REVOLT OF 1857

 

For: Preliminary & Mains
Topic covers: Revolt of 1857 – Beginning, Causes, Suppression, Failure, Significance

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The Revolt Of 1857

It was far more than a mutiny…. yet much less than a first war of Independence.

….Stanley Wolpert

 

The revolt of 1857 was a product of the character and policies of rule.

 

CAUSES OF REVOLT

Economic Causes

1. Unpopular revenue settlement

• The peasantry were never really to recover from the disabilities imposed by the new and a highly unpopular revenue settlement.
• Impoverished by heavy taxation, the peasants resorted to loans from moneylenders/traders at usurious rates, the latter often evicting the former on non-payment of debt dues.

 

2. Misery to the artisans and handicrafts-men

• British rule also meant misery to the artisans and handicrafts-men.
• British policy discouraged Indian handicrafts and promoted British goods.
• The highly skilled Indian craftsmen were forced to look for alternate sources of employment that hardly existed, as the destruction of Indian handicrafts was not accompanied by the development of modern industries.

 

3. Zamindars

• Zamindars, the traditional landed aristocracy, often saw their land rights forfeited with frequent use of a quo warranto by the administration.
• This resulted in a loss of status for them in the villages.

 

Political Causes

• Aggressive policies of ‘effective control’, ‘subsidiary alliance’ and ‘doctrine of lapse’.
• The right of succession was denied to Hindu princes.

 

Administrative causes

• Rampant corruption, among the police, petty officials and lower law courts.

 

Socio-Religious causes

• Racial overtones and a superiority complex.
• The activities of christian missionaries who followed the british flag in India.
• Reforms such as abolition of sati, support to widow-remarriage and women’s education.
• Government’s decision to tax mosque and temple lands.
• Government’s legislative measures, such as the religious disabilities act, 1856, which modified hindu customs.
• Mixing of bone dust in rtta (flour).

 

OUTSIDE INFLUENCE

Influence of outside events the revolt of 1857 coincided with certain outside events in which the British suffered serious losses—the first afghan war (1838-42), Punjab wars (1845-49), Crimean wars (1854-56), santhal rebellion (1855-57).

 

DISCONTENT AMONG SEPOY

• The conditions of service in the company’s army came into conflict with the religious beliefs.
• Restrictions on wearing caste and sectarian marks. e.g. turban
• Forced to travels across the seas. (General Service Enlistment Act which decreed that all future recruits to the Bengal Army would have to give an undertaking to serve anywhere their services)
• Unhappy with emoluments. (Cause of dissatisfaction was the order that they would not be given the foreign service allowance (Matta) when serving in Sindh or in Punjab)
• Racial discrimination. (Also in matters of promotion and privileges)
• Newly introduced Enfield rifle’s trigger point was made of beef and pig fat.

BEGINNING OF REVOLT

• The revolt began at Meerut, 58 km from Delhi, on May 10, 1857 and then, gathering force rapidly, soon embraced a vast area from the Punjab in the north and the Narmada in the south to Bihar in the east and Rajputana in the west.
• Befor Meerut incident, the 19th Native Infantry at Berhampur, which refused to use the newly introduced Enfield rifle and broke out in mutiny in February 1857 was disbanded in March 1857.
• A young sepoy of the 34th Native Infantry, MangalPande, went a step further and fired at the sergeant major of his unit at Barrackpore.
• He was overpowered and executed on April 6 while his regiment was disbanded in May. The 7th Awadh Regiment which defied its officers on May 3 met with a similar fate. And then came the explosion at Meerut.

 

CENTRES OF REVOLT AND LEADER

• Delhi – General Khan
• Kanpur – Nana Saheb
• Lucknow – Begum HazratMahal
• Bareilly – Khan Bahadur
• Bihar – Kunwar Singh
• Faizabad – Maulvi Ahmadullah
• Jhansi – Rani Laxmibai

 

SUPPRESSION OF REVOLT

• The revolt was finally suppressed.
• The British captured Delhi on September 20, 1857 after prolonged and bitter fighting.
• John Nicholson, the leader of the siege, was badly wounded and later succumbed to his injuries.
• Bahadur Shah was taken prisoner.
• The royal princes were captured and butchered on the spot, publicly shot at point blank range, by Lieutenant Hudson himself.
• The emperor was exiled to Rangoon where he died in 1862.
• Thus the great House of Mughals was finally and completely extinguished.
• Terrible vengeance was wreaked on the inhabitants of Delhi. With the fall of Delhi the focal point of the revolt disappeared.
• By the end of 1859, British authority over India was fully re- established.
• The British Government had to pour immense supplies of men, money and arms into the country, though Indians had to later repay the entire cost through their own suppression.

CAUSES OF FAILURE OF REVOLT 

• Limited territorial spread was one factor, there was no all-India veneer about the revolt.
• The eastern, southern and western parts of India remained more or less unaffected.
• Certain classes and groups did not join the revolt.
• Big zamindars acted as “breakwaters to storm”.
• Modern educated Indians viewed this revolt as backward looking, and mistakenly hoped the British would usher in an era of modernisation.
• Most Indian rulers refused to join.
• By one estimate, not more than one-fourth of the total area and not more than one-tenth of the total population was affected.
• The Indian soldiers were poorly equipped materially, fighting generally with swords and spears and very few guns and muskets.
• On the other hand, the European soldiers were equipped with the latest weapons of war like the Enfield rifle.
• The revolt was poorly organized with no coordination or central leadership.
• The lack of unity among Indians.
• Lack of a coherent ideology and a political perspective.

 

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE REVOLT 

• The revolt of 1857 played an important role in bringing the Indian people together and imparting to them the consciousness of belonging to one country.
• During the entire revolt, there was complete cooperation between Hindus and Muslims at all levels—people, soldiers, leaders.
• Rebels and sepoys, both Hindu and Muslim, respected each other’s sentiments.
• Immediate banning of cow slaughter was ordered once the revolt was successful in a particular area.

 

NATURE OF THE REVOLT 

• Views differ on the nature of the 1857 revolt.
• It was a mere ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ to some British historians—”a wholly unpatriotic and selfish Sepoy Mutiny with no native leadership and no -popular support”, said Sir John Seeley.
• Dr K. Datta considers the revolt of 1857 to have been “in the main a military outbreak, which was taken advantage of by certain discontented princes and landlords, whose interests had been affected by the new political leader”
• It was at the beginning of the twentieth century that the 1857 revolt came to be interpreted as a “planned war of national independence”, by V.D. Savarkar.
• Dr R.C. Majumdar, however, considers it as neither the first, nor national, nor a war of independence as large parts of the country remained unaffected and many sections of the people took no part in the upsurge.
• According to Marxist historians, the 1857 revolt was “the struggle of the soldier-peasant democratic combine against foreign as well as feudal bondage”.

 

CONSEQUENCES

• It led to changes in the system of administration and the policy of the Government.
• The direct responsibility for the administration of the country was assumed by the British Crown and Company rule was abolished.
• The assumption of the Government of India by the sovereign of Great Britain was announced by Lord Canning at a durbar at Allahabad in the ‘Queen’s Proclamation’ issued on November 1, 1858.
• The era of annexations and expansion ended and the British promised to respect the dignity and rights of the native princes.
• The Indian states were henceforth to recognise the paramountcy of the British Crown and were to be treated as parts of a single charge.
• The Army, which was at the forefront of the outbreak, was thoroughly reorganised and British military policy came to be dominated by the idea of “division and counterpoise”.
• Racial hatred and suspicion between the Indians and the English was aggravated.

 

 

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