Ganga Baba: Dalit Hero of the 1857 Revolt

 Ganga Baba: Dalit  Hero of the 1857 Revolt

  Ganga Baba, a dalit hero of the 1857 revolt, was born in the villages adjoining Bithoor in UP. The story goes like this: “Gangu Baba was a youth living in a nearby village. It was said that he was so strong that he could change the course of rivers and chop off the heads of mountains. He could fight against two tigers together. Gangu Baba was as kind as he was brave. If he saw a hungry person he would give him his own bread to eat. If he saw someone shivering in the cold he gave his own blanket to wrap. People also say that if he heard a deer crying at night he used to get so upset that he would go to the forest and break the bones of tigers. Although he was born in a low caste poor family, he commanded great respect in the village. Rich and influential landlords used to leave their chairs to embrace him”.

Once Gangu Baba was returning from the forest with a dead tiger on his back, which he had killed unarmed single-handed. Just then Nana Saheb Peshwa, the king of Bithoor, passed by with his army. At that time Nana Saheb Peshwa had already blown the bugle of the battle against the British. When he saw the strapping young man walking nonchalantly with a tiger on his back, he stopped him and asked him to join his army. Gangu Baba was very happy to hear this. He joined the army and while there he once alone killed nearly 150 British soldiers with his sword. This enraged the British, who tried their best to catch him dead or alive. 

After immense efforts they succeeded in capturing him. Then the cruel British officers tied him to the back of a horse and dragged him all the way to Kanpur, which was a long way away. There they killed him by hanging him from a neem tree in Chunniganj, Kanpur. (This story was narrated by an old woman Bhagwanti Devi of Duari located in the district Kanpur Dehat of North India on 10th January, 2007).

This is the story of Gangu Baba, the brave youth of Bithoor, whose story is part of the oral history of the region about the 1857 revolt. To make sure that the story remains for posterity, the dalits of the region raised enough money to commission a statue of Gangu Baba. The statue is installed in Chunniganj, where he had been mercilessly killed by the British as a punishment for his brave act of killing so many of their fellowmen.