The Tree That Was Arrested
One of the milder stories of colonial stupidity and bullying in India…as the story goes, in 1898, a drunken British army officer named James Squid thought this tree was lurching towards him and ordered the mess sergeant to arrest it. The mess sergeant obeyed. More than a hundred years later, the tree is still in chains. “Through this act, the British basically implied to the tribesmen that if they dared act against the Raj, they too would be punished in a similar fashion,” claimed a resident of the army cantonment. Thank you for sharing this unusual tale, Alk3r.
In the Landi Kotal army cantonment area in present-day Pakistan, there is a banyan tree that is kept chained to the ground as if to prevent it from escaping. A board hanging from its branches read, in part: “I am under arrest.”
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