The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was both a military mutiny and a civilian uprising against the British East India Company. Confined mainly to north-central India (present-day Uttar Pradesh, northern Madhya Pradesh, and Delhi), it began in Meerut on 10 May 1857 and largely ended with the fall of Gwalior on 20 June 1858. The rebellion is also known as the First War of Independence, Indian Mutiny, Sepoy Mutiny, Great Mutiny, and the Revolt of 1857.
Although dismissed by some as merely a sepoy’s mutiny or revolt, or as a protest against the violation of religious rights by the British, the great uprising of 1857 is slowly gaining recognition as India’s first war of independence. And in its broad sweep it was the greatest armed challenge to colonial rule during the entire course of the 19th century. Attracting people from all walks of life—both Hindus and Muslims, it triggered demands for radical social and economic reforms, calling for a new society that would be more democratic and more representative of popular demands.
EARLY PRECEDENTS
Neither was it a bolt out of the blue. Although not very well known, the period between 1763 and 1856 was not a period during which Indians accepted alien rule passively. Numerous uprisings by peasants, tribal communities and princely states confronted the British. Some were sustained—others sporadic— a few were isolated acts of revolutionary resistance, but nevertheless they all challenged colonial rule. Precipitated by the policy of unchecked colonial extraction of agricultural and forest wealth from the region—the period saw tremendous growth in rural poverty, the masses being reduced to a state of utter deprivation.
Even as official taxation was back-breaking enough, British officers routinely used their powers to coerce additional money, produce, and free services from the Indian peasants and artisans. And courts routinely dismissed their pleas for justice. In the first report of the Torture Commission at Madras presented to the British House of Commons in 1856, this was acknowledged along with the admission that officers of the East India Company did not abstain from torture, nor did they discourage its use. That this was a practice not confined to the Madras presidency alone is confirmed by a letter from Lord Dalhousie to the Court of Directors of the East India Company in September, 1855 where he admits that the practice of torture was in use in every British province.
Desperate communities had often no choice but to resist to the bitter end. Armed revolts broke out practically every year— only to be brutally suppressed by the British. Lacking the fire power of the British arsenal—they were invariably outgunned. And lacking the means of communication available to the British—individual revolts were also unable to trigger sympathetic rebellions elsewhere. Disadvantageous timing led to crushing defeats. Yet, some of these struggles raged for many years.
SEETHING GRIEVANCES
For instance, in the Bengal Army, the 140,000 Indians who were employed as ‘Sepoys’ were completely subordinate to the roughly 26,000 British officers. These sepoys bore the brunt of the First Britsh-Afghan War (1838-42), the two closely contested Punjab Wars (1845-46 and 1848-49) and the Second Anglo-Burmese War. They were shipped across the seas to fight in the Opium Wars against China (1840-42) and (1856-60) and the Crimean War against Russia (1854). Although at constant risk of death, the Indian sepoy faced very limited opportunities for advancement since all positions of authority were monopolized by the Europeans.
Many of the sepoys in the Bengal Army came from the Hindi speaking plains of UP where (excluding Oudh) the British had enforced the ‘Mahalwari’ system of taxation which involved constantly increasing revenue demands. In the first half of the 19th century tax revenues payable to the British increased 70%. This led to mounting agricultural debts with land being mortgaged to traders and moneylenders at a very rapid rate. This inhumane system of taxation was then extended to Oudh where the entire nobility was summarily deposed.
As a result, the dissatisfaction against the British was not confined to the agricultural communities alone. By bankrupting the nobility and the urban middle class, demand for many local goods was almost eliminated. At the same time local producers were confronted with unfair competition from British imports. The consequences of this were summarized by the rebel prince Feroz Shah, in his August 1857 proclamation, “The Europeans by the introduction of English articles into India have thrown the weavers, the cotton dressers, the carpenters, the blacksmiths and the shoe-makers and others out of employ and have engrossed their occupations, so that every description of native artisan has been reduced to beggary.”
Contrast this turn of events with the arrival of Mughal rule in India. Babar, in spite of his distaste for the Indian climate and customs, noted the tremendous diversity and skill of Indian craftspeople, and saw in that a great potential for expanding Indian manufacturing. Quite unlike the British, the Mughals built on the manufacturing strengths of the Indian artisan (already well establish in the earlier Sultanate period) and took them to dazzling heights in the later periods. But by the mid-19th century, this pre-industrial virtuosity in manufacturing had been virtually choked of by British policies. A British chronicler of the period, Thomas Lowe noted how “the native arts and manufactures as used to raise for India a name and wonder all over the western world are nearly extinguished in the present day; once renowned and great cities are merely heaps of ruins…”
All this inevitably prepared the ground for the far more widespread revolt of 1857. Although concentrated in what is now UP in modern India the 1857 revolt spread from Dacca and Chittagong (now Bangladesh) in the East to Delhi in the West. Major urban centres in Bengal, Orissa, and Bihar including Cuttack, Sambhalpur, Patna and Ranchi participated. In Central India the revolt spread to Indore, Jabalpur, Jhansi and Gwalior. Uprisings also took place in Nasirabad in Rajasthan, Aurangabad and Kolhapur in Maharashtra and in Peshawar on the Afghan border. But the main battleground was in the plains of UP with every major town providing valiant resistance to the British invaders.
Starting out as a revolt of the Sepoys it was soon accompanied by a rebellion of the civil population, particularly in the North Western Provinces and Oudh. The masses gave vent to their opposition to British rule by attacking government buildings and prisons. They raided the ‘treasury’, charged on barracks and court houses, and threw open the prison gates. The civil rebellion had a broad social base, embracing all sections of society—the territorial magnates, peasants, artisans, religious mendicants and priests, civil servants, shopkeepers and boatmen.
For several months after the uprising began in Meerut on May 10, 1857 British rule ceased to exist in the northern plains of India. Muslim and Hindu rulers alike joined the rebelling soldiers and militant peasants, and other nationalist fighters. Among the most prominent leaders of the uprising were Nana Sahib, Tantya Tope, Bakht Khan, Azimullah Khan, Rani Laksmi Bai, Begum Hazrat Mahal, Kunwar Singh, Maulvi Ahmadullah, Bahadur Khan and Rao Tula Ram. Former rulers had their own grievances against the British, including the notorious law on succession which gave the British the right to annexe any princely state if it lacked “legitimate male heirs”.
EXPRESSIONS OF POPULAR WILL
The rebels established a Court of Administration consisting of ten members—six from the army and four civilians with equal representation of Hindus and Muslims. The rebel government abolished taxes on articles of common consumption, and penalized hoarding. Amongst the provisions of its charter was the liquidation of the hated ‘Zamindari’ system imposed by the British and a call for land to the tiller.
Although the former princes who joined with the rebels did not go quite as far, several aspects of the proclamations issued by the former rulers are noteworthy. All proclamations were issued in popular languages. Hindi and Urdu texts were provided simultaneously. Proclamations were issued jointly in the name of both Hindus and Muslims. Feroz Shah in his August 1857 proclamation included some significant points— All trade was to be reserved for Indian merchants only, with free use of Government steam vessels and steam carriages. All public offices were to be given to Indians only and wages of the sepoys were to be revised upwards.
OVERPOWERED BY BRITISH MIGHT, BETRAYED BY THE PRINCES
Threatened by such a radical turn of events, the British rulers poured in immense resources in arms and men to suppress the struggle. Although the rebels fought back heroically the betrayal by a number of rulers allowed the British to prevail. The British were also helped by the conservatism of the trading communities who were unwilling to put up with the uncertainties of a long drawn out rebellion.
But equally important was the superior weaponry and brutality of the British in defending their empire. British barbarity in supressing the uprising was unprecedented. After the fall of Lucknow on May 8, 1858 Frederick Engels commented: “The fact is, there is no army in Europe or America with so much brutality as the British. Plundering, violence, massacre—things that everywhere else are strictly and completely banished—are a time honoured privilege, a vested right of the British soldier…” In Oudh alone 150,000 people were killed of which 100,000 were civilians. The great Urdu poet, Mirza Ghalib wrote from Delhi, “In front of me, I see rivers of blood”. He went on to describe how the victorious army went on a killing spree—killing every one in sight— looting peoples property as they advanced.
Bahadur Shah’s three sons were publicly executed at ‘Khooni Darwaaza’ in Delhi and Bahadur Shah himself was exiled to Rangoon where he died in 1862. Refusing to plead for mercy from the British, he courageously retorted:
“The power of India will one day shake London if the glory of self-respect remains undimmed in the hearts of the rebels”. Thomas Lowe wrote: “To live in India now was like standing on the verge of a volcanic crater, the sides of which were fast crumbling away from our feet, while the boiling lava was ready to erupt and consume us.”
The 1857 revolt which had forged an unshakable unity amongst Hindus and Muslims alike, was an important milestone in our freedom struggle—providing hope and inspiration for future generations of freedom lovers. However, the aftermath of the 1857 revolt also brought about dramatic changes in colonial rule. After the defeat of the 1857 national revolt the British embarked on a furious policy of ‘Divide and Rule’, fomenting religious hatred as never before. Resorting to rumours and falsehoods, they deliberately recast Indian history in highly communal colours and practised pernicious communal politics to divide the Indian masses. That legacy continues to plague the sub-continent today. However, if more people become aware of the colonial roots of this divisive communal gulf, it is possible that some of the damage done to Hindu-Muslim unity could be reversed. If Hindus and Muslims could rejoin and collaborate in the spirit of 1857, the sub-continent may yet be able to unshackle itself from its colonial past.
Although there had been earlier mutinies by the Company’s Indian troops, for example in Vellore in 1806, the 1857 uprising was notable for its larger scale, for the nexus between the civilian and the military revolts, and for “the threat it posed for British power throughout northern India.” The rebels soon captured large swaths of the North-west Provinces and Oudh, including Delhi, where they installed the Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar, as Emperor of Hindustan. The British response came rapidly as well—by September 1857, with help from fresh British reinforcements, Delhi had been retaken. However, it then took the better part of 1858 for the rebellion to be completely suppressed in Oudh.
The rebellion was notable in several ways, although the fighting was marked by great violence on the part of both warring parties, the rebel soldiers, both Hindu and Muslim, as well as their rural supporters displayed unusual religious amity towards each other; although the rebel leaders, especially the Rani of Jhansi, became folk heroes in the burgeoning nationalist movement half a century later, they themselves “generated no coherent ideology or programme on which to build a new order;” the rebellion ended the East India Company’s rule, and led the British to rethink their enterprise in India. Company rule was replaced in 1858 with direct rule by the British Crown in the new British Raj, a system of governance which was to last the next 90 years, until 1947.
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