Mutiny

at the Margins
New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857

Volume 6
Perception, Narration and
Reinvention: The Pedagogy and
Historiography of the Indian Uprising

Edited by
Crispin Bates
Introduction
Crispin Bates

THE tumultuous events of 1857 have been incorporated into an unusually rich
variety of histories and narratives over the past century and a half. An event
full of deep and persistent ambiguities, it has nonetheless most commonly been
represented as a singular episode, at the expense of an appreciation of its place in
the wider context of nineteenth century Indian and global history, as discussed
elsewhere in the Mutiny at the Margins series. It has received diverse and not
necessarily complimentary portrayals from the parties involved and their
descendants. The subsequent political developments in the regions involved
playing a substantial role in these inevitable differences. The Uprising has thus
been posed in British accounts as a spectacular episode, full of treachery, romance
and heroism that conveniently justifies the ensuing decades of imperial rule.
The tropes of endurance and suffering leading to ultimate triumph permeate
memoirs, histories and fictional portrayals, right up until the present day. The
British version of the mutiny can be seen as a moral tale, with the military victory
of British forces legitimised and tempered by stoicism and courage among British
families and soldiers. At the same time, the outpouring of colonial accounts that
followed the establishment of imperial domination effectively smothered the
voices of South Asian participants.
In contrast to the glory days of the victorious British Crown, with ‘order’
restored and a defunct East India Company, the aftermath recorded by Indian,
Pakistani and Bangladeshi authors was far from sweet. For them, the devastating
northern conflict (1857–1858) was an experience of suffering and defeat,
despite the abundance of Indian heroes. Communities were torn apart by the
Great Uprising, and families were not only figuratively, but literally, torn from
the pages of history. Among South Asians, the predominant style in which the
events of 1857 are narrated is thus one of the tragedies. Even the description of
tangible outcomes proves difficult in South Asian accounts, with the questions
of winners and losers, collaborators and the defeated overlooked for fear of the
xvi Crispin Bates

Indian discord and lack of unity that it might reveal. In the most positive light,
it has been cast as the first faltering step on the road to national independence.
Yet, such approaches are teleological, come long after 1857 and lift the
mutiny free of any meaningful context. ‘Patriotic’ explanations of events have
emerged particularly strongly in both India and Pakistan; these work towards
either shoring up or undermining the ‘two nation’ ideology, which forms the
foundation for the emergence of the two separate states at independence in
1947. In becoming part of the ‘master narrative’ of these states, 1857 has thus
emerged as treacherous ground for scholars who are wary of the ramifications
of contradicting the preferred interpretations of politicians, national committees
and institutions.
A consequence of the political burden carried by historical events of 1857
is that profoundly limited interpretations have been passed down to all parties
of the conflict. Narrow, chauvinistic portrayals of 1857, rife with contrasting
depictions of heroes and villains (achieved masterfully in the writings of G.W.
Kaye and V.D. Savarkar), underline the contemporary contribution of the
discipline of history to multiple nation-building projects. The ambitions of state
enterprises have spectacularly compromised the professionalism of historians
and have been effectively enforced in curricula ranging from the university to
primary school. It is unsurprising therefore that attempts to re-frame history
curricula and to design new textbooks have become such a fierce cause of
controversy in both Britain and the Indian subcontinent.1 As a subjective,
humanistic discipline, history should celebrate and encourage a diversity
of interpretation. But in the case of 1857, singular and monovalent modes of
interpretation have predominated, and any attempt to qualify or question them
can become a source of ferocious and unreasonable contestation.
Interpretations of 1857 heavily informed by political preoccupations have
served to justify past conflicts and mistakes, but they provide little evidential
basis for the imagining of alternative futures. There are significant gaps and
omissions, especially concerning the role of women, minorities and subaltern
groups—who are at best stereotyped as loyalists, traitors or fanatics, or are denied
agency and motives of their own. On the British side, there is also an absence
of regret (by contrast with the sympathetic gestures made by Queen Elizabeth
II concerning the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 during an official visit in
October 2007, which included the laying of a wreath at the monument in the Bagh
itself). Unlike other total wars in the twentieth century where British women
and children were caught up in the fighting, there has been little retrospective
anxiety expressed about the scale and violence of British retributions in 1857.
This is surprising, given the criticisms of the East India Company and the British
Indian army expressed at the time, notably in parliament by Benjamin Disraeli,2
the criticisms in the press,3 and the well-documented evidence of massacres that
took place, such as those accompanying the re-capture of Kanpur and Delhi or
the marches of Colonel Neill and Major Renaud.4 Latterly, these have come to
 Introduction xvii

be seen instead as unfortunate but necessary episodes in the development of an

otherwise broadly successful imperial enterprise of the late nineteenth century
that remains an example of the ‘shock and awe’ tactics of warfare to be imitated
in the present day.
Linear and mechanistic forms of interpretation have been favoured by
national, as opposed to local, histories. Ideologically, they have been radical in
some of their claims, such as the imagining of Hindu–Muslim unity in the cause
of Indian nationalism or the moral superiority of British, yet at the same highly
conservative in their narration of events. They can refuse to admit the possibility
of error, and are unquestioning about the social and political hierarchies that
sustained British and Indian involvement in the conflict. This stateist project of
memorialising has been sustained through government institutions, including
galleries and museums. ‘Forgetting’, as the French historian Ernest Renan
famously observed, ‘is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation’ and as the ‘social
memory’ of 1857 faded in the 80–100 years after the event, the stateist agenda
became steadily more influential. Professional historians have to a greater or
lesser extent colluded in these historical weavings, but they are not alone, as
‘national’ versions of events have at the same time received widespread popular
support. The selective re-telling of the events of 1857 has thus been absorbed
into a shared sense of ‘social suffering’.5 This has helped ordinary Indians and
Pakistanis to normalise and explain the variety of painful experiences that
characterised the final century of colonial rule, which culminated, of course, in
the disastrous events of the great partition in 1947 and the subsequent partition
of 1971 that gave birth to the independent state of Bangladesh.
Notwithstanding the hegemony of stateist interpretations of 1857, remem-
brances of past events have emerged at other levels. Aside from state-sponsored
projects of history writing, local and community efforts have sprung up that
contain surprisingly dissimilar interpretations. As observed by Pierre Nora, the
contrast often involves different notions of space: the stories of the experiences
of a particular community are thus usually far more nuanced than those evoked
by national historians. They tell us, for instance, why many people chose at times
not to participate, for reasons relating to particular localised effects that are as
valid as any other. Local narratives have been more organic and less confected,
revealing a complex picture of contradictions, errors, misunderstandings and
unintended consequences. There are several examples of this in the first volume
of the Mutiny at the Margins series. Tapti Roy’s path-breaking study of the revolt
in Bundelkhand can be said to fall into the same category, along with the recent
work of Pankaj Raj, which reveals the diverse contexts and popular recollections
of 1857 in Bundelkhand, Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Western Bihar and some
tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh.6 The contemporary memoirs and narratives of
individuals published in Britain occasionally contain contradictory elements
as well, although they are often profoundly compromised by the editorial
interventions of publishers and a desire to satisfy the particular demands of
xviii Crispin Bates

the British reading public of the day. This can be said to be characteristic of
British imperial narratives in an era when commercial publishing had just begun
to achieve a mass market.7 Few memoirs deviate from the desire to assert the
moral superiority of the British in depictions of masculine heroism and the stoic
devotion of women in the face of adversity.8 Other possibilities have, however,
been afforded by polemical fictions such as J.G. Farrell’s 1973 Booker Prize
winning novel The Siege of Krishnapur, which is based upon first-hand British
accounts of 1857 whilst making a serious effort to highlight the incongruities
of the British occupation of North India and the cruelties of the conflict that
preceded the restoration of British rule.
A more contextualised approach to the mutiny can be found not only in
localised accounts but also in other recent scholarship. Lesser known aspects of
the uprising are revealed by Rosie Llewelyn Jones, who tells, for example, about
the twisted tale of the ‘Kotah Residency Murders’ and of the prize agents, who
were licensed by the British and Company armies in India to raid houses and
properties after the capture of cities and seize anything of value.9 Kim Wagner’s
The Great Fear (2010) tells of the rumour and ‘information panic’ that gripped
and motivated both sides during the insurrection, while William Dalrymple’s
The Last Mughal (2006), and his study of the 1840–1842 Anglo-Afghan war,
The Return of the King (2013), have exposed the conflicts and divisions within the
rebel camp in Delhi in 1857 and some of the more ruthless and foolish aspects of
the behaviour of British officers and administrators in this period. Dalrymple’s
work may be associated with other twenty-first century attempts by western
authors to come to terms with the history and memories of colonial rule.10
This has been most conspicuously evident in the history of colonial counter-
insurgency operations, which have become the subject of excoriatory critiques
by Richard Gott, Grob-Fitzgibbon and John Newsinger.11 Most conspicuously, in
2013 revelations about atrocities in the suppression of the Mau Mau insurgency
in Kenya in the 1950s culminated in the award of compensation to hundreds
of victims of torture and castration in Kenyan prison camps.12 Contemporary
political imperatives can be seen at work here, linking together British
investments, strategic interests and the post-independence leadership of Kenya
(many of whom were associated or involved with the Mau Mau insurgency).13
It is notable that other counter-insurgency operations that occurred with equal
violence and arguably on an even larger scale, such as the 1950s anti-communist
campaign in Malaysia, have received less attention. Perhaps this is because that
campaign became a part of the myth of successful de-colonisation by the British,
a myth that the British army in particular is reluctant to abandon, despite recent
debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan.14 The Malayan conflict also paved the way for a
successor regime that owed no debt to the devastated lives of the predominantly
Malayan–Chinese insurgents who were re-settled en masse or ‘repatriated’ to
China at the close of the conflict.15
 Introduction xix

From India, studies have emerged of late that question the particular roles
of women, ordinary soldiers, Sikhs, Dalits, adivasis and other marginal groups,
examples of which are to be found in essays by Badri Narayan, Charu Gupta,
Gautam Bhadra and others in volumes one, four and five of the Mutiny at the
Margins series. Some of this work is polemical and involves the narration of
novel myths of heroism to counter those within the hegemonic historical
discourse on 1857. However, the deconstruction of those original hoary myths is
still in its infancy and requires a lot more original research of the sort referenced
in the Mutiny at the Margins series. This presents a significant challenge to
historians, who must wean their readership away from stereotypes that have
become commonplace. An attempt to do so is provided by the first chapter in
this volume, by Sudhir Chandra. It examines the widely held assumption that
the Indian intelligentsia were for the most part universal in their condemnation
of British actions in 1857 and united in their opposition to colonial rule: a
view typified in the writings of Nehru and of many Indian historians post-
independence. Chandra argues that it was not until Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
presented a significantly different interpretation of events in 1909, that the British
understanding of 1857 began to be seriously and coherently challenged. Earlier
Indian responses were far more complex. Chandra thus examines the assumed
attitudes of the emergent Indian intelligentsia and compares them to their
actual writings during and after the uprising. Although the eventually dominant
outlook was one of condemnation of the violence of the British counter-
insurgency campaign, opinions at the time were extremely varied. Chandra
examines the reasons for this, including the reporting of the event as primarily
a military revolt, with little mention of the accompanying civilian uprising.
However, Chandra admits that describing many of the Indian intelligentsia as
hostile to the mutiny is not entirely invalid, a reality he demonstrates by citing
several examples from contemporary media (especially from Bengal) in which
Indian authors talked of the insurgents as ‘rebels’ and agreed with the British
authorities on the necessity for forceful measures to restore law and order. His
examples include reporting in the Kolkata journal the Hindoo Patriot, as well as
Rast Goftar (Mumbai’s first overtly political paper) and the classic Gujarati novel
Sarasvatichandra. Initially dismissive of the rebels and their actions, the Patriot’s
reporting gradually changed, demonstrating the varied opinions of ‘educated
Indians’. It reflected the shift in loyalty of English-educated Indians in Kolkata
towards their countrymen and away from a government that consistently
demonstrated its dishonesty and guile. Chandra notes that reporting in the
Patriot ends with an acknowledgement that, in contrast to its original, doubtful
stance, the publication believed the atrocities that were claimed to have been
committed against the rebels had in fact taken place, finally demonstrating
a degree of empathy with the rebels. In his discussion of Govardhanram
Madhavram Tripathi’s Sarasvatichandra, Chandra argues that a still more subtle
and consistent critique of colonial rule is to be found. In the third volume, which
xx Crispin Bates

reflects on British rule, Govardhanram presents an entirely different view of the

Indian intelligentsia. His observations on freedom and the role of the so-called
‘rebel’ in securing it reflected widely held opinions, Chandra argues, that could
not easily be publicly expressed. Chandra concludes by reasserting the need for
an unbiased examination of the writings of the Indian intelligentsia without the
prejudice of subsequent historiography.
In Chapter 2, Chaudhuri and Ray re-examine the events of the so-called
‘mutiny’ of 1857 through an analysis of contemporary proclamations. They
argue that the previous historiographical omission of this evidence has been
significant in shaping misconceptions of the mutiny. In an attempt to reveal
a more indigenous perspective, Chaudhuri and Ray demonstrate how it is
methodologically feasible to use these sources to uncover the aims and motives
of the rebels, revealing the manner in which they saw themselves in contrast with
how they were seen by others. The sepoys’ eventual objectives and the manner
in which they sought to achieve them are discussed, as is the influence this
had on subsequent representations. The very act of labelling 1857 as a ‘revolt’,
they argue, is itself a reflection of the distorted historiography surrounding the
subject. Instead, Chaudhuri and Ray argue that there is evidence that the sepoys
saw themselves not as rebels, but as nationals reclaiming their homeland. This
is made clear not least by the attempts that were made to set up a centralised
government surrounding the restored Mughal emperor. These intended actions
indicate revolutionary, as opposed to merely rebellious intentions. The chapter
points out that the proclamations indicate there was only ever a vague idea of war
strategy, contributing in part to the failure of the uprising, but this was a strategic
rather than a political error. The timeless question nonetheless continues to be
asked whether 1857 was a ‘people’s revolt’ or a ‘mutiny’. Chaudhuri and Ray
oppose the demeaning nature of this debate. The proclamations indicate that
there was a widespread awareness that this was not simply a violent uprising, but
a movement intent on preserving culture, religion, and political and commercial
power through the establishment of an Indian government. The participants felt
they were responding to aggression rather than acting without provocation; the
continuing ignorance of this perspective, they argue, demonstrates how pervasive
early British perspectives on the uprising still remain within contemporary
historiography.
Recognising how dramatically changeable perceptions of history remain
within the popular imagination, in Chapter 3 of this volume Bhagwan Josh
examines Veer Savarkar and his work The Indian War of Independence. Josh
discusses the work itself and Savarkar’s process and intentions in writing it,
arguing that in an attempt to inspire nationalist pride and rebellious spirit,
Savarkar produced a book that existed not merely to clarify history, but to
re-define it. Josh reflects on the difference between academic history and
the ‘inspirational history’ of Savarkar’s creation. In an attempt to inspire
nationalist pride, Savarkar presented history in a way that was not conducive
 Introduction xxi

to understanding or debate but which intended to evoke strong emotions

and commemorate the positive and inspiring moments of the ‘Indian War of
Independence’—with the ultimate aim of encouraging fresh aspirations towards
the overthrow of British rule. Savarkar’s work thus ended up creating social
memory rather than recording it. It was historiography with a political purpose
in the form of ‘remembrance and commemoration’.
Savarkar’s desire to write an ‘inspirational’ history required the creation
of new, inspirational, indigenous heroes. To achieve this, he took previously
unmentioned figures and wrote rousing narratives for each of them. Although
Savarkar was eager to remake history, Josh points out his obvious reliance on
British authors for source material, with little use being made of primary sources.
Savarkar thus had to manipulate British descriptions of events to provide the
best possible narrative, if not most accurate, from a nationalist perspective. As
a revolutionary himself, he understood and sought to evoke the heroism and
bravery of the leaders in 1857 and attempted to place the events of 1857 within
the wider context of Indian rebellion and the struggle for independence. His
endeavour was to imagine parallels between the rebellious spirit of the past and
that of the present. Emphasising examples of Hindu–Muslim unity during the
rebellion, The Indian War of Independence sought to promote national identity
above all else, with 1857 serving as a test of the potential strength of Indians
when united against British rule. His work started an entirely new trend of
inspirational history writing. Josh uses this to discuss the wider implications of
the relationship between history and politics and the role of history as a discipline
which does not merely describe the past but helps us to imagine alternative
possibilities for the future.
Recognising the crucial importance of Savarkar’s work in our imagining of
the ‘Mutiny of 1857’, in Chapter 4 John Pincince goes on to explore whether
his interpretation genuinely reflected the idea of a ‘composite Indian national
identity’. Pincince suggests that the narrative in fact reveals primarily North
Indian Hindu and Maratha unity rather than the unity of every community and
ethnicity in the subcontinent. He discusses the history of the work and how,
despite being banned by the British Government, it was still widely read by
Indian nationalists. In his chapter, Pincince describes Savarkar’s intentions to
both galvanise nationalist spirit and to revise imperial historiography, providing
an alternative to the portrayal of 1857 that had dominated for the previous half-
century. The book is discussed in detail alongside Savarkar’s attempt to inspire
the present using the past and to reclaim the national narrative. The Indian War
of Independence is perhaps most innovative in its reinterpretation of the events
leading up to the revolt as well as its challenging of the British categorisation of
later actions. However, Pincince sees a methodological problem in Savarkar’s
attempts to place the rebellion within the wider context of Indian history by
evoking India’s ‘mythic past’ and elements of tradition and religion. Particular
precedence is given here to the achievements of the Hindu Maratha Empire
xxii Crispin Bates

over any other. Pincince argues that notwithstanding the evocation of examples
of Hindu–Muslim unity within the revolt, Savarkar’s location of national
identity within a predominantly Hindu mythography of the past suggests an
unquestionable ‘sense of Hindu superiority’. The book therefore fails as a truly
integrative text, anticipating at the same time as seeking to resolve the divisions
within the national movement that led eventually to partition.
The approaches taken by historians in portraying past events have a great
impact on how they are later perceived and remembered within society at large.
For the centenary of the uprising of 1857, Surendra Nath Sen was commissioned
to write a supposedly objective work on the rebellion; he was not alone, as
S.B. Chaudhuri also wrote on the subject at this time. In Chapter 5, Mukherjee
sets out to compare the approaches taken by Sen and Chaudhuri. In doing so,
he illustrates a tension within the nationalist assessment of the revolt between
the feudal and the popular elements of the uprising and its portrayal as a war of
independence. Sen’s attempt to create an impartial history resulted in him relying
closely on primary archival sources. However, most of the sources available were
heavily influenced by British voices which still shaped his perspective, especially
given his purported ‘refusal’ to use Persian and Urdu materials. Sen made no
attempt to link the events of 1857 with British colonial activity, perhaps because
of his sympathy for the British and his respect for the modernity they had
brought with them. Though he was less than sympathetic in his portrayal of
the rebels, Sen could not, however, ignore the fact that they were attempting to
oust an alien power. Mukherjee goes on to compare Sen’s account with that of
Chaudhuri, who was more interested in linking the events of the mutiny period
and the pre-mutiny period through their common expression of anti-British
sentiments. The historians are directly contrasted through their presentation
of the events in Awadh. By adhering closely to his sources, Sen produced an
account that focused largely on how the British suffered, seen from a British
perspective. Chaudhuri, by contrast, applied a more critical methodology to
official documents and attempted to extract from them evidence of the actions
and intentions of the rebels; he was also critical of how Sen ignored the actions
of the general masses in India. Both Chaudhuri and Sen were united in a desire
to tie the events of 1857 into a national narrative of India’s history. However,
Mukherjee concludes that Sen’s account, despite his intentions to the contrary,
ended up being little different from those of nineteenth century British historians
who had gone before him. Chaudhuri, on the other hand, succeeded in extracting
from an otherwise inhospitable official archive a narrative that focused on the
actions of the rebels. Chaudhuri thus provides an early example of the merits of
a historical methodology that critically deconstructs colonial sources rather than
taking them at face value, in a manner akin to that later advocated by Ranajit
Guha (1984).
The international impact of V.D. Savarkar’s 1909 work The Indian War of
Independence, 1857 and how it shaped the historiography of independence with
 Introduction xxiii

regards to India is discussed by Vinayak Chaturvedi in Chapter 6. Savarkar felt

that his own work was paramount in shaping the general discourse of Indian
independence. Though this claim is debatable (Gandhi’s Hind Sara, for example,
was published in the same year), Savarkar was certainly of vital importance in
initiating and framing discussion concerning Indian national identity, within
India and beyond. Building on the revolutionary historiography of Europe as
well as that of America, Savarkar established his own ideology of independence
and how it applied to India. The writings of Giuseppe Mazzini in particular
influenced him and shaped his presentation of the events of 1857. He became
adept at presenting foreign revolutions and ideas within an Indian context.
Though the first edition of his history was banned by the British government,
Savarkar’s work spread across India and Europe, initiating an entirely novel
discourse on Indian history and its relevance to the present. Chaturvedi examines
the links Savarkar makes between the first ‘act’ of independence during the 1857
Uprising and the continued quest for freedom and independence from British
rule in India. Chaturvedi concludes by stating that, although Savarkar may have
altered his personal feelings regarding the concept of ‘independence’ over the
course of his writings, he remained committed to an independence that was
specific to India, not one that was merely derivative of previous movements and
European examples.
Chapter 7 sees Benjamin Zachariah address the place of important historical
events in collective memory fashioned during nation-building. He focuses
on debates around anniversaries of 1857, when the question of the place of
the ‘Uprisings’ in the national imagination came to the fore. Contrasting
retrospective accounts with the near-contemporaneous text of Sir Syed Ahmed
Khan, Zachariah’s essay examines the re-telling of histories of 1857 in the
context of the first anniversary text, that of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1907,
published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of 1857, and the controversies
surrounding the writing of the centenary histories in 1957, 10 years after Indian
independence, in which major politicians such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana
Azad were participants. Drawing on debates surrounding history and memory,
and in particular on the work of Pierre Nora, Zachariah’s essay asks why 1857
proved to be so difficult a national lieu de memoire, when in many ways it seemed
ideally suited for the purpose. Through his exploration, and in opposition to
recent attempts to find a ‘prehistory’ of a teleological Indian nation, he suggests
that the events of 1857 were difficult to fit into ways of imagining a future Indian
state and a concomitant nation. Zachariah reminds us of the distinction between
the ‘nation’ as a collective that aspires to political self-determination, and the
state, which the nation must legitimate and justify. It is in this situation that 1857
proves defective in India. In terms of attempting to provide the revolt with a
successful place in a relatively coherent version of an official nationalist ideology,
Indian nationalists were faced with a tricky problem: neither fully canonised
nor properly disavowed, 1857 inhabits, Zachariah argues, a peculiar space of
xxiv Crispin Bates

non-belonging hovering on the brink of belonging: a historic failure from which

the seeds of later success must yet attempt to be recovered.
In Chapter 8, Crispin Bates and Marina Carter discuss the significance of
competing and contrasting interpretations of history in the context of official
commemorations planned to coincide with the centenary of the Great Uprising
in 1957. The chapter explores the complex attitudes of different national and
political groups towards the centenary, embracing key differences between India
and Pakistan and between the attitudes of the Indian National Congress (INC)
and opposition parties, such as the Indian Communists and Socialists. British
concerns about possible threats to Britain’s international reputation and the
safety of those Britishers still remaining in India are described in detail. Different
sites of commemoration are used to traverse the complex and sometimes
conflicting relationship of different stakeholders with the past and each other.
These sites include a mixture of the physical and figurative, covering statuary,
political speeches, planned celebrations and literature. A compelling example is
found in the debate that sprung up in 1957 surrounding the Angel statue at the
Kanpur well site, erected to memorialise the massacre of women and children
at Bibighar.
The timing of the 1957 celebrations is posited as a further indicator of
varying concerns within India; the proposition of the INC to celebrate 1857 in
tandem with the date of independence significantly diverged from the plans of
opposition parties in India, which intended to focus entirely on the mutiny. The
congress government is shown to be determined, for strategic, diplomatic as well
as domestic political reasons, to emphasise British–Indian cooperation rather
than imperialist oppression and heroic rebellion. British fears regarding the
potential for the provocation of anti-British feeling and their attempts to control
the commemoration are explored through a range of sources including foreign
and commonwealth office despatches, intelligence reports and the UK press.
This exploration reveals particular insecurities, as evidenced by the desire of the
UK government to encourage wherever possible use of the term ‘sepoy mutiny’
rather ‘Indian mutiny’ or ‘uprising’. The chapter places these insecurities within
their political and historical context, revealing fascinating evidence for how
commemoration says more about the preoccupations of those remembering
than the historic event itself. Behind everything, a backdrop of waning British
imperialism can be seen, with the impact of near contemporaneous events
around the world, such as the abortive invasion of Suez, weighing profoundly
upon the minds of contemporaries. Most acutely, the chapter describes the
difficult position of the congress government in India, who straddled the line
between maintaining stability and continuity in the wake of independence
and celebrating the past heroes of Indian history. By arguing that uneasiness
pervaded the commemoration of 1857, the chapter illustrates the wider and on-
going anxieties to be found in the relationship between British imperialists and
 Introduction xxv

their former territories and the difficulties this continues to pose for historians,
politicians and government officials.
In a departure from discussion of Indian nationalist attempts to re-interpret
the events of 1857, in Chapter 9 Naeem Qureshi examines the development of
post-partition Pakistani perspectives on the events of 1857 through an extensive
examination of Urdu writings. His aim is to assimilate the individual perspective
into a more balanced whole that challenges portrayals of the uprising purely
as a ‘sepoy mutiny’ of peasant soldiers and self-seeking ‘native’ chiefs. Instead,
he uses Urdu sources to explore the uprising and its portrayal as both a jihad
and a movement of national liberation, unearthing varied and sometimes
contradictory interpretations in the writings of Muslim scholars. The approach
of the centenary produced an outpouring of literature in post-partition Pakistan,
partially in response to the extremely biased accounts of the previous century.
However, Qureshi argues, this newly produced material was still greatly
influenced by national pride and a desire to include the events of 1857 as part
of a narrative of Pakistani nationhood; the desire to reshape the ‘Muslimness’ of
their Indian heritage greatly influenced the work produced by many authors. Yet,
this chapter questions the validity of the links made by some Urdu writers with
the uprising and shows that the desire to represent Muslims as a homogenous
community had a significant effect on Pakistani historiography.
Though far from unified, Pakistani historians share an argument that
the uprising was a justified reaction to a foreign power that had committed
numerous wrongs against both Hindus and Muslims. The factors that led to its
failure are summarily blamed on the lack of organisation amongst the rebels, the
coherence and military strength of the British response, and the impotence of
Bahadur Shah as a leader. Accounts of the Emperor’s role, though, vary greatly
between describing him as a weak individual incapable of taking command and,
alternatively, as a spoilt ruler unwilling to take command. Equally divided, and
examined in this chapter, are the opinions of Pakistani historians as to whether
the uprising was in fact a jihad, as portrayed by the right-wing writers, or a
unified anti-imperialist war as proposed by secular, left-wing historians. Overall,
Urdu historiography suffers from a continual desire to re-write and re-define
history in order to place it within the broader context of the quest for Muslim
independence. Qureshi concludes that post-partition Urdu literature reveals
new areas of thought regarding the uprising, but that every writer is subject
to bias and misinformation. To this, one might add the considerable obstacles
faced by the limited number of professional historians in Pakistan in gaining
access to original government records in properly maintained archives. No
single Pakistani history can therefore be relied upon. It is only by compiling their
perspectives and viewing them as part of a far greater whole that we can begin to
understand ‘what really happened in 1857’.
Syed Minhaj ul Hassan continues the exploration of Pakistani views on 1857
in Chapter 10 of this volume by reflecting on how the history of the subcontinent,
xxvi Crispin Bates

particularly the events of 1857, has been taught in schools. It is common

place for national histories to serve the interests of political and intellectual
elites, providing a framework for their existence. The nature and form of this
phenomenon (whether it involves ethnic or various civic ideas of the nation)
has been extensively studied by George Iggers, Stefan Berger and others within
the European context, the national histories of Germany, France and Britain
being among the outstanding examples.16 Hassan argues that in Pakistan the
teaching in schools has been a particular victim of such active distortion. In the
process of re-shaping history to suit existing ideology, the Pakistani government
has been manipulating the information given to students, producing a society
that fails to question bias or seek to analyse information. The government does
this by controlling the syllabus and the textbooks used in government schools,
universities and colleges. Within this set teaching, there is little variation in the
presentation of the causes and events of the conflict of 1857, despite a greater
emphasis on the Muslim perspective; some diversity is to be found only in
descriptions of the impact of 1857. Pakistani textbooks thus generally present
the events of 1857 as a unified movement of Hindus and the British against
Muslims. However, it is argued that after the uprising it was Muslims who
suffered the brunt of British anger and this contributed to the decline in their
living conditions. Although the failures of Bahadur Shah are admitted, the role
of Sikh and Hindu soldiers in helping to suppress the insurrection is prominently
stressed (only one in five of the attacking force was British). Hassan suggests
that one of the reasons for continued animosity in the present is the extreme
presentation of past conflicts in educational materials, an argument in which he
concurs with Krishna Kumar’s earlier study of the teaching of history in Indian
and Pakistani school.17 At the core of Hassan’s chapter is the manner in which
the teaching of history can affect current relations and perspectives, a fact of
which the government of Pakistan is clearly aware. He concludes by arguing that
the impact of such a mode of education should be considered and suggests that
teachers should take it upon themselves to introduce more nuanced perspectives
that might inspire students to interrogate information on past as well as present
events more critically.
Driven by concern for the lack of understanding and attention given to
Urdu historiography, in Chapter 11 Azizuddin Husain provides examples of his
translations of hitherto ignored Persian and Urdu documents for the benefit of
historians. Since comparatively few of the very large volume of Urdu sources
have been used until this point, Husain argues that only ‘one-side’ of the story of
1857 has been told. The chapter begins by describing the difficulty in obtaining
the documents. Few historians or archivists in India can read Persian or Urdu
documents in forms of short-hand such as shikasta or written using a cursive
style of lettering (taliq). As a result of a lack of proper archiving, many of the
writings are also in danger of being lost. This situation renders the translations
of these texts extremely important. A sample of these Urdu sources provides
 Introduction xxvii

several startling insights concerning issues such as the treatment of British

prisoners and the condition of Shahjahanabad in 1857. Insights into the situation
of Christians and the possible persecution faced by them are revealed, alongside
allusions to the depredations of the Gujars around Delhi and the fragile power
of the Indian government. The conflict is brought to life as the documents depict
the collapse of the chain of command under the Mughal Emperor, with even
the simplest of tasks requiring direct orders from the Emperor in order to be
performed. Details emerge of covert British operations to undermine the Delhi
government, as well as revelations about the mind-set of Bahadur, including
his threats to commit suicide because of the treatment he was receiving, and to
abandon the Red Fort in favour of a Sufi shrine at Mehrauli in the closing stages
of the British siege. Finally, ethical and religious issues arising amongst the rebel
forces are discussed, together with evidence of support for the insurrection from
princely rulers in Rajasthan and details of the vast destruction wrought upon the
capital city following its recapture by the British. The case is thus clearly made
for Urdu sources to be taken more seriously by historians if they are to obtain a
truly comprehensive picture of the uprising.
The varying ways to interpret and teach the subject of history, specifically
the history of India, are examined in Peter Robb’s concluding chapter in this
volume. Robb laments the current trend that teaches British students with an
emphasis on inherited guilt. This, he argues, is especially true in the manner in
which Indian history is taught, particularly concerning the events of 1857. In
the midst of a general decline in the quality of history teaching at early levels,
he argues that the events of Indian history presented to students have been
particularly distorted. A simplified version has been created where the aim
is to teach the legacy of British rule in India, rather than the history of India
and Pakistan as independent wholes. Robb reflects on the dominance of the
Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 in history curricula and how it is used to
emphasise colonial violence, to the detriment of exploring its wider significance.
The chapter concludes that such a method of education warps students’
perceptions of violence, forcing them to oversimplify. The effects of a simplified
approach to violence can be seen in the study of themes and dominant historical
personalities such as Gandhi, whose adherence to non-violence is emphasised
to the detriment of understanding his skills as a politician. Students are taught
to fall into the assumption that all violence should automatically be condemned
and all non-violence is praiseworthy—a stance that creates an unfeasible black
and white perspective on morality whilst misshaping perceptions of Indian
identity. Robb suggests that the teaching of a history of India and Britain that
directly poses one against the other is irresponsibly misleading, as the past and
present links between them are manifold. The legacy of colonialism, it is argued,
was not purely one of violence and injustice but also a mingling of cultures that
resulted in improvement and learning for both.
xxviii Crispin Bates

Robb concludes that only by training students to think critically and without
guilt can there be valid education. But critical thought is the crucial issue here.
If present generations seek to claim prestige or legitimise their status or influence
by reference to the achievements of their ancestors (as all too commonly they
do), then they must equally acknowledge their crimes and errors. But if history
is used to explain rather than justify the prejudices and policies of the present,
then it can play a progressive role. The essays collected in this volume describe
the various ways in which remembrance of the events of the Great Uprising
has been selectively used, twisted or suppressed to serve the purposes of later
generations. As a result of its central importance in the history of Britain, the
British Empire, and of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, the Uprising has been
bent to political purposes perhaps more than any other event in the modern
history of the subcontinent. Brave attempts to rebalance the equation have been
confounded by the selective preservation of relevant historical sources, or have
been silenced by criticism. Worse still, has been the pernicious tendency towards
self-censorship, which has prevented Indian and British scholars from admitting
that there was ever anything but a singular just cause and purpose in the minds
of insurgents and counter-insurgents, that this was shared in common amongst
subalterns and elites alike, and even with those far removed from the epicentre
of the conflict and its aftermath. They have failed, in other words, to distinguish
the ideology of conflict from its immediate stratagems and effects, and have
confused post-pacification rationalisations with aims and intentions during
the conflict itself. In both Britain and India, such myths have played a central
role in twentieth century nation and empire building projects. However, they
ill suit present generations faced with the entirely new demands of the twenty-
first century. By re-thinking the way we fashion our historiography, we may
hopefully craft a more central role for the people, places and ideas that have been
marginalised in previous histories of the Great Uprising. In this way, the events
of ‘the mutiny’ can continue to provide a source of inspiration for scholars and
students in the future. We might also begin to conceive of a history that is post-
nationalist and post-imperialist, less Euro-centric, and rather more globally
comparative and inclusive in its approach.

Notes and References

1. Neeladri Bhattacharya, ‘Teaching History in Schools: The Politics of Textbooks in India’,

History Workshop Journal, 67(1), (2009): 99–110. Richard Garner, ‘“Jingoistic and Illegal”—
What Teachers Think of Michael Gove’s National Curriculum Reforms’, The Independent,
12 June 2013.
2. Pointing to examples of excessive interference and maladministration by the East India
Company, Benjamin Disraeli famously said ‘The decline and fall of empires are not affairs of
greased cartridges. Such results are occasioned by adequate causes, and by an accumulation
 Introduction xxix

of adequate causes.’ Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 27 July 1857, vol. 147 cc 440–546,
pp. 474–475. A summary of his views is available in Bernard Porter, The Lion’s Share: A Short
History of British Imperialism (London: Pearson, 1976, 2004), pp. 41–48.
3. On British criticisms of the campaign, see Chandrika Kaul, ‘“You Cannot Govern by Force
Alone”: W.H. Russell, The Times and the Great Rebellion’, in Mutiny at the Margins, vol. 3 (New
Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2013) and Christopher Herbert, War of No Pity: The Indian Mutiny
and Victorian Trauma (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). Diverse European views
(generally sympathetic to the rebels) are explored in Shaswati Mazumdar, Insurgent Sepoys:
Europe Views the Revolt of 1857 (London: Routledge, 2011).
4. Lord Roberts recorded ‘our men now sack and destroy all the Native [houses in Delhi]… killing
every man we came across… In one pit upwards of 500 bodies were thrown… nearly 2000
Pandies were on the ground dead or dying’, F.S. Roberts, Letters Written during the Indian
Mutiny (London: Macmillan, 1924), pp. 59, 103, 146. C. Griffiths, A Narrative of the Siege
of Delhi (London: John Murray, 1910), Ch. 3, p. 197 described one of several officers during
the capture of Delhi who claimed to have ‘put to death all he had come across, not excepting
women and children’. W.H. Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary (London: Cassell, 1957),
pp. 281–282, described Renaud as ‘emulous of Neill’ in his march from Allahabad: ‘executions
of… natives in the line of the march were indiscriminate to the last degree... In two days
forty-two men were hanged on the roadside, and a batch of twelve men were executed because
their faces were “turned the wrong way” when they were met on the march.’ In one gruesome
incident in Lahore district, 282 soldiers of a disbanded regiment, the 26th Native Infantry (who
took no part in the conflict), surrendered to Frederick Cooper in the belief they were to receive
a court martial and were crammed into a police station and old bastion at Ajnala. Those who
survived suffocation were shot the next morning in batches of 10. Frederick Cooper, The Crisis
in the Punjab from the 10th of May until the Fall of Delhi (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1858),
pp. 158–163.
5. The concept of ‘social suffering’ derives from Arthur and Joan Kleinman. See Kleinman, Das,
V. and Lock, M.M. (eds), Social Suffering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). It has
been used most effectively by Gyan Pandey in Remembering Partition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001) to question the silences, thin consolations and received assignations of
responsibility that have helped constitute the originary myths of the nation states of India and
Pakistan.
6. Tapti Roy, The Politics of a Popular Uprising: Bundelkhand in 1857 (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1995); Pankaj Raj, 1857: the Oral Tradition (New Delhi: Rupa & Co. 2010).
7. The value of a book history approach to the early literature of the British Empire is exemplified
in Ashok Malhotra, Making British Indian Fictions, 1772–1823 (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2012).
8. One example of a contemporary British narrative that deviates from the norm is Mrs Henry
Duberly’s, Campaigning Experiences in Rajpootana and Central India during the Suppression of
the Mutiny, 1857–1858 (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1859). The very title suggests the author
was an active participant, and she does indeed ride into battle alongside her husband’s troops
and does not hesitate to openly criticise the policies of British military officers.
9. Rosie Llewellyn Jones, The Great Uprising in India, 1857–58: Untold Stories, Indian and British
(New Delhi: Viva, 2008).
10. Stuart Ward (ed.), British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2001); Elizabeth Buettner, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 2004); Elizabeth K. Wallace, The British Slave Trade and Public
Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); J.R. Oldfield, ‘Chords of Freedom’:
Commemoration, Ritual and British Transatlantic Slavery (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2007).
xxx Crispin Bates

11. Richard Gott, Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt (London: Verso, 2011);
Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire
(London: Palgrave, 2011); and John Newsinger, Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the
British Empire (London: Bookmarks, 2013).
12. Huw Bennett, Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya
Emergency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); David Anderson, Histories of
the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London: W.W. Norton, 2005);
Caroline Elkins, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (London: Pimlico, 2005).
13. David Sandgren, Mau Mau’s Children: The Making of Kenya’s Postcolonial Elite (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 2012).
14. Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).
15. T.N. Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), p. 174.
16. Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical
Thought from Herder to the Present, 2nd edition (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University
Press, 1984); Stefan Berger, Mark Donovan, and Kevin Passmore (eds), Writing National
Histories: Western Europe Since 1800 (London: Routledge, 1998); Stefan Berger and Chris
Lorenz (eds), The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories
(London: Palgrave, 2008).
17. Krishna Kumar, Prejudice and Pride: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and
Pakistan (New Delhi: Penguin 2001).