THE REVOLT OF 1857

The revolt of 1857 was the most severe outburst of anger and discontent accumulated
in the hearts of various sections of the Indian society ever since the inception of
British rule in Bengal, following the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and the Battle of Buxar.
British historians called it a "Sepoy Mutiny" and the Indian historians termed it as the
"First War of Independence". Jawaharlal Nehru in his book "Discovery of India"
described it as the Feudal Revolt of 1857 and added that "it was much more than a
military mutiny and it rapidly spread and assumed the character of a popular rebellion
and a war of Indian Independence".
Though the revolt was started by the Indian soldiers in the service of the East India
company, it soon proliferated all over the country. Millions of peasants, aritsans and
soldiers fought heroically for over a year and sacrificed their life so that others might
live. Hindus and Muslims kept their religious differences aside and fought together in
order to free themselves from foreign subjugation.
The British tried to dismiss this Revolt by merely calling it a "Sepoy Mutiny", but this
Revolt clearly shows the pented hatred that the Indians had for the foreigners. The
Revolt did not take place overnight. There were many economic causes that added
fuel to the fire. The British were exploiting the Indian economy and thus leaving
many people jobless, helpless and homeless.
There were many social and religious reasons for the Revolt. The British started
imposing their religion on the Indians by building churches and by forcing people to
convert to Christianity. Further more, the Doctrine of Lapse, whereby adopted
children were refused recognition and deprived of pension, instigated the political
causes of the Revolt.
The British did not even spare the Indian soldiers. Rough treatment was meted out to
the soldiers and they lived in squalor. The British left no stone unturned to create an
eternal wall between Hindus and Muslims. The introduction of the greased cartridges
took the situation to its highest point and thus in addition to economic, social and
political causes there were military causes added to the Revolt of 1857.
The Revolt of 1857 was clearly not a success but it is unfair to dismiss it as a mere
mutiny. This was the first time when Indians got together to fight against an invincible
military power. The Revolt failed due to lack of planning, organization and leadership.
The unfortunate part however was that there were some Indians who helped the
British suppress the Revolt. Had they cooperated the Revolt might have been a
success.
Eventhough the Revolt was a failure, the consequences of the Revolt were very
important in Indian history. The Revolt brought the end of Company's rule, along with
changes in the British policy towards Indian States. With the escape of Nana Sahib
and the death of Bahadur Shah Zafar came the end of Peshwaship and the Mughal
Rule. The end of the Revolt also led to the reorganization of the army and India was
completely ruined from economic point of view. One of the most important outcome
of the Revolt was that it gave rise to Nationalism. Indian people became more aware
of the heroes, who sacrificed their lives so that others might live. The Revolt however,
scarred the relationship between Hindus and Muslims with the Divide and Rule
Policy.
•CAUSES OF THE REVOLT

Bahadur Shah Zafar- Last Mughal Emperor of India

a) During the first two hundred years (sixteenth and seventeeth centuries) the East
India Company confined its activities to trade and commerce and had no political
intention. The company purchased textiles, indigo, saltpetre, spices and foodgrains
from Indian market in exchange for gold and other precious metals. It thus played a
useful role by exporting Indian goods and by increasing the production the Indian
goods became so popular that the British government had to pass a law in 1720
forbidding the use of Indian textiles. However during the 18th century, the pattern of
trade went through a drastic change.
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, England developed its own textile
industry and with that the dependence on Indian textiles came to an end. The result
was that instead of buying finished textile goods from India, the British company
purchased raw cotton and exported the same to England. India soon became a raw
material producing country, supplying cotton and jute to the factories in Britain.
Cotton was processed into finished cloth and exported back to India. British traders
made massive profit through this two way trade.
Demand for Indian textiles having reduced, the local handloom industry incurred
heavy losses and suffered badly. The poor Indian weavers could not compete with the
machine made goods imported from England. Moreover, the Company used its
political resources to buy the best quality cotton from the Indian markets leaving no
scope for the Indian weavers to produce good quality products. Gradually, the Indian
handicraft and Cottage industries died out.There was major unemployment problem
and that resulted in resentment among workers against the British rule. The little
patronage that they received from the native princes also was gone because of the
annexations of those dominions. The miserable conditon of the working class led to
this rebellion against the Britsh Rule. The trade and commerce of the country was
monopolized by the by the East Indian Company. No efforts were made to improvise
on the living conditions of the people. Cruel exploitation of the economic resources
made people miserable leading to periodic famines.

The Attack of Mutineers, July 30, 1857

b) The British confiscated the lands and properties of many landlords and Talukdars,
especially those of Oudh. These very disgruntled landlords became leaders of the
Revolt.
c) Thousands of soldiers under the employment of the native states became jobless
when the states were annexed to the British dominion. As many as 60,000 families
lost their livlihood, when Oudh's army was disbanded. Naturally the disbanded
soldiers were seething with anger and were seeking an opportunity to strike at the new
regime which had deprived them of the their livlihood.
d) Gradual disappearence of many states also deprived those Indians who held civil
and judicial posts in the states, of their jobs. Even religious preachers were divested of
their livlihood with the extinction of native kingdoms. The people who were affected
rose against the British.

CAUSES OF THE FAILURE OF THE REVOLT

LACK OF PLANNING, ORGANIZATION AND
LEADERSHIP

Movement without planning, organization and leadership is bound to be a failure. The

revolt of 1857 was no exception. The revolt was supposed to have started on May 31,
1857 as decided by Nana Sahib and his colleagues. But an incident at Meerut whereby
the soldiers had to bite cartridges made of pig fat and cow fat added fuel to the fire
leading to the revolt breaking out early. The leaders had no made plans. The
movement had no leader on top to guide people and command obedience. Every
movement reqiures some sort of discipline and a leader to guide and help. But since
the Revolt unexpectedly broke out on May 10, 1857, there is nothing much the leaders
could do.
Indian Help to the British
Unfortunately, some of the Indian prince's helped the British government at that point
of time. The Sikh princes of Nabhya, Patiala and Kapurthala and the rulers of
Hyderabad and Gwalior very openly helped the British suppress the war with men and
money. Holka and Scindia remained loyal to the British. Their help at this point of
time riveted the shackles of British yoke over India for almost another century.

END OF COMPANY'S RULE

The British Parliament passed an "Act for the Better Government of India" in 1858,
whereby the administration responsibility was passed into the hands of the British
Queen and her Parliament. With this, the rule of the Company came to an end. The
Board of Control was abolished and the Board of Directors had no power left. A
secretary of State for India was to take the place of the President of the Board of
Control. He was advised by a board of fifteen members. The designation of the
Governor-General was changed. While he remained Governor-General for the
provinces under his rule, he came to be known as Viceroy while dealing with Nawabs,
Rajas and native princes.

CHANGE IN THE BRITISH POLICY TOWARDS INDIAN

STATES
To appease native princes, the British declared that they would honour all treaties and
the agreement entered into by the East India Company with the native rulers. Further,
Doctrine of Lapse was abandoned and the right to adoption recognized. The Indian
princes were assured that their territories would never be annexed. Henceforth, the
continual existence of Native States was guaranteed. However, there were clearly
defined restrictions and limitations to them. The military prowess was greatly
reduced.

REORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY

The British soldiers realized that the numerical inferiority of the British Indian army
was one of the causes of the Revolt. The British soldiers were increased in number
 which means, the expenditure also increased. Artillery and other advanced means of
warfare were in the care of British hands. In order to break down the unity of the
Indian soldiers, they were divided and separated.

From Mutiny to Uprising

Early in 1857, the British issued a new rifle to the sepoy regiments. The rifle fired a
paper cartridge that combined the gunpowder and the bullet. The rifleman had to
bite off the end of the cartridge before pushing it down the barrel of the gun. To
ease its passage down the gun barrel, each cartridge was heavily greased with beef
or pork fat. This horrified the Hindu and Muslim sepoys. They would have to bite into
beef or pork fat to use the new cartridges. This act, they believed, would violate
their religions.

The British quickly realized their mistake and tried to assure the sepoys that they
would not have to use cartridges greased with beef or pork fat. But the sepoys
distrusted their British officers. Rumors quickly spread from one regiment to
another that the British were insulting the Hindu and Muslim religions by issuing the
new greased cartridges.

In April 1857 at a military post near Delhi, 85 sepoy cavalrymen refused to use the
new cartridges when ordered to do so. The British court-martialed and sentenced
them to prison. After the sentencing, the British humiliated them by stripping off
their uniforms and shackling their ankles in front of 4,000 sepoy troops. Shocked by
what they had seen, the troops mutinied. They quickly overwhelmed the British and
released the sepoy prisoners. They then began shooting every British man, woman,
and child in sight. When the slaughter ended, the mutineers marched off to Delhi to
seek the help of an elderly Muslim king who had stepped down from power many
years before.

As the sepoys entered Delhi, the people of the city joined them in seeking out the
old Muslim king. Both Hindus and Muslims respected him as a symbol of the
traditional way of life.

At first reluctant, Bahadur Shah II, "King of Delhi," finally agreed to take up the
sepoy cause. He called for all Hindus and Muslims to unite. "May all the enemies of
the Faith be killed today," he said, "and the [foreigners] be destroyed root and
branch!"
Shocked by the capture of Delhi by sepoy mutineers, the British began to disarm
the East India Company sepoy regiments. When the sepoy mutiny first erupted, the
British had only 23,000 regular British army troops in India to restore order.
Eventually, the British had to bring in troops from all over their empire to fight the
rebels.

Civilian rebels soon outnumbered the sepoys. The mutiny grew into a general
uprising against the British across northern and central India. Sepoy regiments,
together with farmers, villagers, government workers, dispossessed estate owners,
and bands of robbers, looted and burned British homes, churches, missions, and
East India Company property. They also hunted down and killed any British people
they found.

British army units began their own war of vengeance. On their way to recapture
Delhi, British soldiers randomly tortured, shot, and hanged hundreds of Indian
people. The British executed many sepoy mutineers they captured by lashing the
victim to the muzzle of a cannon and blasting him to pieces.

The chief cause of failure was the efficient organization of the British forces, their
bravery and courage, and that those who rebelled were not supported by the
masses of Indians many of whom were Hindu and felt no compassion for rebellious
Muslims.

A Link and verbage..

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empi…

""""We could subdue the mutiny of 1857, formidable as it was, because it spread
through only a part of the army, because people did not actively sympathize with it,
and because it was possible to find native Indian races who would fight on our side.
But the moment a mutiny is but threatened, which shall be no mere mutiny, but the
expression of a universal feeling of nationality, at that moment all hope is at an end,
as all desire should be at an end, of our preserving our Empire." — Sir John Seeley
(quoted by Tarling)
The 1857 rebellion, which began with the mutiny of Indian troops stationed near
Delhi, had several chief results:

a year-long insurrection that changed attitudes -- both British and Indian — towards
British rule of India
dissolution of the British British East India Company
beginning of the British Raj, the period during which the U. K. directly ruled the
Indian subcontinent
the end of the Mughal Empire after the British exiled Emperor Bahadur Shah to
Burma
The revolt, mutiny, or rebellion, which some have seen as the first Indian war of
independence, began on May 10, 1857. According to "The Uprising of 1857: A Great
Divide in South Asian History" [US Library of Congress website],

Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army, drawn mostly from Muslim units from
Bengal, mutinied at the Meerut cantonment near Delhi, starting a year-long
insurrection against the British. The mutineers then marched to Delhi and offered
their services to the Mughal emperor, whose predecessors had suffered an ignoble
defeat 100 years earlier at Plassey. . . . The insurrection was sparked by the
introduction of cartridges rumored to have been greased with pig or cow fat, which
was offensive to the religious beliefs of Muslim and Hindu sepoys (soldiers). In a
wider sense, the insurrection was a reaction by the indigenous population to rapid
changes in the social order engineered by the British over the preceding century
and an abortive attempt by the Muslims to resurrect a dying political order.
After the mutineers (or patriots) finally surrendered on June 20, 1858, the British
ended both the East India Company and the Mughal Empire, sending the deposed
Emperor Bahadur Shah to exile in Burma. With the coming of the Raj, a British
governor general (or "Viceroy" as he was known when representing the British
crown) ruled India, and he in turn reported to the secretary of state for India, a
member of Prime Minister's cabinet (LoC Website).

The mutiny, which ended by destroying the Mughal Empire, had major effects on
the U. K. as well, forcing the British government to assume direct control over the
Indian subcontinent. At home, many English, who felt betrayed by peoples they
thought they had befriended, experienced the revolt as a trauma. Newspapers of
the period emphasized atrocities, particularly toward women and children,
committed by the rebels, and these became the subjects of very well known
contemporary paintings. """

Peace

The Indian public had been suffering under an oppressive foreign rule for almost a century by
now and the discontentment had been rising. The revolt of 1857 which although broke out in a
sudden and spontaneous manner had deeper reasons.
Economic Ruin of the Country Since India was ruled as colony by the British, their economic
policies were formulated accordingly. Once the British were in control of a certain area they
began implementing their oppressive colonial market policies. They would force Indians to sell
cheap and buy dear. This over time had completely destroyed the Indian economy and had sent
millions in poverty. Such a massive change in the economic status of Indians had never taken
place in its entire history, and the people resented this injustice inflicted upon them.
Displaced People
British rule brought drastic changes to the lives of many Indians. Land lords who had for long
enjoyed land and social privileges found themselves stripped of their land and left impoverished.
Artisans who were patronized by the Indian rulers now had no patrons amongst the new British
rulers, and were out of work. The subsidiary alliance had forced many kings to disband their
armies in order to meet the costs of maintaining the mandatory British troops and this resulted in
large scale unemployment. These displaced people became major enemies of the British rule in
India
Religious influence and social reform
The British besides conquering India were also
keen to spread their religion, Christianity.
Missionaries were actively encouraged and laws
allowing only Christians to inherit property
were passed. The army maintained a chaplain at
state cost. Indians serving in the army did not
have their religious views respected and were
often made to violate them. The British egged
on by social reformers banned sati and legalized
widow marriage. While these were progressive
steps viewed for the betterment of Indian
society, they were received by the conservative
sections of society as a direct attack on their
culture.

Since the British had remained a foreign alien ruler for over a hundred years, and made no effort
whatsoever to integrate into Indian society, the people opposed it strongly. Earlier foreign
invaders had always integrated into Indian society and there had been a synthesis of ideas. In the
case of the British, the British were simply trying to impose their ideas and beliefs on the
Indians. This did not go down well with the Indian people.
Western Education
The British had been promoting western education and laying emphasis on the education of girls.
This was also mis-interpreted by the conservative sections of the society as an attack on Indian
culture. More importantly western education exposed Indians to the new thoughts of liberty and
equality and they realized that the British were treating them like second rate citizens in their
own country.
Policies of Annexation
The British in order to gain control of India had
adopted some devious annexation policies
which illegally displaced many Indian kings.
The British also refused to recognize the titles of
the sons of the kings. The British humiliated the
Mughals, by proclaiming that after the death of
Bahadur Shah II, his sons would be known as
mere princes and would have to vacate the Red
Fort.
One particular annexation that the British made
proved to be a major mistake. A large part of the
English East India Company's army was from a
kingdom known as Awadh, a loyal ally of the
British. Since the soldiers lacked any
nationalistic feelings they had helped the British
conquer the rest of the country. However, when
the British annexed their kingdom, Awadh, on
flimsy grounds, they were angered and revolted.
A few other minor factors had also been
brewing. The British power had come across as
invincible after they successfully overran a once
mighty country. This myth was shattered when
the British were defeated in Afghanistan. This
gave Indians a new found confidence to revolt.
Finally all that was needed was a spark, and this
came with the greased cartridges controversy.
The British introduced the new Enfield rifle
which had a cartridge greased with the fat of a
cow or pig. The soldiers before they could load
the cartridge into the weapon had to bite off the
cover, which was coated as mentioned above.
This violated the religious feelings of Hindus as
well as Muslims, for they are forbidden from
eating the meat of a cow and pig respectively.
The soldiers perceived this to be a direct and
deliberate attack on their most sacred beliefs and refused to use these cartridges.
On 8th May 1857, the soldiers of the third Native cavalry were sentenced to ten years in prison
for refusing to use the new cartridges. Their imprisonment angered the other Indian soldiers
based at Meerut and the next day they freed their comrades and killed the British officers. After
this they set off for Delhi at sunset and reached by the next morning. The local infantry of Delhi
assisted them in taking over the city and killing many European officials. The rebels instated the
aged and powerless Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II to the post of Emperor of India. The
Mughals had for long been considered the symbol of political unity in India, and this
development transformed the rebellion into a revolutionary war. Bahadur Shah II was pressured
into organizing a movement, and he sent letters to all the important Indian kings to organize a
confederation of Indian states, which collectively could drive the British out of India. A Court of
Soldiers was established with General Bakht Khan heading it, and this body became the real
command centre for the revolt. Soon the revolt spread to many parts of the country with several
Indian kings attacking British positions. Notable personalities of the revolt were people like
Nana Sahib, the Rani of Jhansi, Tantia Tope and Kunwar Singh amongst many others.
The revolt met with some early successes but was eventually suppressed by the British within a
year. The revolt had failed in its objective of overthrowing the British power, although it did
result in some far reaching changes. The revolt of 1857 failed because it suffered from weak
leadership and was hardly organized. This proved a major handicap when dealing with the well
trained and equipped British troops. Also the revolt failed to extend to all parts of the country,
and large sections of the population did not support it. In fact the British were able to use many
divisions of the Indian unit of their army in suppressing the revolt. The revolt however did
however make an impact on the British power, the English East India Company would be
replaced by the British crown The revolt had created a sense of a nation amongst the Indians, and
these nationalistic feelings would eventually result in the freedom struggle.