Other regions affected by the revolt were Rohilkhand, Bundelkhand, parts of Bihar, parts of Punjab and Central India. While the northern, eastern and central regions of the country were affected by the revolt, the western and southern regions remained more or less aloof. The storm centers of the revolt were Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Bareilly and Jhansi. Bakht Khan was the rebel leader in Delhi and ho took the fight to Lucknow. In Kanpur, Nana Sahib, adopted son of Baji Rao II, the last peshwa of the Maratha kingdom, led the revolt because the British refused recognize him as the legitimate successor of the Peshwas. The revolt in Lucknow was led by the Begum of Awadh who proclaimed her son as Nawab. Young Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi joined the revolt when the British refused to acknowledge her right to adopt an heir to the deceased local king. Kunwar Singh, a ruined and discontented zamindar near Arrah, in Bihar, was the chief organizer of the revolt in the area. The revolt carried on as late as 1859, in some instances, before it was crushed.
Colonial accounts, either contemporary or formulated soon after the events, can be take as representing the official position of the colonial state regarding the revolt. The ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ construct saw the revolt of the soldiers arising out of the breakdown of the coercive machinery of the state. Mention of civil protest and peasant resistance was conspicuous by its absence in colonial accounts. Attempts were made to establish the existence of a conspiracy prior to the revolt and the sections involved in it.
The colonial accounts provided the frames of reference for the Indian nationalist historians, as also their main targets of attack. Nationalists developed arguments about proto-nationalism, particularly with regard to the aspirations of the rebels. They therefore stressed the anti-British component of the revolt. A notable exception was R C Majumdar, who stated that the rebels were motivated by narrow self-interest, and had no ‘national’ aspirations or motives. According to another nationalist historian, H. Chattopadhyaya, the mutiny was popular only on a regional and not an all-India basis. Therefore, he termed the mutiny a popular movement but not an all-India one. Like Majumdar, Chattopadhyaya also reiterated that neither sepoys nor civil rebels had any notions of self-determination. Leaders were motivated by local and personal grievances. Chattopadhyaya’s analysis assumes that there is no necessary correlation between the geographical spread of a movement and its popular character.
The agrarian dimensions of the revolt and constituent elements such as composition, motive force and leadership have also been the focus of scholarly scrutiny. Historians such as S B Chaudhuri considered land transfers and loss of landed rights as important motive forces that moved the peasant masses to rebel. According to this theory, moneylenders assisted the colonial state in the process of peasant dispossession. This view was proved erroneous by Eric Strokes, based on his studies of Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar districts in UP. Strokes’ study of these areas proved that the revolt was most intense in areas where moneylenders were least successful in taking over landed rights. Strokes also indicated that often the highest revenue rates were borne by cultivating proprietors without complaint, in areas of fertile soil and easily available credit. Often, Strokes writes, subdivision of tenurial rights could be a potent factor leading to a ‘natural explosiveness’ that manifested itself against the colonial state.
Though Thomas R. Metcalf, in his study of northern India in the 19th century, also reiterated the point about the rise in enforced transfer of property under the colonial state, his analysis was more complex. For him, the ability of the taluqdar to adapt to new institutions was equally, if not more, important than the fact of dispossession itself. the point about the complexity of individual motives and the inadequacy of blanket explanations of the revolt was also made by T R Metcalf. For him, those taluqdars who could transform themselves into an ‘enterprising magnate element’ via enhancement of productivity and/or diversification would be likely to remain loyal to the colonial state. This, in turn, would be responsible for somewhat diluting the popular nature of the revolt in certain districts. Metcalf concludes that only in Awadh, where the revolt involved the royal court taluqdars and peasants alike, can the revolt be termed ‘popular’.
In his own studies of the period, Eric Strokes integrated economic and sociological issues and considered local and caste factors important. He interpreted the events of 1857 as a series of local rebellions occurring at the same point of time. For Strokes, general explanations for outbreak were less relevant than local factors. While accepting the existence of some overarching reasons, he accorded primacy to configurations of power. Strokes postulated that since the majority of the peasants operated within their locality, and since caste majority depended on numerical strength, participation in the revolt depended on the position of the majority caste in the revolt. Therefore, different areas had different responses to the revolt, as well as widely varied reasons to revolt.
Strokes’ theory firmly placed the mantle of decision making on the shoulders of the magnates, who he termed ‘effective decision makers’ in a similar vein. Metcalf had also asserted that the pattern of the rebellion was determined by the orientation of the magnate element, either towards, or against British rule. A different picture was presented by Rudrangshu Mukherjee, based on his study of Awadh during the revolt. Mukherjee postulated that in Awadh, the relationship between the taluqdars and peasants was more positive and has hitherto been assumed. While there was exploitation of the latter by the former, also present was ‘commonality of interests and mutual dependence’. These, writes Mukherjee, led to united action by both Taluqdars and peasants in 1857. The fact that more than 60% of the fighting force in Awadh was drawn from the general rural populace is evidence enough of the popular character of the revolt. In his view, therefore, peasants had more than a subaltern role.
For Marxist historians, the focus was on different aspects. Ranjit Guha stressed on economic factors and class analysis and emphasized factors such as caste and peasant consciousness. Guha used colonial records and prose of counter insurgency to reconstruct a narrative of peasant participation. In Marxist historiography, caste had been seen as a restraining factor that hindered the growth of class consciousness. However, Guha postulated that caste could aid mobilization during 1857, and that ethnic solidarity was an instrument of rebel mobilization. Guha also drew attention to the purposive nature of violence, which manifested itself in the destruction of the visible symbols of power of the Sarkar, Sahukar and the Zamindar, who were all perceived as enemies. This indicated that the character of the peasant movements was much more than merely anti-British. Since peasant participation involved aggression against Indian elements, it cannot be ascribed a proto-nationalist character.
The extent of peasant consciousness and the content and importance of ideology are two additional factors that have been taken by schools of historiography, though with varying degrees of emphasis. According to Gautam Bhadra, peasant consciousness was tradition but neither retrogressive nor completely backward looking. A case in point is the destruction of telegraph wires, which were destroyed not as symbols of modernity but as channels of communication. He refers to the clan network of the jats, exemplified in the context of ‘Chaurasi Desh’ that was mobilized in aid of anti-British resistance. In the context of the development of sepoy consciousness, R Mukherjee emphasizes on the role and importance of their everyday experiences, as subjects of a colonial state.
Even those who have termed the mutiny a popular revolution have stopped short of attributing a ‘nationalist’ motive or ‘patriotic’ sentiments to it. Rajat Ray, however, approaches these issues from a different perspective. Ray accepts that it is religious rhetoric that predominates in the mutineers’ proclamations. However, he makes a case for reading patriotic sentiments in these proclamations, even if disguised the vocabulary of religion. The patriotism felt by those involved in the revolt is negated in secondary historiography precisely because it is expressed as a religious crusade. Ray reads the raw matter of later Indian nationalism in the mutineers’ antagonism to the British.
The revolt of 1857 cannot be easily compartmentalized either as solely an anti-colonial revolt or solely as a feudal reaction against local, indigenous elite. As has been discussed, the revolt was popular in some parts of the country, but restricted to one certain disaffected sections of the society. Leadership was provided both by landed magnates as well as by members of the lower castes, though the latter seems to be more the exception than the rule. Perhaps it can best be described as a movement against foreign domination that also encompassed local issued and grievances that had little to do with colonial rule. In this sense, the movement was anti-colonial and much more. Classificatory categories, though they made issues easier to comprehend, have often led to an overly simplistic understanding of complex events. An event as complex as the revolt of 1857 can, perhaps, best be understood without the imposition of such classificatory categories as ‘popular’ and ‘anti-colonial’.
Bibliography:
- Eric Strokes - The Peasant Armed
- B. D. Chattopadhayaya - The Sepoy Mutiny : 1857
