History Youtube Notes
The 1857 Revolt: the Major Causes
The causes of the revolt of 1857, like those of earlier
uprisings, emerged from all aspects—socio-cultural, economic
and political—of daily existence of Indian population cutting
through all sections and classes. These causes are discussed
below.
Economic Causes
The colonial policies of the East India Company destroyed
the traditional economic fabric of the Indian society.
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 money-lenders/traders at usurious rates, the latter
often evicting the former from their land on non-payment
of debt dues. These money-lenders and traders emerged as
the new landlords, while the scourge of landless peasantry
and rural indebtedness has continued to plague Indian society
to this day. The older system of zamindari was forced to
disintegrate.
British rule also meant misery to the artisans and
handicrafts people.
The annexation of Indian states by the
Company cut off their major source of patronage—the native
rulers and the nobles, who could not now afford to be patrons
of the crafts workers.
Added to this, 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.
The Indian trade and mercantile class was deliberately
crippled by the British who imposed high tariff duties on
Indian-made goods. At the same time, the import of British
goods into India attracted low tariffs, thus encouraging their
entry into India. By mid-nineteenth century, exports of cotton
and silk textiles from India practically came to an end. Free
trade—one way, that is—and refusal to impose protective
duties against machine-made goods from Britain simply
killed Indian manufacture.
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. In Awadh, the storm centre
of the revolt, 21,000 taluqdars had their estates confiscated
and suddenly found themselves without a source of income,
“unable to work, ashamed to beg, condemned to penury”.
These dispossessed taluqdars seized the opportunity presented
by the sepoy revolt to oppose the British and try to regain
what they had lost.
The ruin of Indian industry increased the pressure on
agriculture and land, which could not support all the people;
the lopsided development resulted in pauperisation of the
country in general.
Political Causes
The East India Company’s greedy policy of aggrandisement
accompanied by broken pledges and promises resulted in
contempt for the Company and loss of political prestige,
besides causing suspicion in the minds of almost all the
ruling princes in India, through such policies as of ‘Effective
Control’, ‘Subsidiary Alliance’ and ‘Doctrine of Lapse’.
The right of succession was denied to Hindu princes.
The collapse of rulers—the erstwhile aristocracy—also
adversely affected those sections of the Indian society which
derived their sustenance from cultural and religious pursuits.
Administrative Causes
Rampant corruption in the Company’s administration,
especially among the police, petty officials and lower law
courts, was a major cause of discontent. Indeed, it is the view
of many historians that the rampant corruption we see now
in India is a legacy of the Company rule.
Also, the character
of British rule imparted a foreign and alien look to it in the
eyes of Indians: a kind of absentee sovereignty.
Socio-Religious Causes
Racial overtones and a superiority complex characterised the
British administrative attitude towards the native Indian
population.
The activities of Christian missionaries who
followed the British flag in India were looked upon with
suspicion by Indians.
The attempts at socio-religious reform
such as abolition of sati, support to widow-marriage and
women’s education were seen by a large section of the
population as interference in the social and religious domains
of Indian society by outsiders. These fears were compounded
by the government’s decision to tax mosque and temple lands
and making laws such as the Religious Disabilities Act, 1856,
which modified Hindu customs, for instance, declaring that
a change of religion did not debar a son from inheriting the
property of his ‘heathen’ father.
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), and
the Crimean Wars (1854-56).
These had obvious psychological repercussions. The British were seen to be not so strong and
it was felt that they could be defeated.
Discontent Among Sepoys
The conditions of service in the Company’s Army and
cantonments increasingly came into conflict with the religious
beliefs and prejudices of the sepoys.
Restrictions on wearing caste and sectarian marks and secret rumours of proselytising
activities of the chaplains (often maintained on the Company’s
expenses which meant at Indian expense) were interpreted
by Indian sepoys, who were generally conservative by nature,
as interference in their religious affairs.
To the religious Hindu of the time, crossing the seas
meant loss of caste. In 1856, Lord Canning’s government
passed the 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 might be
required by the government. This caused resentment.
The Indian sepoy was equally unhappy with his emoluments
compared to his British counterpart. A more immediate
cause of the sepoys’ dissatisfaction was the order that they
would not be given the foreign service allowance (bhatta)
when serving in Sindh or in Punjab.
The annexation of Awadh,
home of many of the sepoys, further inflamed their feelings.
The Indian sepoy was made to feel a subordinate at
every step and was discriminated against racially and in
matters of promotion and privileges. The discontent of the
sepoys was not limited to military matters; it reflected the
general disenchantment with and the opposition to British
rule. The sepoy, in fact, was a ‘peasant in uniform’ whose
consciousness was not divorced from that of the rural
population. “The Army voiced grievances other than its own;
and the movement spread beyond the Army”, observes S.
Gopal.
Beginning and Spread of the Revolt
The Spark
The reports about the mixing of bone dust in atta (flour)
and the introduction of the Enfield rifle enhanced the sepoys’
growing disaffection with the government. The greased
wrapping paper of the cartridge of the new rifle had to be
bitten off before loading and the grease was reportedly made
of beef and pig fat. The cow was sacred to the Hindus while
the pig was taboo for the Muslims. The Army administration
did nothing to allay these fears, and the sepoys felt their
religion was in grave danger.
The greased cartridges did not create a new cause of
discontent in the Army, but supplied the occasion for the
simmering discontent to come out in the open.
Starts at Meerut
Choice of Bahadur Shah as Symbolic Head
In Delhi, the local infantry joined them, killed their own
European officers including Simon Fraser, the political agent,
and seized the city. Lieutenant Willoughby, the officer-incharge
of the magazine at Delhi, offered some resistance,
but was overcome. The aged and powerless Bahadur Shah
Zafar was proclaimed the Emperor of India.
Delhi was soon to become the centre of the Great
Revolt and Bahadur Shah, its symbol. This spontaneous
raising of the last Mughal king to the leadership of the
country was a recognition of the fact that the long reign of
Mughal dynasty had become the traditional symbol of India’s
political unity. With this single act, the sepoys had transformed
a mutiny of soldiers into a revolutionary war, while all Indian
chiefs who took part in the revolt hastened to proclaim their
loyalty to the Mughal emperor. It also signified that the
rebels were politically motivated. Though religion was a
factor, the broad outlook of the rebels was not influenced
by religious identity but by the perception of the British as
the common enemy.
Bahadur Shah, 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 entire Bengal Army soon rose in revolt which
spread quickly. Awadh, Rohilkhand, the Doab, Bundelkhand,
central India, large parts of Bihar and East Punjab shook off
British authority.
Civilians Join
The revolt of the sepoys was accompanied by a rebellion of
the civil population, particularly in the north-western provinces
and Awadh. Their accumulated grievances found immediate
expression and they rose en masse to give vent to their
opposition to British rule. It is the widespread participation
in the revolt by the peasantry, the artisans, shopkeepers, day
labourers, zamindars, religious mendicants, priests and civil
servants which gave it real strength as well as the character
of a popular revolt. Here the peasants and petty zamindars
gave free expression to their grievances by attacking the
money-lenders and zamindars who had displaced them from
the land. They took advantage of the revolt to destroy the
money-lenders’ account books and debt records. They also
attacked the British-established law courts, revenue offices
(tehsils), revenue records and police stations.
According to one estimate, of the total number of about
1,50,000 men who died fighting the English in Awadh, over
1,00,000 were civilians.
● Centres of Revolt and Leaders
Delhi - General Bakht Khan
Kanpur - Nana Saheb
Lucknow - Begum Hazrat Mahal
Bareilly - Khan Bahadur
Bihar - Kunwar Singh
Faizabad - Maulvi Ahmadullah
Jhansi - Rani Laxmibai
Baghpat - Shah Mal
● The British Resistance
Delhi - Lieutenant Willoughby, John Nicholson,
Lieutenant Hudson
Kanpur - Sir Hugh Wheeler, Sir Colin Campbell
Lucknow - Henry Lawrence, Brigadier Inglis,
Henry Havelock, James Outram,
Sir Colin Campbell
Jhansi - Sir Hugh Rose
Benaras - Colonel James Neill
Why the Revolt Failed
All-India participation was absent
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. This
was probably because the earlier uprisings in those regions
had been brutally suppressed by the Company.
All classes did not join
Certain classes and groups did not join and, in fact, worked
against the revolt.
Big zamindars acted as “break-waters to storm”; even
Awadh taluqdars backed off once promises of land restitution
were spelt out.
Money-lenders and merchants suffered the
wrath of the mutineers badly and anyway saw their class
interests better protected under British patronage.
Educated Indians viewed this revolt as backward looking,
supportive of the feudal order and as a reaction of traditional
conservative forces to modernity; these people had high
hopes that the British would usher in an era of modernisation.
Most Indian rulers refused to join, and often gave active
help to the British.
Rulers who did not participate included
the Sindhia of Gwalior, the Holkar of Indore, the rulers of
Patiala, Sindh and other Sikh chieftains and the Maharaja of
Kashmir. Indeed, by one estimate, not more than one-fourth
of the total area and not more than one-tenth of the total
population was affected.
Poor Arms and Equipment
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 electric telegraph kept the commander-in-chief informed
about the movements and strategy of the rebels.
Uncoordinated and Poorly Organised
The revolt was poorly organised with no coordination or
central leadership. The principal rebel leaders—Nana Saheb,
Tantia Tope, Kunwar Singh, Laxmibai—were no match to
their British opponents in generalship.
On the other hand, the
East India Company was fortunate in having the services of
men of exceptional abilities in the Lawrence brothers, John
Nicholson, James Outram, Henry Havelock, etc.
No Unified Ideology
The mutineers lacked a clear understanding of colonial rule;
nor did they have a forward looking programme, a coherent
ideology, a political perspective or a societal alternative. The
rebels represented diverse elements with differing grievances
and concepts of current politics.
The lack of unity among Indians was perhaps unavoidable
at this stage of Indian history. Modern nationalism was as
yet unknown in India. In fact, 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.
Hindu-Muslim Unity Factor
During the entire revolt, there was complete cooperation
between Hindus and Muslims at all levels—people, soldiers,
leaders. All rebels acknowledged Bahadur Shah Zafar, a
Muslim, as the emperor and the first impulse of the Hindu
sepoys at Meerut was to march to Delhi, the Mughal imperial
capital. According to Maulana Azad, “Two facts stand out
clearly in the midst of the tangled story of the Rising of
1857. The first is the remarkable sense of unity among the
Hindus and the Muslims of India in this period. The other
is the deep loyalty which the people felt for the Mughal
Crown.” 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. Both Hindus and Muslims were well represented in
leadership, for instance Nana Saheb had Azimullah, a Muslim
and an expert in political propaganda, as an aide, while
Laxmibai had the solid support of Afghan soldiers.
Thus, the events of 1857 demonstrated that the people
and politics of India were not basically communal or
sectarian before 1858.
Significance of the Revolt
For the British the Revolt of 1857 proved useful in that it
showed up the glaring shortcomings in the Company’s
administration and its army, which they rectified promptly.
These defects would never have been revealed to the world
if the Revolt had not happened.
For the Indians, the 1857 Revolt had a major influence
on the course of the struggle for freedom. It brought out
in the open grievances of people and the sepoys, which were
seen to be genuine. However, it was also obvious that the
primitive arms which the Indians possessed were no match
for the advanced weapons of the British. Furthermore, the
senseless atrocities committed by both sides shocked the
Indian intellectuals who were increasingly convinced that
violence was to be eschewed in any struggle for freedom.
The educated middle class, which was a growing section, did
not believe in violence and preferred an orderly approach.
But the Revolt of 1857 did establish local traditions of
resistance to British rule which were to be of help in the
course of the national struggle for freedom.
Summary
Revolt—a product of character and policies of colonial rule.
Economic causes—heavy taxation under new revenue settlement,
summary evictions, discriminatory tariff policy against Indian
products, destruction of traditional handicrafts industry, and
absence of concomitant industrialisation on modern lines that hit
peasants, artisans and small zamindars.
Political causes—greedy policy of aggrandisement, absentee
sovereigntyship character of British rule, British interference in
socio-religious affairs of Indian public.
Military causes—discontent among sepoys for economic,
psychological and religious reasons, coupled with a long history
of revolts.
● Causes of Failure
Limited territorial and social base.
Crucial support of certain sections of Indian public to British
authorities.
Lack of resources as compared to those of the British.
Lack of coordination and a central leadership.
Lack of a coherent ideology and a political perspective.
Nature
R.C. Majumdar and S.N. Sen— “Not an organised ‘national’ revolt”
R.C. Majumdar— “Neither first, nor National War of Independence”
V.D. Savarkar—“War of independence”
Eric Stokes—“Elitist in character”
Lawrence and Seeley—“Mere sepoy mutiny”
T.R. Holmes—“A conflict between civilisation and barbarism”
James Outram—“A Mohammedan conspiracy making capital of
Hindu grievances”
Percival Spear—Three phases of the revolt
Conclusion: Not quite the first war of independence but sowed
the seeds of nationalism and quest for freedom from alien rule.
Effect
Crown took over;
Company rule abolished.
Queen’s Proclamation altered administration.
Army reorganised.
Racial hatred deepened.
White Mutiny.