DAGSHAI, HIMACHAL PRADESH
The hills around Dagshai were far barer a century ago than they are today. It would see pine come up later, seeded and nurtured by units of Scottish regiments who served in the region under the British. In 1920, the slopes were still sparse, the cantonment stark against the ridge above the old Hindustan-Tibet road. Sparse they might have been, but the hills knew how to hold their silence. On the morning of November 2, 1920, they stood still as it rained bullets near the walls of the military jail.
A few minutes earlier, a young Irish private, James Joseph Daly, had walked into the yard with a green silk handkerchief around his neck. A doctor had asked whether he wanted morphine. Daly had refused. Moments later, the Royal Fusiliers—infantry regiment of the British Army—had opened fire. As his body fell, the priest stepped forward to administer the last sacrament and nearly took a stray bullet. Daly’s comrades gathered his remains and handed them over for burial in the Catholic cemetery—grave number 340.
Daly was 52 days short of his 21st birthday. His death made him the last soldier to be executed by the British Army for a military offence. He and other Irish soldiers—many of them world war veterans—had mutinied in protest against the violence in Ireland by the English. It mattered little that they were 7,000km from home, stationed with the Connaught Rangers regiment at Solan in Himachal Pradesh. It was not the first time soldiers in India had turned against their British commanders; Indian sepoys had done so in 1857.
In a letter to his mother written days earlier, Daly explained himself plainly: “What harm it is all for Ireland! I am not afraid to die, but it is thinking of you I am.” His mother was informed of his execution through a telegram on December 31.
The first act of Irish mutiny came 200km from Solan—on June 28, 1920, at Wellington Barracks in Jalandhar, a group of Connaught Rangers refused to take orders. The soldiers sang songs, and even hoisted their tricolour. Some accounts also mention the influence of Sinn Féin, a party active in the Irish War of Independence. Two mutineers travelled to Solan to spread the word.
At Solan, the protest remained peaceful until the evening of July 1. And then the soldiers mutinied, incarcerating their English officers and seizing the armoury. The guards opened fire, killing two men—Peter Sears and Patrick Smyth—and wounding another. A relieving column was rushed from Ambala, which quelled the mutiny. Then a court martial was hurriedly convened at Dagshai on August 20. Sixty-one soldiers were convicted. Fourteen received death sentences. Thirteen were reprieved. Daly alone was executed.
A telegram sent by the commander in chief two days before the execution stated: “Reprieve was not entertained in one case only because the prisoner was the ringleader throughout and maintained a spirit of flagrant defiance for more than twenty-four hours.” For the British, sparing him risked weakening military discipline not only among Irish troops but across the Indian army. Daly’s execution was intended as a message for two nationalities held under the control of its gun—Ireland and India.
The story of Daly’s final days would have faded were it not for the old jail above the Hindustan–Tibet road and for the man who restored it. The Dagshai Jail Museum stands in the same stone building where Daly spent his last weeks. The cantonment itself sits above the same road, earlier called National Highway 22 and what is now NH-5. It is a steep climb from the highway, a few kilometres before Solan. Most travellers pass it for nearby Kasauli. If Kasauli offers the comforts of a hill station, Dagshai asks visitors to slow down, to notice, and to remember.
The restoration of the jail and its legacy owes much to Anand Kumar Sethi, an IIT alumnus who arrived in Dagshai nearly 20 years ago. His father had been the first Indian cantonment executive officer here. When he found the jail had become a Military Engineer Services dumpyard, he began clearing it out. When his wife’s relative became brigade commander here, Sethi gained access to turn the abandoned structure into a museum. Then began a humongous task of restoring not only the jail, but also the cemeteries and even the gothic-style St Patrick’s Church.
Inside the jail, the teakwood floors creak underfoot. The 8ftx12ft cells have almost no natural light, there is a ventilator in the walls though. The one reserved for those with heavier punishment allows only standing room. There is even one cell titled P&T cell, which, Sethi found out, stood for ‘Punishment and Torture’ cell. Not just mutineers, even Mahatma Gandhi and his assassin spent a night here, though nearly three decades apart.
As the jail museum is under the control of Indian Army, Sethi has trained jawans to act as guides for visitors. “The British made three military jails in India,” explains Sethi. “This was number one—the highest security jail.” His research retraced the history through burial registers, court-martial papers, accounts of various regiments posted here and documents of the India Office Records housed in the British Library and the Imperial War Museum in London. Without this work, a lot of what we know today would have remained scattered or unknown—from the details of Daly’s last months to Dagshai’s role in not just the mutiny but also India’s freedom struggle—early freedom fighters like the Ghadarites were jailed and executed here—and its military history: a number of prestigious regiments and officers were posted here. Sethi also restored lost items and added archival pictures to the museum’s collection. As the bells at the jail and the church belfry were also stolen, Sethi sourced them from Kerala.
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Daly’s path to Dagshai began far away in Ballymoe, County Galway, Ireland, where he was born on December 24, 1899. Like many Irish boys, he saw soldiering as both duty and opportunity. He enlisted in the Royal Irish Rifles at 16, lying about his age, until his mother petitioned successfully for his discharge. In 1919, he enlisted again, this time with the Connaught Rangers. The rangers in India had red uniforms with an elephant brooch attached to their collar—an apparent attempt to imperialise the Irish soldiers. Daly’s first posting after training was in Solan.
Ireland and India were both in upheaval. In Ireland, the War of Independence was intensifying, and news of reprisals, raids and the actions of the Black and Tans, a notorious paramilitary force of ex-army men formed by the British government to quell the freedom movement, travelled abroad. In India, anger after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre had deepened, and Gandhi had launched the Non-Cooperation Movement on August 1 in 1920.
Local memory holds that Gandhi, who was in Ambala at the time, travelled to Dagshai when he heard of Irish soldiers mutinying against the British. Gandhi and Irish leader Éamon de Valera were friends. Valera went on to become the president of Ireland in 1959. During his 1920 tour of the US, Valera had addressed Indian revolutionaries, saying that Britain had “plundered India” and that Irish people recognised their struggle.
“We believe what happened here in Dagshai influenced both Ireland’s independence first, and then India’s. Notice our two flags: both tricolours. Not a coincidence,” says Sethi.
Stephen Lally, one of the mutineers, had later said, “I thought we might as well kill two birds with one stone, and if we could get the Indian National Movement with us, it would mean a great victory not [just] for Ireland but India as well.” Lally had also described in the detail the last moments of Daly.
The Connaught Rangers was disbanded in 1922, but its memory lived on. In 2002, the new Connaught Rangers Association was formed. It is now a global community of over 250 members, including the family of mutineers, that collaborates to “preserve the history of the regiment and the memory of the men who served from Connaught and elsewhere”.
P.J. Maloney, chairman of the association, told THE WEEK. “The mutiny was a direct response to reports of British atrocities in Ireland. The brutality of the Black and Tans and the violent suppression of the independence movement are cited as key catalysts for the act of nationalist defiance. For James Daly, the mutiny carried the ultimate price: execution. As the only soldier put to death for his involvement, his story is a profound human tragedy that highlights the brutal mechanics of imperial power.”
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Daly’s grave in Dagshai remained undisturbed until 1970, when demands started growing in Ireland to get home the martyrs buried in Dagshai. When the grave was dug up, it was clear that he was buried in his uniform. His remains were flown back to Ireland, where over 6,000 people attended his reburial.
The mutiny was covered in several newspapers in India and Ireland. Many of the mutineers returned home where their struggle for pension began. After a prolonged battle, Daly’s family was granted 10 shilling in pension. In the decades that followed, remembrance was uneven. Ireland grappled with the legacy of those who had served in the British Army. Subsequent commentary on the mutiny also referred to the revolt as being partly to do with the general conditions of the Irish soldiers in their regiments. India placed greater emphasis on non-violent movements and constitutional politics, leaving military revolts like Dagshai to the margins of public history.
But national sentiments only grow with time and martyrs find their way back in memory. On October 19, 2024, St Patrick’s Church hosted a remembrance ceremony to mark the 125th anniversary of Daly’s birth, the 110th anniversary of last use of Dagshai Gallows House to hang the Ghadar leaders and belatedly the centenary of the mutiny (delayed due to Covid). In attendance were Kevin Kelly, ambassador of Ireland and Maloney, apart from Indian military and civilian dignitaries. The church, now beautifully restored, holds mass every Sunday for over 50 families who stay in the vicinity.
Soon, an obelisk commemorating the Irish-India connection will be installed, jointly by governments of both countries, at the jail in Dagshai. The place where Daly was shot in Dagshai is now a park with flowers and swings for children.