In September 1857, at the heart of then-colonised India, British soldiers came looking for a rebellion. Inside the Jabalpur residence of Raja Shankar Shah, they found something far less conventional: handwritten verses.
The verses were not harmless in the eyes of the colonial authorities. They invoked the goddess Chandi against the British, while other papers recovered during the search included letters and documents linked to plans for rebellion.
Four days later, on September 18, Shankar Shah and his son, Raghunath Shah, were tied to the mouths of cannons and blown apart. A Madhya Pradesh government account of the episode records the arrest, recovery of the papers and the execution.
The evidence that brought the two men to the British authorities' attention was not a stash of rifles or swords.
It was a poem.
