Prisoners of Tsavo: An Account of Persecution and Survival in Colonial Africa

By Lalchand Sharma and Vishva Bandhu Lalchand Sharma

Lalchand Sharma—on the surface—may seem like a regular man from a poor, rural area of British India.

But look a little closer, and you will see someone with an indomitable spirit who refused to try saving his own life by giving false evidence during a trial near Tsavo, Kenya, against fellow Indians.

This was when, partly to explain their defeat at the hands of vastly outnumbered German forces during the Africa campaign of World War I, the British made scapegoats out of innocent Indians. At the same time, the British were afraid that the Ghadar movement (an Indian freedom struggle) would spread to East Africa.

In this autobiography, edited and set in its historical, geographical, and cultural context by the author’s son, readers will discover the manner in which the Indian and Kenyan freedom struggles coalesced. The author also examines two paradigm shifts that played out in the cultural integration of Indians in the larger Kenya nation.

Learn about a fascinating and largely ignored piece of history, and find out how the author escaped execution while others died in Prisoners of Tsavo.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Mar 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781489716149

Lalchand Sharma

Lalchand Sharma was a school dropout from Punjab, India, who went to Kenya to make a future. He escaped execution even though three other innocent Indians were executed—partly as scapegoats for World War I British defeats at the hands of German forces. After being imprisoned with Mombasa’s Indian leadership, he renewed his education. He was ultimately found innocent of any wrongdoing and went on to be a law clerk, shopkeeper, and industrialist. Vishva Bandhu Lalchand Sharma, edited his father’s autobiography and set it in its historical, geographical, and cultural context.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-1615-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-1616-3 (hc)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018903302

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 07/20/2021

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Acknowledgement

The veracity of oral history rests on dedication and integrity. I am most grateful to my father, Pdt. Lalchand Sharma, for his incredibly detailed recall—which he put into writing over a course of 20 years. The account father left behind is worthy of the Guinness Book of Records deeming it singular.

The late Cynthia Salvadori urged me to join the few who have written about the Indian contribution to our beloved Kenya’s emergence and development. I thank Neera Kapur for rekindling Cynthia’s behest.

Western Michigan University’s Gwen Ann Bostic, Coordinator of Faculty Technology Center, gave the manuscript its shape, tackling 1500 references, pictures, maps, and lists that migrated across pages with each laborious editing and printing of galley proofs. Gwen was helped by Merrick Rumel, Charles Larson, and others. To Gwen I owe more than words can express.

Neera, other noted writers, my family, and friends made helpful suggestions. Poet and writer Amarjit Chandan and my niece Amita Sharma provided a vital link with United Kingdom archives. My grandson Raj Brueggemann designed the book cover; Dickson Sikaundi did graphics. I am grateful to all of them.

It proved very difficult to trace the original source of old photographs, maps, etc., which recur without attribution. I am as indebted to those whom I tried tirelessly to trace as I am to the many I have acknowledged by name. In this regard, I am most grateful to Google, Wikipedia, and Kulbhushan Bhakoo (Publisher of Cynthia Salvadori’s We Came in Dhows).

A hundred years ago, Britain’s civil administration in Kenya determined that, under martial law imposed during World War I, the British military had unjustly executed three fuel contractors. They were innocent, caught in a web crafted by British authority to intimidate Indians demanding equal rights with ‘Europeans.’

In completing this project my gratitude to my late wife Kamlesh is boundless. Valiantly battling cancer for long years, she assumed an inordinate share of household management; without her bracing corroboration, I wouldn’t have accomplished the task expeditiously. After I had repeatedly checked and re-checked names, dates, events, etc., Kammo helped me check one last time myriad details that comprised this book’s original complex, tiered, and copious Index—now reduced to its Select Index. I alone remain responsible for all errors and omissions—not Gwen, nor Kammo.

Visho Sharma

Kalamazoo, Michigan

June 2021

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Pdt. Lalchand Sharma (At age 74)        Private collection

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CONTENTS

CHARTS, MAPS,

AND PICTURES

1. Dedication

2. Pdt. Lalchand Sharma at Age 74

3. Lalchand Sharma at Age 18

4. Goatherd in Typical Gondpur; Maasai Moran & Companion

5. Book-cover; Shanti Bhavan, Kalamazoo (1969)

6. Himalayas, Shivaliks, Gondpurs, Ajauli, Bakhra Dam

7. Map of Punjab, India (by Dickson Sikaundi)

8. Gondpur (Taraf Jaichand) Poonj Genealogy – Chart I

9. Gondpur (Taraf Jaichand) Poonj Genealogy – Chart II

10. Map of British East Africa (Depicting Uganda Railway Route)

11. Map of Tsavo-Voi Area

12. Fort Jesus; Mombasa Road to Public Hanging; Makadara

13. World War I Africa Campaign Personnel; Hindu Temple

14. Execution of Ghadarites (Singapore, World War I)

15. Indian Freedom Fighters; Martyrs

16. Kenya’s Indian Pioneers

17. Early Kenya; Transport; Streets; Bundu

18. UR; Jeevanjees; Gen. Smuts; Nairobi Railway Station; Kilindini

19. A typical Indian duka in the bundu

20. Baraat--Bridegroom’s Entourage (Ludhiana, 1927)

21. Mr. & Mrs. Lalchand Sharma Wedding Picture (1927)

22. Nairobi House; Regal Provision Store; Duka in the Bundu

23. Nairobi Family Photograph (1938)

24. Jalpots; Harmandir; Parmeshvari Devi; Ludhiana Railway Station

25. Yograj-Vedi wedding (Ludhiana, 1940)

26. A.S. Nairobi Antrang Sabha – Pdt. Lalchand Sharma, President

27. Smt. S. D. Sharma Receiving Kenya’s Freedom Fighter Award

28. Pdt. Lalchand & Smt. Shanti Devi Sharma (1940s & the 1950s)

29. Leftist Leaders

30. Park Rd; Leela & Sheila; B.R. & Lalchand Sharma; Pdt Baisakhi Ram Bhardwaj

31. House-warming (Juja Road); Pdt. Lalchand Sharma Supervising Construction; Sushma; Arya Samaj Nairobi Presidents (1940s).

32. England: V.K.K. Menon Debating trophy; U.T.C.; Sheila. Nakuru Road; Father with Daughter & Son, Barristers-at-Law

33. 1959 Nairobi Family Photo; Visho (Voice of Kenya TV); Father and Son (University of Nairobi, 1966)

34. Shanti Bhavan Backyard: Dr. Leonard & Mrs. Dorotha Kercher and Grandparents - Sujit & (Later) Rahul’s Mundan--Initiation

35. Grandparents: Heathrow Airport; Shanti Bhavan; Elgeyo Marakwet Road, Nairobi

36. Kamlesh & Visho Sharma (1961)

37. Thorn Tree, Kenya; Gondpur Tobaa

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PROLOGUE

MEMOIRS OF KENYA’S LALCHAND SHARMA

(30th November 1894 – 29th October 1977)

Om tat sat—You are the truth (Poonj family’s favorite invocation)

Asato ma sadgama yatamaso ma jyotirgamaya

mrityorma amratam gamaya

(Lead me from the asat—non-existence, untruth to the

sat—existence, truth. Lead me from darkness to light.

Lead me from death to immortality.)

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad—I.iii.28.

Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a foremost leader and radical fighter for his motherland Bharat Varsha’s freedom, was sentenced by the British to prison for six years. In Mandalay, Burma (Myanmar), he wrote Gita Rahasya—a commentary on Hinduism’s holy book, Gita.

During World War I (August 1914–November 1918), I served similar imprisonment, in Fort Jesus jail, at Mombasa, Kenya, for, allegedly, assisting or harboring the German enemy.

A little more than a year into the war, in December 1915, the British military authority in Kenya sentenced to death by hanging four of us fuel contractors supplying wood to the Uganda Railway line—Kenya’s economic lifeline, owned by Uganda Railways & Harbours (UR&H) or Uganda Railway (UR for short).

Ganesh Dass Bali and Yog Raj Bali (cousins), my partner Sardar Bishen Singh, and I were falsely convicted on trumped up charges. We four were subcontractors working for Ramanand Bodhraj & Co., fuel contractors. Bishen Singh owned a 25% interest in the firm; additionally, he and I split the commission for the wood our large workforce cut (for railway engines) in the Tsavo forest.

The Bali cousins were shot at dawn by a British firing squad within hours of the verdict of a British East Africa Protectorate kangaroo court- martial for allegedly aiding and abetting the enemy. The court refused to let their lawyer put up a defense! Bishen Singh and I were arrested and put on similar trial at Voi. After evidence had been concocted and witnesses suborned, as in the Bali trials, we too were convicted.

Taken to Fort Jesus, Bishen Singh was hanged in public. On the eve of my scheduled hanging, my death sentence was commuted to 10 years’ hard labor. (Later, they commuted the death sentences passed on the two Mombasa Indian leaders tried with us.)

In Fort Jesus, we three were joined by three other Mombasa Indian leaders. We were grouped together as ‘seditious prisoners’; we were separated from other prisoners. Our sentences varied, but they were all imprisonment with hard labor. The Mombasa Indian leaders I referred to were:

Keshavlal Vijayram Dave (of Umret, Gujarat); Lachhmanrao Mahadev Savle (Sitara, near Pune, Maharashtra); Balashanker Krishen Bhatt (Rajkot, Gujarat); Umayshanker (Mourvi, Kathiavad); and Bishendass Ralaram Sharma—B.R. Sharma (Mahilpur, Hoshiarpur District).

With keen interest, we six read Lokmanya Tilak’s Gita Rahasya, written in the style of a Chitpavan Brahmin. Being sick, he said he felt that Yam- senaa ki vimal-dhv’ jaa ab bahut nazar meiN aati hai/ Karti huvi yudh ragoN se meri deh haarti jaati hai. (The death squad’s pristine flag gets nearer in sight/My body, wracked vein to vein, faces defeat.) After long years, Tilak’s poignant words resonate with me with increasing urgency.

My book should be called The Innocent Prisoners of Tsavo. The Uganda Railway line passed through Tsavo, where a pioneer engineer, Lt. Col. J.H. Patterson, worked. He named his book about the shooting of two horrible man-eating lions, Man-Eaters of Tsavo.

Since the core incident of my life occurred in the same Tsavo area, the title of my story should resonate with Patterson’s best seller (a school textbook under British Raj).

The irony is that in my tale the man-eaters were British colonialists. I want readers to know my forebears’ saga and learn how and why my lineage is rooted both in my ancestral village—Gondpur (Taraf Jaichand or Jaichand Side)—and my East African experience. Additionally, exposure to the United Kingdom and USA have influenced our progeny.

With Almighty God’s grace, my beloved wife, Smt. (Shrimati) Shanti Devi Ji, and I celebrated my 75th birthday on 30th November 1969 in the company of our daughter Sheila (who was visiting with us from India) and Suhashni Datta (Munni), our bahu Kamlesh’s youngest sister. Visho and Kamlesh gave a party attended by our acquaintances in Kalamazoo.

Visho and Kamlesh have since gone abroad, leading a group of local teachers and students on Western Michigan University’s Africa Seminar and Global Tour. Helping my wife look after our four grandchildren (Namita, Radhika, and Masters Sujit and Rahul), I feel fit and enthusiastic to address anew the task of recording my life story.

I have asked Visho to pull together my notes (written between 1948 and 1970) and record the talks I had with him and other kith and kin. The notes go only up to the year 1940. Visho, by then a smart seven years old, recalls well what he witnessed and heard. He should make my rather disjointed narrative comprehensive, sequential, and substantive, sketching in the notable world events of the closing years of the 19th century (from the time when I was born) and the momentous events that marked the 20th century.

Kenya’s History: A Synopsis

To set in context my father’s tale, the British first called Kenya East Africa Protectorate and later British East Africa Protectorate (1895-1902)—splitting it from Uganda Protectorate. The British built the Uganda Railway line from Mombasa (a historic port, whose name was adapted from the Arabic word mimbashia for the country that unfolds itself) to Fort Florence (the initial name they gave Kisumu).

Culling Uganda’s cotton was the principal objective of the venture. Controlling Nile’s source and converting the local population to Christianity were among other leading motives. The name Uganda Railway (UR) arose from its preordained destination, Fort Florence (later called by its traditional name, Kisumu, at that time part of Uganda). Because of World War I, the authorities gave priority to the link between Voi¹ and Kahe (to link with Germany’s Tanga-Moshi railway line). From Voi a strategic link was built by the British to German East Africa during the African Campaign of World War I). Indians had long started to settle here, often intermarrying with the local indigenous population (Mijikenda), or with Swahili (Arab-indigenous), or with persons of the seminal Omani Arab strain.

The construction (Mombasa to Kisumu) lasted from 30th May 1896 to 20th December 1901. During the construction-workers’ heart-rending ordeal (2,498 died), British parliamentarians whined about the cost of what came to be called ‘the Lunatic Line’—widely believed to be a financially unsound investment to get Uganda’s cotton. On the other hand, in 1903, the British colonial administrator Sir Charles Eliot made a bold statement regarding Kenya: It is not uncommon for a country to create a railway, but it is uncommon for a railway to create a country. It reached Nairobi (Mile 326), halfway to Kisumu, in 1899. The separate line—from Nakuru to Kampala, Uganda—reached today’s Kenya-Uganda border in 1904. (Wolmar, ibid.) (Kampala is some 730 miles from the Indian Ocean). Out of 31,983 workers, (with 2,498 dead) 135 were killed around Tsavo railway station by two old lions, shot, a month apart (9th and 29th December 1898, after a nine-month vigil) by the 25 years old Tasmanian bridge construction supervisor at Tsavo (Mile 132), Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson. He ended his 31 years’ service as Kenya’s Chief Native Commissioner.

From the early 1500s, the Portuguese (led by seafarers) replaced Arab dominance for some 300 years. The Arabs re-established their power when Portugal became weak. Arab hegemony did not last long. In the 19th century, Britain’s incipient global dominance spread to East Africa.

The Omani Sultan of Zanzibar was reduced to a nominal suzerain over Kenya’s coastal strip. Arabs established settlements along the East African coast as early as the in the eighth century.

Indian traders were plying the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea from many centuries before. As World War I began, the British set in motion the East African Campaign by breaching the Treaty of Berlin (1885) and the Neutrality Clauses of the Congo Act, bringing a European war into Africa. (War in Europe became a World War.)

They attacked German river outposts and boats on Lake Victoria; bombarded Dar es Salaam; mounted a two-pronged attack against Longido and Tanga. Contravening the 1856 Declaration of Paris— governing naval blockades—and other elements of international law, the British placed themselves outside the pre-war moral consensus regarding naval warfare, as a noted historian, Alexander Watson, has pointed out.

The Germans were equally guilty—using poison gas, waging unrestricted submarine warfare, and conducting aerial bombardment over civilian populations. (Gardner, pp. 57-60.) Setting forth on 15th August 1914 from German East Africa (now Tanzania), Germans retaliated. They were led by Col. (later Gen.) Paul Emil von Lettow- Vorbeck. World War I’s best general, he ignored his Governor’s clear order and attacked Taveta, a border town in British East Africa. German troops eventually pushed as far as Mt. Kasigau, 20 miles inside Kenya. (Select Bibliography, Sibley, p. 50; Gardner, pp. 57-60.)

For 20 months Germans controlled a vast swath around Jasin, Latema, Mbuyuni, Maktau, Mashoti Fort, Reata, Salaita, Taita, Taveta, and a part of Kenya’s South Coast close to the Ramanand Bodhraj camps. For four years, with 14,000 men (3,000 Germans and 11,000 local askaris), Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces harassed and harried and held in check a much larger force of over 150,000 British troops (with an additional Carrier Corps that equaled 20% of Kenya’s then 4 million population)! The German General’s exploits—mainly avoiding open warfare, remaining undefeated in the East African Campaign—arguably were the greatest single guerrilla operation in history. In this irregular warfare, small German patrols used ambushes, sabotage, petty warfare, hit-and-run, and sundry military tactics; they used mobility to fight a larger and less mobile traditional military force.

The adversary they faced were the British whose campaign was led by officers who, almost to a man, surpassed each other in mind-boggling ineptitude. (See Sibley, passim; Willson, pp. 65-316.) From March to May 1915, Germany’s guerrilla forces persistently attacked the UR line around Tsavo. It drove the British leadership bonkers. Top military leaders, driven to drink and distraction, thrashed around for scapegoats to cover their crass failings. The blame game lasted two years—the drinking raged on forever. The tide turned for the British when Gen. Jan Christiaan Smuts took over command. He was a seasoned veteran of the second Boer War (1899-1902). (Farwell, pp. 11-12; Sampson, pp. 111-13—for a full description of British successes from February 16, 1916 on, starting with the Indian military converting the defeat of a South African force into victory in the Salaita Hill II skirmish; also Willson, pp.134-253.)

Smuts landed at Mombasa in February 1916 to head the campaign till well into 1917, when he left to join the War Cabinet in London. Smuts got guerrilla war experience in the second Boer War and additional command experience, this time as a British officer, during the brief (and very successful) World War I campaign against German South-West Africa (today’s Namibia).

The War Office in London felt that a large force was needed in East Africa; South African recruits were handy, though not ideal for the Western (European) Front where allied forces of different colors fought side by side. Though Smuts was never able to defeat Lettow-Vorbeck, largely because the German kept eluding him, retreating strategically, he proved to be as smart, as foxy, and as visionary as his German counterpart. Smuts was a racist at heart, the same as any White protagonist in the colonial-imperial enterprise; he, like others, used African askaris and teeming porters as cannon fodder, and to draw enemy fire.

Smuts treated well his South African forces and the British Army’s Loyal North Lancashiremen. Smuts shared their racism, though he showed some admiration for the British Indian Army’s Baluch and Punjab Regiments returning from the Western Front and the brave Dogra Jats of the Bharatpur Regiment. Under Smuts, Indian officers and foot soldiers regained the martial respect lost earlier by India’s direly inadequate princely state regiments. (Farwell, p. 213.)

Crass racism, nevertheless, denied to the Indian military rewards for gallantry that they richly deserved. (Willson, pp. 65-202.) Visiting Fort Jesus prison as the East African Campaign commander, Smuts had drawn attention to the bizarre incarceration of well-educated Indians.

The British asked him to hush up; Smuts obliged. He thus became complicit in the long and harsh suffering of the ‘seditious’ inmates. A year after the Great War, the British judiciary investigated the trials and gave its verdict: every one of the convicted was found not guilty—including the three that had been executed. It is not clear how Smuts felt when the prisoners of Tsavo were declared innocent.

Cynthia Salvadori did pioneer work on the Indian experience in East Africa. She conducted a myriad interviews, foot-slogging tirelessly. Her research was impeccable. (See We Came in Dhows in Select Bibliography.) She urged others to garner memoirs for the Kenyan Indian trove. She wanted me to give my father’s notes the form of a significant memoir, having herself drawn considerably from his rough notes.

My father was a popular raconteur. He was articulate, a histrionic actor, witty, and a very good public speaker. His prodigious memory was among his many attributes; the over 1500 citations of names, places, events, and dates in the Limited Edition of this book have found no parallel in the Guinness Book of Records annals.

The one-year discrepancy in father’s age in the book and in a featured picture caption is due to variance between the record kept by the village Patwari (official recorder) and the entry made by the Brigus (religious clerks who, in Saharanpur, record births, marriages, deaths, etc.). I’ve taken liberty with father’s rather legalistic style of English writing to make it match his superb Punjabi (our mother tongue), Hindi, and Urdu. Some elisions and conflations were necessary during editing.

What I added to my father’s writing by way of notes, footnotes, and interpolations are in this distinct font (contrast it with the other font used earlier and later). - Vishva Bandhu Lalchand Sharma (Visho).

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CHAPTER I

MY INDIAN BACKGROUND

Our second son (Dr. Visho Sharma) has repeatedly urged me to commit my life’s story to writing. Ill health has made the present one a fourth attempt; this time on Visho’s typewriter at Shanti Bhavan, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Visiting with us in America, in 1969, our oldest child, Sheila, reminded me that she had asked me to include women in the genealogy of Gondpur’s Poonj gotra;² I have done that. (See Addendum I at end of book.) Haradvar/Haridwar (Saharanpur District) paandaas, habitually, recorded my forebears’ life histories succinctly, and by their first names—often just nick-names.

Three lineages, pioneer inhabitants of Gondpur, divided the land among ourselves. A hundred years later, under the British Vajib-ul-arz Poonj lost right to the land and Basdevs got demoted. Agnihotris were designated malik (owners); Basdevs, qabz-e-malik (tenants of right); Poonj, marousi (tenants). When Rala Poonj died without a descendant, his fields defaulted to Nihal Chand.

Gondpur Poonj Ancestry

Gondpur Poonj were headed by Hariya; his son was Banu, who had two sons, Dayala and Mala. The Mala line ended: his son Lokoo had one son, Jowala; he, too, had one son, Rala, who died in May 1912. Desperately busy, eking out a living from stony ground, we chose not to fight over what in the main was barren Beet land.

Many years after I had moved to Kenya, I made enquiries at Lahore concerning the land (RE: Rala Ram Poonj & Nihal Chand Nambardar). Chacha Kundan Lal came with me, as did Shivram (from a neighboring village, Kungdat), sarishterdar at a law court near Hoshiarpur. We saw a famous Lahore lawyer, Bakshi Tek Chand Ji. We lost the case; the Financial Court (Lahore) held that, under the Punjab Tenancy Act, Rala Ram’s grandfather Lok Nath Poonj being a tenant of Nihal Chand’s ancestors, maliks of the land, and Rala Ram Poonj dying without issue, the land reverts to the Agnihotri. I never got over this loss.

Years later, when Nihal Chand’s grandsons asked me to donate money for a middle school, I asked them to sell our land back to us, and donate the money for a school to be built (a) between the two Gondpurs—our Taraf Jaichand and the twin-village, Taraf Bula, and (b) the school shall be named for their said forefather, Nihal Agnoti. I never heard from them again. The family feud simmers quietly in my heart.

Dayala had three sons: Chanan, Harcharan, Ishwar. In Chart I (below), we can see how the Harcharan and Ishwar branch lineages progressed or ended.

From here on, we will dwell only on our own Gondpur Poonj lineage (Hariya→Banu→Dayala→Chanan→Asa (Chart II). Chanan had three sons: Dasondi, Asa, Govinda. Asa had three sons—Mukanda, Jawahara, Phalla. (The complete Hariya lineage is in Addendum I.)

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People will not look forward to posterity who never

look backwards to their ancestors – Edmund Burke

My father’s name was confirmed as Jawaharlal at the 1949 dedication of a Nairobi Arya Girls School classroom that my wife and I donated. Chachu and my mother Badam Devi were blessed with one daughter, Bhagwan Devi (Bhagwani, Bhani)—who was first born—and four sons: Thakur Dass, Lalchand, Harnam Dass, Mela Ram. By the grace of Almighty God, my wife Smt. Shanti Devi Ji and I have been blessed with two daughters (Sheila and Sushma—9th generation); between them are three sons (Desh Bandhu, Vishva Bandhu, Priya Bandhu). (We called our father Chachu—father’s younger brother—copying his elder brother’s sons!) Desh and Kamini have three children—Sudheer; twin daughters Sayuja (Tini), Anuja (Mini). [Later, a 3rd daughter, Shalini.] Visho and Kamlesh have four children (Namita, Radhika and sons Sujit, Rahul). Priya and Sita Suman have two daughters (Taruna, Shobhna). I pray that Suman and Priya also are blessed with sons. [Suman died in 1977, leaving behind two daughters and a son, Amit.]

The following is a synopsis of my Poonj family down to the 10th generation: The parents of Kamini, Desh Bandhu’s wife, were Rais Triumbak Shradanand Gautam and Vidya Devi (Sonipat, Haryana). Visho’s