The Confession of Sultana Daku

With a map of Sultana’s area of operations

Authour : Sujit Saraf

Publisher : Hamish Hamilton, 2009, Pages 285

======

Excerpts:

(1) On reaching the age of six, a boy must begin to learn the trade of his fathers. There are three hollow spaces inside the mouth where a man may hide coins, rings and small knives; one on either side, between the cheek and upper lip, and a third, secret one, deep inside the throat. By eight he must complete at least one roomali-naqab; dig a hole under a locked door and crawl through it. Another is khan-naqab, in which you need to dig through the wall, and bagli-naqab, in which you make a hole in the wall near the door.

 (2) If someone was robbed in Gorakhpur, the police went to the doms in the Muktifauj (Salvation Army) prison there, if someone was killed west of Dilli, they went to the berias, and if anything happened between Dilli and Gorakhpur they came to us in Najibabad. In their eyes every murderer in Bijnor, Moradabad or Breilly was a bhantu.

(3) I entered the Lat Sahib George Pancham’s train near the Salimgarh fort tracks. The windows had curtains, a sofa along the wall, chairs and tables with papers strewn about. The carpet was as thick as a mattress, a door led to another room having more sofas and desks, electric fans on the roof, but nothing which I could take. I ran from one room to the next and reached the room having only a bed with a large mirror on the wall. On the bed was a box which I opened and in it was a crown. I heard guards in the first room, and entered the only other door. There was a large trough where a horse could drink, mirror on the wall and towels hanging on pegs. .. I uprooted the thunderbox, put the crown on my head, wrapped my dhoti around my knees and squeezed down the hole below.

(4) I would tell the pujari that we were wandering sadhus from Haridwar. In the mornings we went round the village, begging as sadhus do. We noted which houses were made of brick and which of mud and nal grass, which women wore jewellery, and which banias had had the biggest scales. We marked on their walls with lumps of lime, one line for a rich man, two for a rich man whose wife had jewelry – so the house would be easy to locate in the dark.

(5) I had suppliers in Moradabad, Bareilly, Bijnor and Najibabad, who sold me flour, 12-bore shot, powder, muskets, saddles, bits, feed for my horses. I always paid well. Not all of them were banias either. Soldiers who had fought for George Pancham in the Great War provided muskets, mallas ferried us across the Ganga, and thakurs quietly let us cut their crop because the loss would go on their tenant’s head.

(6)  One night, we set off in opposite directions, I taking half the men towards Kashipur, and Dalpat the other half towards Bijnor. Our movements were watched by the police, and we encountered them in both places. We bhantus do not cover their faces during raids, so the constables in both Kashipur and Bijnor saw me, and word began to spread. Sultana was in two places at once, twenty kos apart ! The banias now trembled, afraid to touch the man to whom Sri Maharaj had given such power !

(7) There was not a town in Rohilkhand where a man, on hearing a sudden shot in the darkness, did not cry, “Sultana Daku ki jai !” I never robbed old women or poor men, and never hurt a child. A bhantu is born to lighten the burden of those who feel it heaviest on their shoulders. If not for a Sultana, who would keep a check on the wealth of banias and the terror of thakurs in Rohilkhand ?

=======

My Take : A breathtaking narrative of notorious Sultana Daku, swashbuckling leader of a gang of bhantu dacoits who terrorised United Provinces, specially Rohilkhand between 1910 to 1924. Sujit Saraf has painstakingly collected the facts and tells the story in the first person with remarkable flair. Though told as fiction, none of it is contrary to known fact.

          Sultana, third in generation of famous Gulfi, had his area of operations mainly in Rohilkhand, from Haridwar to Moradabad , Rampur to Haldwani and Nainital.

Excerpts also given in the book from diaries of Police and Army officers, who were in pursuit of Sultana, have not given above due to space constraints.

======

Subject Type – Historical story telling in reminiscences form

Narrative Style – Excellent

Readability – Excellent

Maintaining Readers Interest – Excellent

====

Available on Amazon  at the time of posting the blog

Available on Flipkart at the time of posting the blog

====

Availability and price would change depending on sale & stock. Check current status.