1857

• Revolt Of 1857 the year that changed everything…

Major Causes Of Revolt Of 1857

The Economic Causes

– High rate of taxation
– Peasants were ruined through exorbitant charges made from their lands by the new class of
landlords established under the Zamindari system introduced by the British.
– Middle & upper classes, particularly in the Northern India, were hard hit by their
exclusion from the well-paid higher posts in the administration.
– Discriminatory tariff policy against Indian products & destruction of traditional handicrafts
resulted into deindustrialization which resulted in unemployment.
– The craftsmen were destroyed by the influx of the British manufactured goods
– Systems of law & administration: corruption & oppression

The Political Causes

– Company’s greedy policy of aggrandizement accompanied by broken
pledges and promises resulted in loss of political prestige.
– Policy of Trade & Commerce, – greatly hampered the interests of the rulers
of the native states.
– British PolicyI. Effective Control
II. Subsidiary Alliance
III. Doctrine of Lapse
IV. Direct annexation as in the case of Mysore & Sindh.

Dalhousie & Policy of Annexation

● His belief that British administration was far superior to the corrupt &
oppressive administration of the native rulers.
● British exports to the native Indian states were suffering because of the
maladministration of these states by their Indian rulers.

● Dalhousie also refused to recognize the titles of many ex-rulers or to
pay their pensions.
● Thus, the titles of the Nawabs of Carnatic & of Surat & the Raja of
Tanjore were cancelled.
● Similarly, after the death of the ex-Peshwa Baji Rao II, Dalhousie refused
to extend his pay or pension to his adopted son, Nana Saheb.

Doctrine of lapse

● Was an annexation policy purportedly devised by Lord Dalhousie.
● According to the Doctrine, any princely state or territory under the direct
influence (paramountcy) of the British East India Company, as a ”vassal”
state under the British Subsidiary System, would automatically be
annexed if the ruler “died without a direct heir”.
● This supplanted the long-established right of an Indian sovereign
without an heir to choose a successor.
Doctrine of lapse
● Also any princely state or territory would automatically be annexed if the
ruler was “manifestly incompetent”.
● Thus the British decided whether potential rulers were competent
enough.
● Awadh (1856)-on charge of mal-administration

-At the time of its adoption, the Company had absolute imperial
administrative jurisdiction over many regions spread over the
subcontinent.
– Company took over the princely states of Satara (1848) , Jaitpur &
Sambalpur (1849), Bhagat (1850),Udaipur (1850), Nagpur (1854)
& Jhansi (1855) , Tanjore & Arcot (1855)

Doctrine of Lapse before Dalhousie

– Dalhousie applied the Doctrine of Lapse vigorously for annexing Indian
princely states, but the policy was not solely of his invention.
– The Court of Directors of the East India Company had articulated this
early in 1834.
– As per, their policy they annexed Mandavi in 1839, Kolaba & Jalaun in
1840 & Surat in 1842.

Rani Chennamma

• Rani Chennamma (queen of Kitturu) led the Kitturu Rebellion (1824) against
  the Company.
• She led a war against British forces when not many rulers were familiar with
  the evil designs of the British.
• The princely state of Kitturu was taken over by the Company in 1824 by
  imposing the ‘doctrine of lapse’, even before it was officially articulated by
  Lord Dalhousie.
  Rani Chennamma
• 
  Abolition of Regal Titles
  For example- The house of the Mughals was humbled when:
  – On Prince Faqiruddin’s death (1856), whose succession had been
  recognized conditionally by Dalhousie.
  – Canning announced that after Bahadur Shah’s death the Mughals
  would lose the title of kings & ancestral Mughal palaces.

The Military Causes

– Overseas deployment (General Service Enlistment Act, 1856)
– Salary discrimination among same ranks
– Refusal to pay bhatta ( Foreign service allowance)
– Soldiers were considered inferior & higher posts were exclusively reserved for
Britishers .
– Post office Act of 1854
– Religious identities seemed to be in crisis.
– Regular humiliation
– Peasant in Uniform

Administrative Causes

– Rampant corruption in Company’s administration.
– Complex Judicial system
– The character of British rule imparted a foreign and alien look:
absentee sovereignty.
– Exclusion of the natives from high appointments
– Misgovernment
– Prejudice

The Socio-religious Causes

– Threat of conversion:
I. The Religious Disabilities Act of 1850/ Lex Loci Act of 1850
II. Modified Hindu customs; a change of religion did not debar a son from inheriting the
property of his father.
III. The rumor was that the English were conspiring to convert the Indians to Christianity.
– Reforms like Abolition of Sati (Regulation XVII, A.D 1829 of Bengal code).
– The policy to tax religious schools further anguished both Hindus & Muslims.
– Racial discrimination by British against Indians, forceful conversion to Christianity.
– The English described the Hindus as barbarian with hardly any trace of culture or civilization,
while Muslims were dubbed as bigots, cruel & faithless.

Influence of Outside Events

– The British suffered defeats in 1st Afghan war (1838-1842) shattering the belief of their
invincibility.
– British suffered major reverses in:
I. Punjab wars (1845-49)
II. Crimean War (1854-56)
– Santhal rebellion (1855-57)
– Psychological repercussions

The Immediate Cause

– When the atmosphere was surcharged with an anti-British feeling the episode of the
greased cartridges provided the spark which turned it into a conflagration.
– The new ‘Enfield Rifle’ introduced by the British in the army needed a special type of
cartridge which had a greased paper cover.
– This paper had to be bitten off before the cartridge was loaded into the rifle –rumour
was that the grease used in the paper was made of beef & pig fat.
– Reports about the mixing of bone dust in atta (flour).
– This angered both the Hindu & the Muslim sepoys – both the communities felt that their
religions were at stake. The Mutiny began…

Revolt: Planned or Unplanned?

– One group of historians & writers has asserted that the Revolt was the result of a
widespread & well organized conspiracy.
– They point to the circulation of chappattis & red lotuses, propaganda by wandering
sanyasis, faqirs & madaris.
– They say that many of the Indian regiments were carefully linked in a secret
organization which had fixed 31 May 1857 as the day when all of them were to
revolt.
– It is also said that Nana Sahib & Maulavi Ahmad Shah of Faizabad were playing
leading roles in this conspiracy.
– Other writers equally forcefully deny that any careful planning went into the making of the
Revolt.
– They point out that not a scrap of paper was discovered before or after the Revolt
indicating an organized conspiracy, nor did a single witness come forward to make
such a claim

Beginning and Spread

29th March, 1857: Brahmin sepoy, Mangal Pandey of 34th Native
Infantry Barrackpore
Starts at Meerut – 10th May 1857
Choice of Bahadur Shah as Symbolic Head
Civilians Join
Hindu-Muslim unity
– The entire Bengal army soon rose in revolt which spread quickly.
– Awadh, Rohilkhand, the Bundelkhand, Central India, large parts of Bihar,
& East Punjab all shook off British authority.
– In many princely states, rulers remained loyal to their British
administrators, but the soldiers revolted. For example, Holkar of Indore
remained loyal but many of the Indore troops rebelled & joined sepoys.

Azamgarh Proclamation

– In 1857, soon after the sepoys rose against the Company in a burst of volcanic fury, the Delhi Gazette
carried a proclamation issued in the name of the emperor.
– Besides predictable denouncements of the “tyranny & oppression of the treacherous” English, the
document was also a manifesto that sought to win support from influential quarters, offering—like
political manifestos today—a cascade of promises.
– Political Manifestos:
I. For instance, the rights of zamindars were guaranteed, just as attractive pay was guaranteed to
soldiers.
II. More interestingly, among promises made to the commercial classes was one that speaks much of
the age in which the mutiny took place.
For it was pledged to men of trade that when the badshahi regime was restored, they would enjoy “gratis” the
use of “government steam-vessels & steam carriages for the conveyance” of their all-important merchandise

Place	Important Leaders	British Resistance
Delhi	Bahadur Shah II, General Bakht Khan	Lieutenant Willoughby, John Nicholson, Lieutenant Hudson
lucknow	Begum Hazrat Mahal, Birjis Qadr, Ahmadullah	Henry Lawrence, Brigadier Inglis, Henry Havelock, James Outram, Sir Colin Campbell
kanpur	Nana Sahib, Rao Sahib, Tantia Tope, Azimullah Khan	Sir Hugh Wheeler, Sir Colin Campbell
Jhansi	Rani Laxmibai	Sir Hugh Rose
Jagdispur	Kunwar Singh, Amar Singh
Benaras		Colonel James Neil
Faizabad	Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah
Baghpat	Shah Mal
Bareilly	Khan Bahadur Khan
Patna	Maulwi Pir Ali
Allahabad	Liyaqat Ali

DELHI

– On 12th May 1857, Delhi was seized by rebels.
– Bahadur Shah II was persuaded to support.
– Loss of Delhi was a prestige loss for British.
– On 20th September 1857, British regained Delhi.
– Bahadur Shah & Zeenat Mahal fled to Humayun’s tomb.
– But were followed & captured by General Hudson.
– The royal princes were killed.
– The king was exiled to Rangoon where he died in 1862.
DELHI

Bahadur Shah II

– He was angered by the assertion of authority by the leaders of the sepoys.
– He vacillated between the desire to reign as Emperor and the desire to
save his skin in case the Revolt was crushed by the British.
– His position was also undermined by his favorite Queen Zeenat Mahal
& his sons who carried on intrigues with the enemy.
– His weak personality
– Old age
– Lack of qualities of leadership

OUDH (LUCKNOW)

– The Nawab of Oudh Wajid Ali shah was exiled to Calcutta.
– But his wife Begum Hazrat Mahal & 11 year old son continued to live in
Oudh.
– The revolt broke out on 4th June 1857.
– Henry Lawrence, the British Resident, with some Europeans & some
hundred sepoys took refuge in a Residency.
– Begum seized the Residency & killed Henry.
– Initially, the attempt of Sir Henry Havelock & Sir James Outram to recover
Lucknow met with no success.
– Finally in November, Sir Colin Campbell attacked with Gorkha regiment.
– In March 1858, the city was finally recaptured.
– Rebels were driven to Nepal border to die in bad climate or captured by
Gorkhas.

Kanpur

– Nana Sahib, the adopted son of Baji Rao II, was proclaimed as the
Peshwa.
– He led the revolt in Kanpur with Tantia Tope, his assistant.
– Declared himself , the governor of Bahadur Shah Zafar’s.
– After a fierce battle, General Sir Hugh Wheeler surrendered on 27th June
1857.
– On 6th December 1857 General Campbell occupied Kanpur.
– Nana fled to Nepal & Tantia joined Rani Laxmibai.

JHANSI & GWALIOR

– In June 1857, the troops at Jhansi revolted against the
British.
– Rani Laxmibai was declared as the ‘ruler of Jhansi’.
– On 3rd April 1858, Sir Hugh Rose recaptured Jhansi.
– She escaped to Kalpi (near Gwalior) where Tantia joined
her after Kanpur was lost.
– Sir Hugh Rose also marched to Gwalior & captured it in
June 1858.
– Rani died fighting bravely

Tantia Tope

– During the 1857 mutiny, Nana Saheb & Tantia liberated Kanpur
from the British
– Later, Nana Saheb sent Tantia Tope with 20k men to aid
Laxmibai
– Tantia & Laxmibai together captured Gwalior but they couldn’t
save Jhansi from Sir Hugh Rose.
– Tantia was an expert in guerrilla warfare.
– He led attacks in Rajputana, Malwa, Panchmahal & Banswara
districts.
– In Panchmahal he aimed to organize the Bhils against the British.

– Tantia escaped southward but was betrayed by his friend Man Singh.
– Tantia was finally hanged.

Others

– At Bareilly, Khan Bahadur, a descendant of the former ruler of Rohilkhand, was
placed in command.
– Not enthusiastic about the pension being granted by the British, he organized an
army of 40,000 soldiers & offered stiff resistance to the British.
– In Bihar, the revolt was led by Kunwar Singh, the zamindar of Jagdishpur.
– An old man in his seventies, he nursed a grudge against the British who had
deprived him of his estates. He unhesitatingly joined the sepoys when they
reached Arrah from Dinapore.
– Maulvi Ahmadullah of Faizabad was another outstanding leader of the revolt.
– He was a native of Madras.

Reasons for failure

Certain classes & groups did not join &, in fact, worked against the revolt.
Big zamindars acted as “breakwaters to storm”.
Moneylenders & merchants suffered the wrath of the mutineers badly &
anyway saw their class interests better protected under British patronage.
Limited territorial spread.
Lack of complete nationalism.
British forces were better equipped with technology & arms.
Lack of coordination
Sepoys were also poorly organized.
Modern educated Indians viewed this revolt as backward looking, &
mistakenly hoped the British would usher in an era of modernization.
By one estimate, not more than one-fourth of the total area & not more
than one-tenth of the total population was affected.

Nature of the Revolt

The First Indian War of Independence-1857-59
It was a war which started for the protection of religion
but got converted into war of independence.

• Surendranath Sen
  Held British responsible for the revolt accepted general discontent among
  people . Causes of Indian Revolt
  The First Indian War of Indian Independence
  It was a feudal outburst headed by feudal chiefs.
  On the whole, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that so
  -called 1st National War of Independence is neither First,
  nor National, nor a war of independence
  ● The British historians Sir John Lawrence & Seeley, considered it
  nothing more than a sepoy mutiny.
  ● “ Sepoy Mutiny, Over patriotic & Selfish ”
  ● According to Seeley, the Revolt of 1857 was a wholly unpatriotic and
  selfish sepoys mutiny with no native leadership & no popular support.
  He further maintains that it was a rebellion of the Indian sepoys.
  ● Sir James Outram, described the Revolt of 1857 as the result of the
  Hindu- Muslim conspiracy.
  
  LER Rees– “ It was a war of religious fanatics. Both Hindus & Muslims against the
  Christians ”
  TR Holmes– “ It was a war between civilisation & barbarism ”

Sepoy Mutiny or 1st War of Indian Independence?

– Not just a Sepoy Mutiny – It was not just confined to the sepoys or soldiers, but
was much broader in base. The civilian population, aristocracy, peasants, religious
leaders played active role in the revolt.
– Not completely the First War of Independence – India was merely a geographical
term then; leaders fought for their own personal reasons to get back what they
had lost; there was no broad vision of a unified India. South India remained more
or less unaffected. Also, the war was won by the British through the support of
Indians.
Therefore, the exact nature of the revolt was somewhat between these extreme views.

Impact of the Revolt

100 years of the rule of the EIC marked the zenith of
exploitation in India. And this exploitation was in all directions,
i.e.
social, economical, & political life of Indians.
The intensity of the revolt of 1857, although confined in certain
pockets, was so high that it shook the backbone of British rule
in India, & it also proved the fact that the EIC which was
basically a trading organization was not efficient enough in
tackling Indian administration.
The revolt exposed the hollowness of the company’s rule in
India. The British Government couldn’t afford to lose India at
any cost, so therefore the British Government decided to
abolish the rule of the EIC, & direct Government was installed,
guided by the British Parliament.

The Direct Results

– The Revolt exposed the danger involved in allowing a commercial organization to rule over a
country. So the rule of the EIC was abolished. The EIC returned to being just a trading
organization.
– Consequently, the British Parliament by an Act transferred the control of the Indian
government from the East India Company to the British Crown.
– The said Act passed on 2 August, 1858, was known as the “Act for the Better Government of
India / the Government of India Act, 1858”.
– Queen Victoria, by a Proclamation announced on 1 November, 1858, directly assumed the
responsibility of the Indian administration in her own hands.

Changes in British Policy Post 1857

The Crown was empowered to appoint a Governor General of India &
Governor of presidencies.
– And it was in accordance with the Queen’s Proclamation that the title of
Viceroy (Crown’s personal representative ) was added to the GovernorGeneral of India.
– The supreme executive & legislative authority in India henceforth came to
be called the ‘Governor-General & the Viceroy’.

Victoria’s Proclamation

– Queen Victoria Proclaimed that
– No state would be annexed.
– No more intervention in religious matters.
– No religious conversion by force.
– No discrimination in recruitment of Army Services.
– Note – Victoria became the ‘Empress of India’ not in 1858 but in 1876.

– In her Proclamation, Queen Victoria also announced certain changes in the governmental
policy to be pursued by the British in India.
– Land of the zamindars was reinstated.
– The Revolt of 1857 led to an extensive reorganization of the army & the civil administration.
– All property of East India Company were transferred to the Crown.
– Company’s territories were to be vested in the Queen & be governed by her.
– It must, however, be remembered that in spite of all these bold theoretical statements hardly
any change occurred in the basic exploitative nature of the British rule in India.

The Government of India Act 1858

– While authority over India had previously been wielded by the Directors of the Company &
the Board of Control, now this power was to be exercised by a “Secretary of State for India”
aided by a Council of 15 members to assist him.
– Offices of Board of Control & Court of Directors were abolished.
– A new ministry was created known as ‘India House’, headed by the Secretary of State for
India who was a minister of cabinet rank.
– Secretary of State was a member of the British Cabinet & as such was responsible to
Parliament. Thus ultimate power over India remained with Parliament.
– Provision created for Indian Civil Services under the Secretary of State.
– Members of the Indian Civil Service to be appointed on basis of Competition.

The Indirect Results

– The Revolt further widened the difference between the ruler & the ruled.
– Divide & Rule policy. Appease certain sections of Indian Society.
– The seed of communal disharmony planted by the English in India sprouted like a poison
tree, & led to the partition of India 90 years later.
– New era of economic exploitation by the British in India.
– British pursued a policy of opposing the educated middle class & supporting the landlords &
the native princes

Strategic Changes in the Army

– The proportion of Europeans to Indians in the army was raised & fixed at 1:2 in
the Bengal army & 2:5 in the Madras & Bombay armies.
– The older policy of excluding Indians from the officer corps was strictly
maintained.
– All sensitive posts were reserved only for the Europeans.
– European troops were kept in key geographical & military positions.
– Caste based battalions were raised.
– Newspapers, journals, & nationalist publications were prevented from reaching
the soldiers.