1857 in Bihar and Veer Kunwar Singh: Exam Notes

Bihar's part in the revolt of 1857 is remembered through one man. Babu Veer Kunwar Singh, the zamindar of Jagdishpur in Shahabad district, was about eighty years old when he took command of the mutinous sepoys, held western Bihar against the Company's columns for months, marched across north India with the other leaders of the revolt, came back to his own district and died there a few days after his last victory. BPSC, BSSC and Bihar Police papers ask the chapter as a short chain of dates and names, and almost every question touches Kunwar Singh.

Bihar on the eve of the revolt

The province had already seen resistance. The Santhal rebellion of 1855 and 1856, led by the brothers Sido and Kanhu, had been put down only a year before, and it left the hill districts disturbed. Bihar was then part of the Bengal Presidency, with a Commissioner at Patna, William Tayler, who became the central British figure of 1857 in the province. The old landholding families of Shahabad had lost ground under Company revenue policy, and Kunwar Singh himself was in debt to the Company's courts, a grievance historians count among his reasons for joining.

Danapur, Arrah and the first campaign

The rising in Bihar began in the cantonment. On 25 July 1857 the three regiments of Indian sepoys at Danapur near Patna mutinied, crossed the Son and reached Arrah, where Kunwar Singh took their command. From 27 July the small British and Sikh garrison was besieged for about a week in a fortified house at Arrah, the building defended by the engineer Vicars Boyle and the magistrate Herwald Wake. A first relief column was ambushed, but a second under Major Vincent Eyre defeated Kunwar Singh at Bibiganj in early August, relieved Arrah and then destroyed Jagdishpur, so the rebel leader took to the field outside his district.

The long march and the last victory

Driven out of Shahabad, Kunwar Singh went north and west and fought alongside the other commanders of the revolt, moving through Lucknow, Kanpur, Rewa, Banda and Kalpi and acting with Nana Saheb and Tatya Tope. In the spring of 1858 he turned back towards Bihar. Tradition remembers the crossing of the Ganga near Shivpur ghat, where a bullet struck his arm and he is said to have cut it off himself and offered it to the river. On 23 April 1858 he defeated Captain Le Grand in the forest at Jagdishpur and entered his own capital again, but he was wounded and died there on 26 April 1858. His brother Amar Singh carried on the fight for several months with Nishan Singh and Hare Krishna Singh among his companions, and was the last rebel leader of the province to be hunted down.

Patna, Tirhut and the men who were hanged

Outside Shahabad the revolt showed itself in the towns. At Patna Pir Ali Khan, a bookseller whose shop was a meeting place of the rebels, led the rising of 3 July 1857 and was hanged on Tayler's orders with a number of others; he is remembered as the martyr of Patna. In Tirhut Waris Ali, a police officer at Muzaffarpur, was arrested for corresponding with the rebels and hanged. Gaya, Bhagalpur and Purnia saw disturbances, and the sepoys of several stations deserted, but no second centre of the strength of Jagdishpur appeared.

How Bihar remembers him

Kunwar Singh's name is attached to much of public life in the state. A postage stamp was issued in his honour in 1966, the university at Arrah carries his name, the road and rail bridge over the Ganga at Arrah is named after him, and 23 April, the date of his last victory, is marked as Vijayotsav. For the exam, remember that he belonged to the Ujjainiya Rajput house of Jagdishpur, that his district Shahabad is today divided and Jagdishpur falls in Bhojpur, and that he was the oldest of the leaders of 1857.