A vintage photo dated 1st of January, 1857 reveals a turban-clad trooper mounted on a single hump dromedary, a species of camels native to the subcontinent of India. While some distance away four British soldiers sporting colonial pattern plinth helmets are engaged in a conversation – among them, one is on a horse.
In the January of 1857, various regiments of the British Indian army had amassed at Khyber Pass and at Peshawar (now Pakistan) to provide a guard of honour salute to Dost Mohammad, the ruler of Afghanistan.
With the Anglo-Iranian conflict (1856-1857) still a source of tension, British Political Agent, Sir Herbert Edwardes, had invited Dost Mohammad to sanctify and renew the treaty of 1855, to strengthen relations between Afghanistan and British India.
Under the renewed treaty, the British Indian Government had agreed to provide arms and money to the Afghan prince. Dost Mohammad, in turn, had agreed to house a British delegate to monitor the use of the resources provided, and as a loyal ally, wage war against Iran.
Possibly, a trooper of the Punjab Irregulars.
While there is hardly any information to suggest which Camel Corps this trooper belonged to, it is quite possible that he may have been a member of the Punjab Irregulars – a frontier regiment created to patrol the borders.
This particular regiment had remained loyal in 1857 and fought alongside other loyal native units to suppress the mutiny – which had erupted three months later in the military cantonment of Meerut on the 10th of May, 1857.
The Punjab Irregulars had comprised of the Scindi Camel Corps, a dromedary contingent that had been formed in 1843 to patrol and protect villages from marauding Baluchi tribesmen. The unit had been raised by Lieutenant Robert Fitzgerald on the orders of Major General Charles John Napier.
Originally a part of the army of the Bombay Presidency, the Scindi Camel Corps was later merged with other units to become the Punjab Irregulars in 1856. The initial 1,000 camels for this unit, was supplied by the Princely State of Bahawalpur in Punjab.
An effective military unit of mounted troopers.
From a paper submitted by General George Williams Green some thirty-seven years later in 1884, we know that this Corps was extremely effective.
Green at the time was writing to stress upon the importance of using camels in Egypt and Sudan, and to prove his point we had relied on the successful exploits of this unit when it was still known as the Scindi Camel Corps, and which he was once a part of when stationed in British India.
Camels for this military unit had served mainly as a means to transport troops and each had seated two. A driver and a pinion rider, usually a rifle-armed soldier. Unlike horse cavalry, this unit had not charged headlong into the fray with swords drawn for close combat but had first dismounted and then engaged the enemy.
The trooper in the photo.
In the photo, the trooper can be seen dressed in a tunic with two breast pockets and a puttee wrapped around his calves. The puttee was a kind of wrapping used by native soldiers, and which was later adopted by British regiments during World War I.
The trooper is visibly short in height as is evident by the length of the Sabre at his side – which seems to be almost half of him in length.
He is perhaps a few inches shorter than the mandatory 5 feet 7 inches required for enlistment in the Bengal army but a rule that was not rigidly adhered to especially in times of war and if the candidate had possessed all other qualifications other than just the height – see the Farbound.Net story: How the Bengal Army came to be an army of robust Sepoys.
Furthermore, the rule had also been ignored when it had come to recruiting men from Punjab – see thesis
The trooper’s style of wearing the turban with the frills equal to the height of his conical Kullah hints that he may have been a Baluchi tribesman or a Rajputana Musalman.
In the armies of the East India Company, Hindus had made up the bulk of the Sepoy infantry units while Muslims were to be found in majority when it came to mounted sowars.
Use of camels during the Mutiny of 1857.
During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, loyalist armies of the East India Company as well as the rebel Sepoys had made ample use of camels.
In the siege of Lucknow, British General James Outram had noted with some anxiety that the formidable rebel force in possession of the city was some 1,20,000 strong. Of which 27,000 were trained Sepoys, 7,000 were trained cavalry and 800 belonged to the Camel Corps.
Though this photo was taken a few months before the Mutiny of 1857 occurred. The accompanying caption was appended after the insurrection had been finally suppressed in 1859.
Appended Caption.
The caption reads: One of the Indian Soldiers who assisted the British in suppressing the mutiny of 1857 when the Sepoys of the Bengal army revolted.
What the original purpose the photo was created to serve is not known. The appended caption, however, which occurred later, suggests it was reused to distinguish between loyal and disloyal native Sepoys.
I F I This is an Independent story aimed at unraveling the story behind this historic photo of a loyal camel trooper. It takes into account various possibilities in an attempt to identify which regiment the trooper may have belonged to, where the photo may have been captured and also highlights the role of mounted units in the British Indian army. It has been created out of facts curated from literary and historical sources. I
