Alam Beg, martyer of sepoy Mutiny, wants to return home

Alam Beg, martyer of sepoy Mutiny, wants to return home

Context

Headhunting is usually associated with primitive tribes and contemporary terrorists, but the colonial rulers of India also collected heads of Indian soldiers as war trophies

Significance

• A proof: A 160-year-old skull of sepoy Alam Beg, now in the possession of a historian in London, is proof that colonial rulers who brought many modern practices to India were also at times inhuman

Who was Alam Beg?

1. In 1857, Alam Beg, also known as Alum Bheg, was a soldier with the 46th Bengal Native Infantry, an arm of the East India Company
2. The Mutiny that year, after having covered the north Indian heartland, spread to Sialkot (now in Pakistan), where Alam Beg and his companions tried to follow their fellow soldiers and attacked the Europeans posted there
3. On July 9, 1857, they killed seven Europeans, including an entire Scottish family
4. Alam Beg, along with his comrades, left Sialkot and trekked all the way to the Tibetan frontier only to be turned away by the guards on the Tibetan side. He was reportedly arrested from Madhopur, a scenic town on the northern part of the Indian Punjab and taken back to Sialkot
5. A year later, he was tried for the brutal killing of the Scottish family and blown up from the mouth of a cannon