Indian_Revolt_of_1857

EMPIRE AND RESISTANCE MAKING OF MODERN SOUTH ASIA HIST 1580 MID-TERM EXAM QUESTION B When the sepoys approached the last Mughal emperor on May 11, 1857, Zafar said to them, “I have neither troops, magazine or treasury. I am not in a condition to join anyone.” They said, “Only give us your blessing. We will provide everything else.” (Dalrymple, p. 162) How significant do you think this moment was for the Revolt of 1857' What does it tell you about the political consciousness of the sepoys' Consider the Revolt of 1857 from different perspectives/sources/points of view. Submitted By: Vasundhara Prasad Banner ID: B00380670 Professor: Vazira Zamindar Word Count: 2409 One of the primary and severe outbursts of resentment against the British rule in India came in the form of the Revolt of 1857. While the sepoys who worked for the East India Company started the revolt, it was later spread across the country by peasants, artisans and soldiers who emerged as an important part of the popular insurgency. This paper claims that Bahadur Shah Zafar’s move to give his ‘blessings’ to the rebellion among the Company’s own troops proved to be highly significant for the Revolt of 1857 as it successfully transformed an army mutiny into a huge uprising. Furthermore, the decision to proclaim the insipid Mughal ruler as the Emperor of India betrayed the political consciousness of the revolting sepoys and their sense of allegiance to the pre-colonial polity. In an effort to better understand the Revolt of 1857, this paper analyses not only the different debates on how to characterize the uprising, but also evaluates the historiography to arrive at a comprehensive explanation for the events that transpired. May 1857 saw an initial mutiny of sepoys in Meerut, sparked by the East India Company’s policy of using cow or pig fat to grease the cartridges of the new Pattern 1853 Enfield rifles. Sepoys refusing to use the cartridges, as judged by Hindu and Muslim beliefs to be considered contaminated and unclean if bitten into, were punished by the British. William Dalrymple in his book, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India provides a very good account of events leading up to the Revolt of 1857. The Meerut sepoys had marched over to the Red Fort in Delhi demanding to see the Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. According to the sepoys, they were delivering themselves to the order of the man who they considered to be the Emperor of India, and a preferred leader to the alternative of British rule. In many ways, these sepoys had come hoping to be redressed for the unjust way in which the British had treated them, and to claim protection under the Mughal Emperor. However, they didn’t realize that the Emperor was like “the king on the chessboard after the checkmate.” The Mughal Empire had reached its twilight, and the last ruler wished for retreat and seclusion. While the Emperor lacked “troops, magazine or treasury”, the revolting sepoys only requested for his “blessing”. This was one of the most crucial decisions to be made by Zafar, and while he made it in the affirmative, he really had no choice with armed, threatening and excitable sepoys pressurizing him from all sides. There is a general perception especially in colonial historiography that the Meerut sepoys showed their immaturity by naming Bahadur Shah Zafar as their nominal leader. The action of the sepoys is regarded as being futile and meaningless since the Mughal emperor was by this time politically impotent. However this view discounts the symbolic importance of the emperor in legitimizing the comprehensive rebellion. Zafar was viewed as a figure who could unite all Indians, Hindu and Muslim alike, and someone who would be acceptable to the Indian people as sovereign. He was the least threatening and least ambitious of monarchs and the restoration of the Mughal Empire would presumably be more acceptable as a uniting force to the people than the domination of any other foreign rule. As Zafar allowed his name to be used a titular head of the revolt, he was declared as the Emperor of the whole of India with the title Shahenshah-i-Hind. This was a reflection of the popular perception that the Mughal emperor was the legitimate sovereign of India. By marching to the capital of the former Mughal Empire, the sepoys betrayed political consciousness and their sense of allegiance to the pre-colonial polity. Even the Maratha leaders, traditional enemies of the Mughals, had no difficulty in accepting him as the leader. This, however, did not mean that Indian rulers were united in their opposition to the British. Yet, it is undeniable that in Bahadur Shah Zafar, the rebels sought to create a political symbol with which the people would be able to identify. In doing so the rebels were not moved by religious considerations but by political motivation. The revolutionary decision to march to Delhi transformed the character of the mutiny—the aim had no become to overthrow the East India Company’s government. The rebel sepoys of the Meerut garrison were not naïve and clearly understood that the colonial state could be successfully overthrown only by establishing an alternative source of authority with wide acceptability. They attempted to create their own state with the Mughal emperor as its nominal head. Apart from this point, the revolting sepoys proclaimed two other positions: one, that foreigners were usurpers and needed to be not just defeated but also driven out; two, even though they did not yet envision a nation in the modern sense as we know it, but were determined to be actors and makers of their own destiny. There was a sense that the British were ‘foreigners’ and very different from those that people of this country had earlier fought—either those that had come from ‘outside’ or those who were of this land but another kingdom. The British were seen as having destroyed their whole way of life, and people were out to affirm and regain what they had lost; not in the literal sense, but through asserting their aspirations for justice. When considering the Revolt of 1857 from different points of view, one of the biggest debates that stand out is the choice of a name, which implied an explanation of the events that transpired during that time. These explanations are usually tied to political positions, as radical nationalists discovered a general state of “war” in the events of 1857, while the apologists of the empire preferred the suggestion of a local disturbance that the term “mutiny” evoked. Drawing on a combination of historical and fictitious accounts produced between 1859 and 1947, Historian Gautam Chakravarty in his article, The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination examines what the uprising meant to the British and how they dealt with the trauma of the revolt. Chakravarty's study considers the ways in which the Mutiny was imagined and re-imagined by the British as throughout the rest of the nineteenth century, the British continued to describe the rebellion as a ‘military mutiny’. This implied a small-scale disturbance, confined only to one sector of society. Whilst this was true of the very initial stages of the unrest in Meerut, with the “blessing” of Zafar, the unrest had turned into in a full-blown uprising in the country. Hence, we once again see the significance of this on the development of the revolt. While the events of 1857, remained for the British hugely significant as a cautionary tale of strict rule, it also became a way to justify the continued British presence in India. However in the early twentieth century, the Revolt of 1857 began to be appropriated by the Indian Nationalist movement. The nationalist poet V. D. Savarkar, in 1909 framed the rebellion as the “first war of Indian independence”. At this point, historians began to re-examine the rebellion and identified resentment of foreign rule as the main driving factor behind it. This display of political motivation provides an obvious reason why there is little agreement over how best to characterize the Revolt of 1857. The historiography has been made more complicated still by the work of historians who ascribe to other historical models. Historian Gautam Bhadra in his article, Four Rebels of Eighteen-Fifteen-Seven writes about the “curious complicity” between all the main modes of historiography based on the rebellion of 1857. He points that the different ways of thinking among the nationalist historians, the Marxist scholars and the revolutionary intellectuals all work within the paradigm on terming the Revolt as essentially elitist in character, with an emphasis on ‘natural leaders’ like Nana Saheb, Laxmi Bai etc. However, he claims that in all these representations what’s missing is the “ordinary rebel, his role and his perception of alien rule and contemporary crisis.” He takes the example of 3 people, Devi Singh, Shah Mal and Gonoo to demonstrate how their rise to power and leadership was a product of the movement. He argues that the rise of these common people, far from being accidental, was actually an integral part of the popular insurgency. “They asserted themselves…and in doing so they put their stamp on the course of the rebellion.” This perspective describing the common man’s involvement in the events of 1857 presents an interesting case for the expansion and spread of the revolt from the Indian sepoys in the British army and the siege and subsequent fall of Delhi. On the other hand, Chakravorty in his article, The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination argues that accounts of the Mutiny can be broken down into three groups. The first he identifies as the tale of flight, siege, or captivity (in which the first-person narrator is the victim of rebels), the second is a personal account of counter-insurgency, and the third is a combination of the first two. Chakravarty suggests that different accounts became popular at different times, reflecting different era's needs to re-think the chaos of 1857 in different ways. Importantly, he takes into account the historical context of the rebellion, offering detailed analyses of catalytic events like the annexation of Awadh, alongside more distant historical unrest. Meanwhile, Karl Marx writing for the New-York Daily Tribune on 15 July 1857 says, “Before this there had been mutinies in the Indian army, but the present revolt is distinguished by characteristic and fatal features.” He points out that it was the first time that the Indian sepoys, not acknowledging the Hindu and Muslim divide had come together to murder their European superiors. While the mutiny was not confined to only a few localities, its origins were also influenced by the English supremacy and intimately connected with the Persian and Chinese wars. Marx also puts the immediate blame of the Revolt on the dissatisfaction prevalent in the Bengal army regarding the allegation that the company was interfering in the religious practices of the people. The cartridges, which required to be bit into, the paper of which was greased with the fat of bullocks and pigs, was considered as an infringement of their religious prescriptions, and thus ignited the fire of rebellion. In another article written for the New-York Daily Tribune on August 4, 1857, Marx traces the timeline of the Revolt. While the revolting sepoys had taken control of Delhi in May of 1857, it was certain that the British forces would soon overtake them and disband the authority of the Mogul Emperor proclaimed on the throne of Delhi. He raises the important point that the most important thing to consider is the slow rate at which the British reacted to these rebels in Delhi. Some reasons for this included the deadly heat of the season, the scanty means of conveyance, absence of heavy artillery at important checkpoints and most importantly, the fact that the loyalty of the British troops had been sacrificed owing to the revolt itself. However, while taking over Delhi was not supposed to be too difficult a task for the British, Marx makes an important point when he predicts that to assume the fall of Delhi to be enough to quench the revolt, would soon become one of the greatest mistakes made by the British in India. The fact that the mutiny had spread from Calcutta to Punjab in the north, and to Rajpootana in the west was proof that it had shaken the British authority from one end of India to another. Marx, writing in yet another article for the New-York Daily Tribune on September 17, 1857 says, “The British rulers of India are by no means such mild and spotless benefactors of the Indian people as they would have the world believe.” He presents official records as evidence for the existence of torture for revenue purposes by the East-India Company. Quoting from the report of the Torture Commission at Madras, “one thing which had impressed the Commission even more painfully than the conviction that torture exists: it is the difficulty of obtaining redress which confronts the injured parties.” Marx outlines these difficulties as caused by inefficient means of the multiple levels of bureaucratic procedure and punishment as required by law. While the existence of torture as a financial institution of British India was officially admitted, Marx argues that the admission was made in such a manner as to shield the British government itself. It was deduced that the low-caste Hindus practiced torture, while the “European servants of the government had always tried to prevent it”. This refusal to accept blame for the irregularities and illegalities practiced under the system, represented neglect for the welfare and interests of the people in general. Marx’s defining argument outlines that since the British in India turned a deaf ear to the grievances of the people of the land, and subject them to all sorts of oppressions, it is surprising that the insurgent people should be considered guilty for the conflict and subsequent revolt. This, according to Marx, presents the “real history of British rule in India.” This also provides the basis for understanding the extent of the revolt, and the reasons why it spread the way it did. Instances like these provided the impetus for the people to rise up against the unjust practices of the British in India. The Revolt of 1857 underwent a lot of changes as it developed and transformed into a large-scale uprising. It started as a military rebellion, but soon mutated. In some areas, it became a fight against unwanted British rule while in others it evolved into disputes over land and taxation. This regional diversity meant that any single explanation for the rebellion would never be comprehensive. However, the fact the sepoys approached the Mughal emperor Zafar to act as the titular head of the rebellion shows that despite the diversity of reasons and goals, the revolt attracted and unified people from all walks of life, and all religions. 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. Most importantly, it acted as an important milestone in the freedom struggle - providing hope and inspiration for future generations of freedom fighters. -------------------------------------------- [ 1 ]. Dalrymple, William Chapter Five IN: The Last Mughal, 2007. Pg.162 [ 2 ]. Ibid, pg. 162 [ 3 ]. Zamindar, vazira – Lecture Notes HIST 1580 [ 4 ]. Chakravarty, Gautam The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2005) [ 5 ]. Zamindar, Vazira – Lecture Notes HIST 1580 [ 6 ]. Bhadra, Gautam Four Rebels of 1857 IN: The 1857 Rebellion, 2007. Pg 129 [ 7 ]. Bhadra, Gautam Four Rebels of 1857 IN: The 1857 Rebellion, 2007. Pg. 130 [ 8 ]. Ibid, pg. 174 [ 9 ]. Chakravarty, Gautam The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2005) [ 10 ]. Marx, Karl The Revolt in the Indian Army IN: The American Journalism Of Marx & Engels, 1966 [ 11 ]. Marx, Karl The Revolt in India IN: The American Journalism Of Marx & Engels, 1966 [ 12 ]. Ibid [ 13 ]. Marx, Karl Investigation of Tortures in India IN: The American Journalism Of Marx & Engels, 1966 [ 14 ]. Ibid [ 15 ]. Ibid [ 16 ]. Ibid