Uprising Of 1857

THE REVOLT OF 1857 The revolt of 1857 was the most severe outburst of anger and discontent accumulated in the hearts of various sections of the Indian society ever since the inception of British rule in Bengal, following the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and the Battle of Buxar. British historians called it a "Sepoy Mutiny" and the Indian historians termed it as the "First War of Independence". Jawaharlal Nehru in his book "Discovery of India" described it as the Feudal Revolt of 1857 and added that "it was much more than a military mutiny and it rapidly spread and assumed the character of a popular rebellion and a war of Indian Independence". Though the revolt was started by the Indian soldiers in the service of the East India company, it soon proliferated all over the country. Millions of peasants, aritsans and soldiers fought heroically for over a year and sacrificed their life so that others might live. Hindus and Muslims kept their religious differences aside and fought together in order to free themselves from foreign subjugation. The British tried to dismiss this Revolt by merely calling it a "Sepoy Mutiny", but this Revolt clearly shows the pented hatred that the Indians had for the foreigners. The Revolt did not take place overnight. There were many economic causes that added fuel to the fire. The British were exploiting the Indian economy and thus leaving many people jobless, helpless and homeless. There were many social and religious reasons for the Revolt. The British started imposing their religion on the Indians by building churches and by forcing people to convert to Christianity. Further more, the Doctrine of Lapse, whereby adopted children were refused recognition and deprived of pension, instigated the political causes of the Revolt. The British did not even spare the Indian soldiers. Rough treatment was meted out to the soldiers and they lived in squalor. The British left no stone unturned to create an eternal wall between Hindus and Muslims. The introduction of the greased cartridges took the situation to its highest point and thus in addition to economic, social and political causes there were military causes added to the Revolt of 1857. The Revolt of 1857 was clearly not a success but it is unfair to dismiss it as a mere mutiny. This was the first time when Indians got together to fight against an invincible military power. The Revolt failed due to lack of planning, organization and leadership. The unfortunate part however was that there were some Indians who helped the British suppress the Revolt. Had they cooperated the Revolt might have been a success. Eventhough the Revolt was a failure, the consequences of the Revolt were very important in Indian history. The Revolt brought the end of Company's rule, along with changes in the British policy towards Indian States. With the escape of Nana Sahib and the death of Bahadur Shah Zafar came the end of Peshwaship and the Mughal Rule. The end of the Revolt also led to the reorganization of the army and India was

completely ruined from economic point of view. One of the most important outcome of the Revolt was that it gave rise to Nationalism. Indian people became more aware of the heroes, who sacrificed their lives so that others might live. The Revolt however, scarred the relationship between Hindus and Muslims with the Divide and Rule Policy. •CAUSES OF THE REVOLT

Bahadur Shah Zafar- Last Mughal Emperor of India

a) During the first two hundred years (sixteenth and seventeeth centuries) the East India Company confined its activities to trade and commerce and had no political intention. The company purchased textiles, indigo, saltpetre, spices and foodgrains from Indian market in exchange for gold and other precious metals. It thus played a useful role by exporting Indian goods and by increasing the production the Indian goods became so popular that the British government had to pass a law in 1720 forbidding the use of Indian textiles. However during the 18th century, the pattern of trade went through a drastic change. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, England developed its own textile industry and with that the dependence on Indian textiles came to an end. The result was that instead of buying finished textile goods from India, the British company purchased raw cotton and exported the same to England. India soon became a raw material producing country, supplying cotton and jute to the factories in Britain. Cotton was processed into finished cloth and exported back to India. British traders made massive profit through this two way trade. Demand for Indian textiles having reduced, the local handloom industry incurred heavy losses and suffered badly. The poor Indian weavers could not compete with the machine made goods imported from England. Moreover, the Company used its political resources to buy the best quality cotton from the Indian markets leaving no scope for the Indian weavers to produce good quality products. Gradually, the Indian handicraft and Cottage industries died out.There was major unemployment problem and that resulted in resentment among workers against the British rule. The little patronage that they received from the native princes also was gone because of the

annexations of those dominions. The miserable conditon of the working class led to this rebellion against the Britsh Rule. The trade and commerce of the country was monopolized by the by the East Indian Company. No efforts were made to improvise on the living conditions of the people. Cruel exploitation of the economic resources made people miserable leading to periodic famines.

The Attack of Mutineers, July 30, 1857

b) The British confiscated the lands and properties of many landlords and Talukdars, especially those of Oudh. These very disgruntled landlords became leaders of the Revolt. c) Thousands of soldiers under the employment of the native states became jobless when the states were annexed to the British dominion. As many as 60,000 families lost their livlihood, when Oudh's army was disbanded. Naturally the disbanded soldiers were seething with anger and were seeking an opportunity to strike at the new regime which had deprived them of the their livlihood. d) Gradual disappearence of many states also deprived those Indians who held civil and judicial posts in the states, of their jobs. Even religious preachers were divested of their livlihood with the extinction of native kingdoms. The people who were affected rose against the British.

CAUSES OF THE FAILURE OF THE REVOLT

LACK OF PLANNING, ORGANIZATION AND LEADERSHIP Movement without planning, organization and leadership is bound to be a failure. The revolt of 1857 was no exception. The revolt was supposed to have started on May 31, 1857 as decided by Nana Sahib and his colleagues. But an incident at Meerut whereby the soldiers had to bite cartridges made of pig fat and cow fat added fuel to the fire leading to the revolt breaking out early. The leaders had no made plans. The movement had no leader on top to guide people and command obedience. Every movement reqiures some sort of discipline and a leader to guide and help. But since the Revolt unexpectedly broke out on May 10, 1857, there is nothing much the leaders could do.

Indian Help to the British Unfortunately, some of the Indian prince's helped the British government at that point of time. The Sikh princes of Nabhya, Patiala and Kapurthala and the rulers of Hyderabad and Gwalior very openly helped the British suppress the war with men and money. Holka and Scindia remained loyal to the British. Their help at this point of time riveted the shackles of British yoke over India for almost another century.

END OF COMPANY'S RULE

The British Parliament passed an "Act for the Better Government of India" in 1858, whereby the administration responsibility was passed into the hands of the British Queen and her Parliament. With this, the rule of the Company came to an end. The Board of Control was abolished and the Board of Directors had no power left. A secretary of State for India was to take the place of the President of the Board of Control. He was advised by a board of fifteen members. The designation of the Governor-General was changed. While he remained Governor-General for the provinces under his rule, he came to be known as Viceroy while dealing with Nawabs, Rajas and native princes.

CHANGE IN THE BRITISH POLICY TOWARDS INDIAN STATES To appease native princes, the British declared that they would honour all treaties and the agreement entered into by the East India Company with the native rulers. Further, Doctrine of Lapse was abandoned and the right to adoption recognized. The Indian princes were assured that their territories would never be annexed. Henceforth, the continual existence of Native States was guaranteed. However, there were clearly defined restrictions and limitations to them. The military prowess was greatly reduced.

REORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY The British soldiers realized that the numerical inferiority of the British Indian army was one of the causes of the Revolt. The British soldiers were increased in number

which means, the expenditure also increased. Artillery and other advanced means of warfare were in the care of British hands. In order to break down the unity of the Indian soldiers, they were divided and separated.

From Mutiny to Uprising Early in 1857, the British issued a new rifle to the sepoy regiments. The rifle fired a paper cartridge that combined the gunpowder and the bullet. The rifleman had to bite off the end of the cartridge before pushing it down the barrel of the gun. To ease its passage down the gun barrel, each cartridge was heavily greased with beef or pork fat. This horrified the Hindu and Muslim sepoys. They would have to bite into beef or pork fat to use the new cartridges. This act, they believed, would violate their religions. The British quickly realized their mistake and tried to assure the sepoys that they would not have to use cartridges greased with beef or pork fat. But the sepoys distrusted their British officers. Rumors quickly spread from one regiment to another that the British were insulting the Hindu and Muslim religions by issuing the new greased cartridges. In April 1857 at a military post near Delhi, 85 sepoy cavalrymen refused to use the new cartridges when ordered to do so. The British court-martialed and sentenced them to prison. After the sentencing, the British humiliated them by stripping off their uniforms and shackling their ankles in front of 4,000 sepoy troops. Shocked by what they had seen, the troops mutinied. They quickly overwhelmed the British and released the sepoy prisoners. They then began shooting every British man, woman, and child in sight. When the slaughter ended, the mutineers marched off to Delhi to seek the help of an elderly Muslim king who had stepped down from power many years before. As the sepoys entered Delhi, the people of the city joined them in seeking out the old Muslim king. Both Hindus and Muslims respected him as a symbol of the traditional way of life. At first reluctant, Bahadur Shah II, "King of Delhi," finally agreed to take up the sepoy cause. He called for all Hindus and Muslims to unite. "May all the enemies of the Faith be killed today," he said, "and the [foreigners] be destroyed root and branch!"

Shocked by the capture of Delhi by sepoy mutineers, the British began to disarm the East India Company sepoy regiments. When the sepoy mutiny first erupted, the British had only 23,000 regular British army troops in India to restore order. Eventually, the British had to bring in troops from all over their empire to fight the rebels. Civilian rebels soon outnumbered the sepoys. The mutiny grew into a general uprising against the British across northern and central India. Sepoy regiments, together with farmers, villagers, government workers, dispossessed estate owners, and bands of robbers, looted and burned British homes, churches, missions, and East India Company property. They also hunted down and killed any British people they found. British army units began their own war of vengeance. On their way to recapture Delhi, British soldiers randomly tortured, shot, and hanged hundreds of Indian people. The British executed many sepoy mutineers they captured by lashing the victim to the muzzle of a cannon and blasting him to pieces.

The chief cause of failure was the efficient organization of the British forces, their bravery and courage, and that those who rebelled were not supported by the masses of Indians many of whom were Hindu and felt no compassion for rebellious Muslims. A Link and verbage.. http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empi… """"We could subdue the mutiny of 1857, formidable as it was, because it spread through only a part of the army, because people did not actively sympathize with it, and because it was possible to find native Indian races who would fight on our side. But the moment a mutiny is but threatened, which shall be no mere mutiny, but the expression of a universal feeling of nationality, at that moment all hope is at an end, as all desire should be at an end, of our preserving our Empire." — Sir John Seeley (quoted by Tarling) The 1857 rebellion, which began with the mutiny of Indian troops stationed near Delhi, had several chief results: a year-long insurrection that changed attitudes -- both British and Indian — towards British rule of India dissolution of the British British East India Company

beginning of the British Raj, the period during which the U. K. directly ruled the Indian subcontinent the end of the Mughal Empire after the British exiled Emperor Bahadur Shah to Burma The revolt, mutiny, or rebellion, which some have seen as the first Indian war of independence, began on May 10, 1857. According to "The Uprising of 1857: A Great Divide in South Asian History" [US Library of Congress website], Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army, drawn mostly from Muslim units from Bengal, mutinied at the Meerut cantonment near Delhi, starting a year-long insurrection against the British. The mutineers then marched to Delhi and offered their services to the Mughal emperor, whose predecessors had suffered an ignoble defeat 100 years earlier at Plassey. . . . The insurrection was sparked by the introduction of cartridges rumored to have been greased with pig or cow fat, which was offensive to the religious beliefs of Muslim and Hindu sepoys (soldiers). In a wider sense, the insurrection was a reaction by the indigenous population to rapid changes in the social order engineered by the British over the preceding century and an abortive attempt by the Muslims to resurrect a dying political order. After the mutineers (or patriots) finally surrendered on June 20, 1858, the British ended both the East India Company and the Mughal Empire, sending the deposed Emperor Bahadur Shah to exile in Burma. With the coming of the Raj, a British governor general (or "Viceroy" as he was known when representing the British crown) ruled India, and he in turn reported to the secretary of state for India, a member of Prime Minister's cabinet (LoC Website). The mutiny, which ended by destroying the Mughal Empire, had major effects on the U. K. as well, forcing the British government to assume direct control over the Indian subcontinent. At home, many English, who felt betrayed by peoples they thought they had befriended, experienced the revolt as a trauma. Newspapers of the period emphasized atrocities, particularly toward women and children, committed by the rebels, and these became the subjects of very well known contemporary paintings. """ Peace

The Indian public had been suffering under an oppressive foreign rule for almost a century by now and the discontentment had been rising. The revolt of 1857 which although broke out in a sudden and spontaneous manner had deeper reasons. Economic Ruin of the Country Since India was ruled as colony by the British, their economic policies were formulated accordingly. Once the British were in control of a certain area they began implementing their oppressive colonial market policies. They would force Indians to sell

cheap and buy dear. This over time had completely destroyed the Indian economy and had sent millions in poverty. Such a massive change in the economic status of Indians had never taken place in its entire history, and the people resented this injustice inflicted upon them. Displaced People British rule brought drastic changes to the lives of many Indians. Land lords who had for long enjoyed land and social privileges found themselves stripped of their land and left impoverished. Artisans who were patronized by the Indian rulers now had no patrons amongst the new British rulers, and were out of work. The subsidiary alliance had forced many kings to disband their armies in order to meet the costs of maintaining the mandatory British troops and this resulted in large scale unemployment. These displaced people became major enemies of the British rule in India Religious influence and social reform The British besides conquering India were also keen to spread their religion, Christianity. Missionaries were actively encouraged and laws allowing only Christians to inherit property were passed. The army maintained a chaplain at state cost. Indians serving in the army did not have their religious views respected and were often made to violate them. The British egged on by social reformers banned sati and legalized widow marriage. While these were progressive steps viewed for the betterment of Indian society, they were received by the conservative sections of society as a direct attack on their culture.

Since the British had remained a foreign alien ruler for over a hundred years, and made no effort whatsoever to integrate into Indian society, the people opposed it strongly. Earlier foreign invaders had always integrated into Indian society and there had been a synthesis of ideas. In the

case of the British, the British were simply trying to impose their ideas and beliefs on the Indians. This did not go down well with the Indian people. Western Education The British had been promoting western education and laying emphasis on the education of girls. This was also mis-interpreted by the conservative sections of the society as an attack on Indian culture. More importantly western education exposed Indians to the new thoughts of liberty and equality and they realized that the British were treating them like second rate citizens in their own country. Policies of Annexation The British in order to gain control of India had adopted some devious annexation policies which illegally displaced many Indian kings. The British also refused to recognize the titles of the sons of the kings. The British humiliated the Mughals, by proclaiming that after the death of Bahadur Shah II, his sons would be known as mere princes and would have to vacate the Red Fort. One particular annexation that the British made proved to be a major mistake. A large part of the English East India Company's army was from a kingdom known as Awadh, a loyal ally of the British. Since the soldiers lacked any nationalistic feelings they had helped the British conquer the rest of the country. However, when the British annexed their kingdom, Awadh, on flimsy grounds, they were angered and revolted. A few other minor factors had also been brewing. The British power had come across as invincible after they successfully overran a once mighty country. This myth was shattered when the British were defeated in Afghanistan. This gave Indians a new found confidence to revolt. Finally all that was needed was a spark, and this came with the greased cartridges controversy. The British introduced the new Enfield rifle which had a cartridge greased with the fat of a cow or pig. The soldiers before they could load the cartridge into the weapon had to bite off the cover, which was coated as mentioned above. This violated the religious feelings of Hindus as well as Muslims, for they are forbidden from eating the meat of a cow and pig respectively. The soldiers perceived this to be a direct and deliberate attack on their most sacred beliefs and refused to use these cartridges.

On 8th May 1857, the soldiers of the third Native cavalry were sentenced to ten years in prison for refusing to use the new cartridges. Their imprisonment angered the other Indian soldiers based at Meerut and the next day they freed their comrades and killed the British officers. After this they set off for Delhi at sunset and reached by the next morning. The local infantry of Delhi assisted them in taking over the city and killing many European officials. The rebels instated the aged and powerless Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II to the post of Emperor of India. The Mughals had for long been considered the symbol of political unity in India, and this development transformed the rebellion into a revolutionary war. Bahadur Shah II was pressured into organizing a movement, and he sent letters to all the important Indian kings to organize a confederation of Indian states, which collectively could drive the British out of India. A Court of Soldiers was established with General Bakht Khan heading it, and this body became the real command centre for the revolt. Soon the revolt spread to many parts of the country with several Indian kings attacking British positions. Notable personalities of the revolt were people like Nana Sahib, the Rani of Jhansi, Tantia Tope and Kunwar Singh amongst many others. The revolt met with some early successes but was eventually suppressed by the British within a year. The revolt had failed in its objective of overthrowing the British power, although it did result in some far reaching changes. The revolt of 1857 failed because it suffered from weak leadership and was hardly organized. This proved a major handicap when dealing with the well trained and equipped British troops. Also the revolt failed to extend to all parts of the country, and large sections of the population did not support it. In fact the British were able to use many divisions of the Indian unit of their army in suppressing the revolt. The revolt however did however make an impact on the British power, the English East India Company would be replaced by the British crown The revolt had created a sense of a nation amongst the Indians, and these nationalistic feelings would eventually result in the freedom struggle.