A piece of history goes under the hammer

A Diary maintained by British officer Allan Ocatavian Hume will go under the hammer for about Rs13 lakh on April 13. Hume was the founder and first general secretary of the Indian National Congress, during the Indian Mutiny in 1857. His diary will be auctioned at Bonhams.

As Magistrate and Collector of the Etawah District in Uttar Pradesh, Hume led a force of 650 Indian troops in defense of the area and kept a daily record of skirmishes with the mutineers. Blaming the uprising on the British Government’s political ineptitude, Hume sympathised with the plight of ordinary Indians. An excerpt from his diary reads, “God help the poor cowed villagers. I can’t... and no body else seems inclined to do so”.

A representative from Bonhams says, “From 1850 onwards Hume had been a prominent social reformer introducing secular education in Hindi and Urdu and improving health care provision.

On his death in 1912 at the age of 83, the Congress — which later led the country to independence in 1947 — paid tribute to him as the, ‘father and founder of the Congress, to whose lifelong services, rendered at rare self-sacrifice, India feels deep and lasting gratitude’.”