There is a historiographical silence about the role of the Punjab during the War of Independence. Historians have generally employed the elite approach or the 'top-down approach' while writing the history of the war. Since the elite, including the rajas, feudal lords, and nawabs had collaborated with the British, historians generalized their participation to that of the entire population of the province. A top-down approach inevitably emphasizes the role of the elite and neglects the role of the masses. So the role and response of the people of the Punjab during the War of Independence 1857-8 requires a thorough re-appraisal, which this book intends on doing. The central argument of this study is that resistance to the British in the Punjab during 1857-8 has been under-emphasized in historical works and the role of the common people or the masses in the Punjab, who resisted the Raj, has not been adequately highlighted in the historiography of the colonial era. Therefore, the present study is an attempt to bring the role of the Punjabi masses to the forefront, along with that of the elite, in order to present a complete picture of the role of the Punjab in War of Independence. This book also helps in understanding the role of the landed elite in contemporary politics of Pakistan, especially in the Punjab and NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as it was a part of the Punjab in 1857) because the families who collaborated with the British during the war, are still playing an important role in the politics of Pakistan.

WINNER OF THE DUFF COOPER MEMORIAL PRIZE | LONGLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 'Indispensable reading on both India and the Empire' Daily Telegraph 'Brims with life, colour and complexity . . . outstanding' Evening Standard 'A compulsively readable masterpiece' Brian Urquhart, The New York Review of Books A stunning and bloody history of nineteenth-century India and the reign of the Last Mughal. In May 1857 India's flourishing capital became the centre of the bloodiest rebellion the British Empire had ever faced. Once a city of cultural brilliance and learning, Delhi was reduced to a battered, empty ruin, and its ruler – Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last of the Great Mughals – was thrown into exile. The Siege of Delhi was the Raj's Stalingrad: a fight to the death between two powers, neither of whom could retreat. The Last Mughal tells the story of the doomed Mughal capital, its tragic destruction, and the individuals caught up in one of the most terrible upheavals in history, as an army mutiny was transformed into the largest anti-colonial uprising to take place anywhere in the world in the entire course of the nineteenth century.

In 1963, a human skull was discovered in a pub in Kent in south-east England. A brief handwritten note stuck inside the cavity revealed it to be that of Alum Bheg, an Indian soldier in British service who was executed during the aftermath of the 1857 Uprising, or The Indian Mutiny as historians of an earlier era described it. Alum Bheg was blown from a cannon for having allegedly murdered British civilians, and his head was brought back as a grisly war-trophy by an Irish officer present at his execution. The skull is a troublesome relic of both anti- colonial violence and the brutality and spectacle of British retribution. Kim Wagner presents an intimate and vivid account of life and death in British India in the throes of the largest rebellion of the nineteenth century. Fugitive rebels spent months, even years, hiding in the vastness of the Himalayas before they were eventually hunted down and punished by a vengeful colonial state. Examining the colonial practice of collecting and exhibiting human remains, this book offers a critical assessment of British imperialism that speaks to contemporary debates about the legacies of Empire and the myth of the 'Mutiny'.

An important document in the social history of India, this volume presents the autobiography of a Punjabi family over the three tumultuous generations that spanned years from the Mutiny to Independence. The book provides an absorbing view, from within, of what British rule meant for the educated elite of the province. In its descriptions of the changing customs and values of the educated Indian in the early twentieth century, the book affords a memorable account of a critical period in modern Indian history.

A forensic look into the Sepoy rebellion at Meerut in 1857 and the three-month siege and capture of Delhi which followed.