The skull of Alum Bheg : the life and death of a rebel of 1857 / Kim Wagner.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-272) and index.

Introduction -- The hot wind of an Indian May -- A religious question from which arose our dread -- Common fame is but a lying strumpet -- Escape at once from this horrible place -- Tenants of Pandemonium -- Their blood have they shed like water -- Gorging vultures and howling jackals -- Justice so prompt and vigorous -- A pursuing destiny -- Sharp and short as the cannons roar -- But from the skulls of the slain -- Epilogue: the dead bodies of thy servants.

In 1963, a human skull was discovered in a pub in Kent in south-east England. A brief handwritten note stuck inside the cavity revealed it to be that of Alum Bheg, an Indian soldier in British service who was executed during the aftermath of the 1857 Uprising, or The Indian Mutiny as historians of an earlier era described it. Alum Bheg was blown from a cannon for having allegedly murdered British civilians, and his head was brought back as a grisly war-trophy by an Irish officer present at his execution. The skull is a troublesome relic of both anti- colonial violence and the brutality and spectacle of British retribution. Kim Wagner presents an intimate and vivid account of life and death in British India in the throes of the largest rebellion of the nineteenth century. Fugitive rebels spent months, even years, hiding in the vastness of the Himalayas before they were eventually hunted down and punished by a vengeful colonial state. Examining the colonial practice of collecting and exhibiting human remains, this book offers a critical assessment of British imperialism that speaks to contemporary debates about the legacies of Empire and the myth of the 'Mutiny'.