Rebellions Against British Rule
Revolt Of 1857
A mighty popular Revolt broke out in Northern and Central India in 1857 and nearly swept away British rule. It began with a mutiny of the sepoys, or the Indian soldiers of the Company’s army, but soon engulfed wide regions and people. Millions of peasants, artisans, and soldiers fought heroically for over a year before their effort was brutally suppressed by the British.
The Revolt of 1857 was not just a mere sepoy uprising but was a product of the accumulated grievances of the people against the Company’s administration and of their dislike for foreign rule. Ever since the British conquest of the country since 1757, popular discontent and hatred against foreign rule had been gaining strength among the different sections of Indian society. It was this discontent that burst forth into a mighty popular revolt.
Perhaps the most important cause of the popular discontent was the economic exploitation of the country by the British which completely destroyed its traditional economic fabric. It impoverished the vast mass of peasants, artisans, and also a large number of traditional zamindaras and chiefs. Other general causes were the British land revenue policies due to which a large number of peasant proprietors lost their lands to traders and money-lenders and found themselves hopelessly involved in debt. In addition, common people were hard hit by the prevalence of corruption at the lower levels of administration. The police and the lower judiciary were notoriously corrupt. All these above mentioned factors made the people desperate and led them to join a general revolt in the hop of improving their lot.
The gradual disappearance of Indian states deprived those Indians, who were employed in them in administration, judiciary and in the cultural fields, of any visible means of livelihood. The Indian rulers had been patrons of arts and literature and had supported religious preachers and divines. Displacement of these rulers by the East India Company meant the sudden withdrawal of this patronage and the impoverishment of those who had depended upon it. Religious preachers, pandits and maulavis, who felt that their entire future was threatened, were to play an important role in spreading hatred against the foreign rule.
Another basic cause of the unpopularity of British rule was its very foreignness. The British remained perpetual foreigners in the country. Unlike foreign conquerors before them, they did not mix socially even with the upper classes of Indians; instead, they had a feeling of racial superiority and treated Indians with contempt and arrogance. Most of all, the British did not come to settle in India and to make it their home. Their main aim was to drain India of its wealth and amass riches before going home.
The period of the growth of discontent among the people coincided with certain events which shattered the general belief in the invincibility of British arms and encouraged the people to believe that the British regime could be overthrown. The British army suffered major reverses in the First Afghan War (1838-42) and the Crimean War (1854-56). In 1855-56, the Santhal tribesmen of Bihar and Bengal rose up in an armed revolt and succeeded in temporarily sweeping away British rule from their area. Though the British ultimately suppressed the Santhal revolt, the disasters they suffered in major battles revealed that the British could be defeated by determined fighting, even by the Indians.
The annexation of Avadh by Lord Dalhousie in 1856 was widely resented. It created an atmosphere of rebellion in the Company’s army as most of the sepoys were the natives of Avadh. The annexation of Avadh adversely affected the sepoy’s purse as he had to pay higher taxes on the land his family held in Avadh.
The excuse Dalhousie had advanced for annexing Avadh was that he wanted to free the people from the Nawab’s oppression. The common man had now to pay higher land revenue and additional taxes on articles. The dissolution of the Nawab’s administration and army threw out of jobs thousands of nobles and officials along with the soldiers and created unemployment in almost every peasant’s home. The British provided no alternative employment to these people. Moreover, the British confiscated the estates of a majority of the taluqdars or zamindars. These dispossessed taluqdars became the most dangerous opponents of British rule and they provided the leadership during the revolt in the Avadh area.
The annexation of Avadh, along with the other annexations of Dalhousie, create panic among rulers of the native states. The policy Doctrine of Lapse was directly responsible for making Nana Sahib and the Rani of Jhansi staunch enemies of the British. The house of the Mughuls was humbled when Dalhousie announced in 1849 that the successor to Bahadur Shah would have to abandon the historic Red Fort and move to a humbler residence at the Qutab on the outskirts of Delhi. And in 1856; Canning announced that after Bahadur Shah’s death the Mughuls would lose the title of kings and would be known as mere princes.
An important role in turning the people against British rule was played by the British interference in religion. They patronised the Christian missionaries who tried to convert people and made violent and vulgar public attacks on Hinduism and Islam. They were also provided police protection. Popular suspicion that the alien Government supported the activities of the missionaries was strengthened by certain acts of the Government and the actions of some of its officials. In 1850, the Government enacted a law that enabled a convert to Christianity to inherit his ancestral property. Moreover, the Government maintained at its cost chaplains or Christian priests in the army.
The conservative religious sentiments of many people were also aroused by some of the humanitarian measures which the Government had undertaken on the advice of Indian reformers. They believed that an alien government had no right to interfere in, or reform, their religion and customs. Abolition of Sati, legalization of widows’ remarriage, and the opening of Western education appeared to them as examples of such undue interference. Religious sentiments were also hurt by the official policy of taxing lands belonging to religious and charitable institutions which had been exempted from taxation by previous Indian rulers.