Bakht Khan

Bakht Khan (1797–1859) was the commander-in-chief, in effect, of the Indian rebel forces in Delhi during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 against the East India Company. A subedar of the Bengal Horse Artillery with forty years of service, he arrived in Delhi on 1 July 1857 at the head of the Bareilly brigade and was granted actual authority by the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, with the title Saheb-e-Alam Bahadur, while the emperor's son Mirza Mughal remained commander-in-chief in name. British officers who had known him before the rebellion described him as "a most intelligent character". ^{1 2}

His birth year is not fully settled: the English article and Wikidata give 1797, while the Urdu article's text gives 1793 and its categories file him under both 1797 and 1798 births; the record follows 1797 and marks the year debated. His birthplace is likewise given as Bijnor district by the English article and as Bareilly by the Urdu article. ^{1 3 2}

Many Urdu writers have described him as of Rohilla heritage, though none, as Iqbal Husain notes, gave his clear family background. One British military officer who took part in suppressing the revolt stated that he was from a Hindu family which later converted to Islam. A British spy, Munshi Jiwan Lal, reported that Bakht Khan claimed to be a Mughal and related to the family of Bahadur Shah Zafar; Khwaja Hasan Nizami claimed, without stating any authority, that he was related to the Nawabs of Oudh on his mother's side and to Ghulam Qadir Rohilla on his father's. The Urdu article describes him as a Rohilla Afghan of the Yusufzai tribe. He became a subedar — the chief native commanding officer — in the East India Company's army, gaining forty years of experience in the Bengal horse artillery and seeing action in the First Anglo-Afghan War. ^{1 3}

When the mutiny broke out at Bareilly, the sepoys there had acclaimed Subedar Bahadur Khan as their general; Bakht Khan, hearing of the rebellion at Meerut, marched to Delhi to support the emperor's army, arriving on 1 July 1857 with a large number of Rohilla sepoys — four regiments of Bengal Native Infantry, one of cavalry and a battery of artillery. Their disciplined arrival dismayed the British besieging Delhi and impressed Bahadur Shah Zafar. Bakht Khan's administrative abilities quickly became evident: he obtained authority to collect taxes to meet the army's financial crisis, and struggled with the growing logistical problem of supplies as the siege tightened. The British captured the Kashmiri Gate on 14 September; Bahadur Shah surrendered on 20 September, against Bakht Khan's pleas, and his sons were executed. ¹

His faith is recorded in this museum as unknown. The sources attest his Muslim identity — on the British officer's account, as a convert — and describe his Rohilla Afghan descent, but no source read names a legal school or a Sufi order for him, and Wikidata gives only Islam. A school is therefore not recorded; the evidence is preserved in his data note. ^{1 3 2}

Bakht Khan left Delhi and joined the rebel forces in Lucknow and Shahjahanpur. After being forced out of Delhi he was mortally wounded, and he died in the Terai plains of Nepal in 1859, which he is said to have entered along with Begum Hazrat Mahal after Awadh came under British control; the Urdu article gives the day as 13 May 1859, which no other source read states. An unnamed tomb in the graveyard of Nanser village in Buner District, in present-day Pakistan, has been claimed by local historians to be his, on the story that he spent his last years under the protection of the Akhund of Swat; the English article calls that claim apocryphal. ^{1 3}