A huge amount of literature is available about the War of Independence in 1857.  Most of this has been written by British Writers with the exception of books by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib.  However, two accounts of the events at Delhi were written by two Indian Writers.  Both of them came under British influence afterwards and they have angled their narratives to make it palatable to British  tastes and possibly to save their lives, however, what does come out of these narratives is the anguish and the struggle the Badshah had not only in fighting the British but also defending Hindustan against the intrigues of  Hindustanees themselves and people who were close to him.  It should be realised that at the time he was very old , but in spite of this he courageously and decently handled affairs until he was over-whelmed.

These two narratives were translated by Charles Theophilus Metcalfe and published by his wife Esther G. Metcalfe.  This was done in the form of a book which is out of publication and is now difficult to get.  I believe the copy right on this book has expired and I have, therefore, digitised it and put it on the Internet as it is a very interesting book.

The two native writers are Mainodin Hassan Khan and Munshi Jiwan Lall,  both of them were associated both with the Badshah and with the British both before and after the War.  The British Library has the original manuscript of Mainodin Hassan Khan and when I visited the Library in February 2004, it was on display at the John Ritblat Gallery, in the Library.  Mainodin Hasan Khan wrote a book  "khadange gadr",  the translation by Metclafe appears to be only that of the events in Delhi, I managed to purchase a copy published in 1972 by Delhi University. 

Please click below to get to the relevant section of the book.