tantya tope

Ramachandra Pandurang Tope (1814 - 18 April 1859), also known as Tatya Tope (pronounced Toh-pey), was an Indian leader in the First War of Indian Independence of 1857. He was a personal adherent of Nana Sahib of Kanpur. He progressed with the Gwalior contingent after the British reoccupation of Kanpur and forced General Windham to retreat from Kanpur. Later on, he came to the rescue of Rani Laxmi Bai. However he was defeated by General Napier's troops and was executed by the British Government at Shivpuri on 18th April 1859.

Born in village Yeola in Maharashtra, he was the only son of Pandurang Rao Tope and his wife Rukhmabai, an important noble at the court of the Maratha Peshwa Baji Rao II. His father shifted his family with the Peshwa to Bithur where his son became the most intimate friend of the Peshwa's adopted son, Nana Dhondu Pant (known as Nana Sahib) and Maharaja Madhav Singhji.

In 1851, when Lord Dalhousie deprived Nana Sahib of his father's pension, Tatya Tope also became a sworn enemy of the British. In May 1857, when the political storm was gaining momentum, he won over the Indian troops of the East India Company, stationed at Kanpur (Cawnpore), established Nana Sahib's authority and became the Commander-in-Chief of his forces.

When Nana Sahib's forces attacked the British entrenchment in June, 1857, General Wheeler's contingent incurred heavy losses as a result of successive bombardments, sniper fire, and assault. Also slow supplies of food, water and medicine added to their misery and they decided to surrender, in return for a safe passage to Allahabad. But despite Nana Sahib's arrangements, some confusion at the Satichaura ghat led to attacks on the departing British by the rebel sepoys, and were either killed or captured.The surviving British women and children were moved from the Savada House to Bibighar ("the House of the Ladies"), a villa-type house in Kanpur. Retaliation occurred as Company forces started approaching Kanpur, and Nana Sahib's bargaining attempts had failed(in exchange for hostages). Nana Sahib was informed that the British troops led by Havelock and Neill were indulging in violence against the Indian villagers.Nana Sahib, and his associates, including Tatya Tope and Azimullah Khan, debated about what to do with the captives at Bibighar. Some of Nana Sahib's advisors had already decided to kill the captives at Bibighar, as revenge for the murders of Indians by the advancing British forces. The details of the incident, such as who ordered the massacre, are not clear.

After losing Gwalior to the British, Tope launched a successful guerrilla campaign in the Sagar and Narmada regions and in Khandesh and Rajasthan.

But the day after his hanging, 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"), it editorially eulogized* Topi with the gusto of victor catching, perhaps, the foreshadow of Indian resistance awaiting in generations still to come.

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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.

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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 TOPE ' 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.

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Tnti Top was a marvellous guerilla warrior. In pursuit of him, Brigadier Parke had marched, consecutively, 240 miles in nine days; Brigadier Somerset, 230 in nine days, and, again, seventy miles in forty-eight hours; Colonel Holmes, through a sandy desert, fifty-four miles in little over twenty-four hours; Brigadier Honner, 145 miles in four days. Yet he slipped through them all--through enemies watching every issue of the jungles in which he lay concealed, only to fall at last through the treachery of a trusted friend. His capture, and the surrender of Mn Singh, finished the war in Central India. Thenceforth his name only survived