CULT OF A DARK HERO

STUART FLINDERS EXPLORES THIS CONTROVERSIAL VICTORIAN SOLDIER, WHO BECAME A CULT FIGURE

Author: Stuart Flinders Publisher: I.B. Tauris Price: £25.00

The final, successful attack on Delhi by British forces during the Sepoy Mutiny took place in September 1857. The offensive was led by the redoubtable John Nicholson, one of the Indian army’s legendary heroes. Nicholson, a 36-year-old giant of a man, was known as an unsmiling egotist and a bully who harboured a deep dislike of the Indians. Two of his brothers had been murdered in India and he himself had discovered the mutilated corpse of one of them. On that fateful day, Nicholson galloped full fury at the Kashmiri Gate, which had been blown in by sappers. That is where he took the bullet that was to bring his adventurous life to close a few days later.

Stuart Flinders has brought this towering, controversial Victorian hero to life in a biography that draws on previously unpublished source material, including diaries and letters of contemporaries. Nicholson was a cult figure in his own day, and the soldier was revered as ‘Nikal Seyni’. He inspired respect and fierce allegiance from the troops under his command. Many tribesmen of the North-west Frontier belonged to this sect and, astonishingly, after Nicholson’s death more than a few converted to Christianity. This was despite his deep sense of racial supremacy and conviction of Britain’s right to rule India. “From a modern perspective,” the author explains, “it is his attitude towards Indians and his use of extra-judicial violence that makes Nicholson such a disturbing figure”.

Nevertheless, it is a curious fact that while memorials to Britain’s colonial servants are reviled in their own country, in Delhi, where Nicholson is buried in an un-vandalised grave, thousands of people travel the Nicholson Road every day without giving it a second thought.