Sita Ram Pande had a remarkable career. He enlisted as a Sepoy in the Bengal Native Infantry (of East India Company) in 1812 and retired after the 1857 mutiny as Subedar (native officer). In these years, he fought in the Gurkha War, joined the campaign against the Pindaris and was a part of the ill-fated Afghanistan campaign. After the Company Bahadur’s forces were routed, Sita Ram was sold into slavery in Kabul. But he escaped and rejoined his unit. He thereafter fought in the Sikh wars. By the time of the mutiny, he had become old and possibly infirm but still carried arms. Amongst the rebels killed by Sita Ram’s paltan was his son. Sita Ram retired to his village in Oudh in 1860 and would regale visitors from England with his tales for long.
Sita Ram was persuaded by his superior, Major-General James Thomas Norgate, to pen his memoirs. Sita Ram wrote an account of his days in the army probably in 1861 in Hindi. He made two copies, one for Norgate and the other for the Bajpai family, the landlords of his village in Rae Bareli. It was an honest account. Sita Ram made no attempt to cover himself with glory and never flinched to point out the follies of his British officers.
Norgate translated it into English with the help of some knowledgeable Indians. Thus was born From Sepoy to Subedar. The first edition was probably published in Lahore in 1873, and the second edition came in 1880. In that edition, Norgate mentioned that Sita Ram was possibly dead.
The book received a new lease of life 30 years later when Col D A Phillott, secretary and member of the board of examiners in the vernacular languages, came across it. He did two things: one, he made an Urdu translation which was serialised in Fauji Akhbar, the newsletter of the armed forces till Independence; and two, he made it mandatory reading for all British officers serving in India. The book now went through several editions — the last one came out in 1943.
After Independence, in an effort to get rid of all things colonial, From Sepoy to Subedar fell into disuse. Routledge & Kegan Paul published a new version, edited by James Lunt and with illustrations done by Frank Wilson, in 1970. Its paperback edition, published by Macmillan, came in 1988.
There has been a great debate amongst historians about the authenticity of Sita Ram’s accounts. Most records of the Bengal Native Infantry are lost; so there is nowhere to check his claims. Sita Ram was also fuzzy about dates. That, some have argued, gives it a touch of authenticity. Had his accounts been doctored, all dates and details would have been absolutely correct and consistent. Still others say that Sita Ram must have written a bland account of his days in the army and praised his officers to the hilt out of fear that he may lose his pension if he spoke the truth, and therefore the masala was probably added by the translator, Norgate.
Sir Girija Shankar Bajpai, of the Rae Bareli landlord family and one of India’s most distinguished public servants (he was governor of Bombay from 1952 to 1954), had claimed in 1912, when he was being interviewed for the civil services, that a copy of the book was indeed in the family’s possession and he had read it as a child. But his son, more than 50 years later, would deny any knowledge of the book. Be that as it may, From Sepoy to Subedar is a fantastic insider’s account of life in the battlefields and the barracks.
I bought my copy from Amazon. You could also try your luck at second-hand bookstores and libraries of some old army, or railway, clubs.
