The real “Thug of Hindostan” - Sidi Kasim (aka Sidi Yaqub)

The real “Thug of Hindostan” - Sidi Kasim (aka Sidi Yaqub), the commander of the Mughal Naval fleet that made life hell for the East India Company

Few days ago, the trailer of the much-awaited Indian movie ‘Thugs of Hindostan’ was released. And to my surprise, many people on social media (including my friends) have been saying that India never had a naval fleet or individual sailors that were brave enough to face the Britishers, as their naval fleet was too advanced.

Mughal Art showing a fight scene by the Mughal naval fleets. Circa 1600

But they are all wrong. India (Actually the Mughal empire that ruled India that time) did have a naval fleet that the Brits actually feared.

And the name of the commander the fleet was ‘Sidi Kasim’.

Sidi was the commander of an Ethiopian naval fleet that acted as the Mughal Navy and his ships first arrived in Bombay in 1680. And since their arrival, there was a tension between Sidi’s soldiers and the English forces.

The Brits were always overconfident of their power and considered themselves to be superior to everyone else and that included Sidi’s forces too. Initially, there were small fights but things got really ugly soon.

In May 1683 a British soldier entered into a fight with Sidi’s soldiers in a bazaar in Bombay and was killed within a few minutes by them. A few days later, another British soldier was thrown off from one of Sidi's ships after he got drunk and tried to procure a slave girl for sex from their ship.

The fellow British soldiers were furious and demanded action against Sidi, but the then East India Company’s Governor, Sir John Child knew the brutality of Sidi’s men and understood Sidi could decimate their forces within no time. So he refused to take any revenge. The soldiers then decided to take the matter into their own hands. They defied orders and used force to push back Sidi’s forces from Bombay. And they somehow succeeded in doing so.

This led to the corrosion in the relations between the Mughals & the British. The Mughals soon sent out ships full of provisions to Sidi’s troops in the sea from Surat but the British fleet captured them.

The over-confident Governer of the East India Company, John Child wrote to Sidi “Should you dare come to Bombay with your fleet, you would be blown away with the air of my bum’.

Sidi wrote back and demanded the return of his ships and simply warned that if it was not done within 3 days, he would return to Bombay and capture it from the British hands. Sidi understood one very important thing, though there were thousands of Britishers in Bombay, the number of British ‘soldiers’ was very low.

The British did not oblige and within 3 days, Sidi decimated the British in Bombay and captured it.

As Sidi’s fleet entered Bombay, the British soldiers got scared looking at the size of his feet and 116 of them ran away. And as written by the Governor himself, they ran so fast that they did not even care about the treasure and left more than 10 chests full of gold.

The British soldiers, however, were not alone, they were aided by the Koli fishermen, Marathas who followed Shivaji and supported the Britishers as they had a common enemy - The Mughals (Sidi’s masters). They thought that their 2,500 soldiers will be more than Sidi’s forces. But to their surprise, Sidi had managed to get together more than 20,000 soldiers who marched into Bombay. As a British officer noted ‘These were men enough to have eaten all the Company’s servants as breakfast”.

Sidi’s forces pushed the Britishers into the Bombay Castle and kept them there for over a year. The company then had no choice but to negotiate with Sidi for their freedom and peace.

Sidi Kasim gave a very humiliating defeat to the British and the peace deal resulted in a huge financial setback to the East India Company.

Sidi was valorous, fearless and smart. He also trained a lot do people and gave the Mughal navy, strong and courageous commanders like him and as long as he was alive, he was a pain for the Britishers.

Sidi indeed lived a ‘Thug Life’ and was the real ‘Thug of Hindostan’ B-)