Sah Mal
Raja Shahmal Singh Tomar (also known as Shah Mal) (1797 — 18 July 1857) born in a Hindu Jat family in Bijrol village was a rebel at the time of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, based out of the village of Baraut, Uttar Pradesh.[1][2]: 209 He led the people of Baraut in rebellion against the East India Company.[3]
His clan had kinship connections across 84 villages, in a region which was fertile and prosperous due to irrigated, rich loam soil. However, the British land revenue system caused immense hardship because of its high and rigid tax demands, which led many cultivators to lose their land to traders and moneylenders from outside the area. The resentful villagers were gathered by Shah Mal who rose against the British under his leadership.[4]
The revolt went out of control when the rebels rose up against all signs of oppression. They plundered the houses of moneylenders and traders and the rebels who had been displaced from their lands seized lands from them. The rebel forces attacked government buildings, destroyed a bridge, dug up metalled roads, to destroy the signs of the British authority as well as to cut off British communication.[4]
In June 1857, Sah Mal Singh seized 500 head of cattle, and collected escaped convicts and other locals and formed a force. On 18 July, British forces came under attack as they approached the village of Baraut. A group of fighters led by Sah Mal took up positions in a nearby orchard, and came under pressed attack by a Rifles unit. The formation broke, and were attacked on the flank by mounted troops. Hand-to-hand combat ensued, during which Sah Mal attained martyrdom.[5]
References
[edit]- ↑ Crispin Bates; Senior Lecturer Modern South Asian History Centre for South Asian Sudies Crispin Bates (16 September 2013). Subalterns and Raj: South Asia Since 1600. Routledge. p. 76. ISBN 978-1-134-51375-8.
- ↑ District Gazetteers of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. 1904.
- ↑ Henry George Keene (1883). Fifty-Seven: Some Account of the Administration in Indian Districts During the Revolt of the punjab Airforce. W.H. Allen. pp. 29–.
- 1 2 "SATHEE CUET: Chapter 10 Rebels and the Raj: The Revolt of 1857 and Its Representations". sathee.iitk.ac.in. Retrieved 4 June 2026.
- ↑ District Gazetteers of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. 1904. pp. 178–.
Further reading
[edit]- Bhadra, Gautam (1988). "Four Rebels of Eighteen-Fifty-Seven". In Guha, Ranajit; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (eds.). Selected Subaltern Studies. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 130–145. ISBN 978-0-19-505289-3.
- Stokes, Eric (1986). Bayly, C. A. (ed.). The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 161–165, 168. ISBN 978-0-19-821570-7.