January 1857, Mathura. The British Magistrate had just returned from touring his district. Tensions were starting to run high, as Indians were growing fed up of the exploitative British rule.
The Magistrate entered his office one morning, and found on his desk, “four dirty little cakes of the coarsest flour, about the size and thickness of a biscuit.” These were four small chapatis! Apparently, an Indian man had sidled up to a village handed over one chapati to the local watchman, asking him to make four more and give them to the watchmen of the nearby villages with the same instructions.
Soon, reports started pouring that this was happening all over! Apparently, thousands of common Indian rotis were being mysteriously passed from hand to hand, village to village, through all of North India. No one knew for sure what they were for.
Mysterious affair
In March 1857, a British doctor serving the East India Company wrote to his sister back in England. ‘There is a most mysterious affair going on throughout the whole of India at present. The Indian papers are full of surmises as to what it means. It is not known where it originated, by whom or for what purpose, whether it is supposed to be connected to any religious ceremony or whether it has to do with some secret society…’the chupatty movement.”
As chapatis continued to be passed on from village to village, panicked British letters started flying about. The British were sure some native mischief was afoot-some of the British called it sedition, others claimed it was superstition. They tried quizzing local people to get to the bottom of this mystery. Bewildered Indians replied that they had never heard of such a thing in all their lives. Even the carriers of these rotis “did not know why they had to run through the night with chuppatties in their turbans”! They looked like ordinary chapatis, and even deep inspection didn’t reveal any distinguishing marks or messages on them.
Faster than the mail
The British soon grew spooked by this eerie, large-scale distribution of chapatis. They know how precarious their position was in India, with barely a 100,000 of them, they would stand no chance. They were ready to get paranoid about any little thing. Local reports even said that the chapatis were getting around at up to 300 km per night, which was much faster than even the swiftest British mails. The Indians on other hand, were sure this was another play of the British, and that unholy items had been mixed into the rotis – bones, animal fat, what not.
Rumours were spreading like wildfire, and disquiet was growing amongst all sections. Tall tales were everywhere. Tension was simmering and the temperature was soaring as summer approached. Everyone was on edge. Finally, on May, 1857, Indian sepoys in Meerut rose up violently against their British officers, kicking off the year-long bloody Revolt of 1857 which would herald the beginning of Crown Rule in India and the demise of the East India Company. However, forevermore, the British would insist that the chapatis had something to do with it!
Picture Credit : Google