Nana Saheb Peshwa II
Nana Saheb Peshwa II (19 May 1824 – after 1857), born as Dhondu Pant, was an Indian aristocrat and fighter, who led the rebellion in Cawnpore (Kanpur) during the 1857 rebellion against the East India Company. As the adopted son of the exiled Maratha Peshwa Baji Rao II, Nana Saheb believed that he was entitled to a pension from the Company, but as he was denied recognition under Lord Dalhousie's doctrine of lapse, he initiated a rebellion. He forced the British garrison in Kanpur to surrender, then murdered the survivors, gaining control of the city for a few days. After a British force recaptured Kanpur, Nana Saheb disappeared, with multiple conflicting accounts existing of his further life and death.
Not to be confused with Nanasaheb Peshwa or Nana Fadnavis.
Nana Saheb Peshwa II
May 19, 1824
Bithur, Cawnpore, Ceded Provinces, Company India
(present-day Bithoor, Kanpur Nagar district, Uttar Pradesh, India)
Narayan Bhat (father)
Ganga Bai (mother)
Early life[edit]
Nana was born on 18 May 1824 as Nana Govind Dhondu Pant, to Narayan Bhat and Ganga Bai. After the Maratha defeat in the Third Anglo-Maratha War, the East India Company had exiled Peshwa Baji Rao II to Bithur (near Kanpur), but the Company allowed him to maintain a large establishment paid for in part out of a British pension. Nana's father, a well-educated Deccani Brahmin, had travelled with his family from the Western Ghats to become a court official of the former Peshwa at Bithoor. He had married the sister of one of the Peshwa's wives, who bore him two sons.
Lacking sons of his own, Baji Rao adopted Nana Saheb and his younger brother Bala Saheb in 1827. Nana Saheb's childhood associates included Tatya Tope, Azimullah Khan and Manikarnika Tambe. Tatya Tope, Nana Saheb's fencing master, was the son of Pandurang Rao Tope, an important noble at the Peshwa's court, who had followed his sovereign into exile. Azimullah Khan later became Nana Saheb's secretary and dewan.