Richard Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, was assassinated on 8 February 1872 by Sher Ali Afridi, a disgruntled Indian soldier of Afghan Muslim background, who had been convicted of murder and condemned to penal servitude. The assassination occurred at the penal settlement of Port Blair, Andaman Islands, India. It was the first, and only, time a Governor-General of India was assassinated. [lower-alpha 1]
Lord Mayo, a Conservative statesman of Anglo-Irish background, entitled the Earl of Mayo in the peerage of Ireland, had served as Viceroy of India since January 1869. He had been appointed by Queen Victoria on the advice of the then Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (later confirmed by William Ewart Gladstone). In late January 1872, he engaged in a State visit to Rangoon and Maulmain in Burma, where he was received with great splendour. On 30 January he held a levee and ball, and hosted a grand ball on 2 February. [1] On 5 February he visited the Andaman Islands, where he planned to inspect the infamous Penal settlement at Port Blair. The islands were used as a British penal colony for convicts from India, both criminals and political prisoners. Arriving with a large entourage, [2] Lord Mayo was involved in drafting the regulations of the penal settlement at Port Blair. He did not plan to stay longer than a single day and was mainly interested in prison reforms, improving the welfare of prisoners. [1]
Sher Ali Afridi, also known as Sher Ali Khan, [3] was an ethnic Pathan from the North-West Frontier, who had formerly served in the Peshawar police. [1] He had been condemned to life imprisonment (more specifically penal servitude) for a murder he had committed in British territory of the North-West Frontier—a murder he claimed to be innocent of—and was thus sent to the Penal colony in the Andaman Islands. [1] Indignant and claiming innocence, he elected to kill two Government officials, the Superintendent and the Viceroy, as revenge for his sentence, which he thought more severe than he deserved. [4] Sher Ali waited for a full day to commit the assassination; it was not until the evening that he found an opportunity to kill the Viceroy. He said that he killed on the instructions of God. [1] He readily posed for photographs. [1]
British sources later described him thus:
All who met Shere Ali were struck with his appearance ... he was powerfully made, very active and a good horseman. He was as fair as a European, with light beard and moustache, and blue eyes... [he was] a fearless soldier and one who would have been selected for any service of danger. Like the rest of his tribe he was constantly involved in blood feuds..." [5]
At 7:00 PM on 8 February, when the Viceroy had almost completed his inspection of the penal settlement at Port Blair and was returning to his boat, where Lady Mayo was also waiting, Sher Ali Afridi appeared from the dark and stabbed him in the neck, causing Mayo to bleed to death and die at the scene. Sher Ali was immediately arrested by twelve security personnel, whose gross failure to detect and defer the assassin was soon evident. [1]
The murder of the Viceroy, the supreme official of India appointed by the British Crown, sent shock waves throughout the British Empire. [1] It was entirely unexpected and unexplained. Yet, in the context of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and recent murder of John Paxton Norman in 1871, not entirely so. [1] More locally concerned, the incident attracted much attention to the Andaman islands, which were relatively unheard of in the Western world. [6]
It was initially assumed that the reasoning for the murder was purely Jihadist, [1] ignoring Sher Ali's imprisonment; as a man serving a life imprisonment he had nothing to lose in assassinating Lord Mayo.
Queen Victoria was shocked by the brutal murder of her fourth Viceroy. The news was telegraphed directly to Windsor Castle four days after the event, with the Queen pasting the telegram into her journal. [7]
An inquiry into the assassination was launched. [1] [8]
Some jihadist-inspired prisoners were jailed at Andaman during the same period but the British found no link to the murder of the Viceroy and the presence of these prisoners. [1]
Sher Ali Afridi was condemned to death and was hanged on the gallows of Viper Island prison, on 11 March 1872.
The Andaman Islands are an archipelago, made up of 200 islands, in the northeastern Indian Ocean about 130 km (81 mi) southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between the Bay of Bengal to the west and the Andaman Sea to the east. Most of the islands are part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a Union Territory of India, while the Coco Islands and Preparis Island are part of the Yangon Region of Myanmar.
Admiral of the Fleet Albert Victor Nicholas Louis Francis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma was a British statesman, naval officer, colonial administrator and close relative of the British royal family. He was born in the United Kingdom to the prominent Battenberg family. He was a maternal uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and a second cousin of King George VI. He joined the Royal Navy during the First World War and was appointed Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command, in the Second World War. He later served as the last Viceroy of India and briefly as the first Governor-General of the Dominion of India.
Richard Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, styled Lord Naas from 1842 to 1867 and Lord Mayo in India, was a British statesman and prominent member of the British Conservative Party who served as Chief Secretary for Ireland and Viceroy of India (1869–72).
Earl of the County of Mayo, usually known simply as Earl of Mayo, is a title in the Peerage of Ireland created, in 1785, for John Bourke, 1st Viscount Mayo. For many years he served as "First Commissioner of Revenue" in Ireland. He had already been created Baron Naas, of Naas in the county of Kildare, in 1776, and Viscount Mayo, of Moneycrower in the county of Mayo, in 1781, also in the Peerage of Ireland.
Francis Napier, 10th Lord Napier and 1st Baron Ettrick, was a British polyglot, diplomat and colonial administrator. He served as the British Minister to the United States from 1857 to 1859, Netherlands from 1859 to 1860, Russia from 1861 to 1864, Prussia from 1864 to 1866 and as the Governor of Madras from 1866 to 1872. He also acted as the Governor-General of India from February to May 1872.
Port Blair is the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India in the Bay of Bengal. It is also the local administrative sub-division (tehsil) of the islands, the headquarters for the district of South Andaman and is the territory's only notified town.
The Cellular Jail, also known as 'Kālā Pānī', was a British colonial prison in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The prison was used by the colonial government of India for the purpose of exiling criminals and political prisoners. Many notable independence activists, including Sardar Singh Artillery, Diwan Singh Kalepani, Yogendra Shukla, Batukeshwar Dutt, Shadan Chandra Chatterjee, Sohan Singh, Vinayak Savarkar, Hare Krishna Konar, Shiv Verma, Allama Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, and Sudhanshu Dasgupta were imprisoned here during the struggle for India's independence. Today, the complex serves as a national memorial monument.
Edwina Cynthia Annette Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma,, was an English heiress, socialite, relief worker and the last vicereine of India as the wife of Rear Admiral The 1st Viscount Mountbatten of Burma.
John Ulick Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne,, professionally known as John Brabourne, was a British peer, television producer and Oscar-nominated film producer. Married to the elder daughter of 1st Earl Mountbatten, Brabourne was a survivor of the bombing which killed his father-in-law, mother and son.
The Japanese occupation of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands occurred in 1942 during World War II. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, are a group of islands situated in the Bay of Bengal at about 1,250 km (780 mi) from Kolkata, 1,200 km (750 mi) from Chennai and 190 km (120 mi) from Cape of Nargis in Burma. Until 1938 the British government used them as a penal colony for Indian and African political prisoners, who were mainly put in the notorious Cellular Jail in Port Blair, the biggest town (port) on the islands. Today they form a Union Territory of India.
Ross Island, officially known as Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Island, is an island of the Andaman Islands. It belongs to the South Andaman administrative district, Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The island is situated 3 km (2 mi) east from central Port Blair. The historic ruins are a tourist attraction.
Events in the year 1872 in India.
Viper Island is an island of the Andaman Islands. It belongs to the South Andaman district of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Sher Ali Afridi was an Indian soldier of Pashtun background, convicted of murder and imprisoned at the penal colony of Port Blair, Andaman Islands. He is known for assassinating Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India, on 8 February 1872. The British sources described him as a "fearless soldier and one who would have been selected for any service of danger".
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, a relative of the British royal family, was assassinated on 27 August 1979 by Thomas McMahon, an Irish republican and volunteer for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).
A bronze statue of Admiral of the Fleet Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma is located on Mountbatten Green, off Horse Guards Road, Whitehall, London, England. The sculptor was Franta Belsky and the work was cast by the Meridian Bronze Foundry. The memorial was unveiled on 2 November 1983.
Ross Island Penal Colony was a convict settlement that was established in 1858 in the remote Andaman Islands by the British colonial government in India, primarily to jail a large number of prisoners from the Indian Rebellion of 1857, also known as the Indian Mutiny. With the establishment of the penal colony at Ross Island, the British administration made it the administrative headquarters for the entire group of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and built bungalows and other facilities on the site. This colony was meant as "manageable models of colonial governance and rehabilitation". The Chief Commissioner's residence was located at the highest point on the island. Over time, several other islands including Chatham and Viper were used for the penal colony.
The Battle of Aberdeen, on the Andaman Islands of India close to Port Blair, was an armed conflict that occurred on 14 May 1859 between the natives of the Andaman islands, the forces of the British colonial government in India, and to some extent the convicts of the Ross Island Penal Colony.
Dudhnath Tiwari was an Indian convict from the Sepoy mutiny who was sent to the penal settlement in the Andamans and became famous for escaping and living with the Andamanese tribes for about a year. Accounts of life among the tribals, though coloured by his own prejudices and by possible embellishments, became famous in his time. During the time that he spent among the tribes, he came to learn of a tribal uprising being planned against the British at the penal settlement at which point he chose to return to the penal settlement and reveal the plans. The British penal settlement officers then prepared themselves for what was known as the Battle of Aberdeen in which the tribals were defeated. For his actions Tiwari was pardoned.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is an archipelago of 572 islands of which 37 are inhabited. It is a union territory of India.
