LONDON.- A hand written dairy kept by Allan Ocatavian Hume, the founder and first general secretary of the Indian National Congress, during the Indian Mutiny in 1858 is to be auctioned at Bonhams’ India and Beyond, Travel and Photographs sale on 13 April 2010. As Magistrate and Collector of the Etawah District in modern day Uttar Pradesh, Hume led an irregular force of 650 Indian troops in defence of the area and kept a daily record of skirmishes with the mutineers. Blaming the uprising on the British Government’s political ineptitude, Hume sympathised strongly with the plight of ordinary Indians unwittingly caught up in the action, writing, “God help the poor cowed villagers. I can’t… and no body else seems inclined to do so”. He pursued a deliberate policy of mercy towards the local population estimating that there were no more