The Indian Rebellion of 1857 had diverse political, economic, military, religious
and social causes. The sepoys, a generic term used for
native Indian soldiers of the Bengal Army, had their own list of grievances
against the Company administration, mainly caused by the ethnic gulf between
the European officers and their Indian troops. The British had issued new
gunpowder cartridges that were widely believed to be greased with cow or pig
fat, which insulted both Hindus and Muslims. Other than Indian units of the
British East India Company's army, much of the resistance came from the old
aristocracy, who were seeing their power steadily eroded under the Company.
Frictions Some Indians were upset with what they
saw as the draconian rule of the Company who had embarked on a project of
territorial expansion and westernisation that was imposed without any regard for
historical subtleties in Indian society. Changes introduced by the British were
accompanied by prohibitions on Indian religious customs, seen as steps towards
a forced conversion to Christianity. Historian William Dalrymple asserts that
the rebels were motivated primarily by resistance to the move of the British
East India Company, which was perceived as an attempt to impose Christianity and
Christian laws in India. For instance, when Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar
met the sepoys on 11 May 1857, he was told: "We have joined hands to protect
our religion and our faith." They later stood in Chandni Chowk, the main square,
and asked the people gathered there, "Brothers, are you with those of the
faith?" Those European men and women who had previously converted to Islam such
as Sergeant-Major Gordon, and Abdullah Beg, a former Company soldier, were
spared. In contrast, foreign Christians such as Revd Midgeley John Jennings, and
Indian converts to Christianity such as one of Zafar's personal physicians, Dr.
Chaman Lal, were killed. Dalrymple further points out that as
late as 6 September, when calling the inhabitants of Delhi to rally against
the upcoming Company assault, Zafar issued a proclamation stating that this
was a religious war being prosecuted on behalf of 'the faith', and that all
Muslim and Hindu residents of the imperial city, or of the countryside
were encouraged to stay true to their faith and creeds. As further evidence,
he observes that the Urdu sources of the pre- and post-rebellion periods usually
refer to the British not as angrez, goras or firangis, but as kafir and
nasrani. Some historians have suggested that the
impact of these reforms has been greatly exaggerated, as the Company did not have
the resources to enforce them, meaning that away from Calcutta their effect was
negligible. Economics
The Indians felt that the Company was asking for heavy tax from the locals.
This included an increase in the taxation on land. This seems to have
been the most important reason, keeping in view the speed at which the
conflagration spread to the villages where farmers rushed to get back their
unfairly grabbed title deeds. The resumption of tax free land and
confiscation of jagirs caused discontent among the jagirdars and zamindars . Lord
William Bentinck had attached several jagirs in Bengal. He also resumed the
tax free lands. It caused widespread resentment not only among the landed
aristocracy but also caused great havoc to a larger section of the middle-class
people. The lands were confiscated from the landlords and auctioned. Rich people
like the merchants and moneylenders bought it.
Sepoys During the late eighteenth century and
the early part of the nineteenth century, the armies of the East India
Company, in particular those of the Bengal Presidency, were victorious and
indomitable — the term "high noon of the sepoy army" has been used by a military
historian. The Company had an unbroken series of victories in India, against
the Marathas, Mysore, north Indian states, and the Gurkhas, later against
the Sikhs, and further afield in China and Burma. The Company had developed a
military organisation where fealty of the sepoys to the Company was considered
the height of "izzat" or honour, where the European officers replaced the
village headman in battalions and units peopled by soldiers closely related or
belonging to the same caste, community or hamlet and became benevolent figures
of authority to the sepoys. Unlike the Mumbai and Chennai Armies,
which were far more diverse, the Bengal Army recruited its regular soldiers
almost exclusively amongst the landowning Bhumihar Brahmins and Rajputs
of the Ganges Valley. Though paid marginally less than the Bombay and
Madras Presidency troops, there was implicit trust between the soldiery and
the establishment — the soldiers felt needed and that the company would care
for their welfare. The soldiers performed splendidly on the field of
battle in exchange for which they were rewarded with symbolic heraldic rewards
such as battle honours in addition to the extra pay or "batta" routinely
disbursed for operations committed beyond the established borders of
Company rule. There was a feeling of invincibility,
especially amongst the Indian population and the sepoys, about the iqbal or
continued good fortune of the East India Company. During the mid-nineteenth
century, events disturbed these beliefs of the soldiery, all of which
contributed to the escalation of events in 1857. The belief of invincibility of
the British was lost in the First Anglo-Afghan War where poor political
judgement and inept British leadership led to the massacre of Elphinstone's
army while retreating from Kabul. When the mood of the sepoys turned against
their masters, they remembered Kabul and that the British, like everyone else,
were not invincible. Caste privileges and customs within the
Bengal Army were not merely tolerated but encouraged in the early years of the
Company's Rule. Partly owing to this, Bengal Sepoys were not subject to the
penalty of flogging as were the European soldiers. This meant that when they came
to be threatened by modernising regimes in Calcutta from the 1840s onwards, the
sepoys had become accustomed to very high ritual status, and were extremely
sensitive to suggestions that their caste might be polluted. If the caste of
high-caste sepoys was considered to be "polluted", they would have to expend
considerable sums of money on ritual purification before being accepted back
into society. There were many indications that all was
not well in the armies of the East India Company in the form of mutinies by
company troops. As early as 1806, concerns that the sepoys' caste may be
polluted had led to the Vellore Mutiny, which was brutally suppressed. In 1824,
there was another mutiny by a regiment ordered overseas in the First
Anglo-Burmese War, who were refused transport to carry individual cooking
vessels and told to share communal pots. Eleven of the sepoys were executed and
hundreds more sentenced to hard labour. In 1851-2 sepoys who were required to
serve in the Second Anglo-Burmese War also refused to move, but were merely
sent to serve elsewhere. The pay of the sepoy was relatively low
and after Awadh and the Punjab were annexed, the soldiers no longer received
extra pay for service there, because they were no longer considered "foreign
missions". Since the batta made the difference between service being
munificent or harsh, troops repeatedly opposed inconsiderate unilateral changes
in pay and batta ordered by the Military Audit department. In the past, the
refusal to proceed on service until pay issues were resolved was considered a
legitimate form of displaying grievance by Indian troops serving with Indian
rulers and as such was considered a legitimate tactic by the sepoys also,
being repeated every time such issues arose. The British considered such
refusal at times as treachery of the highest order and crushed these refusals
brutally, at other times the Company directly or indirectly conceded the
legitimacy of the sepoy's demands, as when troops of the Bengal and Madras
armies refused to serve in Sindh without batta after its conquest.
The varying stances of the British government, the reduction of allowances
and harsh punishments contributed to a feeling of the troops that the Company
no longer cared for them. Certain actions of the government, such as
increased recruitment of Sikhs and Gurkhas, peoples considered by the
Bengal sepoys to be inferior in caste to them, increased the distrust of the
sepoys who thought that this was a sign of their services not being needed any
more. The transfer of the number 66th which was taken away from a regular
Bengal sepoy battalion of the line disbanded over refusal to serve without
batta, and given to a Gurkha battalion, was considered by the sepoys as a breach
of faith by the Company. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, British officers were intimately involved with the troops,
speaking Indian languages fluently, participating in the culture of the
times even to the extent of having native spouses. Later, the attitudes of
British officers changed with increased intolerance, lack of involvement and
unconcern of the welfare of troops becoming manifest more and more.
Sympathetic rulers, such as Lord William Bentinck were replaced by arrogant
aristocrats, such as Lord Dalhousie, who despised the troops and the populace. As
time passed, the powers of the commanding officers reduced and the
government became more unfeeling or distant from the concerns of the sepoys.
Finally, officers of an evangelical persuasion in the Company's Army had
taken to preaching to their Sepoys in the hope of converting them to
Christianity. In 1857, the Bengal Army contained 10
regiments of Indian cavalry and 74 of infantry. All the cavalry units and 45
of the infantry units rebelled at some point; and all but 5 of the infantry
regiments which did not rebel had to be disbanded. Once the first rebellions
took place, it was clear to most British commanders that the grievances which led
to them were felt throughout the Bengal army and no Indian unit could wholly be
trusted, although many officers continued to vouch for their men's
loyalty, even in the face of captured correspondence indicating their
intention to rebel. The Bengal Army also administered,
sometimes loosely, 29 regiments of irregular horse and 42 of irregular
infantry. Some of these units belonged to states allied to the British or
recently absorbed into British-administered territory, and of
these, two large contingents from the states of Awadh and Gwalior readily
joined the growing rebellion. Other irregular units were raised in frontier
areas from communities such as Assamese or Pashtuns to maintain order locally.
Few of these participated in the rebellion, and one contingent in
particular actively participated on the British side.
The Bengal Army also contained three "European" regiments of infantry, and
many artillery units manned by white personnel. Due to the need for technical
specialists, the artillery units generally had a higher proportion of
British personnel. Although the armies of many Rajas or states which rebelled
contained large numbers of guns, the British superiority in artillery was to
be decisive in the siege of Delhi after the arrival of a siege train of
thirty-two howitzers and mortars. There were also a number of units from
the British Army stationed in India, but in 1857 several of these had been
withdrawn to take part in the Crimean War or the Anglo-Persian War of 1856.
The moment at which the sepoys' grievances led them openly to defy
British authority also happened to be the most favourable opportunity to do
so. The Enfield Rifle
The rebellion was, literally, started over a gun. Sepoys throughout India were
issued with a new rifle, the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifled musket—a more
powerful and accurate weapon than the old but smoothbore Brown Bess they had
been using for the previous decades. The rifling inside the musket barrel ensured
accuracy at much greater distances than was possible with old muskets. One thing
did not change in this new weapon — the loading process, which did not improve
significantly until the introduction of breech loaders and metallic, one-piece
cartridges a few decades later. To load both the old musket and the new
rifle, soldiers had to bite the cartridge open and pour the gunpowder it
contained into the rifle's muzzle, then stuff the cartridge case, which was
typically paper coated with some kind of grease or beeswax to make it waterproof,
into the musket as wadding, before loading it with a ball. The rifle's
cartridges contained 68 grains of FF blackpowder, and the ball was typically
a 530-grain Pritchett or a Burton-Minié ball.
It was believed that the cartridges that were standard issue with this rifle were
greased with lard which was regarded as unclean by Muslims and tallow which
angered the Hindus as cows were equal to goddess to them. The sepoys' British
officers dismissed these claims as rumours, and suggested that the sepoys
make a batch of fresh cartridges, and grease these with beeswax or mutton fat.
This reinforced the belief that the original issue cartridges were indeed
greased with lard and tallow. Another suggestion they put forward was
to introduce a new drill, in which the cartridge was not bitten with the teeth
but torn open with the hand. The sepoys rejected this, pointing out that they
might very well forget and bite the cartridge, not surprising given the
extensive drilling that allowed 19th century British & Indian troops to fire
three to four rounds per minute. British & Indian military drills of the time
required soldiers to bite off the end of the Beeswax paper cartridge, pour the
gunpowder contained within down the barrel, stuff the remaining paper
cartridge into the barrel, ram the paper cartridge down the barrel, remove the
ram-rod, return the ram-rod, bring the rifle to the ready, set the sights, add
a percussion cap, present the rifle, and fire. The musketry books also
recommended that, "Whenever the grease around the bullet appears to be melted
away, or otherwise removed from the cartridge, the sides of the bullet
should be wetted in the mouth before putting it into the barrel; the saliva
will serve the purpose of grease for the time being" This meant that biting a
musket cartridge was second nature to the Sepoys, some of whom had decades of
service in the Company's army, and who had been doing musket drill for every
day of their service. Prophecies, omens, signs and rumours
There was rumour about an old prophecy that the Company's rule would end after
a hundred years. Their rule in India had begun with the Battle of Plassey in
1757. Before the rebellion, there were reports
that "holy men" were mysteriously circulating chapatis and lotus flowers
among the sepoys. Leader of the British Conservative Party and future prime
minister Benjamin Disraeli argued these objects were signs to rebel and evidence
of a conspiracy, and the press echoed this belief.
After the rebellion, there was rumour in Britain that Russia was responsible.
Citations References
External links Details of the rifle issued as a result
of the mutiny