UPSC History Uprising against British Rule 1857 Revolt NCERT Extracts - The Revolt of 1857

 General Causes

• The Revolt of 1857 was much more than a mere product of sepoy discontent.
• It was in reality a product of the character and policies of colonial rule, of the accumulated grievances of the people against the Company's administration and of their dislike for the foreign regime.
• The most important cause was the economic exploitation of the country by the British and the complete destruction of its traditional economic fabric.
• Other general causes were the British land and land revenue policies and the system of law and administration.
• Common people were hard hit by the prevalence of corruption at the lower levels of administration.
• The police, petty officials and lower law courts were notoriously corrupt.
• The middle and upper classes of Indian society, particularly in the north, were hard hit by their exclusion from the well paid higher posts in the administration.
• Displacement of rulers by the East India Company meant the sudden withdrawal of patronage and the impoverishment of those who had depended upon it.
• Religious preachers, pandits and maulavis, who felt that their entire future was threatened, were to play an important role in spreading hatred against the foreign rule.
• Unlike foreign conquerors before them, British did not mix socially even with the upper classes of Indians; instead, they had a feeling of racial superiority and treated Indians with contempt and arrogance.
• The period of the growth of discontent among the people coincided with certain events which shattered the general belief in the invincibility of British arms and encouraged the people to believe that the days of the British regime were numbered.
• The British army suffered major reverses in the First Afghan War (1838-42), in the Punjab Wars (1845-49), and in the Crimean War (1854-56).
• In 1855-56 the Santhal tribesmen ofBihar and Bengal rose up armed with axes and bows and arrows and revealed the potentialities of a popular uprising by temporarily sweeping away British rule from their area.
• The annexation of Awadh by Lord Dalhousie in 1856 was widely resented in India in general and in Awadh in particular.
• The excuse Dalhousie had advanced for annexing Awadh was that he wanted to free the people from the Nawab's mismanagement and taluqdars' oppression, but, in practice, the people got no relief
• Similarly, merchants, shopkeepers, and handicraftsmen who had catered to the Awadh Court and nobles lost their livelihood.
• These dispossessed taluqdars, numbering nearly 21,000, anxious to regain their lost estates and position, became the most dangerous opponents of the British rule.
• The annexation of Awadh, along with the other annexations of Dalhousie, created panic among rulers of the native states.
• This policy of annexation and subordination was, for example, directly responsible for making Nana Sahib, the Rani of Jhansi and Bahadur Shah their staunch enemies.
• Nana Sahib was the adopted son of Baji Rao II, the last Peshwa. 'The British refused to grant Nana Sahib the pension they were paying to Baji Rao II, the last Peshwa, and forced him to live at Kanpur, far away from his family seat at Poona.
• The house of the Mughals was humbled when Dalhousie announced in 1849 that the successor to Bahadur Shah would have to abandon the historic Red Fort and move to a humbler residence at the Qutab on the outskirts of Delhi.
• And, in 1856, Canning announced that after Bahadur Shah's death the Mughals would lose the title of kings and would be known as mere princes.
• An important factor in turning the people against British rule was their fear that it endangered their religion.
• These missionaries tried to convert people and made violent and vulgar public attack on Hinduism and Islam.
• The abolition of the custom of sati, the legalization of widow remarriage, and the opening of Western education to girls appeared to them as examples of such undue interference.
• The Revolt of 1857 started with the mutiny of the Company's sepoys.
• The sepoys were after all a part of Indian society and, therefore, felt and suffered to some extent what other Indians did.
• The sepoy was, in fact, a 'peasant in uniform9. If their near and dear ones suffered from the destructive economic consequences of the British rule, they, in turn, felt this suffering.
• The military authorities forbade the sepoys to wear caste and sectarian marks, beards or turbans.
• In 1856, an Act was passed under which every new recruit undertook to serve even overseas, if required.
• The sepoys also had numerous other grievances. A wide gulf had come into existence between the officers and the sepoys who were often treated with contempt by their British officers.
• Even though a sepoy was as good a soldier as his British counterpart, he was paid much less and lodged and fed in a far worse manner than the latter.
• A more immediate cause of the sepoys' dissatisfaction was the recent order that they would not be given the foreign service allowance (batta) when serving in Sindh or in the Punjab.This order resulted in a big cut in the salaries of a large number of them.
• The dissatisfaction of the sepoys had in fact a long history. A sepoy mutiny had broken out in Bengal as early as 1764.
• In 1806 the sepoys at Vellore mutinied but were crushed.
• In 1824, the 47th Regiment of sepoys at Barrackpore refused to go to Burma by the sea- route.
• In 1844, seven battalions revolted on the question of salaries and batta.
• Thus widespread and intense dislike and even hatred of the foreign rule prevailed among large numbers of Indian people and soldiers of the Company's army.
• This feeling was later summed up by Saiyid Ahmad Khan in his "Causes of the Indian Mutiny”
• The Revolt of 1857 came as a culmination of popular discontent with British policies and imperialist exploitation.
• From 1763 to 1856, there were more than forty major rebellions and hundreds of minor ones. These rebellions had been often led by rajas, nawabs, zamindars, landlords and poligars, but their fighting forces had been provided by peasants, artisans rulers and dispossessed and disarmed zamindars and poligars.

The Immediate Cause

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• The episode of greased cartridges was the immediate cause. The new Enfield rifle had been first introduced in the army. Its cartridges had a greased paper cover whose end had to be bitten off before the cartridge was loaded into the rifle.
• The grease was in some instances composed of beef and pig fat.
• The sepoys, Hindu as well as Muslim, were enraged. The use of the greased cartridges would endanger their religion.
• Many of them believed that the Government was deliberately trying to destroy their religion and convert them to Christianity. The time to rebel had come.

The Beginning and Course of the Revolt

• A peculiar aspect of the study of the history of the Revolt of 1857 is that it has to be based almost entirely on British records.
• The rebels have left behind no records. As they worked illegally, they perhaps kept no records.
• The Revolt began at Meerut, 58 km from Delhi, on 10 May, 1857
• Even before the outbreak at Meerut, Mangal Pande had become a martyr at Barrackpore. Mangal Pande, a young soldier, was hanged on 29 March, 1857 for revolting single- handed and attacking his superior officers.
• And then came the explosion at Meerut. On 24 April, ninety men of the 3rd Native Cavalry refused to accept the greased cartridges.
• On 10 May, they released their imprisoned comrades, killed their officers, and unfurled the banner of revolt. As if drawn by a magnet, they set off for Delhi after sunset.
• The rebellious soldiers proclaimed the aged and powerless Bahadur Shah the Emperor of India. Delhi was soon to become the centre of the Great Revolt and Bahadur Shah its great symbol.
• This spontaneous raising of the last Mughal king to the leadership of the country was recognition symbol of India's political unity.
• Bahadur Shah, in turn, under the instigation and perhaps the pressure of the sepoys, and after initial vacillation, wrote letters to all the chiefs and rulers of India urging them to organise a confederacy of Indian states to fight and replace the British regime.
• The popular character of Revolt of 1857 also became evident when the British tried to crush it.
• They had to wage a vigorous and ruthless war not only against the rebellious sepoys but also against the people.
• Much of the strength of the Revolt of 1857 lay in Hindu-Muslim unity. Among the soldiers and the people as well as among the leader there was complete cooperation as between Hindus and Muslims.
• All the rebels recognised Bahadur Shah, a Muslim, as their Emperor.
• At Delhi the nominal and symbolic leadership belonged to the Emperor Bahadur Shah, but the real command lay with a Court of Soldiers headed by General Bakht Khan who had led the revolt of the Bareilly troops and brought them to Delhi.
• At Kanpur the Revolt was led by Nana Sahib, the adopted son of Baji Rao II, the last Peshwa. At the same time he acknowledged Bahadur Shah as the Emperor of India and declared himself to be his Governor.
• The chief burden of fighting on behalf of Nana Sahib fell on the shoulders of Tantia Tope, one of his most loyal servants.
• Tantia Tope has won immortal fame by his patriotism, determined fighting and skilful guerrilla operations.
• Azimullah was another loyal servants of Nana Sahib. He was an expert in political propaganda.
• The revolt at Lucknow was led by Hazrat Mahal, the Begum of Awadh, who had proclaimed her young son, Birjis Kadr, as the Nawab of Awadh.
• One of the great leaders of the Revolt of 1857, and perhaps one of the greatest heroines of Indian history, was the young Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi.
• She captured Gwalior with the help of Tantia Tope and her trusted Afghan guards.
• The brave Rani died fighting on 17 June, 1858.
• Kunwar Singh, a mined and discontented zamindar of Jagdishpur near Arrah, was the chief organiser of the Revolt in Bihar.
• Though nearly 80 years old, he was perhaps the most outstanding military leader and strategist of the Revolt.
• Maulavi Ahmadullah of Faizabad was another outstanding leader of the Revolt.
• He was a native of Madras where he had started preaching armed rebellion.
• In January, 1857 he moved towards he north to Faizabad where he fought a large-scale battle against a company of British troops.
• The greatest heroes of the Revolt were, however, the sepoys, many of whom displayed great courage in the field of battle and thousands of whom unselfishly laid down their lives.

The Weaknesses of the Revolt and its Suppression

• Even though spread over a vast territory and widely popular among the people, the Revoh of 1857 could not embrace the entire country or all the groups and classes of Indian society.
• It did not spread to South India and most of Eastern and Western India because these regions had repeatedly rebelled earlier.
• On the contrary, the Sindhia of Gwalior, the Holkar of Indore, the Nizam of Hyderabad the Raja of Jodhpur and other Rajput rulers, the Nawab of Bhopal, the rulers of Patiala. Nabha, Jind, and other Sikh chieftains of Punjab, the Maharaja of Kashmir, the Ranas of Nepal, and many other ruling chiefs, and a large number of big zamindars gave active help to the British in suppressing the Revolt.
• Governor-General Canning later remarked that these rulers and chiefs "acted as the breakwaters to the storm which would have otherwise swept us in one great wave."
• Madras, Bombay, Bengal and the Western Punjab remained undisturbed.
• Even many of the taluqdars (big zamindars) of Awadh, who had joined the Revolt, abandoned it once the Government gave them an assurance that their estates would be returned to them.
• The zamindars of Bengal also remained loyal to the British. They were after all a j creation of the British.
• The big merchants of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras supported the British because their main profits came from foreign trade and economic connections with the British merchants.
• The modem educated Indians also did not support the Revolt.
• The Rebels were short of modem weapons and other materials of war. Most of them fought with such ancient weapons as pikes and swords.
• They were also poorly organised. The sepoys were brave and selfless but they were also illdisciplined. Sometimes they behaved more like a riotous mob than a disciplined army
• The uprisings in different part of the country were completely uncoordinated. The leaders were joined together by a common feeling of hatred for the alien rule but by nothing else
• It lacked a forward-looking programme, coherent ideology, a political perspective or a vision of the future society and economy.
• The diverse elements which took part in the Revolt were united only by their hatred of British rule, but each of them had different grievances and differing conceptions of the politics of free India. This absence of a modem and progressive programme enabled the reactionary princes and zamindars to seize the levers of power of the revolutionary movement.
• At Delhi, a court of administrators, consisting of ten members, six armymen and four civilians was established.
• In the end, British imperialism, with a developing capitalist economy and at the height of its power the world over, and supported by most of the Indian princes and chiefs, proved militarily too strong for the rebels.
• The British Government poured immense supplies of men, money and arms into the country. The rebels were dealt an early blow when the British captured Delhi on 20 September, 1857 after prolonged and bitter fighting.
• The Emperor was tried and exiled to Rangoon where he died in 1862, lamenting bitterly the fate which had buried him far away from the city of his birth.
• With the fall of Delhi the focal point of the Revolt disappeared.
• John Lawrence, Outram, Havelock, Neil, Compbell, and Hugh Rose were some of the British commanders who earned military fame in the course of this campaign.
• Nana Sahib was defeated at Kanpur. Defiant to the very end and refusing to surrender, he escaped to Nepal early in 1859, never to be heard of again.
• Tantia Tope escaped into the jungles of Central India where he carried on bitter and brilliant guerrilla warfare until April, 1859 when he was betrayed by a zamindar friend and captured while asleep.
• The Rani of Jhansi had died on the field of battle earlier on 17 June, 1858.
• By 1859, Kunwar Singh, Bakht Khan, Khan Bahadur Khan of Bareilly, Rao Sahib, brother of Nana Sahib, and Maulavi Ahmadullah were all dead, while the Begum of Awadh was compelled to hide in Nepal.
• By the end of 1859, British authority over India was fully re-established, but the Revolt had not been in vain.
• It paved the way for the rise of the modern national movement.

Two rebels of 1857

• Shah Mal lived in a large village in pargana Barout in Uttar Pradesh.
• Locally acknowledged as the Raja, Shah Mal took over the bungalow of an English officer, turned it into a "hall of justice", settling disputes and dispensing judgments.
• He also set up an amazingly effective network of intelligence.
• Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah was one of the many maulvis who played an important part in the revolt of 1857. Educated in Hyderabad, he became a preacher when young.
• He moved in a palanquin, with drumbeaters in front and followers at the rear. He was therefore popularly called Danka Shah - the maulvi with the drum ( danka).
• British officials panicked as thousands began following the maulvi and many Muslims began seeing him as an inspired prophet.
• He fought in the famous Battle of Chinhat in which the British forces under Henry Lawrence were defeated. He came to be known for his courage and power.
• In 1851 Governor General Lord Dalhousie described the kingdom of Awadh as "a cherry that will drop into our mouth one day".