Sitting behind a large desk, Syeda Shamim Asghar Jafri, research officer at the Punjab Archives, gesticulates animatedly while talking to a group of researchers from various universities who are here to look at and examine original documents — telegrams, urgent circulars and letters, lithographs and wartime directives — regarding the events of the Great Rebellion of 1857.

For nearly 20 years, Jafri has worked here as an archivist and researcher, and many academics going down the archival route will find themselves, at some point, sitting at her desk and sharing their research questions with her. Her eyes light up as she recalls some of the most famous academics she has helped dig through ponderous files and official documents dating back hundreds of years to find relevant material for their research. “One of the first academics I had the opportunity to work with was William Glover, when he was writing Making Lahore Modern,” she says.

The Punjab Archives are housed in one of the most significant buildings of the early Mughal period — the tomb of Anarkali — a beautiful ivory coloured stone construction with eight corner turrets. Surrounded with leafy bushes and trees, the tomb is situated in the government’s civil secretariat complex, and so, it is not open to the public. “We welcome those who have serious interest in history — students, academics, journalists, etc — but we’re exhibiting precious documents dating back hundreds of years and we can’t risk damaging them,” she explains.

Titled “Fear and Vengeance in 1857”, the documents on display reflect the ‘British’ side of the Great Rebellion — an event many of us learned about at school while reading stories of bravery of Rani of Jhansi and the sepoys of Meerut who took up arms against the British officers in May 1857. It is not a coincidence then that the curators chose to launch the exhibit in May despite the sweltering heat. An earlier exhibit of documents on the trial and execution of Bhagat Singh took place in March, to mark his death anniversary.

The collection of documents covers the time from May 1857 to April 1858, and includes urgent telegrams (the Telegraph system was brought to the Punjab in 1857) from harried British administrative and military officials, one of the most striking components of the exhibit are lithographs of scenes of war, of women and children in hiding, even executions. They offer an insight into the British view of the Great Rebellion, and their representations of Indian sepoys.

Written in loopy, barely legible, cursive writing, the exhibit also carries handwritten letters carrying requests to churches for prayers for the British in the time of difficulty. As a journalist, I particularly found interesting a directive to all commissioners to employ the age-old tactic of censoring information about the mutiny.

“I am writing...to request you that you will call upon all native editors of newspapers...to refrain from publishing any rumours connected with the mutiny in the army calculated to excite alarm. They should be urged...to endeavour to alley the general meanings, and to point out the folly of the present conduct of the Sepoys,” says a portion of a communiqué sent to commissioners in India demanding, what we like to call a media blackout, of the uprising.

The urgency and brusque tone of the letters and telegrams reflect the fear and vengeance hanging over the British in government at the time. For example, a letter to the secretaries of the governments of Bengal and the North West Frontier Province, dated June 20, 1857, says: “With reference to the Act No. XVII of 1857 passed this day... every Sessions Judge and every Officer exercising the power of a Sessions Judge to try officers and soldiers of the Native Army for mutiny or desertion, to sentence them on conviction, to death transportation, or imprisonment, and either to carry the sentence immediately into execution, or in any case in which it may not appear expedient to inflict such punishment to report the matter to the Governor General in Council for order...”

The documents displayed are a part of a series of archives available on the events and aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion. Historian Yaqoob Bangash, who has directed this project, says they are hoping to unveil other parts of the exhibit at a venue which could be accessed by more people — AlHamra or perhaps Jinnah Library. The upcoming exhibitions in this series include a display of the official documents pertaining to the Siege of Delhi (one of the most decisive events in the 1857 war) and the trial of Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zaffar.

The earlier exhibit on Bhagat Singh and the one currently on display at the tomb of Anarkali are a part of a larger project to digitise the nearly 700,000 documents and files stored at the Punjab Archives, Bangash explains. “Since it’s such a huge project, we decided to start by identifying five thematic focuses and digitise the documents along those lines,” he says. The Punjab Archives has scheduled exhibits along those themes, which include records on John Lockwood Kipling and the Mayo School of Art (now National College of Arts), and on Ranjit Singh. “The documents on Ranjit Singh are written primarily in Persian and aren’t available anywhere else in the world,” Bangash says. The digitisation process of the archives includes a plan to create a catalogue, search engine and a database of these historic records, and every file will have a note carrying a brief explanation of the contents of the records. “The idea is to make history accessible and engaging for people,” he says.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2018