The Barkur Manuscript[1]

In a certain year, on the 30th of Mai (a Tulu month corresponding to February-March) 1784, in one and the same night all the Christians of the District of Kanara were arrested and mustered in their respective villages. Those of the Barkur Taluk were taken the next day to the Kacheri at Bramavar and detained there for eight days. They were thence taken to Koteshwar in the Cundapur Taluk, where they were joined by the people of that taluk. They were all collected at a hilly place called Hangur, in Koteshwar Neragi, where they were detained for a period of two months, after which they were made to ascend the Nagur Ghat, and conducted by that route to Seringapatam.

They had to endure great sufferings during the interval. They were about 20,000 people from these two taluks. While on the march the people were divided into two sections, the labourers forming one, and the cultivators the other. The latter had to walk in advance followed by the labourers, the whole forming a line extending nearly to a league in length. They travelled at the rate of two leagues a day, and then encamped. The day labourers had their batta, but the farmers had none, so that those who falsely asserted that they belonged to the class of farmers daily experienced great difficulties in procuring the necessaries of life.

Whilst travelling in this manner, pregnant women were often confined on the road, and the babies had to be borne bundled up about them, to be suspended in cradles from the branches of trees when they rested. If anyone happened to die, the deceased was buried on the spot. Those who had not finished their cooking when the order was given to start for another village had to leave behind their rice as well as the cooking pots as they stood over the fire. When the survivors of the hardships of the journey arrived within two leagues of Seringapatam, they were made to halt at a place called Karikatte, this side of the river Mennehole, where they encamped for eight to ten days. They were then taken across the river, and stationed on a plain called Shaharganjam, a suburb of the city, where they were accommodated in tents, each of which sufficed for a hundred persons. The people of the Mangalore, Bantwal, and adjacent Taluks had already arrived before the Barkur people, and these last were followed by those belonging to Honore, and neighbouring parts.

The total Christian population amounted to 80,000 souls. A month after these people had been located at Shaharganjam, small-pox, dysentery, fever, cholera and various other diseases broke out and carried off so many that at least one-third of them must have died.

The misery endured by them almost baffles description. Ten out of a family would lie ill, and when one died, the news of his death would cause the death of another. Hence the father’s death was not made known to the son, nor the son’s to the father. The daughter did not know that she had lost her mother, nor the mother that her daughter was no more. And in like manner one brother did not know of the other’s loss. A person returning from funeral succumbed under an attack of cholera and lay dead. His associates, being too weak to dig a grave, buried the corpse in a hollow in the sand half a yard deep scooped out with their bare hands. Some simply heaped up sand and earth over the corpse, while others dragged a dead body to a trench or well and threw it in. The decent clothes covering the remains of the dead consigned to the earth in this manner were stolen by the city thieves. Even meals were cooked while dead bodies lay in the house. Dogs and jackals preyed upon the corpses, and many of the latter were washed away by the rains.

The Sultan on his return from a warlike expedition to Mangalore, visited the people during their sojourn at Shaharganjam. The leading men among them were conducted by the choupdar to the presence of the Sultan in the city, and on their describing their occupations, they were given hachada and various other presents and sent back.

Sometime afterwards, Jennehole, Padulli and other villages were given them for cultivation, as well as some old paddy fields for their subsistence. The use of the rice cooked from this paddy produced serious maladies among the people.

They made a representation on the subject and obtained an order for a supply of new paddy, upon which they subsisted while they began the cultivation of some lands. They were at this time visited by the harakari (recruiting officer), who took away the grown up young men with their families to join the army then engaged in war. These young men, not knowing why they were taken away got frightened. Some of them bribed the guards who watched over the four corners of the city, got themselves marked as dead on the roll and deserted at the first opportunity. The runaway husband deserted his wife, the father his son, and the brother his brother. Some others escaped from the places where they were under the pretext of gathering firewood, while others made good their escape under cover of night by unfrequented by-ways. On four occasions able-bodied young men were thus drafted for the army. Those who remained, such as the lame, the blind and the aged, employed themselves in cultivating the land and in doing various manual works.

The young men drafted for the army were housed in quarters at Shaharganjam. They were paid at the rate of one pagoda each per month and the women and children under ten years received one rupee. Some of them were appointed jemadars, subedars and havildars.

The Sircar supplied them with ghee, butter, curds and firewood, etc. When they were enlisted in the army, one hundred men were formed into a company, four companies into a risala, four risalas into a sufedar and four sufedars were placed under a bakshi. Out of every company twenty-five men were taken and circumcised and at the end of the month, when the wounds were healed, another batch of twenty-five was submitted to the same rite, and so on till the whole company was initiated into Islamism. At the same time about two hundred young and robust girls were selected and taken to the harem. A Kazi was appointed to each company. Kalam was taught them in the morning, and in the evening they were exercised in drill. On every Friday they were taken to the mosque and made to perform the Nimaz (Mahomedan worship), and on that day there was no drill. At the end of the month, when they went to the bakshi to receive their pay, some of them were chosen for different avocations, such as fanning, drumming, fifing, etc. When they had undergone these hardships and privations for a year, they were made to shoulder arms and march to Adoni, where many of them died of dysentery brought on by the water of the place and by the unwholesome food supplied to them. The survivors were sent to Chennaghery and Hariat. There too very many of them died from the effects of bad water. The Sultan, hearing of this, sent the survivors back to Seringapatam, where the mortality subsided a little.

The Sultan on his return to Seringapatam from Adoni, caused all those who had escaped to Kanara or had been lurking there, to be taken into custody.

On their arrest they were first taken to Nagar, where they were circumcised, and thence to Seringapatam, where they were kept with those who had already been circumcised. Shortly afterwards they were removed to Mysore, whence two risalas were sent daily to Seringapatnam on guard duty. During their absence some officers appeared on the scene, accompanied by bearers, and dhoolies and a guard of men, and proceeded to select young girls for the harem.

While they were thus engaged the young men rose up and drove them off. The following day, before setting off for Seringapatnam, the men of the guard urged those at home to offer resistance as they had offered the previous day. The day after, the officers again appeared and began to seize the girls selected, but the young men fell on them and smashed their dhoolies. When the Sultan came to know of this on the following day he sent an armed force to arrest all those who had offered resistance, and had five hundred strokes administered to each one of them with shoes, whips, canes, tamarind switches and clubs, from the effects of which many of them fainted and died. The Jemadars, Subedars and Havildars had meted out to them more ignominious punishment, for with their noses and ears slit off, they were seated on asses and paraded through the city. One of these, a certain Babli Anton, made the following speech to the Sultan: “You have disfigured my features by cutting of my nose and ears. You have forgotten the favours done to you. May God behold this.” And raising his eyes to Heaven, he appealed to God, expressed contrition for his sins and expired. His death looks like that of a martyr.

Ropes were tied round the loins of the men of the two risalas who had advised their compatriots not to allow the Sultan’s officers to seize the girls, and they were moreover condemned to carry baskets filled with earth on their heads for three days. The chief Kazi of the Sultan, believing that they had suffered this punishment through the lying reports of the officers, counselled him to free them from it. The Sultan on that very day had the noses and ears of the calumniators cut off and ordered them to be banished from the country, at the same time issuing a proclamation that the like punishment was in store for those who spoke ill of the Christians. But the detachments were again formed as before.

The Christians believing that this tribulation came upon them for their neglect of the law of God and their religious duties, began to read the Purana with fervour and to expound it to the illiterate, who in turn learned to read it and to remember God. Some Mahomedans coming to know of this, took the books and destroyed them. Some of the Christians however constructed subterranean refuges where they resorted to read their books and perform their religious duties. The Sultan being apprised of this, ordered them to be mixed up with the Corgars, Hindus and Mahomedans.

Shortly afterwards he set out on an expedition against the king of Travancore, and took some of the Christians with him. One day when encamped near the confines of the kingdom, he and his bodyguard were treacherously surrounded and attacked by the troops of Ram Rajah. At the critical moment when the Sultan was in imminent danger, Manuel Mendez, his personal attendant, donned his master’s apparel and took his place in the royal palanquin, while the Sultan hid himself in a nullah and eventually escaped to the camp. Ram Rajah’s soldiers seized the palanquin, thinking that its occupant was the Sultan, but when they found a Christian instead, they cut him into three pieces. Before the Sultan reached Seringapatam, information was received that the British Company’s troops under Colonel Medows were advancing from below the Ghauts.

[1] Moore, J. 1905. The History of the Diocese of Mangalore. Mangalore: 40-47