Click to play videoVellore: It was a mutiny that never figured in any history book, but was an important landmark in India's struggle for independence. It was the first mutiny during the Raj, 51 years before the more celebrated Sepoy Mutiny of 1857
The Indian sepoys in Vellore Fort rose in a bloody revolt against the East India Company's garrison on July 10 1806 at 0300 hrs in the morning. In the massacre that followed, 350 Indian sepoys were killed. In no sepoy revolt till then had so many Indian soldiers lost their lives.
Professor Manikumar, who's writing a book on the Mutiny in Vellore, says that like the 1857 mutiny, this too was a protest against loss of religion.
"Sepoys exerted tremendous influence in the society. So everybody wanted to become sepoys. But when they became sepoys in the British army, they were frustrated. Added to this was the rumour that the leather in the newly introduced hat was made of the skin of a hog," K A Manikumar says.
The Vellore sepoys were passionate about their cultural identity. So in a way, were the other soldiers who were housed in this prison in modern India. The fort was turned into a special camp of the Central Prison, and LTTE prisoners.
In 1995, however, 43 LTTE prisoners dug a 153-foot-long tunnel under the fort and escaped. Soon after, the special fort prison was closed. Tipu Mahal is now part of a Police Training College, which means everyone is barred entry.
The gates have been shut for more than two decades. No one is allowed access to the Mahal where the mutiny started exactly 200 years ago. Because it is also the place where the embarrassing jailbreak happened.
What was once a symbol of nationalistic pride is now a fort of shame. Even today's history books have forgotten it. The revolt of 1806 might not have been as effective or widespread as the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, but it still was the first major military revolt against the British in India.
But historians say the Vellore revolt finds its importance walled in by north Indian bias in nationalist writing.
"South India has always been seen as an exception for broad historical process. Events like the anti-India agitation, the struggle for state autonomy in Tamil Nadu, massive social reform championed by Periyar. All these tended to reinforce this kind of willful forgetting of certain major events," Associate professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies, A R Venkatachalapthy says.
Meanwhile, the memories are fragments now and a fragment of respect for this freedom struggle now lives on in the stamp released to commemorate 200 years since the Revolt of 1806.
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