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As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of our first war of independence, the debate goes on—a mutiny, a revolt, a religious war or India’s first call for freedom?
Taking a closer look at the events at that time, we realize that there were several reasons that prompted the uprising. Apart from the story of bullets greased with cow- and pig-fat, the attempts at spreading Christianity among the soldiers were also a cause of concern for the soldiers. The Indian rulers were resentful of the Doctrine of Lapse. The people, in general, had other grievances like high taxation and abolishment of several long-time customs.
It’s an established fact that most of the British, and subsequent European, historians have always tried to downplay the event by labelling it as a ‘mere Sepoy Mutiny’. Some Indian historians of later date have also agreed to this name, and have been branded as pro-British and anti-national. But wasn’t it a mutiny? The Oxford dictionary defines mutiny as “open revolt, esp. by soldiers or sailors against officers”. Other sources also define mutiny in very similar terms. Taking into account that the 34th Bengal Native Infantry, led by Mangal Pandey, did openly defy the orders and revolted against their officers, only to be followed by their colleagues in Meerut, it was a mutiny, nevertheless. But the mutiny was just the beginning—the tip of the iceberg. It wasn’t a ‘mere Sepoy Mutiny’ because had it been just a mutiny, why did the common man and princes and kings join in the show?
Calling it a revolt is also not totally wrong, because the long oppressed people of the country did rebel against the ones they saw as their oppressors. And this revolt took the shape of a war when their own leaders, people like Nana Saheb, Tantia Tope, Begum Hazrat Mahal, and Rani Laxmi Bai, joined in and led them.
In an interview with BBC News website before the release of his book, The Last Mughal, William Dalrymple says that his research for this book has revealed that the uprising was a war of religion. To quote Dalrymple, “In the rebels’ own papers, they refer over and again to their uprising being a war of religion. There were no doubt a multitude of private grievances, but it is now unambiguously clear that the rebels saw themselves as fighting a war to preserve their religion, and articulated it as such.”
1 He further states, “…what the rebels most objected to in the foreign domination of their country was the way the British threatened their religions - the words din and dharma [the Muslim and Hindu words for religion] appear constantly in rebel proclamations, and were used as war cries by the combatants. They certainly appear far more regularly than secular declarations of the right to self-government or economic freedom, both of which are occasionally mentioned, but far less frequently than concerns over British intentions to impose Christianity on them.” To say that the words din, more often written as deen, and dharma mean religion is like looking at a minute part of the entire picture. In Hinduism, Dharma implies what is right—the natural law, one’s sense of duty, and one’s conscience. Similarly, Islamic scholars explain Deen as the proper way of living life rather than just a religion. Therefore, branding it as a war of religion is not true. Religion was one of the factors, but not the prime factor.
Colonel GB Malleson, presenting his view on the events, says, “The determining cause of the Mutiny of 1857 was the attempt to force Western ideas upon an Eastern people. This was especially the case in the North-western Provinces, where the introduction of the Thomasonian system unsettled the minds of noble and peasant. It was the case in Oudh, where the same system suddenly superseded the congenial rule of the ex-King. Nowhere else in India was the rebellion more rampant and more persistent than in those provinces.”
2
Throughout his book, Malleson refers to the uprising as mutiny, but his accounts of the events don’t match up with the nature of a mere mutiny by native soldiers against their British officers. He writes, “The spirit which had sustained Great Britain in her long contest against Napoleon was a living force in India in1857-8, and produced similar results.” So much for a mutiny?
In Richard Collier’s opinion, the British policy of rapid expansion of their territory aggrieved the common public, as well as the soldiers. In his book the Great Indian Mutiny, Collier writes, “…these annexations were a source of discontent and anxiety to many people besides the sepoys. In eight years, Canning’s predecessor, the despotic Lord Dalhousie, at 35 the youngest Governor-General India had ever known, had annexed over 250,000 square miles— an area three times the size of England and Ireland. The Punjab, Sattara, Nagpur— Dalhousie’s hands had stretched out to embrace them all. ‘An Indian Governor General,’ stormed The Hindu Patriot, ‘is chartered to destroy dynasties with a scratch of his quill.’ Indignities were heaped upon crowned heads: the jewels of the Royal Family of Nagpur were publicly auctioned in Calcutta.”
3
What started as a mutiny, and then progressed as a revolt, ultimately took the shape of a war—India’s first war of independence. Historians who refute this term often point out that the theory of India as a nation was not present at that time, so there was no nationalism involved. It’s true that the concept of India as a nation wasn’t present at the time, but at the same time all the people who waged the war did belong to some part of India, and to them their native land was their country. Also, when we say a war for independence, it doesn’t only signify freedom from a foreign rule, it also implies freedom of thoughts, actions, and religious practices.
The inference of the uprising in The First Indian War of Independence 1857-1859, by Marx and Engels, aptly drives home the point, “If there is a lesson to be learned from any of this, it is that a people, once pushed into a corner, will fight for nothing more than the freedom to fight, and live, if not for religion then for their basic right to live in freedom.”
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In conclusion, we find that different factions and groups revolted for different reasons, but the uprising gained a national character as it progressed. Considering the gamut of factors and implications, it was undoubtedly India’s first war of independence. But this war had shades of mutiny, religious righteousness, rebellion and other factors mixed in it. It was also this war that changed the course of history for both—British and Indians. In a way, it was India’s first war of independence that sowed the seeds of nationhood, of India as a nation, among Indians.
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