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    The Indian Uprising of 1857 (Keywords in modern Indian studies)

    Chapter · January 2012

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    Crispin Bates
    University of Edinburgh
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    From Dharampal-Frick, G., Kirloskar-Steinbach, M. & Phalkey (eds.), J., Keywords in modern
    Indian studies (SOAS Studies on South Asia), (Oxford: OUP, 2012)

    The Indian Uprising of 1857


    Crispin Bates

    The Uprising of 1857 had both material and emotional causes. It began as a mutiny
    within the ranks of the native sipahi or ‘sepoy’ army of the Bengal Presidency in
    North India. The immediate provocation for this mutiny lay in rumours that claimed,
    amongst other things, that the army were to be issued with a new rifle, the Enfield,
    the cartridges for which were greased with the fat of pigs and cows. This was
    supposed to be a deliberate attempt to undermine the religions of both Hindu and
    Muslim soldiers in the army. This explanation was favoured by British historians of
    the time, but behind these rumours lay more general anxieties, concerning the
    Christian missionary activities encouraged by the East India Company and the
    perceived and real injustices perpetuated under Company rule. Hindus and Muslims
    thus rose simultaneously some historians claim to protect their dharma (religious
    ethic) and din (faith) and to ‘save the country’. However, a more immediate cause of
    discontent amongst the sepoys was the General Service Enlistment Act of 1856,
    which threatened to remove the substantial special payments made to troops
    serving beyond the boundaries of the Presidency and which proposed to diversify
    recruitment, thereby removing the priority accorded to sons of sepoys. This attack on
    the livelihoods of sepoy families was considered an act of betrayal.
    The 19th Native Infantry, stationed at Barrackpore just west of Calcutta, was the first
    regiment to take up arms against its officers. Those involved in this mutiny were
    arrested and the regiment disbanded. On the day following the initial outbreak – 29
    March 1857 – Mangal Pande of the 34th Regiment, which had been barracked
    alongside the 19th, fired at his commanding officer but was overpowered. He and
    another sepoy were tried and executed. After the 34th was also disbanded, rumours
    about the greased cartridges and the summary disbanding of regiments spread
    rapidly. Six weeks later, a thousand miles away, a native regiment at Meerut was
    publicly humiliated for refusing even to train in the use of the (yet to be issued)
    cartridges, being marched in shackles to jail. The next evening (10 May), the
    remaining sepoys rallied around the guns of their regiments, forced open the
    armoury, released their colleagues from jail, and attacked and killed their British
    officers along with a number of civilians. The following day they marched to Delhi.
    By demanding that the aged Mughal emperor in Delhi, Bahadur Shah II, should
    support their revolt, and by calling for the expulsion of the British feringhi from India,
    the Meerut regiments indicated their desire for a restoration of past authority.
    Simultaneously, although they had no desire for a revival of Mughal rule, many north
    Indian elites rose to arms to defend their respective territories following the collapse
    of British power. Other regiments joined the Mutiny, eventually totalling more than
    100,000 soldiers. But in the absence of effective leadership, the uprising
    degenerated into uncoordinated sieges of the surviving British garrisons in north
    India, made famous by the prolonged struggle to rescue besieged British families
    from the British Residency in Lucknow (finally achieved in November 1857) and
    infamous by the massacre in June and July 1857 of British soldiers and their
    families at Kanpur
    The military mutiny was accompanied by a widespread civil insurrection which
    affected most of the Indo-Gangetic plain. The fiercest fighting was in the territory of
    the former princely state of Awadh in eastern Uttar Pradesh, from which many
    sepoys had been recruited. The British seizure of this once loyal kingdom, the
    deposition of the Nawab (formally regent of the Mughal empire), the raising of land
    taxes, and the displacement of aristocratic landlords (talukdars) were all important
    factors furthering the revolt. British reprisals were ruthless and re-captured towns
    and cities were laid waste as well as villages which had supported the mutineers.
    The British faced continual uprisings in India but that of 1857-59 was by far the
    largest and most bloody. The 1857 uprising was also the most politically significant.
    Since British families were caught up in the fighting there was widespread public
    support for the sending of Government troops to India to put down the rebellion. The
    capture, deposition and exile of the last Timurid Emperor in September 1857 marked
    the end of Mughal rule and vast new territories came under the direct control of the
    British, including the former Mughal imperial capital of Delhi. However, the campaign
    bankrupted the East India Company and from 1858 onwards the EIC’s Indian
    territories were brought under the rule of the British crown. The uprising was thus of
    global significance, since after this date the activities of British trading corporations
    across the globe were replaced by the establishment of formal imperial control. 1857
    thus marks (following the loss of the American colonies in 1769) the beginning of
    what has been termed ‘the second British empire’. At the second time it provided an
    important inspiration to later Indian nationalists.

    References
    Rudrangshu Mukherjee Awadh in Revolt 1857–1858 (New Delhi: Permanent Black,
    2001).
    Tapti Roy The Politics of a Popular Uprising: Bundelkhand in 1857 (Delhi: Oxford
    University Press India, 1994).
    Eric Stokes (C. A. Bayly ed.) The Peasant Armed: The Indian Rebellion of 1857
    (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
    Kim A. Wagner The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of
    the Indian Uprising (Oxford: Peter Lang Oxford, 2010).

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