Bahadur Shah Park: A living archive of Dhaka’s colonial past
The park bears the layered memory of colonial repression, the 1857 uprising and Dhaka’s evolving political and public life. But the people who come here simply to walk and exercise, or the vagabonds who come to rest, perhaps do not realise that, with every step, they are walking through history
Seven roads branch out from the four sides of Bahadur Shah Park, carrying people towards Shankharibazar, Raishaheb Bazar, Lakshmibazar, and Sadarghat. Today, the 85-katha, tree-lined park is a familiar refuge in Old Dhaka.
Every day, between 2,500 and 3,000 people come here to walk, exercise, relax or escape the surrounding noise. Yet beneath that ordinary scene lies a darker memory.
It was on this ground that two men, Kafur Khan and Din Dayal Mishra, took their last breaths in November 1857, amid one of the most turbulent episodes in British India.
The flatbread that carried a message
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The story begins with a curious object: a small, round flatbread called "chapati".
By 1857, chapatis had begun travelling across India. Anti-British activists, often disguised as fakirs and ascetics, carried them from village to village.
Historian Hashem Sufi described the chapatis as carriers of a revolutionary message. The message remained the same: prepare for rebellion, drive out the British and take control of your own country.
In Sufi's view, the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 was India's first war of independence, its roots reaching back to the East India Company's conquest and exploitation of Bengal.
Then, in 1857, the accumulated anger caught fire.
Fear grips Dhaka
From Meerut, sepoys marched to Delhi, hoping to declare Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar the emperor of Hindustan. Dhaka was far from the main centres of revolt, but distance did little to calm the British. Officials had anticipated trouble since March.
The native troops stationed at Lalbagh Fort were known as Kala Sepoys, while British soldiers were called Gora Sepoys. According to historian Muntasir Mamun, the native troops were strong, robust and amiable.
Hashem Sufi noted that although ordinary residents could not openly join the rebellion, many supported the sepoys.
Then rumours began to do what armies could not.
On 12 June, a man from Mill Barracks spread panic by claiming that two native infantry companies from Jalpaiguri had joined dismissed Barrackpore sepoys at Lalbagh. They were supposedly looting markets and freeing prisoners.
The rumour raced through Dhaka. Police fled the magistrate's court. Students left their colleges. Offices and courts emptied. Wealthy residents bought rice and lentils, locked their doors and windows, and sat in darkness.
The report was eventually exposed as false. Lieutenant MacMahon went to Lalbagh and found the sepoys calm and carrying on with their normal duties.
But the rumour was not entirely detached from reality. Rebel sepoys were already spreading their message, sometimes travelling as fakirs and ascetics. It could not be ruled out that some had reached Dhaka.
Bracing for rebellion
On 30 July, Europeans gathered in front of what is now Dhaka College and formed volunteer infantry and cavalry units. Major Smith led the infantry, while Lieutenant Hutchinson commanded the cavalry.
From August, Gurkha troops under Lieutenant T E Lewis kept the fort under siege. The sepoys remained outwardly quiet, but by October the British had indications that they were secretly preparing themselves.
During Bakri Eid, church services in August and Muharram, volunteer forces patrolled the streets through the night.
Then, on 21 November, news arrived that the sepoys in Chattogram had revolted.
That day, Lieutenant Lewis met Dhaka's military and civilian officials. They decided to disarm the native sepoys. Volunteers were ordered to assemble at 5am the following morning.
At dawn on 22 November, the commissioner, judge, civilians and volunteers were divided into two groups. One headed for Lalbagh, joining the sailors; the other moved towards the government treasury to disarm the guards.
The sepoys at the Toshakhana, main offices and storehouse surrendered their weapons without resistance. At Lalbagh Fort, everything changed.
The battle at Lalbagh
Inside the fort, the delayed rebellion became an armed uprising. British sailors clashed with native soldiers who refused to surrender their weapons.
The battle lasted less than 45 minutes. 41 sepoys were killed. Others were wounded, while some fled towards Jalpaiguri. Three drowned in the river. Three British sailors also died.
But even the battle itself has more than one version.
Brennand, then principal of Dhaka College, wrote that the sailors found the sepoys ready for battle, apparently warned in advance. As the sailors entered the fort, gunfire erupted.
Historian Hridoynath Majumdar offered another account. He wrote that the sepoys had been sleeping and did not expect an attack. Startled by the gunfire, they prepared to fight, but when the Subahdar refused to hand over the keys, the soldiers could not reach their weapons and were forced to surrender.
Soon, the survivors were captured.
A farcical trial
On 23 November, captured sepoys were brought before a trial at the judge's court, not far from today's Bahadur Shah Park. The proceedings continued into December, but the first death sentences came on 24 November.
Rumours spread that the condemned men would be hanged on 28 November in the open ground in front of the church.
The rumour became reality.
That morning, sailors and volunteers secured the field. The accused men arrived under guard as crowds gathered. Among those sentenced to hang was 28-year-old Kafur Khan of Faizabad.
Kafur Khan denied the accusations. He said he had been ill and living in a rented house outside the lines, near Icha Mia's house, about 150 paces from the barracks. He collected medicine from the hospital and insisted he had never fought against the government.
His defence did not save him. Kafur Khan and wounded sepoy Hossain Box were so weak they had to be helped onto the gallows. Din Dayal Mishra climbed up himself. Before his death, Mishra made one request: that his ashes be scattered in the river. He was told his request had been granted. Then the lever was pulled.
A warning written in blood
An account published in Dhaka News described rebels being hanged at seven in the morning, with volunteer infantry and cavalry standing beside the gallows. In all, 11 people were hanged at Antaghor Maidan.
Their bodies were not handed to relatives. They were left hanging from trees for days. Eventually, vultures fed on the corpses; a stench spread through the area, flesh fell away, and skeletons remained.
Hridoynath Majumdar wrote that the massacre made people fear Antaghor Maidan. Stories spread through Banglabazar, Shankharibazar, Kaltabazar and nearby neighbourhoods that the ghosts of the dead wandered there at night. After dusk, people were afraid to pass through the field.
Why leave the bodies hanging? Hashem Sufi's answer is blunt: Antaghor Maidan was at the heart of Dhaka. The British knew many residents sympathised with the sepoys. The executions, and the bodies left hanging, were intended as a warning. Courage would have a price.
From Antaghor to Bahadur Shah Park
The park's history is not only about rebellion and death.
In the early 18th century, wealthy Armenians established Dhaka's first European-style club there, known as the Armenian Club. Its oval building had a billiard table at the centre. The porcelain or stone balls resembled eggs, inspiring Dhaka's residents to call the place Antaghor, or "egg house".
But the executions of 1857 cast a shadow over the place, and Antaghor soon closed.
In 1858, Queen Victoria took control of India from the East India Company. The proclamation announcing the transfer was made before a gathering at the park, which was subsequently renamed Victoria Park.
Later, a European Club was established at the site, offering billiards, cards, lawn tennis and badminton.
The park also preserves the memory of Nawab Khwaja Ahsanullah's eldest son, Hafizullah, whose friends erected a granite memorial after his death in 1884.
By the 1920s, Victoria Park had become a centre of anti-British politics. Students of Jagannath College held meetings and rallies there.
A century after the rebellion, in 1958, the Dhaka Improvement Trust built a memorial to the martyred sepoys and renamed the park after Bahadur Shah Zafar.
In 2020, Dhaka South City Corporation renovated the park, adding walking paths, toilets, benches, landscaped spaces, an amphitheatre gallery and parking facilities.
Today, the park is brighter, busier and more orderly.
Yet beneath the modern park lies a place layered with memory: an Armenian club, a colonial gathering ground, a site of execution, a centre of resistance and, finally, a public park.
Had Antaghor survived, it would now be more than 225 years old. The building is gone. The names have changed.
But the ground remembers. History endures here.
Perhaps that is Bahadur Shah Park's greatest distinction. It gave a final resting place — not a peaceful one, but a historic one — to some of those who stood among the earliest challengers to British rule in the subcontinent. Their story has survived the club, the gallows, the rumours and the changing names.
The park survives too, carrying the city's past beneath the footsteps of those who come simply to walk, exercise and rest — and, perhaps without knowing it, walk through history.
