Movie On 1857 Revolt
Heli Whetzel
In the mid-19th century, India was very different from the nation state we know today. It didn't exist as a country, but instead consisted of different territories controlled by a variety of rulers. The greatest of these was the British East India Company which governed two thirds of the subcontinent.
Originally formed in 1600 purely to trade with the Mughal Empire, the Company needed to secure its commercial posts at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. It purchased land from Indian rulers to build its settlements on, and recruited native armed forces to protect them. Eventually, these evolved into the Bengal, Bombay and Madras Armies.
Of the 159,000 men on the Bengal Army establishment in 1857, 24,000 were European and 135,000 were Indian sepoys (infantry) and sowars (cavalry). This ratio was especially problematic given that discipline in the Bengal Army had for some time been inferior to that in the Company's other armies.
Poor terms of service and pensions, bad pay, lack of promotion, and increased cultural and racial insensitivity from British officers all contributed to the feelings of discontent among the Indian soldiers of the Bengal Army. Many high caste Hindu sepoys also viewed attempts during the 1840s to extend recruitment to lower caste Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims as a threat to their traditional social status.
Rumours spread that the cartridges for the new rifle were greased with pig and cow fat. This made them offensive to both Muslims and Hindus, and added weight to existing concerns about forced conversion to Christianity.
On 29 March 1857 at Barrackpore, Sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry attacked his officers. When his comrades were ordered to restrain him they refused, but they stopped short of joining him in open revolt.
The Mutiny proper began at Meerut on 10 May 1857. Eighty-five members of the 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry, who had been jailed for refusing to use cartridges they believed to be at odds with their religion, were broken out of prison by their comrades. They ransacked the nearby military station and killed any Europeans they could find.
The situation rapidly escalated, and the British reacted slowly. The following day Delhi fell to the mutineers. News of these events spread, encouraging further mutinies elsewhere. Eventually all 10 Bengal Light Cavalry Regiments and most of the 74 Bengal Native Infantry Regiments were affected.
Some units were disarmed before they had the chance to mutiny. In other cases, British officers refused to believe their men would rebel until it was too late. Not everyone who mutinied took up arms against the British. Many simply went home and refused to assist either side.
There were only 35,000 British soldiers in the whole subcontinent and these were widely scattered. Reinforcements took months to arrive. Fortunately for the British, it was almost exclusively soldiers of the Bengal Army who mutinied.
Equally unpopular was the policy of lapse, which said that the lands of any ruler who died without a male heir would be forfeit to the Company. Princes and maharajahs, along with their courtiers and soldiers, found themselves unemployed and humiliated.
These marginalised people, seen as having the authority to lead a campaign against the British, were in many cases a natural focal point for mutineers. And although they may have preferred to deal differently with the British, the arrival of rebel sepoys at their gates often forced them to take up the cause.
Many wanted to destroy the system by which the Company collected taxes. Peasants, who had been forced to switch from subsistence farming to export crops in order to meet increasing tax demands, needed little encouragement to rebel.
Following the outbreak at Meerut, uprisings by soldiers and civilians alike occurred across northern and central India. But the main centres of rebellion were Delhi, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Jhansi and Gwalior. The future of India would be decided on these battlefields.
The Indian rebellion was fed by resentments born of diverse perceptions, including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, summary treatment of some rich landowners and princes,[12][13] and scepticism about the improvements brought about by British rule.[g][14] Many Indians rose against the British; however, many also fought for the British, and the majority remained seemingly compliant to British rule.[h][14] Violence, which sometimes betrayed exceptional cruelty, was inflicted on both sides, on British officers, and civilians, including women and children, by the rebels, and on the rebels, and their supporters, including sometimes entire villages, by British reprisals; the cities of Delhi and Lucknow were laid waste in the fighting and the British retaliation.[i][14]
In some regions, most notably in Awadh, the rebellion took on the attributes of a patriotic revolt against British oppression.[16] However, the rebel leaders proclaimed no articles of faith that presaged a new political system.[l][17] Even so, the rebellion proved to be an important watershed in Indian and British Empire history.[m][11][18] It led to the dissolution of the East India Company, and forced the British to reorganize the army, the financial system, and the administration in India, through passage of the Government of India Act 1858.[19] India was thereafter administered directly by the British government in the new British Raj.[15] On 1 November 1858, Queen Victoria issued a proclamation to Indians, which while lacking the authority of a constitutional provision,[n][20] promised rights similar to those of other British subjects.[o][p][21] In the following decades, when admission to these rights was not always forthcoming, Indians were to pointedly refer to the Queen's proclamation in growing avowals of a new nationalism.[q][r][23]
The sepoys were Indian soldiers who were recruited into the company's army. Just before the rebellion, there were over 300,000 sepoys in the army, compared to about 50,000 British. The East India Company's forces were divided into three presidency armies: Bombay, Madras, and Bengal. The Bengal Army recruited higher castes, such as Brahmins, Rajputs and Bhumihar, mostly from the Awadh and Bihar regions, and even restricted the enlistment of lower castes in 1855.[29] In contrast, the Madras Army and Bombay Army were "more localized, caste-neutral armies" that "did not prefer high-caste men".[30] The domination of higher castes in the Bengal Army has been blamed in part for initial mutinies that led to the rebellion.[citation needed]
After the annexation of Oudh (Awadh) by the East India Company in 1856, many sepoys were disquieted both from losing their perquisites, as landed gentry, in the Oudh courts, and from the anticipation of any increased land-revenue payments that the annexation might bring about.[33] Other historians have stressed that by 1857, some Indian soldiers, interpreting the presence of missionaries as a sign of official intent, were convinced that the company was masterminding mass conversions of Hindus and Muslims to Christianity.[34] Although earlier in the 1830s, evangelicals such as William Carey and William Wilberforce had successfully clamoured for the passage of social reform, such as the abolition of sati and allowing the remarriage of Hindu widows, there is little evidence that the sepoys' allegiance was affected by this.[33]
However, changes in the terms of their professional service may have created resentment. As the extent of the East India Company's jurisdiction expanded with victories in wars or annexation, the soldiers were now expected not only to serve in less familiar regions, such as in Burma, but also to make do without the "foreign service" remuneration that had previously been their due.[35]
There were also grievances over the issue of promotions, based on seniority. This, as well as the increasing number of British officers in the battalions,[37][better source needed] made promotion slow, and many Indian officers did not reach commissioned rank until they were too old to be effective.[38]
The final spark was provided by the ammunition for the new Enfield Pattern 1853 rifled musket.[39] These rifles, which fired Mini balls, had a tighter fit than the earlier muskets, and used paper cartridges that came pre-greased. To load the rifle, sepoys had to bite the cartridge open to release the powder.[40] The grease used on these cartridges was rumoured to include tallow derived from beef, which would be offensive to Hindus,[41] and lard derived from pork, which would be offensive to Muslims. At least one Company official pointed out the difficulties this might cause:
unless it be proven that the grease employed in these cartridges is not of a nature to offend or interfere with the prejudices of religion, it will be expedient not to issue them for test to Native corps.[42]
However, in August 1856, greased cartridge production was initiated at Fort William, Calcutta, following a British design. The grease used included tallow supplied by the Indian firm of Gangadarh Banerji & Co.[43] By January, rumours abounded that the Enfield cartridges were greased with animal fat.[citation needed]
Company officers became aware of the rumours through reports of an altercation between a high-caste sepoy and a low-caste labourer at Dum Dum.[44] The labourer had taunted the sepoy that by biting the cartridge, he had himself lost caste, although at this time such cartridges had been issued only at Meerut and not at Dum Dum.[45] There had been rumours that the British sought to destroy the religions of the Indian people, and forcing the native soldiers to break their sacred code would have certainly added to this rumour, as it apparently did. The company was quick to reverse the effects of this policy in hopes that the unrest would be quelled.[46][47]
On 27 January, Colonel Richard Birch, the Military Secretary, ordered that all cartridges issued from depots were to be free from grease, and that sepoys could grease them themselves using whatever mixture "they may prefer".[48] A modification was also made to the drill for loading so that the cartridge was torn with the hands and not bitten. This, however, merely caused many sepoys to be convinced that the rumours were true and that their fears were justified. Additional rumours started that the paper in the new cartridges, which was glazed and stiffer than the previously used paper, was impregnated with grease.[49] In February, a court of inquiry was held at Barrackpore to get to the bottom of these rumours. Native soldiers called as witnesses complained of the paper "being stiff and like cloth in the mode of tearing", said that when the paper was burned it smelled of grease, and announced that the suspicion that the paper itself contained grease could not be removed from their minds.[50]
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