The British in Bengal Part III
The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857
The Sepoy Mutiny
The Great Rebellion,
The Great Mutiny,
The Revolt of 1857,
The First War of Independence.
Such was the ferocity and significance of the uprising against the rule of the British East India Company, that the Indian Rebellion of 1857 had many names for it.
The dark state of affairs have been chronicled by many, including the inimitable William Dalrymple, who wrote about this in his magnificent book, The Last Mughal. Hundreds of thousands of mostly Hindu soldiers turned on their British officers of the East India Company and made their way to Delhi to appoint the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II as Emperor of Hindustan.
According to Dalrymple, the Mughals are one of the few dynasties in the world to have become an adjective. The anglicised word Mogul has become synonymous with power, might and prestige.
Zafar, the scion of Genghis Khan and Timur, was a frail old man of 82 who was at heart a poet and Sufi mystic — appealed across the religious divide to Indians as his mother was a Hindu Rajput Princess whilst his father, Akbar Shah II was Muslim. Zafar was forced by the mutineers to hoist a saffron flag over the Red Fort. Dalrymple said of Zafar:
“While Zafar was never cut out to be a heroic or revolutionary leader, he remains, like his ancestor the Emperor Akbar, an attractive symbol of Islamic civilisation at its most tolerant and pluralistic.”
I asked Uncle for his thoughts on the Mutiny.
Baba Raihan,
You are an avid student of history and you will agree with me that wars have been waged and fought not only for military gains but also for other reasons including religious, cultural and psychological. We have discussed how the enactment of the Permanent Settlement Act, 1773 led to virtual pauperisation of the Indian peasants. The money lenders showed no mercy and untold human misery continued uninterrupted.
The Company’s revenue increased manifold, so went up the greed and avarice of the Company officials. Robert Clive made such a fortune as it would not only return him to the House of Commons from a Shropshire constituency but also bring him an honorary DCL (Doctor of Civil Law) from Oxford University. Encouraged by Clive’s meteoric rise and emboldened by the impunity that they had enjoyed so far, the Company now began to look beyond Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.
Fort St. George at Madras trained their guns at Mysore, its ruler Haidar Ali, and after his death Tipu Sultan became the ‘logical’ target for the wealth and jewels that they possessed. So followed the Anglo-Mysore wars between 1767–1799, the last being fought between Tipu Sultan and Col. Arthur Wellesley, younger brother of the Governor General Lord Wellesley. The Nizam of Hyderabad joined hands with the British forces and after fierce fighting for a few days, the Company decisively won the battle of Serirangapatnam. Tipu was defeated and slain. Then followed the orgy of loot and plunder. Some accounts say that Col. Arthur Wellesley’s share of booty was 700 jewels and £3,000 which is equivalent to approximately £216,000 today.
Do you know who this Colonel was? He was none other than the future Duke of Wellington, the hero of Waterloo where he defeated Napoleon!
This victory emboldened the Company and whetted the appetite of their Directors in London. The Company articulated a new policy which came to be known as the Doctrine of Lapse. This policy signalled the death knell of many a kingdom and princely states.
Although this doctrine was formulated as early as 1834, it became a devious instrument of annexation during Lord Dalhousie’s tenure who occupied the Office of Governor General from 1848 to 1856. We will see shortly that in the eight years that he was in India he annexed vast swath of territory which included such wealthy princely states as Jhansi, Jaipur, Nagpur, Satara and Sambalpur.
According to this doctrine if an Indian ruler did not leave a male heir to succeed him, his state would automatically cease to exist and would fall under the suzerainty of the Company.
Similarly an incompetent ruler shall be liable to be deposed without any question. It will be the prerogative of the Company to decide who is competent and who is not. The Company became deviousness personified for it was the complainant, the prosecutor and the judge. Take a closer look at their denunciation of human rights and enunciation of the values of love, charity and compassion. They will uphold charity as long as it does not begin at home. “Fair is foul and foul is fair,” exclaims the weird sisters of Macbeth.
There is considerable unanimity among historians that this diabolical doctrine was one of the main causes that precipitated the outbreak of the Mutiny in 1857 after only one year of Dalhousie’s exit from India. The deep suspicion among the native rulers and the resentment of the Indian sepoys at their humiliation caused systematically by the Company went a long way in igniting the rebellion.
The British dealt with the religious and cultural sentiments of the Indian sepoys quiet disdainfully. The cartridges of Enfield Rifles contained animal fat, rumoured to be cow fat and lard which angered and alienated the sepoys completely; by no means they were prepared to compromise with their religious beliefs for a job under the Company.
History books are littered with gory details of the atrocities committed by the commanders and soldiers of the Company, how women were raped and defiled, and how the captured soldiers and civilians alike were put to death without any qualms. The Company soldiers went on a rampage to avenge the Siege of Cawnpore (Kanpur) where 120 British women and children were killed in what is termed as the Bibighar massacre. Their remains were thrown down a nearby well and this led to similar retaliation from the British which was inflicted multiple fold on the natives.
Bahadur Shah Zafar, the titular Emperor was arrested and exiled to Rangoon, Burma. Captain Hodson captured two of the sons of the Emperor and shot them to death in broad daylight on the streets of Delhi.
Zafar, a poet of some eminence, wrote, “itni bad nasib Zafar ke do gaj jamin na mili — so luckless you are Zafar that you were not given two yards of space for your body to be interred.”
Look at the wheel of fortune! One cannot fathom its inexorable movement. Clive, the Oxford DCL holder commits suicide and the last Mughal Emperor languishes in a foreign land and rues about his misfortune.
Our National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam writes eloquently “Chirodin kaharo saman nahi jay/Aj je rajadhiraj kal she bhikkha chay — nobody enjoys the same fortune all the time / today’s king appears with a begging bowl in hand the next day!”
Look how poignantly he describes the mutability and transitoriness of life.
30 May 2020
Many reasons can be cited for the causes of the rebellion and its failure. Sir Sayed Ahmed Khan in his famous monograph, Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind (The Causes of the Indian Revolt) vehemently denied that the conspiracy was planned by Muslim elites who resented the diminishing influence of the Muslim monarchs. He categorically blamed the East India Company for its ruthless policy of expansion as well as the ignorance of the British politicians to the cultural ethos of India.
Even such British politicians and intellectuals such as Macaulay and Burke denounced and disapproved of the misrule of the Company. Edmund Burke in his famous impeachment of Governor General Hastings pointed out how the Company failed in its duty to govern India.
The Lord Chancellor Edward Thurlow prosecuting Hastings said:
“Corporations have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be condemned. They therefore do as they like.”
Following Robert Clive’s suicide in 1774, the English poet Samuel Johnson wrote “Clive had acquired his fortune by such crimes that his consciousness of them impelled him to cut his own throat.”
Queen Victoria’s Royal proclamation in 1858 marked the end of the British East India Company and finally the British Crown officially took over the direct rule of India!
