About Sees Chand Mansion in Kaithi,Katehar,Varanasi

The story of Sees Chand Mansion and of Plebeians who would be Kings

The Hindu nationalists consider the 1857 mutiny or insurgency as the first war for freedom, although every mutinous sepoy from Meerut in May 1857 or 1,39,000 minus only 7796 sepoys of the largest modern Army in Asia, the Bengal Army joined by the entire population, as the inspiration touched a popular crescendo, declared Bhadhur Shah Zafar, the last Moguls emperor as their leader, and emperor. Zafar was powerless to resist being made the leader. Leader of an army of unpaid peasantry and officer less and haphazard soldiers. And while Hindus regard their martyrs who died for the idea of freedom from the foreign yoke, but in and around Delhi it was more of religion, looked upon as a defensive act of rebellion against the work of missionaries of Christianity as well as a generalized fight against foreign domination and the move of the company (E.I.C.) to impose Christian laws in India. The sepoys declared before the emperor on 11th may 1857 we have joined hands to protect our religion and our faith in chandni chowk they asked, Brothers ;are you with those of the faith?. “During the uprising, it is note worthy, the British who had converted to Islam were not molested; but Indians converted to Christianity were mowed- down, being referred to as ‘Kafirs’ (Infidels) and ‘Nasrani’ (Christians). “Although the great majority of sepoys were Hindus, in Delhi a flag of jihad was raised in the principal mosque” and the insurgents were often found calling themselves mujahideen, ghazis and jihadies. And after the initial bravado of the seize when majority had departed from the scene being hungry and getting despised, the remainder were out and out jihadis , including a regiment of “Suicide ghazis” from gwalior who had vowed never to eat again and to fight until they met death- “ for those who have come to die have no need for food “. Closing of urdu madras by the British was one of their grievance. What the news work of Willian Dalrymple’s stories contain shows the Rising of 1857, is a chain of human event, dramatic, arbitrary, accidental and tragic to resurrect the ordinary individuals whose fate is caught up by chance in one of the great up heavals of history. It is through the story of the successes and struggles of the individuals that can bridge the chasm of the time and understanding separating us from the remarkably different world of our ancestors of six to seven generations ago. Duncan ha finished the permanent settlement in Banaras on the lines of Bengal and given the lease to Babu Shivratan Singh of the house of Sees Chand of Katehar in Kaithi and peaceful by any contemporary standards in the villages, the pargana and in the 1st House of Raghuvanshies of Katehar. With ‘Amils’ melting away and officials in the forms of ‘Qanungos’ directly under the ‘Collector’ taking- over, the struggle against the wily Raja was over, So it was time to put more and more of ‘Deeh’ and ‘Damar’ and untilled portions of 2292 Bigha to put under cultivation. Then why the only son of Shiv Ratan Singh of Aarrah to proceed towards Lucknow, by way of Azamgarh?. His father was already very old, or may be dead by then, as his three uncles were also very much junior to him, being contemporary of his son Ram Sunder Singh. There was no reason for a man of fifty-five or sixty to leave home and go fighting. Was there unrest at home/ was his spouse no more and the dowager princess Hansa kunwar, wife of his son, too dominating for his liking , to make an excuse for leaving home and joint the fighting forces. This is because of the fate of the 1st House of Raghuvanshies to be blessed by domineering head of the inner house- hold; like my own mother and grand mother. Hansa Kunwar was so domerineering that Babu Ganga Prasad Singh had to take her to courts for his share from her for partition of residential plot no 1328 in 1901.But she was surely no more by 1904, when her son Bharat Singh took up the cause of appeal to the case. Having given birth to Bharat Singh who died at 110 in 1944 or so, she must have been around 35 in 1857, when Jaipal Singh her father-in-law, went to join Kunwar Singh in the 1st war of independence. Kaithi was secluded from three sides by two rivers and connected by a dirt road to Varanasi, 27 kilometer and Ghazipur, 50 kilometer away and unless Janak Rai is Chet Singh of Katehar involved in the conspiracy collecting 34000 soldiers under Raja Chet Singh of Ramnagar, to abduct Warren Hastings, it was pretty far away from the turmoil’s and Chaos of polities of the day and even a word of the popular uprising of 1857 getting there was obscure. Then how did Jaipal Singh and his cousins from ‘Chhayee’ Patti got together to become unlikely martyrs of the uprising ?.
Perhaps the news of the uprising spread far too well by word of mouth, in the era of minimal mass communication, than what means are today, like we can not comprehend today. The suffocation of foreign domination of a different kind (Having different skin) was overwhelming and up to the neck. The stories told by my father’s cousins who was born in same house seemed wild and clueless when there was no commitment from us to the family and it’s history of any sort. But recently when visiting my widowed sister born in 1925 that is before the demolition of the old house of Sees Chand in 1932 or so, she related of the first floor and the attic of the old house and unknowingly confirmed what kaka had mentioned for the occasion of rebuilding of the old house and efforts being made to collect the barrels of the muzzle- loading guns as many a twenty in the drain out- let of the court- yard of women’s quarter, where they were dumped for hiding after the mutiny was crushed or may he soon after the news of death of Jaipal Singh was heard or felt by the community on withdrawal of Babu Kunwar Singh and his return to Bihar with the story of his failure and sacrificing his wounded arm to mother Ganges at the ripe age of seventy.
On the death of her illustrious and famous husband at the age of 91, my sister was left alone in her Lucknow residence, everyone having gone to Sohna, expect myself to keep her company, began to reminisce about life in Kaithi and she was one of rarest persons, other than our only living aunt, to have seen and lived in perhaps the original version of the house of Sees Chand, although four hundred years then is too long for a Kachchi- “Bakhari” ( no not exactly a Haveli which would be a bit of high faluting description of the fairly large house of Sees Chand, as the income from 2292 Bighas of Kaithi was not matching to be able to build something akin to a grand ‘Haveli’of a prosperous Zamindar of Bengal in the literary works of the nineteenth century ) to have lasted without one or two more demolitions in between . Alas! No on kept a record neither did the great sage of the house- hold confide in anyone. He was very vocal and adamant against its demolition on the keen desire of Collector Moss and his deputy Ram Rup Singh. He must have been born in the particular version of the house of Sees Chand. Perhaps his father(who went away, leaving his family, for a cause of the survival of the family, by saving the landed property from the British raj) and his grand father the cause celebre’ of the hide and seek and speaking only half truths for a maha- yogi, who was claimed to have never spoken a lie in all his 110 years was also born in that house and he must have loved that missing-in- action grand father and his deeds that he kept under covers, the genealogical table of its true identity even from the cousins in the family. As Ram Rup Singh would always say “ We are the most prominent family of Katehar “ (not exactly knowing its meaning of what he has said in deeper sense) so Bharat Singh without the help of the G. table (kept in hiding with him) enforced his prominence through the force of his personality and grandeur and of course the ‘Karma’ as the best agriculturist in entire Katehar. And as per my eldest sister there were secrets in the at attic of that old Bakhari, th match- locks and the lazzims, where the children and women were not allowed to dwell. So.it must have been an object of anxiety for the grand old man as a to what to do with those artifacts of the past. Although as per my Kakaji , the solution came in as quickly to get rid of all those vulnerable things to the security of the family, and to the newly found status of the family house of a brilliant and titled Civil Servant of the British raj, by simply dumping it overnight in a deep well on the “Kot ” of the earlier settlers the famous Seories (who had given the rightful possession to Sees Chand and his two brother to settle in lieu of their non agriculture settlement without any sanction from Raja Banar of the Gaharwars)across the road from the house of Sees Chand so well placed for dumping activities in the dark of the night. This came as a well founded confirmation from the horses mouth as the phrase goes of the stories of the match-locks and muzzle-loaders of the brotherhood of Raghuvanshies of Katehar by the agents of Johnathan Duncan , the British Agent sent for permanent settlement by Governor General in Council (They were willing and anxious to maintain the corporate nature of their zamindari over Katehar and not in the form of individual leases of land under the individual cultivation or occupancy ). Those were the ancient arms and armaments which was counted by Aiene Akhari as maintaining 500 horses and 4000 foot- soldiers by the Raghuvanshies of Katehar (Rajputs) and 1932 saw the end to all that talk of what was Ayodhya and its Sun- Dyansty and of Doman Deo and the pristine glory of Katehar, where the mighty Suri King Sher Shah served for fifteen years (1501-1515) in the stable of Doman Deo to submission and acceptance of global civility and service to the rulers, British or world- wide administrative or economic in nature.