Tatya Tope means ideal leadership on battle field ! ‘To know the core –principle of freedom fight of 1857, we need to understand one aspect of Tatya Tope’s life with minute details. After we lost this battle, Tatya Tope was fighting it for following ten months like a guerilla war, feinting, parrying, with sudden raids, he harried the British army. Sometimes he used to come in the range of enemy attack and his army also used to get routed. Tatya Tope used to slip away from there and go to another place and launch new army. Tatya Tope could launch new army whenever and wherever he wanted. This was because people were so displeased with the British and wanted freedom so badly that he could raise army of men who were ready to kill and die. It is also true that people had full faith in Tatya’s ability to fight war. People knew that this man would fight till his last breath with all his might. Tatya Tope means ideal leadership on the battle field !’ But the day after the London Times published its report of the popular hero’s hanging (“a great scramble was made by officers and others to get a lock of hair, &c”), it editorially eulogized* Topi with the gusto of victor catching, perhaps, the foreshadow of Indian resistance awaiting in generations still to come. He raised armies as fast as we could disperse them, took up one position after another to our infinite annoyance, and led us a chace which, despite of unexampled efforts on the part of our soldiers, seemed to be really endless. Our troops pursued him without intermission, contrived more than once to surprise him, repeatedly captured his artillery and scattered his troops, but could never deprive him entirely of followers or guns. He seemed to summon forces from the earth as if by magic. As the pursuit grew hotter and hotter he mounted his men on ponies and camels, and marched, it is said, at the average rate of 60 miles a-day. Wherever we found him he had always cavalry and guns, and these he posted with remarkable skill. … Be it remembered that for half a century we had been training soldiers, and that in Bengal alone there were 150,000 natives under arms when this revolt broke out. Now, in all this enormous host there was not a single man who, when the bonds of allegiance and discipline were abruptly removed, displayed the intuitive capacities of a military commander. … The two years of the revolt, with all their opportunities, never produced one native General. … One man alone reproduced the old Indian character, and that man was TANTIA TOPEE — an obscure civilian, without place or power. He, by the light of nature alone, discerned the strong points of the rebels’ position and our own weak points. By the exercise of that faculty with which heroes are gifted he could always, even in his most desperate straits, draw followers to his standard. … Nothing could more forcibly illustrate the reputation which this man had acquired than the fact that his fate has been attended with some regret … if he had not met his match in those opposed to him he might have founded a dynasty.
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 23:27:37 +0000
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