Hardayal Singh had finished his theology studies in 1911 at the Methodist Seminary in Bareilly. Kamlapur was his third ministerial posting, in the capacity of a deacon at the local church. For his Christian brothers, he was Reverend Hardayal Singh. The church was a twenty-minute cycle ride from his house. Hardayal switched on the large battery lamp on his bicycle and started pedalling on the dewy roads. The lamp barely cut through the thick fog, its feeble beam scarcely illuminating patches of the muddy path ahead. His only companions en route were an occasional farmer going towards the fields or a grouchy cock inspecting the earth for some early morning grub. The light in the sky was still bleak but a diffused orange glow was visible beyond the fields.
Rev. Hardayal Singh was a tall man of Rajput descent. He was fair-complexioned but weather-worn inside out. He was known for his hair-trigger temper within the family. He was scrupulous and hardworking. Always in a white achkan, dhoti and pagdi, the Reverend had unique hunter skills that he had picked up from his father.
That morning, on his way to the local Methodist Church, the Reverend was about to be ambushed by a group of vigilantes. His white clothes would get soiled with mud stains, an ironic reminder of an anxious past. The past he thought he had left behind.
As the sun rose higher on the horizon, visibility improved. Hardayal had encountered no one for a vast stretch. Along a lonely path, just outside the boundary of his village, he was startled by hasty footsteps approaching him. A group of six men armed with wooden lathis, surrounded him menacingly. Evidently, they had been biding their time for his arrival. One of them let out an exultant sigh, screaming, ‘Mil gaya, Sultana (found you, Sultana).’ Some gazed at him with scepticism, while others stared at him with conviction. They were possessed by a collective hysteria, the kind of frenzy that is capable of causing mobs to forsake reason and succumb to the sheer muscle of rage.
In a flash, Hardayal was thrown off his bicycle and he landed on the ground with a thud. Not one to be scared easily, he sprang back up to face his oppressors. A volley of questions was thrown at him. He was pushed around without a chance to speak. It was clear to Hardayal that the angry men were mistaking him for someone else. Amidst the thick village dialects thrown at him, he caught the word ‘Bhantu’, repeatedly. The word stung his ears like a sharp arrow cutting through the fog of memory, igniting a host of feelings that the Reverend didn’t want to visit ever again.
Rev. Hardayal Singh was an ‘ex–Bhantu’. Even though he was now casteless in his new identity post-conversion, caste was difficult to disguise in India. It stuck to him like an invisible shadow, refusing to die and always finding a way to rise like a phoenix. Like any other nomadic tribe member, Hardayal had also heard the tales of Sultana. Sultana Daaku, the feared infamous dacoit, whom the vigilantes erroneously mistook Hardayal for. The only common thing between the Reverend and Sultana was their connection with the Bhantu tribe. Hardayal Singh towered at six feet, whereas Sultana Daaku was a foot shorter and dark-complexioned. Both, however, wore big Rajput-style curled moustaches. Any other physical resemblance between the two, if at all, was incidental.
Occupational thieves, congenital robbers and habitual cons. That is what the other castes called the Bhantus. Ethnologically, the Bhantus were recognized as a tribe. Most members traced their lineage to Rajputs, from the army of Rana Pratap, but for decades now, they were reduced to a nomadic community, allowed only at the periphery of villages. With fewer avenues to explore in the face of extreme social stigma and poverty, many tribe members operated as a clan and carried out collective thefts and crimes for their survival. They usually looted government vehicles and goods trains, stealing grains and food. Most Bhantus were landless nomads and the British regarded them with equal suspicion.
Sultana Daaku, whose full name was Sultan Singh, was a notorious dacoit. He lived in the thick jungles of Tehri. Gulphi, another famous ancestor of the Bhantus, was considered the most proficient of all thieves and Sultana’s grandfather, a thief of repute himself, was considered the Gulphi-incarnate by many.1 With this history, Sultana considered dacoity to be his destiny. Areas with ravines and forests like Tehri, Chambal and Chilpata were known for dacoits. Troubled by the escapades of these outlaws, between 1836 and 1848, the East India Company had established a series of legal acts called the Thuggee and Dacoity Suppression Acts.2
As part of preventive measures, the so-called ‘suspicious tribes and inherently criminal individuals’ were camped in reformatory colonies. But in spite of rehabilitation programmes and government aid, it was observed that the men would return to their earlier way of life.3 Sometimes, the government programmes fell short of funds and they were abandoned. Therefore, the substantial task of the reformation and rehabilitation of criminal tribes was subcontracted to the Muktifauj or the Salvation Army. Sultana and his family were also living in a forted Salvation Army settlement.4
However, suspicious of the army’s intentions to proselytize, he had escaped from the forted settlement and since then wreaked havoc in the neighbouring areas of Tehri. In principle, he stole only from the rich business class, the Bania community, and never attacked or robbed the Rajputs, for he considered himself one of them. Sultana had unwavering admiration for Rana Pratap; he is even believed to have named his horse Chetak after the warrior’s horse.
Bhantu legend says that Sultana Daaku never kept the loot to himself but distributed it to the poor and needy in the community. The idea of a short man, an outcaste from an underprivileged background, standing up for the poor and against the atrocities of the upper castes and the British was romanticized by the Bhantus. Predictably, he was a wanted criminal in the eyes of the law and rumours of him hiding in disguise in the plain lands of the Central Province abounded.
But on that cold, foggy morning in Sitapur, the tall man standing up for himself—in the face of yet another injustice— wasn’t, in fact, Sultana. He was my great-grandfather, Rev. Hardayal Singh. An ex-Bhantu, a man of another faith and a person in search of a new start.
It is said bounds of caste are made of steel. Sometimes invisible but almost always inextricable.
Excerpted with permission from This Land We Call Home by Nusrat F. Jafri published by Penguin Random House India, 2024