I am reading this book called “The Maharajah’s Box” by Christy Campbell. It is another book I came across via the excellent Empire podcast and it too is about the story of Maharajah Duleep Singh. This does not go into Sophia, like the other book, in fact she’s only tangentially mentioned in the few pages I have read so far. This book is more like an investigative journalism into the story and jumps all over the place. I am yet to get used to the rhythm of the book so it’s been a bit slow reading, but I’ll get there I think. The author has more books and I ordered one more of his.
Anyways, in one of the footnotes I came across the following snippet: “… was brutally suppressed when sixty-eight Namdharis were blown from British cannon“. Huh, what the heck was that?! Blown from a cannon?? Curious, I Googled for it and apparently it’s a well known thing. There’s a Wikepedia page on it and countless articles on this particular incident too.
To be honest I embarrassingly actually thought blowing from a canon was like a circus cartoon thing where in maybe the person was somehow fitted into a canon and blown out. But nope, you basically put a person in front of the mouth of the canon and fire the canon – as simple and brutal as that. Jeez. I can’t imagine I belong to a species that devises such brutal ways of killing other people. I shouldn’t be surprised, I know, considering the ways in which we torture people… but still, why not just shoot people or poison them or do any other efficient way of killing them. I guess the point is to deter others from rising up in whatever act they did, lest they too be blown up similarly, but still… *shudders*
Of course, this is not a British invention or exclusive to them. According to Wikipedia the Portugese used to do it, and so did the Mughals, but looks like the British used it a lot in India. The news article I linked to is an interesting read on how the Namdharis even volunteered to be executed this way to take a stance. Just imagine, volunteering to stand in front of a cannon, knowing that the cannonball is going to come hurtling through the barrel and smash your chest and kill you.