Why were British Officers tensed? What did they do to control Maulvi's Activities
Answers
Answer:
Rana Safvi explores the life of Urdu journalist Maulavi Muhammad Baqar, who recorded the siege of Delhi during the 1857 mutiny in his paper Dehli Urdu Akhbar.
Vasily Vereshchagin’s Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
In 1884, Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin painted his famous Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English, in which he showed a man being tied to the mouth of a canon that was about to be blown. The man in question was Maulavi Muhammad Baqar, who I discovered during the course of my research. Though the description of the execution in the painting showing Baqar tied to the mouth of a canon, is incorrect, it shows how Baqar had captured popular imagination even three decades after the 1857 revolt.
After a four month long siege, Delhi fell to the British on September 14, 1857 and Baqar (1790-1857) was the first journalist to have fallen to the imperialistic designs of the British on September 16, 1857. He was a religious scholar who was well versed in Persian, Arabic, Urdu and English. He had received religious education from his father Maulana Muhammed Akbar (who was an eminent alim) and secular education in Delhi College, which he joined in 1825. Later he became a Persian language teacher at Delhi College.