By Dhananjaya Bhat The quiet and beautiful township of Bithoor is situated on the Kannauj Road, 27 km from Kanpur.
Located on the banks of the Ganga, this tranquil spot is of considerable historical and religious importance.
Although the town of Bithoor , entered the history of India only in 1857, by being the abode of the last of Peshwas, Nana Saheb, mythologically it has been one of India's most famous temple towns since millenniums.
It was known as Brahmavarta in the Puranas, and is said to be the center of Brahman (universe).
This is where, according to Hindu mythology, Brahma, the God of Creation, commenced his task at this place by the banks of river Ganga.
As of 2001, Bithoor had a population of 9647.
There are many views as to how it came to be known as Bithoor.
The most plausible one relates to Bajirao Peshwa of Maharashtra, who had made Bithoor his home after being expelled from Satara by the British in 1818.
The Peshwa was a devotee of God Vithoba known affectionately as Bithoba.
He built a temple dedicated to the God and renamed Brahmavarta as Bithobapur and over the years Bithobapur came to be called Bithoor.
In the middle of the 19th century , Bithoor was home to more than 2000 Maratha families .However, today there are only about eight to ten Maharashtrian families in Bithoor.
Bithoor has been closely associated with the Indian independence in 1857.
It was home to two of its most important heroes and the singular heroine the Rani of Jhansi Lakshmi Bai, whom, her enemy and commander of the British forces, General Hugh Rose described "as the bravest of the Rebels".
When Baji Rao came to Bithoor, in his entourage was his priest, Moropant Tambe, with his six year old daugher Manu Bai.
It was at Bithoor that Manu Bai grew up and learnt the art of warfare.
The Peshwa who was impressed by her beauty and bravery, got her married to Maharaja Gangadhar Rao of Jhansi, thus making her the redoubtable Rani of Jhansi.
The British had agreed to give Baji Rao, a yearly pension of Rs.10 lacs and the jagir (estate) of Ramel.
But after his death, the British refused to accept his successor Dhondhupant Nana Saheb as the legal heir.
The pension was also stopped.
Nana Saheb sent his adviser Azimullah Khan to Britain to put up his case, but it was of no avail.
Insulted by this behaviour of the British, he joined the war of 1857 as one of its most important leaders..
As the trend of battles turned in favour of the British, Nana Saheb had to leave Bithoor and take asylum in the neighbouring Kingdom of Nepal.
Entering Bithoor, the British troops systematically looted Nana Saheb's palace.
Many of the British soldiers believed that the thick walls of the Bithoor palace contained many hiding places for the treasures and as such destroyed the edifice brick by brick.
Ironically, such destruction made it impossible for the official prize agents of the British Army to identify later, the actual treasure chambers of the palace, where such wealth might have been hidden.
But one infamous Indian spy, Angoori Tiwary, brought to the knowledge of the British, that, according to his secret information, one of the seven deep wells within the palace contained bullion hidden by Nana Saheb, as he left Bithoor.Using hundreds of British soldiers, Lt.Malcolm of the Royal Engineers drained the well and took out what was called Nana's gold plate.
According to a contemporary British historian " this was immensely valuable because it was of solid and very pure gold, but it had not artistic importance".
After ten days of further work the British took out the silver howdah of the Indian leader and great quantities of silver plate, in all totaling rupees one crore in value.
Below the silverware was found bullion in a great number of ammunition boxes, closely packed with gold and silver coins, worth 30 lakhs of rupees.
As such the well had yielded wealth valued at 13 million rupees of treasure, worth conservatively 2600 million rupees today!.
The British soldiers had worked with great interest, to collect the so called "rebel's wealth", hoping that it will be declared as prize money, which would have meant atleast a thousand rupees per soldier.
But after the Sepoy Mutiny ended, the Governor General decreed that the immense treasure did not come under category of captured enemy treasure and the soldiers got nothing.
Inspite of its historic importance, Bithoor is neglected from the tourism point of view.
One has to actually walk around the 3 km stretch of the town, for sight-seeing.
There are no hotels here and it also does not have many shops around it.
The best plan to see this town would be to leave for Bithoor from the nearby metropolis of Kanpur in the morning, make a day long trip around this place, and return by tempo at 19-00 or avail of the last train to Kanpur at 19-45 from Bithoor.
The crumbling structures of historical importance in Bithoor are in for a major facelift, thanks to the interest generated in view of the 150th anniversary celebrations of the 1857 revolt.
It is hoped that the 150 crores of rupees allocated by the Central Government for repairing the historic buildings and edifices destroyed by the British during the Mutiny in Bithoor and other towns of Uttar Pradesh would be implemented.
One of these, is a proposal to erect a statue of Nana Saheb in the centre of the town.
A museum is also being constructed at Bithoor in which, mementos of history from the 1857 mutiny would be on display.
