Peer Ali Khan

In July 1857, a Patna bookbinder led a night attack on British officials. He was arrested the next day and hanged within four days.

He was Peer Ali Khan. His shop had been a quiet centre for passing secret messages.

1Who was Peer Ali Khan?

He was an ordinary craftsman, not a soldier or a prince.

• He was born around 1812.
• Wikipedia places his birth at Patna, Bihar.
• Other accounts name Azamgarh, so sources differ on the place.
• By trade he was a bookbinder.
• He also sold books in Patna.
• He was poor, and he had no army behind him.
• His life shows that 1857 was not only a revolt of sepoys.
• Tradesmen and craftsmen took part in it too.

2How did a bookshop become a network?

He used his trade as a cover.

• He secretly handed out important leaflets and pamphlets.
• He also passed coded messages to freedom fighters.
• A bookseller meets many people, so visitors raised no suspicion.
• He ran regular campaigns against British rule.
• He played a leading role in organising the revolt in Patna district.
• The revolt in Patna came in July 1857.
• It followed the first outbreak at Meerut in May.
• Patna was the seat of a British commissioner.
• That commissioner was William Tayler, in office since 1855.
• He was also an amateur artist who sketched Indian life.
• He served at Cuttack in 1830 before rising to Patna.
• He joined the East India Company in 1829.
• Tayler was born on 8 April 1808 and studied at Charterhouse and Oxford.

3What happened on 3 July 1857?

A small band struck at British officials in the city.

• He led the uprising in Patna on 3 July 1857.
• His men first attacked the house of a Catholic priest in the city.
• The priest escaped.
• They then killed Dr Lyell.
• Dr Lyell was the principal assistant to an opium agent.
• Peer Ali was believed to be the man who killed him.
• The British were alarmed by an armed rising inside the city.
• This came well before the Danapur sepoys revolted.
• The Danapur garrison mutinied on 25 July 1857.
• So his rising came about three weeks earlier.
• So Bihar saw several different kinds of resistance in July 1857.
• The British were driven back with heavy losses.
• Rebels ambushed that force about a mile from the siege house.
• On 29 July a force of 400 men left Danapur to relieve Arrah.

4How did the British respond?

They moved fast and made the punishment public.

• He was arrested on 4 July 1857.
• Thirty-three followers were arrested with him.
• He was hanged in full public view on 7 July 1857.
• Commissioner William Tayler was the officer who ordered it.
• Fourteen other rebels were hanged with him.
• They included Ghasita Khalifa, Ghulam Abbas and Nandu Lal.
• Others were Jumman, Maduwa, Kajil Khan and Ramzani.
• The list also names Peer Bakhsh, Wahid Ali and Ghulam Ali.
• It ends with Mahmood Akbar and Asrar Ali Khan.
• Tayler was later accused of executing many people without enough evidence.
• His superiors thought his measures were too harsh.
• He was suspended on 26 January 1859 and resigned in March 1859.
• He later wrote about these months in The Patna Crisis, published in 1858.
• The 1858 book is a first-hand British account of the Patna revolt.
• Readers should remember that it was written from the British side.
• A Commons copy of the book is free to read online.
• It was called Thirty-Eight Years in India and carried his own drawings.
• In 1881 and 1882 he published a two-volume autobiography.
• The full title was The Patna Crisis; or, Three Months at Patna.

5How is he remembered?

Bihar has named public places after him.

• A road near Patna Airport carries his name.
• The Bihar government named it in 2008.
• Shaheed Peer Ali Khan Park is a children’s park in Patna.
• It stands near Gandhi Maidan, in front of the District Magistrate’s residence.
• The state government named the park after him.
• His revolt failed within days.
• Yet local memory has kept his name alive for more than a century.

6What are the exam traps?

Dates and places are easy to mix up.

• Uprising: 3 July. Arrest: 4 July. Hanging: 7 July.
• Do not confuse his Patna rising with the Danapur mutiny of 25 July.
• Do not confuse him with Kunwar Singh, who fought around Arrah in Bihar.
• He was a bookbinder, not a sepoy or a landlord.
• The commissioner’s name is usually spelled Tayler, but many books write Taylor.
• The revolt was in Patna, not in Delhi, Awadh or Jhansi.
• Read about the Revolt of 1857.
• Read about Kunwar Singh.
• Compare him with Bakht Khan in Delhi.