Historians and the Great Revolt, 1857-59* Jitendra Kumar, M.A. (F) History, University of .

Abstract:

The mutinies that took place on 10th of May, 1857 in and their marched to Delhi on 11th May and very soon the spread of the mutinies in , Locnow, etc. have been called as “Sepoy Mutiny” by the colonial official and British colonial historians. But after a few decades of the revolt, perception of the historian like John. W. Kaye was different in nature. An remarkable turning point came out on the notion of the revolt in 1909 when V.D. Savarkar published his work and defined it as the Indian War of Independence. While the celebration of 100th anniversary of revolt has brought a large number of researches and books on the topic by Joshi, Chaudhary and Sen ect. where they saw the revolt of 1857 into a new perspectives. Then the new kinds of historiographies ermerged by Mukherjee and Stokes in the late 20th century and works of Dalrymple, and Rajendran in early decades of 21st century presented the historyof the revolt in the very new perspectives that had been never written by the early historians. In his article, i will highlight the issues and concept of historiography that had been done both in the colonial and independent India.

The causes, concept and the nature of the mutinies that took place at Meerut on 10th May 1857 and soon the sepoy of the Meerut cotinental reached to Delhi and proclaimed 8o's year old Bahadur Shah Zafar as the Badshah (kingh) of Hindustan, can not only be understood by the writings that had been produced in the 19th century and early 20th century, whether they are John Kaye's History of the Sepoy War in India or V.D. Savarkar's The Indian War of Independence of 1857. It is also not possible for us to understand and write the history of the mutinies on the basis of the readings of the text produced in the Independent India. If we have to learn the things that exactly caused the revolt of 1857 and the circumstances and problems that the people of Indian sub-continet faced. In order to find the full hisotry of the mutinies that had been occured basically in Meerut, Delhi, Kanpur, Locnow, Jhanshi and Jagdishpur etc., there is need to study all the writings that had been produced during and after the revolts; whether it was written by foreigners or Indians, in colonial India or Independent India.

In order to hide the cause of the mutines broke out in Meerut and its spread to Delhi, the British colonial official began to credited the grease cartidges which caused the break out of the revolt in terms to save their religius beliefs. But very soon after the break out of the mutinies, Syed Ahmad Khan (1817 - 1898) wrote a tract called ‘The Causes of the Indian Revolt’ to counter this allegation, where he sought to examine the underlying features that determined the nature of 1857. The most serious dissenting voice was that of Karl Marx who linked the colonial exploitation of India to the anger that * This article has been written by me to submit as an Assignment for my Internal Assessment of M.A. (F) History to Prof. Amar Farooqui, Department of History, University of Delhi, New Delhi in April 2015. was displayed by the people during the Revolt. Marx and Engels hailed the unity displayed by the different religious communities who opposed British colonialism.1

The most important books on the mutinies that had been written on the colonial point of view in the next decade of revolt is the work of John W. Kaye's History of the Sepoy War in India.2 In his book, Kaye has given a detailed analysis of the causes and the phases of the revolt that had bben occured during the revolts. He provides a fairly detailed account of the background to the Upsurge, concentrating espectially on teh trails and tribulations of Awadh in the decade preceding the revolt. Kaye's work can be read at one level as a historigraphical discourse on the exercise of colonial power over Indian society. The preface of Kaye's work directly shows that his work is written to highlight the history of the strugle between the colonizers and the colonized. He talks that this uprising was marked by the rising of of Black man against the White man. But Shahid Amin in his review of John Kaye's History of the Sepoy War in India points out that “Kaye's history is not so much about the Black Man's rising as about the White Man's suppression of that uprising. It underlines the unity of his enterprises as one where the colonial masters are so completely the subject of Indian history that an account of hte most important rebellion against them, can only be written up as the history of the English-under-fire”3

By the end of the nineteenth century the Revolt attracted and inspired the first generation of the Indian nationalists. Thus, V.D.Savarkar, who was perhaps the first Indian to write about the Revolt in 1909, called it The Indian War of Independence of 1857. His pro-nationalist stance made Savarkar reject the colonial assertion that linked the Revolt with the greased cartridges. As he put it, 'if this had been the issue it would be difficult to explain how it could attract Nana Sahib, the Emperor of Delhi, the Queen of Jhansi and Khan Bahadur Khan to join it.'4 Besides, he also focused on the fact that the Revolt continued even after the English Governor General had issued a proclamation to withdraw the offending greased bullets. Savarkar went ahead and connected the Revolt to the ‘atrocities’ committed by the British. At the same time, the importance he gave to religion illustrates the influence of the imperialist writers on him. Jyotirmaya Sharma in review of Savarkar's writings has pointed out that “Savarkar's account of 1857 has served to legitimise retributive voilence in the name of Hindu nationalism. It is based on a conception of how the history of the “Hindu Rastra” ought to be written, while enunciating a model of politics based on the opposition between “friend” and “foe”. A justification of revenge, retaliation and retribution was carefully built into Savarkar's retelling of 1857. For Savarkar, a massacre is a terrible thing that happens because humankind has failed to approximate the lofty ideals of natural justice, peace, parity and unverdal brotherhodd. And he says that these kinds of humankind are largly absent in the rule and nature of the both the colonial rulers and their authority. From the 1920s, efforts were made to analyse the Revolt from a Marxist position by pioneers like M.N. Roy (India in Transition, 1922) and Rajni Palme Dutt (India Today, 1940). Roy was rather dismissive about 1857 and saw in its failure the shattering of the last vestiges of feudal power. He was emphatic about the ‘revolution of 1857’ being a struggle between the worn out feudal system and the newly introduced commercial capitalism, that aimed to achieve political supremacy. In contrast, Palme Dutt

1 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The First War of Independence, 1857-1859, Moscow, 1975. 2 J.W. Kaye, Hisotry of the Sepoy War, Vol. 2, 1910 (reprinted at New Delhi in 1988). 3 Shahid Amin, English Domination and Indian Subordination: A Reading of John Kaye's Hisotry of the Sepoy War, Vol. 2, 1910. Vol. II Nos. 7 & 8, July-August 1997. 4 V.D. Savarkar, The Indian War of Independence of 1857, (London, 1909). saw 1857 as a major peasant revolt, even though it had been led by the decaying feudal forces, fighting to get back their privileges and turn back the tide of foreign domination. After the independence, the Govt. Of India had celebreted the 100th anniversary of the revolt of the 1857 and during and after the occassion a large number of works were written to highlight the casues and the nature of the revolt in the different types of point of vies. Some of the important works are of R.C. Majumdar's The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857 (1957), S.B.Chaudhuri's Civil Revolt in the Indian Mutinies, 1857-59, (1957) and Theories of the Indian Mutiny, (1965), S.N. Sen's Eighteen Fifty- Seven, (1957), and, K.K. Datta's Reflections on the Mutiny, (1967). These historians were not uniformly comfortable with the idea that the 1857 Revolt was the ‘First War of Indian Independence’. Moreover, they referred to ideas like nationalism that were supposedly witnessed during 1857 or saw the very inception of the national movement contained in the Revolt. The most important and widely read work produced after the indepence was S.N. Sen's Eithteen Fifty- Seven was written 1957.5 It was written by Sen when he recieved a request from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, then Education Minister. Azad fetl that “time had now come to write a new and objective history of the movement of 1857.”6 So he commissioned S.N. Sen to write an “authentic account” based on “facts and facts alone.” After the publication of S.N. Sen's works, Azad's comments on the book shows Sen's writings had avoided “all appeal to passion or sentiment.” Sen followed in the footsteps of Kaye and treated the uprising in terms of administrative divisions or geographical . Rudrankshu Mukherjee points out that Sen has given a lot time in his work to highlight the details of the events, but in order to highlihght “the linkages which existed between the events and the activities of the rebels of one area with those of another Zone of the rebelion.” Whatever we study about the revolts, whatever we write about the causes of 1857, the last dicision that many historians show that more or less the revolt of the 1857 was caused by the domination of the Company's colonial rule and the exploitation of the whether it might be the economic resouces or social or cultural identities. But here in his book Sen did not link the revolt to the colonial domination and exploitation of India, and while he saw the British rule in India as the “agent of a social revolution” However, Sen's work had brought together an enormous ammount of material within the compass in his single one volume and his book contains the most comprehensive bibliography on the subject of the revolt of the 1857. Till now his book has reffered as the single textbook which has the enornous comprehensive details of the revolt by the common people or the historians. Apart form Sen's writing, the writings of P.C. Joshi has focused on both the diversities and the specificities of the 1857 Revolt . This included assessing 1857 against the colonial backdrop, examining aspects of participation and focusing in a major way on the internal contradictions. His volume also sought to highlight dimensions of popular culture by incorporating folk poems that have survived. In 1980's a new historiography came out to highlight the revolt of the 1857 produced by Eric Stokes.

5 S.N. Sen, Eighteen-Fifty-Seven (New Delhi: Prakashan Division, 1957 and 1995). 6 Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Introduction to Eighteen-Fifty-Seven by S.N. Sen (New Delhi: Prakashan Division, 1957 and 1995). He wrote a lot of essays on the concerned topic, but due his death, his all works on the topic were brought in publication which edited by C.A. Bayly called The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857 (1986). Eric Stokes examined issues ranging from the way the nature of 1857 was conditioned by the background, the demographic and ecological features to the social composition and the role of the peasants, especially the ‘rich’ peasants’. He in his “Peasant Armed” basically focused on the upper and central and argued that “ruler political affiliation in the hour of crises” was related to British land- revenue policies and its impact on patterns of landholding in different regions.7 He has talked about the military dimension of the revolt of the 1857 and the operations headed by the British in order to suppress the mutinies. He then turns to the world of peasants and British administration, focusing his attention on the “swollen proprietary communities” which formed the recruiting base for the Bengal army. The most importatn thing should be talked is his description on the progress and failures of the rural revolts. But he did not try to highlight the social status of the 'purvi' sipahi which was the phases of the recruitment and the situations they faced while they were in thier duties. Here, it can be noted that social structure of the Bengal army were very effected by the policies of the Company which might have bring these sipahi into the thinkings for the mutinies. However, the historians like Rudrangshu Mukherjee and Tapti Roy gave their focus on the popular level of the Revolt. Their effort was based on specific area studies such as Awadh and that brought to light fascinating complexities of popular militancy that had remained ignored. The central thesis of Mukherjee's writings is advanced in a fairly straight-forward fashion in the introductry chapter on agrarian relations in pre-annexation Awadh.8 He basically focus on the 'well-knit relationship between lord and peasant' to illumunate the history of the revolt in Awadh by isolating the districts of , Gonda, Fyzabad, Sultanpur, Partapgarh and parts of Rae Bareli which, for him, are the core areas of 'peasant-talukdar interdependence and co-operation'. His works highlight the relationship between the land lords (taluqdars) and the peasants and the mobilization of the peasants into the revolt because they were aware of the approaches of the colonial rule and its exploitation in India. Michael H. Fisher in his book review point out as to how Mukherjee asserts that the revolt was the conflict in terms of “popular resistense” and concluded that people's essential aim was the “restoration” of the feudal order desputed by the British rather than any revolutionary movement by the subaltern classes.9 Tapti Rai's work on Bundelkhand shows the looking of larger area of Bundelkhan lying between Kanpur in east and Gwalior in west. Her works presented the history of the revolt by focusing on the village level events and the condition of the common people effected by the Company's rule.

7 Whereas in his first work he had focused on the ‘rich’ peasant leadership and mobilisation, in Peasant Armed Stokes enlarged the social basis of peasant participation in the Revolt. (Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Peasant Society and Agrarian Revolt in Colonial India, 1978; and The Peasant Armed: The India Revolt of 1857, 1986). 8 Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Awadh in Revolt, 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 1984). 9 Michael H. Fisher, Book Review of Awadh in Revolt, 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance by Rudrangshu Mukherjee (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 1984) in The Journal of Asian Studies/ Volume 45 / Issue 01 / November 1985, pp 181-182. The historical writings on the revolt of the 1857 produced after the 1990's have focused on the popular dimensions of 1857. The scholars like K.S.Singh has highlighted the participation of adivasis in the revolts of the 1857.10 He says that the tribal movements during the early parts of 19th century in terms of resistance, elernental, spontaneous, violent, led bytribal chiefs or other chiefs, aimed at overthrowing the colonial authority that destroyed the old system. Most of these characteristics were present in the upsing of the 1857. However, important things is that the revolt of the 1857 represents possibly one of the most powerful and dramatic anti-colonial movements which united the peasants and the landed sections against the ruthless imperialist onslaught over the first half of the nineteenth century. At the same time, it also questioned the internal exploiters like the moneylenders and buniyas. 21st century historians have shifted their focus from the mutinous ‘sepoys’, and seeing in it the origins of Indian nationalism to studying the diversities of the Revolt both in terms of popular participation and regions affected by it as also highlighting the internal contradictions. Presently some historians are engaged in resarching gender-related issues, which would undoubtedly enrich our understanding of the Revolt of 1857. The coming of the new researches on the topic of the revolt of 1857 during the 150th anneversary of the revolt produced a new kind of historiography on the topic. One of the most importatn works was William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal. Dalrymple has here written an account of the Indian mutiny such as it had never written before, of the events leading up to it and of its aftermath, seen through the prism of the last emperor's life. He has vividly described the street life of the Mughal capital in the days before the catastrophe happened, he has put his finger deftly on every crucial point in the story, which earlier historians have sometimes missed, and he has supplied some of the most informative footnotes that had been ignored by earlier historians.11 Amar Farooqui in his book review of The Last Mughal show this work of Dalrymple as “not so much a biography of Bahadurshah II, better known by his takhallus or pen-name ‘Zafar’, as a history of the revolt in Delhi... The real strength of the book is its portrayal of the everyday lives of various sections of the people of ‘independent Delhi’ during the hot summer months of 1857.”12 In order to highlight the isseus of the causes and nature of the revolt, he argues that till 1830's the colonial official and Indian elites could interact with meaningful way interms of socially, culturally; they all eat food of both people, bear the cloths and live together in the colinies, but after 1840's these interaction came to be collapesed and distincion were made due to the enterference of the colonial authority and its effect on the Indian society and culture.

Finally, we can also see the researches that highlight the revolt of the 1857 in all India character that have been presented by the new kinds of research. The most development and advanced researches on the causes and nature of 1857 have been presented during and after the celebration of 150th

10 K. S. Singh, “The ‘Tribals’ and the 1857 Uprising” in Social Scientist, Vol. 26, No. 1/4 (Jan. - Apr., 1998), pp. 76-85. 11 William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 (New Delhi: Penguin, 2006). 12 Amar Farooqui, Book Review of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 by William Dalrymple (New Delhi: Penguin, 2006) in The Book Review: Literary Trust, Vol. XXXI No. 3, March 2007. http://www.thebookreviewindia.org/articles/archives-2642/2007/march/3/history-of-a-revolt.html anneversary of the revolt in 2007. These new types of works based on the different perspectives have not only countered the colonial writings, but also oppose to accept the notion that the revolt of 1857 was only limited in the areas of of Northen and Central India and some parts of Bihar. The works of K.C. Yadav highlight the participation of the people of , Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh that had not been cited by any other historians before it.13 Even earlier there was notion created by the British Indian Empire that Punjab had been loyal. He cited a various serious sepoy mutinies at Ferozepur, Jullundur, Phillour, Jhelum, Sialkot, Thanesar, Ambala, Sirsa, Lahore, Ferozepur, Peshawar, and Mianwali etc. where the people and the rulers of the princely states had broke out the mutinies. Apart from K.C. Yadav the the works of N. Rajendran has surveyed the history of the revolt in new perspectives that shows the presence of the revolt in the areas of Tamilnadu and other parts of south India.14 He says that for colonial writers, "benighted Madras" was a "model Presidency" and even Surendra Nath Sen, in his work Eighteen Fifty-Seven, says: "The Presidency of Madras remained unaffected all through, though some slight signs of restlessness were perceived in the army. The educated community unreservedly ranged itself on the side of law and order and condemned the rising in unambiguous terms." But he in his article has clealy shown as to how the areas of Madras, Arocot and Salem etc. were affected by the mutinies, but it is true that it was suppressed by the Company's armies very soon.

13 K.C. Yadav, 1857: The Role of Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2009). 14 N. Rajendran, “The Revolt of 1857: Rebelliuous Prelude and Nationalist Response in Tamil Nadu,” in Rethinking 1857, edited by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (New Delhi: ICHR Publication, 2007), 180- 209.