Scottish sign commemorating soldiers who died in Lucknow Siege to be rewritten following complaint from PIO doctor

LONDON: A plaque describing a monument commemorating Scottish soldiers who lost their lives during the Lucknow Siege is to be completely rewritten following a complaint from a Britain Indian doctor that it panders to imperialism.
Historic Environment Scotland (HES) has agreed to rewrite the plaque accompanying the India Cross, a sandstone cross which commemorates the 78th Highlanders who died during India's First War of Independence in 1857, following a written complaint from Vivek Majumder.
A spokesperson for HES said: “We were contacted by a member of the public about the wording on an interpretation panel next to the India Cross on Edinburgh Castle esplanade. One of our historians is researching the siege of Lucknow to ensure the revised text is factual and provides context to the event.”
Majumder, 26, a junior doctor living in Edinburgh, whose father is from Kolkata and mother is of Trinidadian-Indian descent, was struck by the words “India Cross” on the plaque. He had seen the Celtic cross many times before and presumed it was a religious symbol, so was surprised, upon reading the sign, to discover it was related to India, then angry to see Scottish soldiers described as “heroes of Lucknow” who “relieved” the city.
“The sign talks about how brave the soldiers were who fought off the Indian insurgents in India! This was not even during the British Raj! It was the East India Company times. It is talking about relieving a city from locals and trying to praise that as a positive thing which I took offence to. I thought there should be something explaining what this monument is but with less celebratory language,” he told TOI.
Majumder and his friends emailed the HES and got a response from the man who wrote the sign a few days later apologising.
“Was it heroic to subjugate one quarter of world’s population? I don’t think so. Using words like hero is celebrating imperial ideas so it is pandering to imperialism. The Battle of Lucknow would be better. If they had put heroes of Lucknow in quotation marks, that would be fine, as long as the text reflects they were not necessarily heroes,” Majumder said.
Two thousand people have signed a petition launched by UK pressure group Save Our Statues against the changes. The petition reads: “The wording on this sign has apparently offended one man, but by removing it you are causing offence to many thousands. You are offending anyone who has respect for men who gave their lives for our country.”
“Is it not offensive to locals who tried to save their own town from a foreign invader by having those foreign invaders called heroes?” Majumder asked. “There isn’t a lot of teaching about the British Empire in British schools,” he said, so he was not in favour of pulling the statue down. “If you have a statue commemorating the soldiers and then a sign saying this is what the soldiers did, it will allow people to think critically,” he said.
“It was a very bloody siege and the defenders suffered terribly. It was pretty heroic because they didn’t surrender and eventually the city was relieved by a British rescue force,” said Indian-origin author and broadcaster Dr Zareer Masani.
“The whole idea that East India Company was any more an occupying force than so many others and the French, is imposing our values now, and they were pretty heroic by the standards of their time, so why that word should now be considered offensive is part of this attempt to try and cancel the past,” he said.
But Assam-born data architect Puneet Dwivedi, who lives in Edinburgh, said: “British children should learn about the true history about the British colonial Raj. This is not being taught in schools here. I support what the doctor said.”