Rebels and the Raj (1857 Revolt)

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT History Class XII (Themes in Indian History Part III), Chapter 10.

A telegraph line cut, a king woken up

On the afternoon of 10 May 1857, sepoys in the Meerut cantonment broke into mutiny. It began in the lines of the native infantry and spread to the cavalry and the city. They seized the bell of arms (the storeroom where weapons were kept), attacked white people, destroyed records, burnt the jail, court, post office and treasury, and cut the telegraph line to Delhi. Then they marched to Delhi.

Early on 11 May they reached the Red Fort, in the month of Ramzan, and appealed to the Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah. They told him they had come from Meerut after being asked to bite cartridges coated with the fat of cows and pigs, which would destroy the faith of Hindus and Muslims alike. Surrounded by sepoys, the old emperor agreed to be their leader. A mutiny of soldiers suddenly had a king, a capital and a claim to legitimacy.

This chapter asks why such a rising was possible at all, who joined it and why, how the British put it down, and how the same events were pictured so differently afterwards.

The big idea: many grievances met in one spark

No single cause explains 1857. The cartridge was the spark, but the powder had been laid over a century of changes. Different groups carried different grievances, and the revolt gathered them together.

Mutiny or revolt? Two words, two meanings

The two words are used for different things, and the exam tests the difference.

The sepoys' mutiny was the first stage. The wider revolt began when ordinary people joined, and in many places the target widened from white officers to anyone linked with the British.

How the revolt spread: the pattern

Wherever the sepoys rose, the revolt followed a recognisable pattern.

Once ordinary people took part, the rising turned into a general defiance of authority and hierarchy of every kind.

Lines of communication. The rising spread quickly because the sepoys talked to one another. The 7th Awadh Irregular Cavalry, after refusing the new cartridges, wrote to the 48th Native Infantry that they had acted for the sake of their faith and awaited its orders. Messengers moved from station to station, and in Kanpur panchayats of sepoys met almost every night to take decisions together.

Leaders: who led, and how

Most of the leaders were not planners. Many were pulled in by the sepoys or by the people.

Rumours and prophecies: why people believed

Rumours spread faster than orders. The most famous was about the new Enfield rifle: that its cartridges, which had to be bitten open, were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. Captain Wright traced the origin of this rumour to the Dum Dum magazine in the third week of January 1857, where a low caste khalasi is said to have told a Brahmin sepoy that he would "lose his caste" by biting the cartridges. Other rumours claimed that the British had mixed the bone dust of cows and pigs into the atta (flour). A prophecy said that British rule would end on the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Plassey, on 23 June 1857.

Why they were believed. Rumours spread where fear already existed. From the late 1820s, Governor General Lord William Bentinck pursued reform: English medium schools, Western education, the abolition of sati in 1829 and the legal permission for Hindu widows to remarry. The annexation of Awadh, Jhansi and Satara showed that the Company was ready to take kingdoms on the plea of misgovernment or the lack of a recognised heir. The activities of Christian missionaries added to a general suspicion. People who feared for their faith were ready to believe the worst.

Pause and predict: A sepoy is told that cartridges are greased with cow and pig fat. Which two communities feel their faith threatened, and why?

Check your answer: Hindus and Muslims. The cow is sacred to Hindus, and the pig is considered unclean by Muslims. The same rumour thus touched two communities at once, which is why the sepoys told the emperor that it threatened the faith of both.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: chapatis circulating at night were read as an omen of upheaval. In reality: the circulation of chapatis from village to village in early 1857 is well documented, and British officials of the time were puzzled and alarmed by it. Historians such as Kim Wagner have shown that the British themselves saw it as a mysterious sign, but there is no clear evidence of what, if anything, it meant to those who passed the chapatis on. It is best understood as a sign of the anxiety of the times rather than a proven signal for revolt.

Awadh: the case study in cause and effect

Awadh shows how several policies joined together. The chain below is the one CUET tests most.

Pause and predict: If a sepoy's family farmed in Awadh, and the Summary Settlement raised the revenue demand, what would his feelings toward the army's masters be?

Check your answer: Angry. The grievances of the army and of the Awadh countryside overlapped, which is why a military mutiny in Awadh quickly turned into a civil rebellion.

Racial attitudes. From the 1840s, many white officers developed a sense of racial superiority over their sepoys, and abuse and physical violence grew. The distance between officers and soldiers widened. The greased cartridge episode was a classic example of how little the officers understood the feelings of their men.

What the rebels wanted

Rebel leaders issued proclamations (ishtahars) that appealed to people of every caste and creed. They recalled the pre British Hindu and Muslim past and the coexistence under the Mughals. A proclamation issued under Bahadur Shah's name called on people to fight under the standards of both Muhammad and Mahavir. The British tried to divide the rebels. In Bareilly in December 1857 they spent Rs 50,000 to incite Hindus against Muslims, and failed.

The Azamgarh Proclamation of 25 August 1857 described the rebels' complaints against British rule under five headings.

The rebels also tried to set up alternative authority in Delhi, Lucknow and Kanpur: appointing officials, collecting revenue, paying troops and building chains of command. In doing so they looked back to the eighteenth century Mughal world for a model.

Two views. For the exam: the revolt began as a mutiny of sepoys and became a popular rebellion, as the sequence in Awadh shows. Another reading: the British at the time and many officials afterwards described it as only a "sepoy mutiny", while nationalists, from V. D. Savarkar's book of 1909 onwards, called it the first war of independence. The historian R. C. Majumdar, in a study published in 1957, argued that it was neither first, nor national, nor a war of independence, because it was limited to certain regions and its leaders were not united by a single national aim. Other scholars have emphasised local grievances and see the revolt as many risings with a common enemy rather than one national movement.

Repression: how the British won

The British struck back in stages. In May and June 1857 they passed Acts that placed North India under martial law and empowered military officers and ordinary Britons to try and punish Indians suspected of rebellion. Rebellion had "only one punishment: death". They mounted a two pronged attack, with one force advancing from Calcutta and the other from the Punjab.

In Awadh the British broke the unity of peasants and landholders by promising to return estates to the big landholders. Those who had rebelled were dispossessed and the loyal were rewarded. A British official estimated that three fourths of the adult male population of Awadh was in rebellion, which is why the British could no longer treat the rising as a simple mutiny.

Images of the revolt

The revolt was recorded in paintings, cartoons, photographs and newspaper pictures. Images tell us how a powerful group wanted events to be remembered.

The outline of events around Lucknow is also tested. Henry Lawrence, Commissioner of Lucknow, gathered the Christians in the Residency and was killed. Colonel Inglis continued the defence. James Outram and Henry Havelock fought their way in on 25 September 1857, and Colin Campbell, the new Commander in Chief, relieved the garrison some weeks later.

Nationalist images. In the twentieth century the national movement drew inspiration from 1857. The Rani of Jhansi was shown as a masculine warrior on horseback with a sword, and a poem by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan made her story widely known.

Two views. For the exam: the same revolt produced opposite images. British images stressed the suffering of women and children and the heroism of rescuers, which justified revenge. Another reading: historians who study these pictures warn that they show how each side wanted events remembered rather than what happened. Nationalist images of the Rani, for example, borrow the idea of a masculine hero, while British images show women mainly as victims. Neither can be used as a plain record of events.

Key people, places and terms

Timeline

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Before this: Colonialism and the Countryside explains the revenue systems and rural distress behind the grievances of peasants and landholders.
• Next: Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement shows how nationalism later became a mass movement with very different methods.
• Also read: An Imperial Capital for the later history of Delhi under British rule.