As an eighth-grader in Maharashtra Mandal school in Pune, Parag Tope would blush during history lesson when the name of Tantya Tope and his role in the 1857 revolt came up. “It was a reasonably famous and uncommon name,” he recalls. “The entire class would look at me.”

Now Parag, 40, a San Diego-based software engineer and fourth-generation member of the family of the military commander whose organisational skills shook the foundation of the British empire, is mapping his family tree to put the 19th century leader’s life in perspective: Write a biography.

What began as a drawing-room conversation among siblings soon became a deadline-driven family project. Why not do something in the memory of Tantya Tope in the 150th anniversary of the Revolt?

In March this year, the siblings got together to make an outline for the book. Parag’s Delhi-based brother Rajesh, 46, an anaesthetist in New Delhi’s Apollo hospital, and sister-in-law Nandita, in whose house the idea hatched, volunteered to study the official archival records. Sister Rupa, 43, a school teacher, decided to collect research material out of Mumbai. Her husband, Dhananjay Joshi, who works at the Dhirubhai Ambani International School, offered to develop a cohesive storyline.

While Parag, founder of Vistarus, which offers software services to the US construction sector, has started investigating how the international press viewed the Revolt and the British policy of Doctrine of Lapse, by which Indian ruler’s kingdoms were annexed if they did not have a blood heir. “The idea is to bring a human perspective into the mosaic of seemingly uncorrelated incidents,” he points out.

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