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Azimullah Khan: The Strategist Behind Nana Sahib

He fought the British with a pen and a printing press, not a sword. His song is still called India’s first national anthem of resistance.

Azimullah Khan, counsellor and comrade-in-arms of Nana Sahib. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

📑 Contents

Azimullah Khan (17 September 1830 – 1859) rose from an orphaned childhood in Kanpur to become secretary, then Dewan (prime minister), to Maratha Peshwa Nana Sahib.
He learned English and French at a mission school, an unusual achievement for an Indian at the time.
In 1853, he led a mission to England to seek the resumption of Nana Sahib’s cancelled pension. The mission failed.
In February 1857, he launched Payam-e-Azadi, an Urdu-Hindi newspaper meant to build public opposition to British rule.
Its first edition carried his own song, “Hum Hain Iske Malik, Hindustan Hamara,” often called India’s first national song of resistance.
During the 1857 revolt, he played a political rather than military role, closely advising Nana Sahib through the Kanpur siege.

During his time in England, he observed British society and politics closely. On the return journey, his party stopped in Constantinople, where he met Times correspondent William Howard Russell.
He returned from England with a printing press, later used to produce material opposing British rule.
He was involved in the negotiations around the besieged British garrison’s evacuation at Kanpur, which collapsed into violence.
He was a Muslim advisor at a largely Hindu court, without personal wealth or troops of his own. Historians describe his influence as resting entirely on argument and strategy, not on military or social standing.

His failed pension mission to England is a useful reminder. Some of 1857’s key figures had specific personal grievances against the Company, not only broad political ones.
His use of a newspaper and a song as tools of resistance shows 1857 wasn’t purely a military affair. Print and public opinion mattered too.
The genuine uncertainty over his death is itself worth noting. Many of 1857’s political, non-military figures left thinner documentary trails than its famous battlefield leaders.