It is just by
chance that one of my classmates in Engineering posted a small piece on the
Battle of Saragarhi along with a song that goes “Mitti Me Mil Java” which I am
posting below.
When I read
that piece, my feeling is one of guilt and also of awe. How can I not know
about this scintillating piece of unbelievable valour? I then read about the
battle and what my reading revealed fascinated me and also made me sad.
Such battles
should go into our history books and each child should know about it. Both the
Indian and the British armies celebrate 12th September as a day of
valour in commemoration of the battle.
The battle of
Saragarhi was fought with tremendous odds of one side. I don’t think there is
any other battle in the history of the world which was so unequal. So what was
the background for the battle and how did it come about?
The battle
took place in Sep 12, 1897. The British were in complete control of India by
then, but their hold on the North West Frontier Province peopled by Pashtuns
was somewhat tenuous. The 36th Sikh Regiment was created by the
British in 1887 under the command of Colonel J.Cook. The regiment comprised
fully of Jat Sikhs and it was deployed in the NWFP to fight the rebellious Pashtuns.
The Amir of
NWFP conceded to the British but the people would have none of that and there
were rebellions. The British to control the people of NWFP used the Forts built
by Maharaja Ranjit Singh and stationed soldiers there. Two such were Fort
Lockhart and Fort Gulistan in the Hindu Kush Mountains. These 2 forts were
located at a distance of about 5 Km. from one another. As the terrain and the
ridges blocked the line of sight between the 2 forts, another small
intermediary fort was established at Saragarhi at a height as a communications
out post. It lay roughly in between the 2 forts. This was used as a
heliographic communications post and used to rays from the Sun to transmit
messages between the 2 forts.
The number of
soldiers defending that outpost was just 21 led by Havildar Ishar Singh of the
36th Sikh Regiment. . A general uprising of the Afghans began in
1897 and many vigorous efforts by the Pashtuns to capture the forts were beaten
back by the Sikh Regiment.
Then on as a
part of the uprising, to take the 2 forts it was decided by the Pashtuns to
take the fort of Saragarhi to cut the communications between the 2 forts. A
Pashtun army of no less than 10,000 soldiers attacked Saragarhi on Sep 12, 1897
while it only had 21 soldiers to defend it.
So the odds of
the battle were 500 to 1 there. Despite that and despite inducements offered to
the Sikh soldiers by the Pashtun army to surrender, none did so, and in an
extreme act of bravery each of the 21 soldiers fought to death, both with guns initially
and also in hand to hand combat with ultimate bravery when the fort walls were
breached. They held the fort for 7 hours under extreme odds.
When the fort
walls were breached Havildar Ishar Singh himself delayed the British attack by
confronting and fighting with them while his soldiers moved into the inner
layer.
It was a
miserable failure of the British army that they failed to send reinforcements to
these troops in time. Sepoy Gurmukh Singh signalled the commencement of the
battle to Colonel Haughton at Fort Lockhart. He was the last surviving member
of the soldiers and is considered to have killed 40 enemy soldiers himself.
The relief
party came in only 2 days later and the Fort of Saragarhi was taken back by intense
artillery fire. The Pashtuns themselves admitted that about 300 of their men
were killed and hundreds wounded before the fort could be taken by them. When
the relief party entered into the fort after the artillery barrage they found
600 Pashtun bodies lying around in the fort. Of course 200-300 of the must have
perished in the intense artillery barrage.
All the 21 Sikh
soldiers who died in the battle were awarded the “Indian Order of Merit” at that
time the highest gallantry award an Indian soldier can receive.
The following is the link for the song Mitte me Mil Java from the film Kesari which commemorates the battle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tionpZAVPd4
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