George Dodd - The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856-7-8

The chupatties – small cakes of unleavened bread, about two inches in diameter, made of Indian corn-meal, and forming part of the sepoys’ regular diet – were regarded in England, as soon as the circumstances of the Revolt became known, as signs or symptoms which the various officers of the Company in India ought sedulously to have searched into. Ever since the middle of 1856 – ever since, indeed, the final arrangements for the annexation of Oude – these chupatties were known to have been passing from hand to hand. A messenger would come to a village, seek out the headman or village elder, give him six chupatties, and say: ‘These six cakes are sent to you; you will make six others, and send them on to the next village.’ The headman accepted the six cakes, and punctually sent forward other six as he had been directed. It was a mystery of which the early stages were beyond our ken; for no one could say, or no one would say, which was the first village whence the cakes were sent. During many months this process continued: village after village being brought into the chain as successive links, and relays of chupatties being forwarded from place to place. Mr Disraeli, attacking on one occasion in the House of Commons the policy of the Indian government, adverted sarcastically to this chupatty mystery: ‘Suppose the Emperor of Russia, whose territory, in extent and character, has more resemblance to our Eastern possessions than the territory of any other power – suppose the Emperor of Russia were told – “Sire, there is a very remarkable circumstance going on in your territory; from village to village, men are passing who leave the tail of an ermine or a pot of caviare, with a message to some one to perform the same ceremony. Strange to say, this has been going on in some ten thousand villages, and we cannot make head or tail of it.” I think the Emperor of Russia would say: “I do not know whether you can make head or tail of it, but I am quite certain there is something wrong, and that we must take some precautions; because, where the people are not usually indiscreet and troublesome, they do not make a secret communication unless it is opposed to the government. This is a secret communication, and therefore a communication dangerous to the government.”’ The opposition leader did not assert that the government could have penetrated the mystery, but that the mystery ought to have been regarded as significant of something dangerous, worthy of close scrutiny and grave consideration.

The chupatties first appeared in the Northwest Provinces, around Delhi; and subsequent events offered a temptation for rebuking the governor-general and the commander-in-chief, in having failed to strengthen the posts with English troops after the indications of some secret conspiracy had thus been made. In some places it was ascertained that the cakes were to be kept till called for by the messengers, other cakes being sent on instead of them; but what was the meaning of this arrangement, the English officials could not, or at least did not find out. In Scotland, in the clannish days, war-signals were sent from hut to hut and from clan to clan with extraordinary rapidity; and, however little an unleavened cake might appear like a war-signal, military men and politicians ought certainly to have been alive to such strange manifestations as this chupatty movement. From the Sutlej to Patna, throughout a vast range of thickly populated country, was the secret correspondence carried on. One thing at any rate may safely be asserted, that the military stations required close watching at such a time; something was fermenting in the minds of the natives which the English could not understand; but that very fact would have justified – nay, rendered almost imperative – the guarding of the chief posts from sudden surprise. Little or nothing of this precautionary action seems to have been attempted. Throughout nearly the whole of the great trunk-road from Calcutta to the Punjaub, the military stations were left as before, almost wholly in the hands of the sepoys. At Benares there was only a single company of European foot-artillery; the rest of the troops consisting of two regiments of native infantry, and one of the Cis-Sutlej Sikh regiments. At Allahabad, the great supply magazine of the province was left almost wholly to the guard of the sepoys. Lucknow had only one European regiment and one company of artillery; notwithstanding that, as the capital of Oude, it was in the midst of a warlike and excited population; while the native army of the province, capable of soon assembling at the city, comprised no less than fourteen regiments of infantry, six of cavalry, and six companies of artillery. Cawnpore, a very important station with a large medical depôt, contained three regiments of native infantry, one of native cavalry, and two companies of native artillery with twelve guns; while the English force was only a company of infantry, and about sixty artillerymen with six guns. The large magazine of Delhi, the great storehouse of ammunition for the military stations all around it, was left to be guarded entirely by sepoys. The late General Anson, at that time commander-in-chief, was among the hills at Simla, relaxing from his duties; and neither at Simla nor at Calcutta did it seem to be felt that, with existing symptoms, more European troops were necessary in the Bengal and Northwest Provinces.

The chupatty was not the only symbol of some mystery: the lotus was another. It was a common occurrence for a man to come to a cantonment with a lotus-flower, and give it to the chief native officer of a regiment; the flower was circulated from hand to hand in the regiment; each man took it, looked at it, and passed it on, saying nothing. When the lotus came to the last man in the regiment, he disappeared for a time, and took it to the next military station. This strange process occurred throughout nearly all the military stations where regiments of the Bengal native army were cantoned.

Chupatties and lotus-flowers, together with the incendiarism and the cartridge grievances presently to be noticed, unquestionably indicated some widely spread discontent among the natives – military if not general. ‘It is clear,’ in the words of an observant officer, writing from one of the Cis-Sutlej stations, ‘that a certain ferment had been allowed gradually to arise throughout the mass of the Bengal army. In some it was panic, in some excitement, in some a mere general apprehension or expectation, and in some it was no doubt disaffection, or even conspiracy. Governing an alien people and a vast army, we had divested ourselves of all the instruments of foreign domination so familiar to Austria and all other continental powers. We had no political police, no European strongholds, no system of intelligence or espionage, comparatively little real military discipline; and even our own post-office was the channel of free, constant, and unchecked intercourse between all the different regiments. Not a letter even was opened; that would have been too abhorrent to English principles. The sepoy mind had probably become prepared to distrust us, as we had begun to distrust them. There were strange new legislative acts, and new post-office rules, and new foreign service enlistments, and new employment of armed races in our army, and other things disagreeable and alarming to the true old sepoy caste. And then it came about that from a small and trifling beginning, one of those ferments to which the native mind is somewhat prone, took possession of the sepoy army.’

One of the strange facts connected with the chupatty movement was, that the cakes were transmitted to the heads of villages who have not been concerned in the mutiny, while many sepoys who broke out in revolt had received no cakes. They appear to have been distributed mostly to the villagers; whereas the lotus passed from hand to hand among the military.