1857 Historiography

Pati on contemporary British interpretations?

• 1686 Viewed as the ‘Sepoy mutiny’

• Idea of a ‘Muslim conspiracy’ and accounts of Indians being sexually barbaric, raping white women

• Nevertheless, there was a section of British society that supported the 1857 rebellion

  • Chartists and Marxists, viewing it as a product of colonial rebellion

Pati on nationalist historiography

• VD Savarkar in 1900 - ‘Indian War of Independence’

  • He rejected the attribution to greased cartridges, pointing out that this did not explain why the Mughal Emperor in Delhi and Khan Bahadur Khan had joined in

  • Argued that the ‘atrocities’ committed by the British had unified people across religious boundaries

• Developing Indian working class movement used a Marxist position

  • MN Roy - saw it being a struggle between the ‘worn-out feudal system and the newly introduced commercial capitalism’

• 1687 - No consensus on the idea of a ‘First War of Independence’

• SN Sen’s work was sponsored by the state, to obviously celebrate Indian nationalism

• Challenged the dominating narratives of the British as victors and the rebellious Indians as having been utterly defeated - there was a growing effort to locate internal contradictions and paid attention to the popular aspects of the 1857 movement

Pati on Mukerjee

• Mukherjee - focused on connections between the talukdars and the peasants, focused on talukdar leadership in Aluwak being based on the support of the peasantry and countryside 

  • ‘He explained this by referring to the agrarian relations in the region, which was marked by an inter-dependence of the talukdars and the peasants’

• He argued that peasants did not simply play a peripheral role, evidenced by the fact that the ‘peasants were on the side of the rebellion in areas where the talukdars remained loyal to the British’

• The peasants were sipahis - the removal of the talukdars in the new system and the removal of the Nawab

  • ‘Apprehensions about the collapse of the traditional order of interdependence between the ruler and the peasants and issues related to the moral economy of the peasant’

• The connection with the talukdar did not place the peasant in a subordinate position - while the talukdars could and did get pardoned, the peasants faced much higher risk of massacre

Pati on Roy’s work on the Bundelkhand region

• Targeting all those associated with British power - bankers, officials, mahajans - ‘these reflected the more negative forms of political assertion, which marked the most obvious and widespread form of rural ‘jacqueries’

• 1688  After the initial phase of the rebellion, it shifted to those ‘they identified with the internal order of exploitation’ - auction purchasers, decree- holders, merchants, bakers

• Large scale deserations of villages, set up their new sections

• ‘She emphasised the unity between the peasants and the landed sections against the British who were seen as the common enemy and some sections associated with colonialism’

• ‘Roy explained the high level of solidarity and mass participation by referring to the marginality of agricultural production in the Bundelkhand region which actually worked as a leveller among the different sections in the village’

Pati on Dasgupta’s ‘The Rebel Army;

• Argues that the mutiny by the sepoys was an act of repudiation against the EEIC and also the traditional ruling class of India

• It was an assertion of autonomous power, a force which threatened to sweep away the symbols of colonial power in northern India.

• It also threatened to alter the traditional power equations in indigenous society.

• The nature of the outbreak and the rapidly evolving political dynamics during the course of the mutiny represented a severe threat to established hierarchies in indigenous society. 

• The sepoys sought to rapidly carve out an autonomous space for themselves within the power hierarchy. Dasgupta argues that the sepoy assertion was not synonymous with people's power.

• The autonomy of the sepoys did not represent the autonomy of the people. Despite their strong links with peasant society, the sepoys possessed a distinct identity and considered themselves to be distinct from indigenous society.

• Company service which they violently repudiated in 1857 gave them a sense of empowerment. In such a context, they aspired to be the new elite and were ready to take on the old elite and the common peasantry

Bhadra on the importance of the ordinary rebels

• S.B Chaudhari and R.C Majumdar have argued that the landed chiefs, the taluqdars and zamindars were responsible for the ‘origin and prolongation of popular revolt’

• While Eric Stokes has acknowledged the popular nature of the revolt, he places them in a subordinate position to the elites

• All of these historiographical narratives miss out the ordinary rebel - ‘his role and his perception of alien rule and contemporary crisis’ - Bhadra stresses the need to acknowledge this historical agency

Bhadra on Shah Mal

• Bijraul is a historically significant village in the Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh, India. - North Central India

• Most village proprietors and cultivators beloned to the same caste

• Although English authority had been established in 1836, rights hadn’t been transferred but there was a growing grievance - felt uncertainty within the settlements, and the coercive mpower of the state

• Started as a local affair but accelrated in intensity, with many lumbradars becoming village leaders, gained support of the village headmean and small zamindars

• Gainned support from various Jat villages such as Baoli and Barout

• The rivalry between Jats and Guhars was crucial to shaping their views of the government 

• Although Shah himself was Jat, he mobilised support from villagers of various clans and casts - it was difficult to demarcate which villages were hostile or in support, messages of insurgency and counterinsurgency were transmitted among a common wavelength

Bhadhra on Devi Singh

• Village rebel of Tappa Raya in Mathura

• No outside intervention, contained to a peasant community

• Strong clan and community feelings, sustained by the connection with landholding, and tradition, memory and customs

• Each area had a dominant clan

•  ‘the uprising, as it has been stated, began with an attack on the township by the leading zamindars and the residents of the Chowdah Taraf, i.e the core villages surrounding Raya’

• ‘It was thus that a peasant king was made, deriving his authority from an age old tradition of the Jats. That tradition asserted itself in the colour of the yellow dress Devi Singhput on as the insignia of his new status’

• ‘But Devi Singh did not reckon with the strength of the empire. To him the colonial state was a local affair and ‘having driven out the police he thought he had overthrown our government’

Bhadra’s conclusion

• Uses Gramsci’s suggestion that there are ‘multiple elements of consciousness leadership at the political level’

•  Different political aspirations, political experiences, social and economic conditions

• The role of such leaders was not ephemeral or incidental, but was ‘an integral part of popular insurgency’

• The recognition of the strength and weakness of these rebels would be a step forward in understanding their role beyond stereotyped categories and formulae. They were not mere adjuncts to a linear tradition that was to culminate in the appropriation of power by the elite in a post-colonial state’

Dasgupta’s overall argument

• ‘act of repudiation’ against both the EIC and Indian hierarchies - autonomous power seeking out an autonomous space 

• People’s power?

  • Some historians have argued the sepoys and peasants had the same grievances, ‘some have gone so far as to say that the sepoys were peasants in uniform’

• ‘I argue that the sepoys despite their strong links with their parent society possessed a distinct identity and considered themselves apart from indigenous society’

  • Company service > empowerment in a sense

    • Bengal sepoys usually had high caste origins

• Bengal army - high caste men from Awadh and Bihar - recruiting policy based on the principle that these castes were idea soldier material, although the 1830s and 1840s saw increasing representation of Gorkhas and Sikhs

• 1730 - ‘village life and ties were to an extent replicated in the army as the native recruits made their own living arrangements by construcing huts in a manner not very different from their native villages’

Dasgupta - A peasant in uniform?

• These close connections with parent societies have led historians such as Rudrangshu Mukherjee to assert they were ‘basically peasants in uniform’

  • This doesn’t take into account the influence of army life and trainining 

    • Huntington argues that there is a distinct ‘corporate’ identity - ‘members of the same profession exhibit a notion of organic unity and conceive of themselves as a group distinct of laymen, in this case the civilian’

• Hybrid identity created two levels of conflict - ‘he had multiple identities, and it was the uniqueness of the situation, which led him to assert a particular aspect of his identity. After all, his conflict was not only with the colonial government, he was also jockeying for power within his own parent society’

Dasgupta on Sepoys as the new elie

• Empowerment by company service had fuelled social aspiration and a desire to dominate indigenous society

• ‘The mutiny of the sepoys could thus not be equated or treated as synonymous with a people’s rebellion as some historians have sought to portray it’

• Rajat Ray - Sepoy’s are the most democratic aspect of the rebellion through serving as a ‘decisive voice’ in indigenous armies, they didn’t want to take over government but rather only have the last stay

  • E.g the role of the sepoys in the restoration of Lakshmibai in Jhansi

  • ‘Ray also argues that the sepoys set up councils through which they exercised power in their centres of power such as Lucknow, Delhi, etc.’

Dasgupta - Sepoys needed popular support, but often held contempt

• 1731 - e.g their behaviour through the general population

  • Delhi’s mutineers had frequent conflict with te common people, forcing heavy extractions 

  • ‘Jeeval Lal says that the Muslim section of the city feared that the sepoys would murder Bahadur Shah Zafar and indulge in a general massacre’

  • The sepoys were frequently violent - ‘it is time that romantic notions of sepoys being the vanguard of the people’s rebellion are shed’

• The sepoys asserted their right to elect their own officers, challenging the foundations of British rule

• Resentment against native officers -

Guha on the colonial origins of the historiography of Indian peasant insurgency

• The historiography of Indian peasant insurgency has colonial origins in the East India Company’s political concerns - 2 accounts of peasant uprisings were written up as administrative documents

• Colonial administrators tried to make sense of the revolts through looking at other rebellions

  • The Chota Nagpur uprisings of 1801 and 1817

  • The Basarat bidroha of 1331

• ‘Causality was harnessed thus to counter-insurgency and the sense of history converted into an element of administrative concern’

• Peasant denied agency as a historical subject, this historical tendency has been continued - must attribute a consciousness to him and reject the pervasive idea of spontaneity

• Peasant intervention was seen as dependent upon the upper classes

Guha’s use of Gramsci

• Gramsci’s contentions

  • History cannot be purely spontaneous - this does not mean that it requires a ‘conscious leadership’

  • ‘Image of the pre-political peasant’

  • ‘Whatever its validity for other countries the notion of pre-political peasant insurgency helps little in understanding the experience of colonial India. For there was nothing in the militant movements of its rural masses that was not political’

    • Rent was the majority of their income - extremely extractive - similar to a feudal relationship

Guha - ‘How then are we to get in touch with the consciousness of insurgency when our access to it is barred thus by the discourse of counter-insurgency?’

• Use sources such as reports, despatches, minutes, judgments, laws, letters - written by policemen, soldiers, burcaucrats, landlords and usurers

  • ‘It should be possible therefore to read the presence of a rebel consciousness as a necessary and pervasive element within that body of evidence’

    • Mentions insurgent messages, rumours, conversations, statements 

    • Elite discourse expresses ‘the hostility of the British authorities and their native proteges towards the unruly troublemakrs in the countryside’

Stokes on Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar districts in Uttar Pradesh, North India

• The "Moneylender as Villain": Most traditional accounts portray the moneylender (mahajan or bania) as the primary beneficiary of British rule. British institutional changes—transforming land rights into transferable private property, heavy cash assessments, and forced land sales—allegedly allowed these "new men" to dispossess the traditional gentry and peasantry, uniting them in revolt.

• The Statistical Disproof: Detailed scrutiny of the Saharanpur district challenges this. Statistics suggest that the geographical incidence of disturbance varied in inverse proportion to the land held by the moneylending classes.

• The Inverse Rule: Violence was most severe in the southern parganas (Nakur, Gangoh, Deoband), where land transfer rates and mahajan ownership were actually below the average.

Stokes on why the rebellion broke out

• The Burden of Revenue Assessment: The source identifies the stiff and inelastic land-revenue demand (like Thornton’s 1838 settlement) as the most critical factor. British officials often used the mahajan as a "scapegoat" to avoid admitting their own revenue systems were the root cause.

• The Impact of British Civil Law: There was a widespread sense of "unjust and fraudulent spoliation" through the medium of the British courts. This created a deep hatred of the "bania ka raj" (rule of the moneylender-trader), which was seen as an extension of British rule.

• Ecological Inequality and "Relative Deprivation":

  • "Thirsty" Tracts: Rebellion was centered in backward, dry upland (bangar) tracts where canal irrigation had not reached.

  • Grievance of Comparison: While communities in canal-irrigated areas thrived via cash-crop agriculture, those in dry tracts remained trapped in subsistence while facing severe revenue assessments.

Stokes on Caste and Clan motivation

• The Gujars: Rebellious Gujars expressed frustration over their inability to succeed in the new rural economy. Initial acts of violence involved destroying account books and debt bonds to cancel legal obligations.

• Pundir Rajputs: A "proud, hardy race" with a history of turbulence, they revolted in the eastern Katha region, which was marked by dry soil and stiff assessments.

• Muslim Gentry and Jihad: Decayed Muslim families, impoverished by debt and land partition, provided "combustible materials" for revolt. Some were motivated by the communal goal of re-establishing Muslim supremacy or joined organized jihad movements.

Stokes on the role of the ‘canal buffer’ and collaborating elites

• The "Canal Buffer": The prosperity brought by the Jumna and Ganges Canals acted as a major stabilizer. Communities benefiting from irrigation were "reclaimed from improvident habits" and remained orderly and contented.

• The Role of Collaborating Elites:

  • Internal Differentiation: In areas where a new "magnate element" had emerged—often through office-holding (e.g., the Sayyids of Jansath)—these leaders used their influence to restrain their communities from violence.

  • The Landhaura Estate: Once a massive Gujar lordship, it had been reduced to a "creature of the British power." Its leader, Padhan Sahib Singh, stood firm for the British and used his influence as a Gujar to keep the "turbulent body in subjection".

Stokes on organisational and physical constraints, and political disunity

• Organizational and Physical Constraints:

  • Clan Organization: In western Muzaffarnagar and Meerut, Jats were organized into formidable bhaiachara (brotherhood) communities fit for revolt. In the east, Jats were sub-proprietors or occupancy tenants under loyalist landlords, which significantly restrained their resistance.

  • Tolerability Thresholds: Disorganized communities (like the Sayyid gentry) often bore massive land losses passively, whereas organized, armed communities (Jats/Gujars) had a much lower threshold for tolerating grievances.

  • Geographical Isolation: Northern subdistricts remained quiet because they were thinly peopled, separated by jungle, and isolated from revolutionary centers by British military stations.

• Political Disunity: The alliance between various groups (like Gujars and Muslim political leadership) was often loose and short-lived. By late 1857, some communities that had initially revolted began obstructing other rebel groups (like the Jats) to avoid a purely ancillary role.

IV. Conclusion: The Mechanism of Rebellion

Misra on the Garo rebellions

• 1681 The Garo community is ‘marked out in colonial records as among the most violent and isolated people that British rule encountered in eastern and northeastern India’

• A critique of the idea of primitive violence and the production of the ‘tribe’ under conditions of colonial modernity will occupy the latter half of the article. Here it will argue that the numerous and apparently disparate acts of headhunting, raids, plunder and burning by the Gatos on the lowlands of Bengal and Assam were in fact an assembling of the first of a series of sustained peasant rebellions in this part of colonial India - a powerful manifestation of a community’s historical consciousness of the loss of its sovereign self under British rule’

• As the EIC sought to gain control and demarcate the boundaries of hilly northeastern Bengal and western Assam, ‘the long histories of several polities exercising simultaneous political control and claims over hills and valleys begin to appear in its records’

  • The Garos - demonstrate significant resistance to the shattering of the pre-colonial order

    • Their role in producing and exchanging cotton was crucial, as it had been during the mughal order

    • Didn’t possess uniform control but had powerful political control
      

Bates on the downfalls of nationalist historiography

• Nationalist historiography has the pitfall of being teleological - ‘cast as the first falteringstep on the road to national independence’

• In becoming part of the ‘master narrative’ of India and Pakistan, ‘1857 has thus emerged as treacherous ground for scholars who are wary of the ramifications of contradicting the preferred interpretations of politicians, national committees and institutions’

• Due to the intrinsic connection with nation-building projects, ‘singular and monovalent modes of interpretation have predominated, and any attempt to qualify or question them can become a source of ferocious and unreasonable contestation’

Bates on the importance of local narratives

As observed by Pierre Nora, the contrast often involves different notions of space: the stories of the experiences of a particular community are thus usually far more nuanced than those evoked by national historians

‘Local narratives have been more organic and less confected, revealing a complex picture of contradictions, errors, misunderstandings and misintended consequences’

Roy - Bundelkhand, overall

• The historiography of 1857 has long focused on long-term political issues, seeking to accomodate the rebellion in a longer span of historY

  • English writers viewed it as the ‘watershed between Company rule and Crown rule’ and Indian writers viewed it as the beginning of India’s struggle for national independence

• These analyses obscure the lived experience and understanding of the rebels of 1857

• ‘The uprising is often seen as a series of negative actions’ where coordination and organisation are viewed as accidental 

• ‘The present paper argues that the rebels were involved in a fight for power, in an endeavour to capture the apparatus of the state’

  • Sought to build an alternative to colonial state

  • ‘This was an area where one could trace out the pattern of convergence of diverse actions towards a totality of political consciousness’

Roy on chronology

• Jhansi (5 June): Soldiers of the 12th Native Infantry used a false alarm of a dacoit attack to seize the magazine. Joined by the 14th Irregular Cavalry and artillery, they released prisoners, burned government records, and killed English officers at the Jhansi Fort. They entered the town through the Orchha gate shouting "Deen ka Jai" ("Victory to Religion").

• Nowgong & Kurrera (10 June): Mutinies broke out among the 12th Native Infantry and 14th Irregular Cavalry.

• Lalitpur (12 June): Paranoid British officials fled first. Soldiers refused to accompany them, seized the treasure on behalf of the "King of Delhi," and headed for Jhansi.

• Orai (Jalaun): The uprising was initiated by chaprasis (customs department) and police rather than soldiers. As Orai was a central point, soldiers from Jhansi and Nowgong later passed through, burning records and buildings.

• Hamirpur (14 June): Rebels targeted wealthy residents and killed a Christian preacher. "Bengali babus" were specifically attacked for "writing English".

• Banda (14 June): Popular rebellion in the villages actually preceded the military mutiny. Once news arrived of mutinous cavalry crossing the Jamuna, the city erupted in plundering. Missionary schools were looted, and Europeans were released only after converting to Islam.

Roy on the rebels’ administrative and political design

• Centralized Vision: The rebels did not just act locally; they aimed to build a supra-local political order with Delhi or Kanpur as the capital.

• Organizational Discipline:

  • Regimental Formations: Rebels maintained their military structures, used English words of command for drill, and adhered to traditional hierarchies.

  • Leadership Ranks: Decisions were often made by senior Indian officers, such as Kala Khan (Risaladar) and Lal Bahadur (Subahdar) in Jhansi.

• Ideology of Faith: Rebellion was framed as a moral imperative to protect "Deen" (Religion) and "Dharam" (Faith) from "Christian heresy". The traditional duty to the "bread giver" (the State) was only flouted for this loftier religious cause.

• Kalpi as a Rebel Hub: After the falls of Delhi and Kanpur, Kalpi became the new headquarters under Tantia Topi and Nana Sahib. It featured a subterranean magazine, four foundries for cannons, and an estimated 12,000 soldiers.

Roy on the complex role of local Rajas

• Ambivalence and Pressure: Most Rajas (Jhansi, Banda, Banpur) were initially reluctant and were often forced into leadership by mutinous soldiers. In Jhansi, soldiers threatened to kill Lakshmi Bai if she did not comply.

• Constrained Authority: Even when Rajas assumed power, the soldiers often retained decision-making control and held the treasury.

• Fragmentation of Power: As British rule collapsed, old rivalries were "resurrected," leading to internal battles between local Chiefs over territory (e.g., Ali Bahadur vs. the Rani of Ajaigarh).

• Strategic Choice: Lakshmi Bai only fully committed to fighting when the British "line of communication" snapped and Hugh Rose’s forces approached in 1858.

Roy on the Thakur uprising and Bhumiawat

• Tradition of Resistance: The thakurs (Rajput landed magnates) had a long history of "perpetual insubordination" and used the 1857 crisis to engage in "bhumiawat" (fighting for landed inheritance).

• Independent Action: Thakurs often acted independently of the soldiers, setting up their own "kings" and flags (e.g., Burjore Singh in Western Jalaun).

• Guerilla Tactics: After the British reoccupied towns in 1858, thakurs like Despat transitioned to partisan warfare in the hills and ravines, remaining active until 1859.

Roy on popular rebellion and the village kings

• Total Defiance: Entire village communities rose up to attack tax offices (tahsilis), destroy debt records, and oust the bankers and traders favored by British rule.

• Proclaiming New Sovereigns: In Geora Mugli, a man named Zunowar Ali was proclaimed the "King of Delhi and India" with the beat of a tom-tom.

• Refusal of Reoccupation: Villagers often deserted their homes or provided false information to the British to protect rebels.

• Collective Punishment: The British responded to this widespread participation by punishing entire settlements, such as fining the village of Nunora Rs 3,000.

Roy on why the rebellion broke out in North India

• Perceived Collapse of British Authority: A primary driver was the unprecedented and "irrefutable proof" that the British state was being "overthrown and ousted". This created a "historical conjuncture" where news of mutinies in places like Meerut and Allahabad acted as a spark, convincing both soldiers and civilians that British rule was at an end.

• The Ideology of Faith (Deen and Dharam): For the soldiers, the uprising was framed as an "imperative course of action" to protect their religion from "Christian heresy". This religious framework allowed them to flout their traditional "moral pledge" to the State for a "loftier cause".

• Political Vision of a New State: The rebellion was not merely "negative" destruction; it was a "conscious fight for power" aimed at capturing the state apparatus. Soldiers sought to build a "centralized, supra-local political realm" with Delhi or Kanpur as the capital, utilizing their shared experience of colonial military service to inform this new order.

• Long-Standing Traditions of Resistance: Among the thakurs (landed magnates), the rebellion was a continuation of a "long tradition of resistance" and the practice of bhumiawat (fighting for landed inheritance). They used the 1857 crisis to reclaim dominions and oust British-favored "auction-purchasers".

• Economic Distress: For the general population, "over assessment and bad seasons" had left many "half starving," making them receptive to reports of British defeat and ready to join the insurrection.

Roy on why the rebellion faced limitations in spreading cohesively

• Reluctance of Traditional Elites: Most Rajas and Chiefs did not initiate the rebellion and were often "ambivalent and vacillating". Many, like Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi or Ali Bahadur of Banda, were forced into leadership by mutinous soldiers or joined only after their lines of communication with the British were "snapped".

• Resurrection of Old Rivalries: As British authority receded, local political forces were "resurrected," leading to a "scramble for more areas" and internal battles between different principalities. Chiefs often clashed over the same territories, prioritizing local power over a unified front against the British.

• Independent and Fragmented Action: The thakurs "by and large operated quite independently" of both the soldiers and the Rajas, rarely seeking legitimacy from a higher authority. Similarly, "village kings" like Zunowar Ali acted within the space of individual villages, making their movements easy for the state to sweep aside.

• Lack of Long-term Collaboration: While a "short-lived collaboration" was forged between thakurs and Rajas in early 1858 to oppose British advances, this confederacy broke up following defeats at Chanderi and Kalpi. The movement remained a "collage of political actions" rather than a singular, integrated organization.

Wagner on the beginning of the uprising

• The uprising truly began on 12 May, after the outbreak at Meerut and Delhi

  • ‘Until then, sepoys had merely been voicing their discontent and sharing their fears and aspirations with each other’

  • ‘These mutterings, however, had no clear aim, nor a notion of what might happen if the troops acted on their panic, and oppossed their superiors’

• There had been a sense of anticipation amongst sepoys and civilians for months 

• ‘With Delhi in the hands of mutinous sepoys under the leadership of Bahadur Shah, the widespread disaffection had attained a definite goal and had been given a distinct direction’

Wagner on other volatile areas

• Ambala - mutiny was barely averted

• Lucknow, recently annexed, was a particular hot spot - sepoys had shown unrest since May

  • Sepoys were thought to have been corrupted through contact with the locals and the Governor General had even been considering removing all native regimes from the city

  • The outbreak at Lucknow was three weeks after the outbreak at Meerut

• ‘That the outbreak happened at Meerut, rather than anywhere else, was entirely accidental. Caused initially by Smyth’s decision to demonstrate the new drill, it was only due to the proximity of Delhi that this relatively minor event had such massive repercussions’

Wagner on how news of the outbreak spread throughout North India

• E.g a telegram in Lahore - informed authoritries, led to the disarmament of the native regimes and subsequent chaos 

• ‘Elsewhere, the thoughtless acts of panicking officials provoked sepoys to join the rebels. Many Indians who had no previous intention of turning against the British now found themselves under constant suspicion and being accused of conspiracy’

• Official reports in the British press filtered to the Indian troops

Wagner -

‘The thousands of sepoys stationed all over northern India provided the Uprising with a sense of unity.’

• The sepoys of the Bengal army constituted a uniquely coherent group, cutting across religious and social divides, and as such they added a sense of organisation and unity to the outbreak that was not to be found anywhere else in India at this time’ 

• ‘The correspondence between the different native regimes, which had been carried on ever since the first rumours at Dum Dum and Barrackpore in January, now assumed a more serious character. 

• ‘Being forewarned, the British moved quickly to disarm the affected regiments, but across northern India plotting amongst the sepoys was proliferating at an exponential rate’

• The spread of the news created panic and further outbreaks 

• ‘The significance of the initial outbreaks may be discerned in the manner in which the mutinies spread outwards from Meerut and Delhi - not entirely unlike the transmission of the chatpattis a few months earlier. During May and June, the early outbreaks followed a clear pattern, spreading outward from Delhi, and for each new regiment or station that mutinied, the Uprising and its transmission were further energised’

Wagner - As the Uprising spread, it became a series of localised conflicts stimulated by neighbouring examples of revolt’

• Longstanding dissatisfaction - sepoy mutiny provided an impetus

• Talukdars in some areas reasserted their power, while other regions saw long-sanding feuds over land and power

• ‘In some instances sepoys assumed the role of leadership but generally, the absence of colonial authority meant the reimposition of pre-colonial authority based on traditional systems of governance’

• ‘At the front of the rebels in Oudh were the landowners and petty rulers who had recently been dispossessed by the British’

  • Aimed to recover their land

  • Converged with seopy aims

Wagner on peasants in uniform

Many sepoys of the Bengal Army may have maintained close ties to their kinsfolk and villages, and this undoubtedly played a significant role in places like Oudh and Bihar during the Uprising. The regiments that mutinied at Meerut and Delhi, however, had no such connections or attachment to the local population of the region. To claim that the sepoy was merely a peasant in uniform does not establish the existence of a bond between the first mutineers and the urban populations of those cities, or even the Gujars and Jats of the rural areas’

Wagner on the anxieties of 1857

• ‘1857 was not a particularly bad year in India: there was no economic depression, drought or failure of harvest, but there was a vague sense of unrest’

• Oudh

  • Landholding and elite negatively impacted  by the new revenue settlement after the Company takeover

• Britain was also at war with the Shah of Persia - rumours that Russia was supporting Persia and fears of invasion

• Anxiety surrounding the disruptive cholera epidemic of 1856 - still creating deaths. Outbreaks of cholera often linked with movement of Company armies - belief of British culpability

• ‘Though the population of northern India was not on the brink of starvation or beset by invaders, the calm that seemed to prevail during the early months of 1857 was highly deceptive’

Wagner on the emergence of chapattis throughout Northern India

• Chaukidars passed on chapattis - didn’t know where they came from - reports of chapattis came in from places hundred of miles apart - authorities investigated

• Attributed it to native superstition - set of alarm bells of colonial administrators

• ‘The circulation of chapattis was, like a rumour, a transient phenomenon that passed swiftly through the districts of northern India’

• ‘The circulation of chapattis does appear to have originated at Indore and to have been related to the outbreak of cholera, which persisted in a number of cities long after the greater epidemic of 1856 had ended’ - idea of removing a disease by passing it on to an object

Mukerjee - Was Awadh a rebel stae?

• Following the battle of Chinhat, where the rebels swarmed to Lucknow, there were efforts to organise rebel activities

• Jailal Singh was the chief spokesman of the rebels and Birjis Qadr was crowned King at his instance - coronation alos served as an act of consensus amongst the rebel leaders

• The rebels has a set of conditions they were firm on

  • E. double pay after leaving the English service, importance of orders from Delhi, and no interference should be take place respectign the treatment and disposal of those who are friends of the English

• Tension between the Awadh royal family and the overall sovereignty of the Mughal Emperor 

  • ‘Awadh nawabi was to maintain its autonomy but in a subsidiary position to the monarch in Delhi’

  • They invoked the 18th century Mugha order where regional powers had flourished under Mughal authority

• ‘Birjis Qadr reportedly also sent an ambassador to Delhi bearing his petitions to Bahadur Shah, asking for confirmation’

Mukherjee - Decision making bodies in Awadh

Two separate decision making bodies were established

• One focused on organisation and payments, consisting mainly of old nawabi bureaucrats or Court officials

• The other took military decisions, mostly composed of sepoys and rebel soldiers with a few officials
  

In July 1857, no taluqdar was in the decisin making bodies - only became involved in the battle of Chinhat, although some talukdar’s men had joined the rebel forces - orders were issued for talukdars and zamindars to join the flag,

• ‘An appeal was being made by the monarch to landed magnates to show their valour and join hands against a common enemy’

• Talukdars took up the appeal and were rewarded with various leadership appointments

‘The administrative arrangement, if it can be called that, was loose and precarious. Obedience to orders was not always forthcoming; talukdars and other rebel leaders often acted independently and in accordance with their personal direction’

Mukerjee - challenge to the Begum from the Maulavi

‘The most serious rift in the administrative set-up was the challenge to the Begum’s authority by the Maulavi. Around December 1857 and early January 1858 serious dissension broke out among the rebel leaders, splitting them into two camps’

• Maulavi threatened to set himself up as king, basing his claim on divine will

• Interfered with Begum’s military orders

‘’Perhaps the opposition of the Maulavi represented a certain tension within the rebel camp between a religious leader at the grassroots level and a leadership entrenched in the upper echelons of the royal court’

‘Once Lucknow had fallen and the rebels dispersed in the country, the Maulavi carried on the revolt around the borders of Awadh and Rohilkhand till his death in June 1858. The Begum’s authority on the other hand remained unbroken till the last days of the retreat’

Mukherjee - Plundering

‘To overcome the scarcity of money and to provide for themselves and their followers, many rebel leaders took to pludering. Often the conspicuously wealthy or the mahajan became the victims, but innocent villages also did not escape the rapine’

• ‘In October 1858, the rebel infantry and cavalry were said to be collecting their pay in ‘any way’ but food supplies were being sent by ilaqadars

• ‘Such plunder would obviously have been detrimental to any popular and united support for the rebels. Yet plundering the rich, Robin Hood fashion, is a familiar expression of popular discontent’

Mukerjee - war of religion?

• What held the movement together and what sparked it?

• How did they understand themselves?

• Rebel leadership proclamations - ‘virulent anti-British character’

  • The duty of all people to ‘put the English to death’ 

  • ‘In short, no one should spare any efforts, to destroy the enemy and reduce them to the greatest extremities’

• ‘The preservation of religion emerged as the dominant rallying cry of the rebellion’ - Feroze Shah circulated a list of the ‘real intensions of the British, including burning all other religious books, destroying religious buildings, enforcing Englsh customs etc.

• ‘The growing belief that there was a conspiracy to despoil cherished religion and caste, and the fear that coercion would be used if necessary to break the faith, acted as the motors of collective hatred’

• ‘Every act was now interpreted as a deliberate attack on indigenous religious practices and traditions’

Mukerjee - ‘This is not to say that religion was all that there was to the revolt of 1857 but it did form a vital component of the tradition that determined the circumstances in which the insurgents tried to reshape their own history’

• Religion was part of everyday life - ‘coloured the articulation of all grievances’

• ‘It helped create a unity, in opposition to the British, which covered a broad spectrum of society’

• No divisive issues between Hindus and Muslims - emphasis on coexistence in the Mughal imperial framework

• Every proclamation mentioned Hindus and Muslims and their respective religions in the same breath

Mukherjee - A war of restoration?

• Discontent with the annexation of Awadh - treacherous acts, the British could no longer be trusted

• ‘Such sentiments not only tie up with the grievances of dispossessed talukdars but are also a pointer to the order of things visualised by the rebel leadership’

• ‘Here was an almost automatic and perhaps inevitable affiliation with the viewpoint pf the magnates and propertied classes. Hierarchy, status based on lineage, and honour were important’

  • Aligned with Mughal tradition - the world of lineage, patronage and deference had been unturned

‘In a sense perhaps the revolt was voicing the viewpoint of an older political, economic and cultural order that had lost its viability in the previous century’

• To them Britain’s work in India was an onslaught on their traditional, familiar world, and on cherished values. Theirs was not a struggle to establish a new social order. British rule had turned their world topsyturvry; their aim was to restore that world, and all therein. Their essential sentiment was indignation, their essential aim restoration’