholson. If I were writing this article one hundred years ago, he would require no further introduction. As an imperial hero he was an household name, famed for his exploits and celebrated in books, paintings and statues across the empire. He had served in the Indian Army in wars against the Afghans and Sikhs and had operated as a highly effective agent of British rule in the notoriously wild North-West Frontier region. His role in the suppression of the Great Rebellion of 1857-8 catapulted him to even greater fame. Nicholson led the force that was to recapture Delhi from the mutineers and organised the siege. In true Nelsonian tradition, he died at the point of his greatest triumph, leading a bloody but successful British assault at the at the Kashmir Gate, which was to lead to the eventual capture of the city.
When I was in Delhi, I visited Nicholson’s grave. It is to be found by a busy traffic junction near the site where he had been mortally wounded. At the entrance to an utterly forsaken cemetery, an elderly Indian stood up to show me in. He wore what looked like an old army khaki jersey that had seen better days. “Nicholson?” he asked as I approached. The graveyard was an untidy, overgrown ruin; the once-grand Victorian headstones were standing at angles or not standing at all. I had been warned that snakes infested the long grass and so picked my way carefully towards Nicholson’s final resting place. And there it was, an inscribed slab of stone. My guide shuffled onto the grave, dutifully swept some dead leaves from the surface and, feeling he had done enough to earn a few rupees, allowed me to take photographs. I asked when he had last had a visitor. He shrugged, “Many weeks ago now, perhaps a month or two”. Here was an almost forgotten piece of history in a forgotten
The ‘Hero of Delhi’ John Nicholson. British hero?
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