The mutiny and great revolt of 1857–59

When soldiers of the Bengal army mutinied in Meerut on May 10, 1857, tension had been
growing for some time. The immediate cause of military disaffection was the deployment of the
new breech-loading Enfield rifle, the cartridge of which was purportedly greased with pork and
beef fat. When Muslim and Hindu troops learned that the tip of the Enfield cartridge had to be
bitten off to prepare it for firing, a number of troops refused, for religious reasons, to accept the
ammunition. These recalcitrant troops were placed in irons, but their comrades soon came to
their rescue. They shot the British officers and made for Delhi, 40 miles (65 km) distant, where
there were no British troops. The Indian garrison at Delhi joined them, and by the next nightfall
they had secured the city and Mughal fort, proclaiming the aged titular Mughal emperor,
Bahādur Shah II, as their leader. There at a stroke was an army, a cause, and a national leader—
the only Muslim who appealed to both Hindus and Muslims.

Nature and causes of the rebellion

This movement became much more than a military mutiny. There has been much controversy
over its nature and causes. The British military commander Sir James Outram thought it was a
Muslim conspiracy, exploiting Hindu grievances. Or it might have been an aristocratic plot, set
off too soon by the Meerut outbreak. But the only evidence for either of these was the
circulation from village to village of chapatis, or cakes of unleavened bread, a practice that,
though it also occurred on other occasions, was known to have taken place at any time of
unrest. The lack of planning after the outbreak rules out these two explanations, while the
degree of popular support argues more than a purely military outbreak.

Nationalist historians have seen in it the first Indian war of independence. In fact, it was rather
the last effort of traditional India. It began on a point of caste pollution; its leaders were
traditionalists who looked to reviving the past, while the small new Westernized class actively
supported the British. And the leaders were not united, because they sought to revive former
Hindu and Muslim regimes, which in their heyday had bitterly clashed. But something important
was required to provoke so many to seize the opportunity of a military uprising to stage a war of
independence.

The military cause was both particular and general. The particular reason, the greased
cartridges for the Enfield rifles, was a mistake rectified as soon as it was discovered; but the fact
that explanations and reissues could not quell the soldiers’ suspicions suggests that the troops
were already disturbed by other causes. The Bengal army of some 130,000 Indian troops may
have contained as many as 40,000 Brahmans as well as many Rajputs. The British had
accentuated caste consciousness by careful regulations, had allowed discipline to grow lax, and
had failed to maintain understanding between British officers and their men. In addition, the
General Service Enlistment Act of 1856 required recruits to serve overseas if ordered, a
challenge to the castes who composed so much of the Bengal army. To these points may be
added the fact that the British garrison in Bengal had been reduced at this time to 23,000 men
because of troop withdrawals for the Crimean and Persian wars. (See Barrackpore Mutiny.)

The general factors that turned a military mutiny into a popular revolt can be comprehensively
described under the heading of political, economic, social, and cultural Westernization.
Politically, many princes of India had retired into seclusion after their final defeat in 1818. But
the wars against the Afghans and the Sikhs and then the annexations of Dalhousie alarmed and
outraged them. The Muslims had lost the large state of Avadh; the Marathas had lost Nagpur,
Satara, and Jhansi. Further, the British were becoming increasingly hostile toward traditional
survivals and contemptuous of most things Indian. There was therefore both resentment and
unease among the old governing class, fanned in Delhi by the British decision to end the
Mughal imperial title on Bahādur Shah’s death.

Economically and socially, there had been much dislocation in the landholding class all over
northern and western India as a result of British land-revenue settlements, setting group
against group. There was thus a suppressed tension in the countryside, ready to break out
whenever governmental pressure might be reduced.

Then came the Western innovations of the now overconfident British. Their educational policy
was a Westernizing one, with English instead of Persian as the official language; the old elites,
schooled in the traditional pattern, felt themselves slighted. Western inventions such as the
telegraph and railways aroused the prejudice of a conservative society (though Indians crowded
the trains when they had them). More disturbing to traditional sensibilities were the
interventions, in the name of humanity, in the realm of Hindu custom—e.g., the prohibition of
suttee, the campaign against infanticide, the law legalizing remarriage of Hindu widows. Finally,
there was the activity of Christian missionaries, by that time widespread. Government was
ostentatiously neutral, but Hindu society was inclined to regard the missionaries as eroding
Hindu society without openly interfering. In sum, this combination of factors produced, besides
the normal tensions endemic in India, an uneasy, fearful, suspicious, and resentful frame of
mind and a wind of unrest ready to fan the flame of any actual physical outbreak.

The revolt and its aftermath

From Delhi the revolt spread in June to Kanpur (Cawnpore) and Lucknow. The surrender of
Kanpur, after a relatively brief siege, was followed by a massacre of virtually all British citizens
and loyal Indian soldiers at Kanpur. The Lucknow garrison held out in the residency from July 1,
in spite of the death of Sir Henry Lawrence on July 4. The campaign then settled down to British
attempts to take Delhi and relieve Lucknow. In spite of their apparently desperate situation, the
British possessed long-term advantages: they could and did receive reinforcements from
Britain; they had, thanks to the resolution of Sir John Lawrence, a firm base in the Punjab, and
they had another base in Bengal, where the people were quiet; they had virtually no anxiety in
the south and only a little in the west; and they had an immense belief in themselves and their
civilization, which gave resolution to their initial desperation. The mutineers, on the other hand,
lacked good leadership until nearly the end, and they had no confidence in themselves and
suffered the guilt feelings of rebels without a cause, making them frantic and fearful by turns.

In the Punjab were some 10,000 British troops, which made it possible to disarm the Indian
regiments; and the recently defeated Sikhs were so hostile to the Muslims that they supported
the British against the Mughal restoration in Delhi. A small British army was improvised, which
held the ridge before Delhi against greatly superior forces until Sir John Lawrence was able to
send a siege train under John Nicholson. With this, and the aid of rebel dissensions, Delhi was
stormed and captured by the British on September 20, while the emperor Bahādur Shah
surrendered on promise of his life.

Down-country operations centred on the relief of Lucknow. Setting out from Allahabad, Sir
Henry Havelock fought through Kanpur to the Lucknow residency on September 25, where he
was besieged in turn. But the back of the rebellion had been broken and time gained for
reinforcements to restore British superiority. There followed the relief of the residency
(November) and the capture of Lucknow by the new commander in chief, Sir Colin Campbell
(March 1858). By a campaign in Avadh and Rohilkhand, Campbell cleared the countryside.
The next phase was the central Indian campaign of Sir Hugh Rose. He first defeated the Gwalior
contingent and then, when the rebels Tantia Topi and Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi had seized
Gwalior, broke up their forces in two more battles. The rani found a soldier’s death, and Tantia
Topi became a fugitive. With the British recovery of Gwalior (June 20, 1858), the revolt was
virtually over.

The restoration of peace was hindered by British cries for vengeance, often leading to
indiscriminate reprisals. The treatment of the aged Bahādur Shah, who was sent into exile, was
a disgrace to a civilized country; also, the whole population of Delhi was driven out into the
open, and thousands were killed after perfunctory trials or no trials at all. Order was restored
by the firmness of Charles John Canning (later Earl Canning), first viceroy of India (governed
1858–62), whose title of “Clemency” was given in derision by angry British merchants in
Calcutta, and of Sir John Lawrence in the Punjab. Ferocity led to grave excesses on both sides,
distinguishing this war in horror from other wars of the 19th century.

Measures of prevention of future crises naturally began with the army, which was completely
reorganized. The ratio of British to Indian troops was fixed at roughly 1:2 instead of 1:5—one
British and two Indian battalions were formed into brigades so that no sizable station should be
without British troops. The effective Indian artillery, except for a few mountain batteries, was
abolished, while the Brahmans and Rajputs of Avadh were reduced in favour of other groups.
The officers continued to be British, but they were more closely linked with their men. The
army became an efficient professional body, drawn largely from the northwest and aloof from
the national life.