To what extent did the British policy of Anglicisation precipitate the Indian rebellions of 1857?

Writers at the time were even shocked by the rebellion.  On the same day it broke out the Times reported on the ‘perfect tranquillity pervading the whole of India’.  The Duke of Argyll also failed to recognise why the Indian Mutiny occurred confessing that ‘The savage slaughter of the officers came at the end of years of sympathy and affection.’  However, when confronted with a change in ‘sympathetic’ religious policy, under Dalhousie, rebellion became more plausible.

Anglicisation policy also encouraged missionary Christian zeal.  Historians such as Fitzjames Stephen analysed the Mutiny as a reaction to the huge amount of change. In 1854 British neutrality towards religion had changed as money was given to missionary schools to extend their teaching.  The British had ‘violated all that was held sacred and dear by the people of India.’  The religious zeal ‘created an atmosphere of fear and distrust in which anything associated with Christianity was an object of suspicion and hatred’.  The name of the commissioner in Awadh, Mr. Christian, even increased the animosity of the rebels.  The rebels thought they were fighting in defence of their religion and a rebel proclamation even announced that “The rebellion began with religion”.  The Lee-Enflield rifle also had to be greased with fat of pigs and cows, which went against the Muslim and Hindu religions and has, traditionally, been thought of as the single event that sparked the rebellion. Fear and panic spread as rumours surrounding plots to overthrow caste and forcible conversions to Christianity reflected a deep rooted suspicion of the British.  ‘The violence intrinsic to British rule in India, the violation by zealous British administrators of all that was sacred and cherished, and a perceived threat to religion that manifested itself in the circulation of rumours’ were all responsible for the rebellion.  Queen Victoria was also belief that the rebellion was religiously motivated stating that ‘none molested or disquieted by reason of their religious faith or observances’.  Prior to Dalhousie, fundamentalist Hindu and Islamic beliefs flourished under new governance, making society more overtly religious. Also by increasing the protection from Maharaja’s suppression, religious leaders grew in power and absorbed the power of the state, increasing their own personal wealth and becoming significant powerful authorities.  When this power was threatened under Dalhousie it spurred a reaction.  The unfounded threat that was thought to exist towards the Hindus and Muslims did whip the rebels into frenzy, however the economic grievances imposed by the British seemed to have had more of an impact. Hyam believes that the main cause behind the rebellion was ‘religious interference and the spread of western ways and taxation’.  Nana Sahib also recognises the importance of religion as a cause but recognises the economic factors too.  His Proclamation blames the ‘compulsion’ to ‘make people Christians’ but also supports Metcalfe’s view that ‘double payment’ or economic grievances might also have been to blame.

In the economic sphere the so called ‘anglicised’ policy changed many institutions and economic structures.  It was the deteriorating conditions of the peasants, as a result of these changes, that can be held responsible for the peasant uprising of 1857.  The ryotwari system permitted the taxation of peasants, and these areas were squeezed to compensate for deficiencies in Bengal.  The East India Company also had monopolies over domestic economic issues for example the production of salt, opium, tobacco and betel.  There was a shift in interest regarding the export market.  Indian textile trade was absorbed by British industrialisation and interest in south East Asia took over trade in India, opium sales of the 1830s and 40s totalled forty percent of India’s total amount of exports.  The economy suffered a depression in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, port cities such as Madras were offset be de-industrialisation and de-urbanisation.  In a general climate of Depression the peasant rebels took the opportunity to attack institutions that were creating it.

Indian’s social economy became more peasant-based and agrarian where indigenous populations were forced to adopt agrarian forms of production. The population became more ‘sedentary’ as wandering peasants were grounded and tax tied them to their land, for example the peasant in Bombay was threatened with losing his land if he did not cultivate after one year.  The social structure also became homogenised, tax meant there were little or no distinctions between anyone in the agrarian community.  Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98) backed this idea by citing the causes of the Indian Rebellion to ‘the Government for having deprived them of their position and dignity and for keeping them down’.  It was a response to multiple grievances and there was no coherent strategy.  The revolt in the Oudh took the shape of a ‘popular’ movement (Rudrangshu Mukherjee) with all classes fighting on behalf of the sepoy.  Conversely the North western provinces rebelled as a response to fifty years of British rule and can be described as the ‘post pacification’ revolt.  The development of landlord propriety rights meant that irrigation of their land was neglected, fuelling further economic decline.  Peasants rebelled against the suppression they had experienced under this system of landlord rule.  

As a result of economic factors, a ‘peasantization’ of society ensued but with the increase in amount of agricultural production, supply outstripped demand.  There was also a contraction of the money supply.  The revenue and fiscal policies were heavy and spurred the contraction of investment.  Rates of assessment were judged upon the quality of the land and its output.  At the same time peasants who were losing money due to overproduction, often moved to dry and arid land therefore cutting any form of investment.  . The rebellion occurred in the poor, marginal communities on the banks of the River Jumna.  This was not a coincidence. The people here were representative of the poor peasant and their hostility towards the changes inflicted by the Dalhousie government were hard to swallow.  Interestingly, Marx stressed ‘rapacious land tenure policies, and evidence that tax collectors resorted to torture’ as evidence to suggest the reason behind the rebellion was purely economically motivated.

Commercial and banking systems were also disrupted by the British as fiscal management was absorbed by the state bureaucrats and private bankers were denied access to cash held in the Company treasuries.  There was a displacement of leading Indian officials from positions of power.  Charles Theophilus Metcalfe attributes the cause of the rebellion to ‘the thousands of men in the service of the king…thrown out of employment’ and that the ‘welfare of the soldier required this [the rebellion]; the honour of their chiefs was at stake’.  The Bengali army, the main participators in the rebellion, also lost status through proposals to Europeanize the army, bringing it under strict controls.  The soldiers found it difficult to adjust to the modernisation of the army such as the General Service Enlistment Act of 1856 that required soldiers to fight abroad if the Empire required.  The rebellion also occurred in the province of Oudh where its annexation in 1856 meant that many of the soldiers would lose their land rights.  Many families had also joined to army to retain their social status (it was the only way how under the East India Company).  Dalhousie’s policies threatened their social status.

The judiciary was also anglicised, alienating the Indian population.  The judges exercised independent judgement and ‘failed to establish a mechanism which could give customary law the same independent status as common law in England’.  Indian subjects had no influence in the formulation or practice of law.  Washbrook contests that ‘British-Indian law became less a tool of liberty than an instrument of despotism’.  The peasant insurgency sought to first destroy the British institutions that represented oppression by looting and damaging them.  The peasants also launched attacks on the businessmen of Kanpur (mainly the money lenders) showing that they were rebelling against the spirit of British rule, which was supported by these upper classes.

A greater social distance was also imposed between the peasant and the ‘Brahmin’s’ who enjoyed being elevated in colonial society due to their new founded roles as bureaucrats and protectors of land.  The actions of the Brahmin’s themselves was the cause of much discontent, not just the anglicised policies of the British.  They held a high position in society and were able to dictate the British stance on aspects of social policy such as caste, where the Indian elites held the opinion that the system should be upheld rigidly The presence of a standing army that was crucial in the running of Indian internal and foreign affairs meant that princes who provided soldiers became useful allies and were protected.  It was the elevation of princes and lords, established long before 1857, that engrained a social order within society.  When members of the Brahmin caste in Bengal were threatened by the concept of flattening social structures they sought to rebel.  An example of the Mutiny being led by grievances of the higher caste members include that of Nana Sahib, who stood to inherit a hefty pension from his father but could not due to Dalhousie’s resistance to recognising the inheritance.  The rebellion thus occurred because the policies of Dalhousie contrasted with the privileges higher caste members received under the neo-orientalist government that existed previously.  A Marxist interpretation of the Mutiny suggests that it began with the ‘fattened’ and ‘peppered’ sepoys.  Many of the members of the high castes in the Bengal army had privileges such as escaping flogging.  Under Dalhousie, the army was to be brought under European discipline which created tensions.

In conclusion the British policy of Anglicisation served to alienate different groups in Indian society both economically and socially.  The peasant suffered under the authority of land proprietors, overproduction, and heavy taxes.  The British policies, however, seemed to revert back to a more ‘traditional’ economy rather an Anglicised or westernised one.  Its implementation was even condoned by many authoritative figures in Indian society.  The rebellion of the peasants, although outwardly seen as an attack on British institutions, had more to do with their own economic situation which had come about due to the insatiable land owners, who had the backing of the British.  The army, conversely, mutinied at the prospect of modernisation and equalisation of society.  Ironically they were not campaigning for the reforming proposals of Dalhousie but the policies that had existed under the British that favoured the upper classes. ‘The contradictions of British rule – caught between inventing an Oriental society and abolishing it – were manifested in many complex patterns of the revolt witnessed in 1857.’  There were contradictory policies of orientalism and westernization that would remain in Indian society for a long period after 1857.  After 1857, the romanticised view of India had been quashed and more anglicised policies were enforced with greater vigour.  It did, however, serve to make the British aware of their loosening grip on power, initiating a hard-line, racially motivated colonial policy in the late nineteenth century.

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