It seems strange and sounds like a hoax that one would find two cannons used in the Battle of Waterloo of 1815 in Aizawl. However, this is not a cooked up story but a fact. These two cannons adorned the porch of the Quarter Guard of the first Battalion of the Assam Rifles in the heart of the city since 1898 when Aizawl was a military cantonment of the British. In 2003 they suddenly disappeared when the Battalion was transferred from Aizawl to another location. These cannons have immense emotional and sentimental value to the people of Aizawl as they have been vanguards of the city since its birth. For a long time since then there were murmurs of protests and newspaper comments by concerned old-timers and enlightened citizens on their disappearance but without any substantial or concrete action taken by anybody on the matter.

In 2008, the Mizoram Chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) took up the matter wherein they met the Governor to apprise him of the facts and also the DIG of 23 Sector Assam Rifles in Aizawl. Since there was not much they could do, the Mizoram Chapter of INTACH then sent letters to the Defence Secretary and the Home Secretary requesting their intervention on the matter. A similar petition was also sent to the Director General of the Assam Rifles based in Shillong. The Chapter also sought the help of the Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla who in his communication to the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram endorsed fully the stand of the Chapter and requested the restoration of the two cannons to their original home – Aizawl.

During the Home Minister’s visit to Aizawl last month in connection with the Bru refugee repatriation, the Chief Minister again brought up the matter of the cannons, and followed this up on his recent trip to Delhi where he also met the DGAR Maj. Gen. Lakhanpal. The Union Home Ministry under whose purview Assam Rifles falls has recently taken the decision to return the cannons to Aizawl and they are expected to reach Aizawl by 15th May.  The decision was taken keeping in mind the sentiments of the people of Mizoram on the cannons which is also very much in consonance with the motto of the Assam Rifles ‘Friends of the Hill People’.

Last year during the Monsoon Session, legislators of the Mizoram Assembly cutting across party lines had unanimously adopted a Special Motion calling for the return of the two cannons by the Assam Rifles to Aizawl where they belong. The Motion was moved by one of the opposition legislators and President of the Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP) Lalduhoma. In their speeches of support for the Resolution, ruling and opposition legislators spoke in unison about the historical and emotional significance of the cannons in the history of Aizawl. Many legislators recalled how as young boys they would rush to see the cannons gleaming and would point at the cannons from their trousers pockets as it was said that anyone who pointed fingers at them would be fired upon by the cannons.

These cannons have an interesting tale to tell and find mention in the book ‘The Making of Aijal’ (the earlier name of Aizawl) by Lt. Col. J Shakespeare which was published in 1939. According to the book, the cannons were among those used by the Duke of Wellington’s troops which were part of the combined armies of the Seventh Coalition to defeat French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Waterloo. They were part of an armament of a Burma-bound warship that was docked in the Chittagong Port (now in Bangladesh) in 1857. He wrote that when the detachment of the 34th Native Infantry mutinied on November 18th that year as part of the Sepoy Mutiny, the cannons were thrown overboard to prevent them from falling into the hands of the natives and were fished out after the mutiny was crushed. The cannons somehow found their way to Rangamati (now in Bangladesh) and were ultimately transported to Lunglei around 1892 during troubled times. In 1898 Lt. Col. J Shakespeare who was the Superintendent of the Lushai Hills and the head of the civil administration in Aizawl had them brought to Aizawl to decorate the bust of Queen Victoria in the Quarter Guard of the Assam Rifles.

It may be mentioned that the Lushai Hills Military Police was christened Assam Rifles in 1917 in Aizawl and that Aizawl in some ways can truly be called the birth place of the oldest para-military force of India – the Assam Rifles. INTACH has no objection to the Assam Rifles at Aizawl being considered the custodian of the cannons, the only condition being that they should be kept in the Quarter Guard which has been their abode for over a century. It only seems fitting that Aizawl which is the ‘mother’ of the Assam Rifles should be home to these cannons.

Pratap Chhetri