The panel settlement in Andamans: 1858-1870 brings together two accounts written by two freedom fighters who spent long terms in the settlement.
The account by Maulana Khairabadi titled The Indian Rebellion, originally written in Arabic Prose and poetry, gives us the eyewitness details of the fighting between the rebel and the British armies in Delhi and Lucknow. This account is of special interest as it describes not only the misery and sufferings but makes it clear that the rebellion failed primarily due to incompetence and corruption of the rebel leaders both in Delhi and in Lucknow. His account of the Penal Settlement describes the locale, as it was when first prisoners reached there after the suppression of the rebellion and under what inhuman conditions, both natural and manmade, they had to live in. Khairabadi shows staunch religious belief, but without any prejudice.
Tawarikh-I-Ajeeb of Thanesari tells us about the settlement when the confinement conditions had improved and the natural surroundings had been domesticated to some extent. Maulana Thanesari was the chief accused in the famous Patna Wahabi Trial involving a chain build for transfer of money, arms and men to the Wahabi centers in Northwestern Frontier region where fierce fighting was going on between the Wahabis and the British. Sentenced to death and then commuted to life imprisonment, the account provides a vivid account of British jails in Punjab. Sindh and Bombay. It tells us about the Andamans of a time when the natural and prison conditions had substantially improved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jaweed Ashraf
Professor Jaweed Ashraf was born in 1934 in a family of Malkhana Rajputs with both Hindu and Muslim relatives. Thus, from childhood he experienced an insider’s view of both cultures. He had his primary education in Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, an institution that was born out of the freedom movement and where traditional Islamic learning was combined with modern education. He learnt Arabic and Persian, besides Urdu, Hindi and English in Jamia. Later he shifted to Lucknow Christian College where he started studying Biology and experienced Christian belief and way of life. He graduated with Geology, Geography and Botany from Aligarh Muslim University and also obtained his Master’s degree in Botany from there. In 1960 he went to join Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, Moscow, for his doctoral studies in physiological genetics. After completing his doctorate, from 1965 to 1972 he worked as a Junior Research Assistant in the USSR Academy of Sciences, first working in the Institute of Genetics in Moscow and then in the Botanical Institute, Leningrad. In 1972 he joined School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi as Associate Professor and finally retired from there in 1999. Since his retirement he has worked on projects of Indian Council of Historical Research and of Indian National Science Academy, editing and translating medieval manuscripts on Unani medicine, horticulture and other aspects of medieval Indian biological sciences. He knows a number of modern and classical languages and has extensively covered countries of Asia, Durope and the U.S.A. He has served on a numbr of committees appointed by Archaeological Survey of India and other departments of the government of India.
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