1857: The Real Story Of The Great Uprising

By Vishnu Bhatt Godshe Versaikar

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, when the East India Company had consolidated its hold over the Indian subcontinent, a Chitpavan Brahmin by the name of Vishnu Bhatt GodsheVersaikar decided to cross the Vindhya mountains with his aged uncle to earn some money. What he had not foreseen was how his trip would coincide with the historic Sepoy Mutiny and play havoc with their travel plans. This is a unique first-person, eyewitness account of their picaresque journey, recorded several years after their return home. This is also perhaps the only documentation of a momentous event in the history of India by an impoverished but learned young beggar-priest. In this gripping yet sensitive translation, Mrinal Pande brings to life for today's reader the account of Vishnu Bhatt's adventures, and the fascinating history of its publication.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperPerennial
• Release date: Jul 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9789350294772

Vishnu Bhatt Godshe Versaikar

Vishnu Bhatt Godshe Versaikar, a Chitpavan Brahmin of theShandilya gotra, was born to Balakrishna Bhatt and Radha Bai ofVersai village in 1827. He was the eldest of three brothers and a sister.According to local lore, he was married at the age of twenty-one andsired six children - three sons and three daughters. He travelled acrossthe Indo-Gangetic plains between 1856 and 1859. But due to a fear ofreprisals by the British, he wrote of his travels twenty-four years laterand gave the manuscript for safekeeping to a friend. As per his wish,this book was published in 1907, four years after his death in 1903. Mrinal Pande was born in 1946 in Tikamgarh to the well-knownHindi author Shivani and educationist Shukdeo Pant. She has taughtat the universities of Allahabad, Delhi and Bhopal, edited the Hindiperiodicals Vama and Saptahik Hindustan and worked as editor/anchor for Star News and Doordarshan. In 2000, she became India'sfirst woman chief editor of a multi-edition Hindi daily, Hindustan.She has also been the secretary general of the Editors' Guild of Indiaand was the founder president of the Indian Women's Press Corps.After her retirement in 2009, she was appointed chairperson of India'snational broadcaster, Prasar Bharati.Mrinal writes in both Hindi and English. Her work includesfi ction, plays and essays on contemporary India and its women. Shewas awarded the Padmashree in 2006 for her services in the fieldof journalism. She lives in Delhi with her husband and has twodaughters.

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1

The Beginning

Iwas born in the Saka year 1749 (AD 1827), in the monsoon month of Shravana, in a Brahmin family in a farming village known as Versai. This village is in the Pein taluka in the district of Alibagh and is located on the banks of a river that flows along a hill. It has an ancient Shiva temple and is well known as a village of learned Brahmin pandits, most of whom belong to the Chitpavan sect. We earn a living by putting our traditional learning to use by performing various kinds of rituals for clients in the surrounding villages. Most of us must supplement the meagre income generated by this work with alms.

Ours is a family of Godshe Brahmins of the Shandilya gotra or sub-caste, specializing in the study of the Rigveda, and we are some of the oldest inhabitants of the village. My noble father’s name is Balakrishna and my dear mother is known as Radha Bai. I, Vishnu Bhatt, am their firstborn. I have two younger brothers, Hari Pant and Dhond Bhatt, and a sister, Krishna Bai. My father has two learned brothers, Keshav Bhatt and Ram Bhatt, but here, in the village, Father is the sole supporter of the household. Father used to work with Sardar Vinchurkar, a nobleman from the court of Srimant Baji Rao Peshwa. After the decline of the Peshwa empire of Pune, Sardar Vinchurkar decided to migrate up north to Bithur, in what we know as Hindustan. Father was still keen to continue serving the Srimant and was willing to migrate with him to Hindustan. Despite ill health, he accompanied Sardar Vinchurkar up to the river Narmada, but he had to abandon his plans and come back after he developed a high fever.

In the Saka year 1760 (AD 1838), Father decided that he would no longer work for a salary from a government; he would return instead to his ancestral village with his family and spend the rest of his life praying, meditating and living on whatever he could earn as a Brahmin. I was around ten years of age then. After we arrived in Versai, Father became fully involved in performing all the prescribed daily rituals and reading the scriptures. Given my father’s other-worldly temperament, our household income from rituals, even when supplemented by alms that we sought, remained minimal. We had a small patch of land in the village that helped us grow just enough paddy for our own consumption. But we lived, more or less, in perpetual penury. After my father’s brothers, my kakas, decided to move away and set up their own homes, things became even more difficult for us. Father now remained immersed in holy rituals all day and, as a result, the money that he and his brothers occasionally brought home by begging for alms became negligible and finally trickled to a stop.

Father’s daily rituals now included numerous baths, the sandhya (evening prayer) recitations, performing the Brahmayagna, followed by eleven recitals of the Rudra Path for Lord Shiva. He offered pooja to numerous other gods including our family deities, recited from the holy Bhagavat, and performed the sixteen prescribed rituals for Sri Baijnatheshwara, an incarnation of Lord Shiva. After lunch, he would again sit down to read the Vishnu Sookta and the eighth chapter of the Gita; then, around four, he went out to collect tulsi and bilva leaves for the evening offerings to the gods and, after a lengthy ritual that he performed in the holy shrine within the house, he had a frugal dinner and went to bed after pondering over the scriptures. Because he was extremely particular about maintaining this complex daily routine, unlike other householders in the village, he had no time left for worldly pursuits that would help support the family. We had to make do somehow with the meagre produce from the fields.

Father, when he was working with Sardar Vinchurkar, was renowned for his worldly skills such as bookkeeping and calligraphy in the old Modi script. He was then in charge of all of his employer’s accounts and was known for his skills in adding, subtracting and assessing the total interest payable to his employer against various loans he had given out. He taught me all these skills by and by. And once that was done, he began wondering if I, as the elder son, should not be sent to look for a suitable job on the basis of these skills. This would generate an income and support the family. He finally decided to consult his brothers.

One night, when one of my kakas, Keshav Bhatt, was over to see Father, they discussed the matter; together they decided that, given the current requirements of the market, it would be best if I trained as a priest. The family could get me apprenticed to some learned teacher and, in time, I would acquire all the right qualifications for performing formal priestly tasks for a good fee. Kaka said that in the villages nearby, there were at least twenty-five households which invited him and my other kaka to preside over and conduct various rituals through the year. Since he had no sons who would take over as family priests after him and given that poor Ram Bhatt Kaka’s wife was no more, it would be best if I were groomed as their successor. Thus I would inherit their clients and our income would be guaranteed and stable. Otherwise, once the Godshe brothers passed on, the clients would be left without a family guru, and that would be disastrous.

‘Just let me collect a few young students with whom Vishnu can initially be taught the basic scriptures,’ Kaka told Father. ‘It is best to train your son, if you have one, and get him to perform rituals for other respectable households and live by their offerings. Slaving for some quirky Peshwa or a ruler of a different caste and faith, only to earn some money, is never a good option.’

So the almanacs were consulted and, one fine day, when the stars were right, Keshav Bhatt Kaka started teaching me the various scriptures. Unfortunately, when my training was about to be completed, he passed away. This was the summer of the Saka year 1768 (AD 1846). Soon afterwards, Ram Bhatt Kaka also decided to migrate up north to the court of the Peshwa in Bithur, and he later married a girl from that area.

As the poet says, sometimes, after assessing your family, lineage, learning and other qualities, Penury, the daughter of the Fates, may suddenly select you as a life partner. This is what happened to us now. I had learnt the scriptures from Keshav Kaka, but was yet to be trained in the art of performing the yagnas (sacrificial fire rituals) properly, which was essential for bringing in the much needed money. After Keshav Kaka’s untimely death and Ram Kaka’s move north, Penury, having placed her wedding garland around my neck, followed me everywhere as my better half. Because I was half-trained and without a proper guide and mentor, all gates to earning were closed in my face one by one.

But I was not ready to give up so easily. I was young and headstrong and decided that Vinayak Shastri Joshi, who also lived in our village, would be the perfect guru for me. Not only did he know the scriptures, but he was also a good astrologer and an expert organizer of sacred yagnas. I went to him and recounted my tale of woes. I told him that after my kaka’s death, with my other kaka also gone to Bithur, there was no one left in my family to teach me how to perform the rituals correctly. I said I would be much obliged if he would apprentice me as a deserving but poor young Brahmin boy and help me master the Dharmashastra and the associated rituals. I knew that no one but a guru like him could help me do all this. I was aware that, at that point, the ageing Shastriji, who was losing his sight, might be keen to teach and train a younger priest to assist him. So I persisted, and when he saw how eager and sincere I was, he finally said yes, and thus my immediate problem was resolved.

Realizing my priorities, Shastriji decided to train me first for the kind of work that would generate some sort of regular income for my family. To this end, he began teaching me the basics of Sanskrit language and literature from books such as Roopavali, Samaschakra, Amarkosha and portions of kavya (poetics). After that, he came to the scriptures with Dharmashastra, which he taught me alongside Narayan Bhatt’s treatises on the volumes. I was fortunate that, as a guru, Shastriji was extremely generous and gave me the best kind of education. Ever since I grew up, I had been hedged in by dire poverty on all sides. Now, under my guru’s benign encouragement, I suddenly found my mind expanding. I responded to my guru’s efforts by working hard all through the day and most of the night. Muhurt Martanda, Nirnaya Sindhu, Prayoga Parijata and Smrityarthasara—I memorized all these in a short while. Since my guru had poor eyesight, I had to read all the books out loud to him so he could explain the various terms to me. Given his love and my own enthusiasm, we were able to go through all the major treatises in a short span of time. Shastriji also taught me how to consult the great almanacs, including the Muhurt Martanda, to decide upon the astrologically suitable timings for the performance of various rituals. Soon, I was able to demonstrate my skill so well in this particular area that I had clients from all over seeking me out.

Of the three of us brothers, Hari Pant had the best handwriting. He was also good at accounting. He first went to Thane to appear in the school exams, but when he failed to qualify, he took up a job at a moneylender’s in nearby Pein taluka at a salary of fifty rupees per month, besides free meals. His employer looked after him very well and soon came to trust him so much that Hari was given charge of handling all his accounts. Hari’s probity and intelligence were widely talked about and several people with marriageable girls approached Father with marriage proposals for him.

Dhond, the youngest among us, was a bright boy. He learnt all the eleven chapters of the Samhitas by rote and also studied some astrology and grammar. He began to write poetry while still quite young and earned some fame as a scholar. In the village, our family enjoyed a good reputation, and soon our family was flooded with many marriage proposals for all three of us. Father was understandably unwilling to marry us off while the family was struggling to make ends meet. It was only because rice was cheap in those days and other foodgrains were also relatively inexpensive that we managed to survive without incurring debts. But finally, he relented and the three of us were married one after another. At this point, we were forced to take loans to fund the traditional wedding festivities. The expenses on numerous house guests who came pouring in and stayed on for the next wedding, and the one after, were enormous and drove us deeper and deeper into debt.

The moneylenders knew of our straitened circumstances, but since they respected and trusted my father, they continued to loan us money and even waived off the customary signing of papers. Then, our only sister Krishna Bai also had to be married, and so we borrowed some more, after which the slide became uncontrollable.

We were a close-knit family and our shared poverty had brought us even closer together. People compared us to Lord Rama and his band of brothers. We fooled around, but never compared whether any of us had more than the others. Often, people were amused to see how, when we went to the river to bathe, we ate out of the same pots. We had heard that often young wives, when they enter the family, create rifts between brothers. But in our family, dissidence was swiftly tackled, and because our wives were well brought-up, they were also circumspect in their behaviour and did not try to drive a wedge between family members. So, at night, we brothers often sat together and pored over the figures and discussed various strategies for getting ourselves out of the debt trap.

In the Saka year 1778 (AD 1856), in the month of Magha, when the Shivaratri festival was close, I had to go to Pune to perform certain rituals for one of our clients. In Pune, I heard that the widow of the late Shinde ruler in Gwalior, the dowager queen Vaiza Bai Sahib, was planning to get the Sarvatomukha yagna performed in the holy north-western city of Mathura. Several learned Brahmins in Pune and Nagpur had received letters informing them that there was a budget of some seven to eight lakh rupees earmarked for the performing of this elaborate ritual. Since at that point worries about our family debt were foremost in my mind, I had begun to think of drastic measures. I felt that if I stayed at home, I would never be able to earn enough to repay the loans. So why should I not leave home and try my luck in distant lands? When I heard of the yagna in Mathura, I decided I must travel to Hindustan. It was true that I did not qualify as a full-fledged, learned senior priest, but I was confident that whatever little I had learnt was pure and precious since I had learnt it at the feet of a truly great guru. I had also found out that the kulguru (family priest) of the Peshwas in Gwalior was someone called Balakrishna Bhatt Vaishampayan. It so happened that Vaishampayan’s daughter was married into the family of Inamdar Karve, who lived in our village. Vaishampayan knew my father and held him in high regard. So I decided to seek his help to get myself invited to join the band of priests who were to perform the yagna for the dowager queen. Having made the decision, I began to ponder how to break the news to my wife, my brothers and my parents and get them to agree to my plan. As soon as I returned to Versai, I summoned Hari, the brother I was closest to, and confided in him. After a long and emotionally charged debate, I was able to convince him that risking a long journey to Hindustan in order to earn some money was not such a bad idea after all.

Then I got busy.

First, I sent a letter on my father’s behalf to Bhau Sahib Vaishampayan to find out the details of the aforementioned yagna. And when the reply came, I simply handed the letter to my father and left. He was struck dumb when he read it. He sent for me and chided me gently, asking why I had kept him in the dark about writing on his behalf to Bhau Vaishampayan. I replied: one, because he was a relative; and two, because Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, was smiling upon him. Also, since he was the head of the donations department in the treasury of a rich and eminent princely state, I had felt that in case Father wrote to him and he did not reply, it would hurt him. Father was satisfied with my explanation, but he was still in a state of shock. He argued that Hindustan was too far away, the roads were said to be no good, being full of all sorts of dangers, with deceitful bands of thugs roaming all around. He said he had heard that in Hindustan they imbibed all sorts of intoxicating drinks and their women were full of wiles and enticed innocent young men. He, therefore, could not allow his son to go there.

I felt let down, but there was no way I could leave without obtaining my father’s formal permission. Then a thought struck me. Vaishampayan’s relative, Inamdar Karve, had just received a letter from Gwalior about the Sarvatomukha ritual, detailing how some seven to eight lakh rupees had been budgeted for expenses. This letter also said that if Balakrishna Bhatt’s son, meaning myself, could come along with him, it would be both a happy family reunion and an occasion for the young man to earn some extra money as a member of the band of priests. The letter hinted that I would also thus be introduced to the extended family of migrant Brahmins from our side who had gone and settled in Hindustan.

I had Karve show that letter to my father, but when he remained unrelenting, I sought my uncle Ram Bhatt’s help. Having lost his wife, Ram Kaka had by now returned from Bithur and settled in Versai. And even though he lived apart, he was still as loving as always. Our fields, the family books and the fruit trees remained under a collective ownership, and though the brothers lived separately, there was no rancour between them. When I asked Ram Kaka to intercede on my behalf, he asked me to give him time to mull it over. I went back to him the next morning and, fortunately, my stars seemed well aligned this once. Kaka, after thinking things over, was himself amenable to revisiting Hindustan. He said that he too would like to contribute to repaying the enormous debt before he died. He felt he was getting on in years but that his son from his second marriage was a good-for-nothing from whom he could expect nothing by way of help. So he would be happy to accompany me to Hindustan if I promised to take care of him during our travels and to bring him back safe and sound. Travelling together like father and son, Kaka said, would be comfortable, and whatever we earned from performing various rituals for sundry clients, we could later split between us. Having worked and lived in Bithur for several years, Kaka knew many people in both Gwalior and Jhansi. This too, he told me, would work in our favour. He assured me that he would get my father to agree to this plan.

I was delighted and sat down immediately to write a letter to summon Hari Pant once again from Pein. At night, as the clan sat together to discuss my proposal, I started politely: ‘See, we have this heavy debt weighing on our family, and it has now exceeded the total sum of our properties. To top it all, apart from our usual household expenses, we have streams of house guests and many celebrations following births, marriages and deaths. All this costs money, which our limited incomes do not bring in enough of, and so our debts have been mounting year after year. We have come to a point where we must get a lump sum large enough to clear all our debts, and that is possible only by travelling to distant lands. I agree I have never travelled far out of here, but still I am confident that I will be able to manage things. And of course, Kaka will be with me all along. So, Father, please give me your permission to travel. You must know that I am embarking on this for the family’s sake and the family’s blessings will protect me and bring me good luck. We can hire a portion of Karve’s cart and share the expenses on food, etcetera. We have also received an invitation from Gwalior, and I think it would be best if you permitted me to go.’

When I fell silent, my noble father recounted his earlier apprehensions once again. I calmed him and assured him that I was not heading for Hindustan to chase women. I swore that I would not allow women to entice me, nor would I partake of wine or other kinds of intoxicants. I also said that I would take very good care of my health. I said that, having lived in Bithur for long, Kaka knew Hindustan well and would see to it that I stayed on the straight and narrow path. We talked till late into the night and, finally, Father gave me permission to embark on my travels. The next day, I sat with my dear mother and explained things to her. Mothers are so different from fathers. Their love is truly indescribable. She hugged me wordlessly and wept for an hour, picturing me in a faraway land.

At night, my young wife, who had just recovered from a long and debilitating illness, cornered me. She insisted that I drop the dangerous plan. But I was ready to reason with her. I said, ‘You have just recovered from a long illness and are so weak that you need support even to walk two steps. Your hair has also thinned. It’s best if you pay attention to yourself just now. Continue with the medication the vaidyaraj is giving you for your recovery, and when you are better, keep yourself busy taking care of my good mother. It will only be for a few months. It is summertime now; I promise you I shall be back by the month of Pausha in winter, by which time you too will be fit and fine.’ She then fell silent and gave up her protests.

The next day, Kaka met Father and said to him, ‘Since we both are leaving for Hindustan, please take care of my house and yours. Do not worry about your Vishnu. He is my son now and I am his father. Need I say more? Now please look up the almanac and find us an auspicious date to begin our travels.’

By then, Mother had also arrived. A simple lady, she said with tears in her eyes, ‘I do not know what to say. I do not know much about the world, so I cannot give any advice, I just listen to everyone. I can only say that the day I see my Vishnu again, it will be a golden day for me.’

I touched her feet and said, ‘I promise you that I shall not dawdle there once my objective is attained. Your feet shall bear witness to this vow of mine. Please do not worry.’

My youngest brother Dhond Bhatt was a mere boy then. He met me alone and said solemnly that I should not leave home. I reasoned with him and said, ‘After Kaka and I go away, you are the one who must take care of our family clients. Keep reciting the Vedas and learn the proper way to conduct yagnas. Be careful, for Hari is in Pune and you alone will be with Father and Mother. Always obey their commands and console Father if