Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
The great Indian mutiny of 1857, was the first Indian political movement of the nineteenth century. The movement was national as well as political. The underlying causes and the contributory forces were many. The union of the Hindus and Mohammedans, the thoroughness of the organisation which preceded the mutiny, the stubbornness with which the mutineers fought, and the comparatively few treacheries that characterised the mutinous campaign, all point to the same conclusion.
The mutiny, however, failed because the people on the whole had no faith in the constructive capacity of the mutineers. The mutineers had no doubt agreed to postpone the question of the constructive ends in view, until after they had turned out the British, but the people could not. The people’s patience had been exhausted by the military activities of the preceding century and the accompanying disorder and anarchy, and they saw before them the possibility of a recurrence of the same in the case of success attending the arms of the mutineers. They hated the British; the Indian nobility and aristocracy, as well as the Indian people, hated them. They sympathised with the mutineers; but they helped them only half-heartedly. They had no faith in them.
Some Traitors of the Mutiny
Sir John William Kay, a British military historian, admitted “that although the English were supposed to be fighting against the natives, they were in reality sustained and supported by the natives.”
Major Hodson of ‘Hodson Horse’ had established a highly efficient intelligence network and recruited the Services of Rajab Ali, Mirza Ilahi Baksh, father-in-law of heir apparent, Mirza Fakhru, and Munshi Jeewan Lal. Ominous and treacherous Shadow of this trio looms large and pales the heroic deeds and valour of the rebels. Rajab Ali and Mirza Ilahi Baksh organised the destruction of the Yamuna bridge which provided great strategic advantage to the British. Their agents had blown up the gun powder manufacturing factory of the rebels for a reward of Rs 1,000 which was never paid.
Rai Bahadur Jeewan Lal is an interesting character. He was the descedant of Raja Raghunath Bahadur (from Narnaul), Diwan Ala or Prime Minister of Aurangzeb. Jeewan Lal’s father entered the service of the British who destroyed the Mughal dynasty. Jeewan Lal followed his father and after ‘eating the salt’ of the British remained loyal to them. His opinion and advice were sought by the British which were invariably found to be sound and reliable, honest and useful. Caste activism of the father and son (Kayastha) was able to replace Brahmins from the administration for the first time. Jeewan Lal enjoys some sort distinction to introduce Income Tax in India.
Jeewan Lal employed two Brahmins and two Jats. He conspired with officials of Bharatpur State who facilitate the opening of the city gate at sight of British Army.
Through his agents he forwarded the letters of Williams and Murphy from Meerut to the Raja of Ballabgarh. Maulvi Ahmad Ali, Mukhtar of the Raja, met Munshi Jeewan lal on June 3, 1857 to acknowledge the receipt of the letters and assure him the loyalty of the Raja whom the British had favoured with Jagir and honour. The Maulvi informed the Munshi that the Raja was devising means for sending his motif with troops to the Sahibs at the Duamdameh. Had the rebels not stormed Ballabgarh, Raja Nahar Singh would not have died a martyr’s death!
Mirza Ilahi Baksh remained inside the city during the seize and he was able to furnish important intelligence of the movements of the rebels. Later on he brought about the peaceful surrender of the King, and helped Hodson in effecting the capture of the princes Khizar Sultan and Abul Bakar, thus dealing the rebellion a death – blow by depriving the disaffected of their hereditary leaders.
Deeply impressed by the exhibition of unsolicited loyalty and spectacular support of the Maharaja of Gwalior during the most critical period in 1857-58, Governor-General Lord Charles John Viscount Canning had passed an extraordinary fiat, Royal Salute for Maharaja Scindia of Gwalior for his Loyalty and Unsolicited Support against the Mutineers, The Right Hon’ble Governor General, in order to mark his appreciation of the Maharajah Scindia’s friendship, and his gratification at the re-establishment of His Highness’ authority in his ancestral dominions, is placed to direct that a Royal Salute shall be fired at every principal station in India. We may not err to guess that the new avatar of Gwalior continued to receive the Royal Salute whenever he visited the principal stations, for example, Dacca, Calcutta, Cuttack, Patna, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, Karachi, etc. till the British sun set over India.
In all fairness it needs to be added that Mahtab Chand, the Maharaja of Burdwan, a zamindar of the sprawling estates in Bengal, too had ingratiated himself to the British authorities for similar distinction, of course, on a lesser scale. A Bengal Civilian C.E. Buckland reveals that[….] at the Imperial Assembly at Delhi on 1st January 1877 he was granted as a personal distinction, the right to receive a salute of 13 guns. At the time of Santhal Rebellion in 1855 and again in the mutiny [1857-58] the Maharaja did everything in his power to help the Government by placing elephants and bullock carts at the disposal of the authorities and by keeping open the communications throughout his property.
, Meer Zaffars and, or their descendants for their collaboration with the colonial masters Names of a few are given here: Maharaja Sir Lachmesvar Singh Bahadur, KCIE, of Darbhanga [1880, 1893, 1895 and 1897]; Maharaja Sir Harendra Kishore Singh Bahadur, KCIE, of Bettiah, Champaran [1891]; Moulvi Syed Fazl Imam Khan Bahadur of Patna [1892]; Maharaja Sir Ravaneshur Prasad Singh Bahadur of Gidhour, Monghyr [1893, 1895]; Maharaja Mahtab Chand of Burdwan [1864]; Maharaja Jotindra Mohan Tagore [1870, 1872], Maharaj Jagadindranath Roy, Natore, Rajshashi [1894, 1897] etc.
Proclamations of rewards for apprehension of two prominent rebels merit our attention in this context. The Governor General had offered reward of Rs 25,000 for the arrest of Babu Kuwer Singh of Shahabad, Bihar, and Rs 50,000 for Moulvi Ahmadullah Shah of Fyzabad .The former has been duly recognised in history for his anti-colonial role during the Mutiny.The Moulvi wanted Raja Jagannath Singh of Pawain, a zamindar in district Shahjahanpur (UP), to join the anti-colonial war. With prior appointment, he went to meet the zamindar in his fortress-like house. On arrival at the gate, he was greeted with a volley of gunshots from Jagannath Singh’s brother and retainers. The Moulvi breathed his last on the spot as a result. The martyr’s head was severed and carried in a piece of cloth with blood still oozing from it to the District Magistrate, Shahjahanpur by the zamindar.
For the centenary of 1857, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad had commissioned Prof. Surendra Nath Sen to write an objective history of the struggle. In his foreword, Maulana Azad adopts a somewhat magisterial tone: “As I read about the events of 1857, I am forced to the sad conclusion that Indian national character had sunk very low. The leaders of the revolt could never agree. They were mutually jealous and continually intrigued against one another. They seemed to have little regard for the effects of such disagreements on the common cause. In fact, these personal jealousies and intrigues were largely responsible for the Indian defeat.”
The ruling families of India, the aristocracy and the nobility, were perhaps more dreaded and hated by the people than were the British. There was no one to rally them to one standard.
How the Mutiny was Put Down
Here again it was British ” diplomacy ” that saved the British situation. The British rallied to their support the newly born aristocracy of the Punjab,— the Sikhs. The Sikhs had been persecuted and oppressed by the Mohammedans. They were not in a mood to look favourably at the chance of Mohammedan supremacy being re-established in India. They had had enough of the “Turk,” as they called every Mohammedan; and they threw the whole weight of their recently gathered virility on the side of the British. Popular perception based upon the accounts by historians, including Sikhs, is that the Sikhs supported the British. In Rebel Sikhs in 1857 the author has torn this into shreds. If Sikh princely states of Punjab supported the British, the heroic deeds, valour and sacrifices of the common Sikhs have been thoroughly researched and documented. Sikh rulers of Patiala (Maharaja Narender Singh), Jind (Sarup Singh), Nabha (Bharpur Singh) and Kapurthala (Raja Randhir Singh) had been substantially “supplying war materials as well as sepoys to the British Army” for which they were suitably rewarded. William Howard Russell of London Times wrote in a dispatch : “Our siege of Delhi Would have been impossible, if the Rajas of Patiala and Jhind (Jind) had not been our friends”. Islam explodes the thesis of R.C Majumdar “who refused to treat 1857 rebellion either as ‘National’ or ‘War of Independence”; rejected the claim that it was led by any kind of an ideal like patriotism, and believed the Sikhs were won by the British to avenge the insults the Mughals had inflicted on their gurus.
They were told and they believed, that in crushing the Mohammedan power, they were revenging themselves on the slayers of Guru Teg Bahadur, the oppressors of Guru Govind Singh, and the murderers of his sons. It was the thought of Sirhind and the incidents associated with the name of that cursed place,( Sirhind is a small town on the road to Delhi, where the Muslim governor of the time tortured the two minor sons of Guru Govind Singh to death by placing them between two brick walls.) that goaded them to the destruction of the last chance of Mohammedan supremacy in India. The mutiny failed, but its course showed with what intensity the mutineers hated the British. The Indians are a very kind-hearted people; they would not injure even an ant, much less a human being, if they could help it, but some of them were guilty of the most cruel excesses during the mutiny. The British, too, in their turn did not spare the Indians in any way either during the mutiny or after it. Innocent and guilty alike were placed before the cannon and shot in lots.( See Kaye and Malleson, vol. II, p. 367.) “ In respect to the mutineers of the 55th, they were taken fighting against us, and so far deserve little mercy. But, on full reflection, I would not put them all to death. I do not think that we should be justified in the eyes of the Almighty in doing so. A hundred and twenty men are a large number to put to death. Our object is to make an example to terrify others. I think this object would be effectually gained by destroying from a quarter to a third of them. I would select all of those against whom anything bad can be shown — such as general bad character, turbulence, prominence in disaffection or in the fight, disrespectful demeanor to their officers during the few days before the 26th, and the like. If these did not make up the required number, I would then add to them the oldest soldiers. All these should be shot or blown away from the guns, as may be most expedient. The rest I would divide into patches : some to be imprisoned marches through the country, British soldiers tortured men, women, and children, and sometimes hung their heads or carcasses on the trees. Both sides vied with ten years, some seven, some five, some three.”) In their1757 TO 1857 A.D. 95 marches through the country, British soldiers tortured men, women, and children, and sometimes hung their heads or carcasses on the trees. Both sides vied ( History of Indian Mutiny, Kaye and Malleson, vol. II, p. 203. “ Martial law had been proclaimed ; those terrible Acts passed by the Legislative Council in May and June were in full operation; and soldiers and civilians alike were holding Bloody Assize, or slaying natives without any Assize at all, regardless of sex or age. Afterwards the thirst for blood grew stronger still. It is on the records of our British Parliament, in papers sent home by the Governor General of India in Council, that the aged, women, and children, are sacrificed, as well as those guilty of rebellion. They were not deliberately hanged, but burnt to death in their villages — perhaps now and then accidently shot. Englishmen did not hesitate to boast, or to record their boastings in writings, that they had ‘spared no one,’ and that ‘ peppering away at niggers’ was very pleasant pastime, ‘ enjoyed amazingly.’ It has been stated in a book patronised by high class authorities, that for three months eight dead-carts daily went their rounds from sunrise to sunset to take down the corpses which hung at the cross-roads and market-places,’ and that ‘ six thousand beings’ had been thus summarily disposed of and launched into eternity.”
See Kaye and Malleson’s History of the Mutiny, vol. II, p. 177. “Already our military officers were hunting down the criminals of all kinds, and hanging them up with as little compunction as though they had been pariah-dogs, or jackals, or vermin of a baser kind. One contemporary writer has recorded that, on the morning of disarming parade, the first thing he saw from the Mint was a ‘row of gallowses.’ A few days afterwards the military courts or commissions were sitting daily, and sentencing old and young to be hanged with indiscriminate ferocity. On one occasion, some young boys, who, seemingly in mere sport, had flaunted rebel colours and gone about beating tom-toms, were tried and sentenced to death. One of the officers composing the court, a man unsparing before an enemy under arms, but compassionate, as all brave men are, towards the weak and the helpless, went with tears in his eyes to the commanding officer, imploring him to remit the sentence passed against these juvenile offenders, but with little effect on the side of mercy. And what was done with some show of formality either of military or of criminal law, was as nothing, I fear, weighed against what was done without any formality at all. Volunteer hanging parties went out into the districts, and amateur executioners were not wanting to the occasion. One gentleman boasted of the numbers he had finished off quite ‘ in an artistic manner,’ with mango-trees for gibbets and elephants for drops, the victims of this wild justice being strung up, as though for pastime, in ‘ the form of a figure of eight.’ “On mock trials see Holmes’ History of the Sepoy War, p. 124. “ Officers, as they went to sit on the court martial, swore that they would hang their prisoners, guilty or innocent. . . . Prisoners condemned to death after a hasty trial were mocked at and tortured by ignorant privates before their execution, while educated officers looked on and approved.” “ Old men who had done us no harm, and helpless women with sucking infants at their breasts felt the weight of our vengeance, no less than the vilest malefactors.” Again see History of the Siege of Delhi quoted by Savarkar in his “ War of Indian Independence,” p. 111, by an officer who served there, how, on the way from Umbala to Delhi, thousands were placed before a court martial in rows after rows and condemned to be hanged or shot. In some places cow’s flesh was forced by spears and bayonets into the mouths of the condemned. (All Hindus abhor cow’s flesh and would rather die than eat it.) See Charles Ball’s Indian Mutiny, vol. I, p. 257. “One trip I enjoyed amazingly; we got on board a steamer with a gun, while the Sikhs and the fusiliers marched up to the city. We steamed up throwing shots right and left till we got up to the bad places, when we went on the shore and peppered away with our guns, my old double-barrel bringing down several niggers. So thirsty for vengeance I was. We fired the places right and left and the flames shot up to the heavens as they spread, fanned by the breeze, showing that the day of vengeance had fallen on the treacherous villains. Every day we had expeditions to burn and destroy disaffected villages and we had taken our revenge. I have been appointed the chief of a commission for the trial of all natives charged with offences against the Government and persons. Day by day, we have strung up eight or ten men. We have the power of life in our hands and, I assure you, we spare not. A very summary trial is all that takes place. The condemned culprit is placed under a tree, with a rope around his neck, on the top of a carriage, and when it is pulled off he swings.” “ In the Punjab, near Ajnala, in a small island, many a Sepoy who had simply fled away from a regiment which was working under the reasonable fear of being disarmed and shot by the Government for suspicion, was hiding himself. Cooper with a loyal body of troops took them prisoner. The entire number, amounting to two hundred and eightytwo, were then conveyed by Cooper to Ajnala. Then came the question what was to be done with them. There was no means of transporting them to a place where they could be tried formally. On the other hand, each other in their cruelties. The victors have immortalised the reprisals (or say, the iniquities) of the vanquished by building permanent memorials on the spots where they were perpetrated; their own, they have forgotten, and so have perhaps the descendants of those who were the objects thereof, though they are recorded in history. The impression which a visit to these memorials leaves on the mind of an English visitor can be better realised by the following extract from an account published in The Outlook (the English journal) on the 3rd of April, 1915, over the signature of one F. G. A. Speaking of the mutiny memories and monuments of if they were summarily executed, other regiments and intending rebels might take warning by their fate, and thus, further bloodshed might be prevented. For these reasons, Cooper, fully conscious as he was of the enormous responsibility which he was undertaking, resolved to put them all to death. Next morning, accordingly, he brought them out in tens and made some Sikhs shoot them. In this way, two hundred and sixteen perished. But, there still remained sixty-six others who had been confined in one of the bastions of the Tahsil. Expecting resistance, Cooper ordered the door to be opened. But not a sound issued from the room; forty-five of them were dead bodies lying on the floor. For, unknown to Cooper, the windows had been closely shut and the wretched prisoners had found in the bastion a second Black-Hole. The remaining twenty-one were shot, like their comrades. 1 —’8 — ‘57. For this splendid assumption of authority, Cooper was assailed by the hysterical cries of ignorant humanitarians. But Robert Montgomery unanswerably vindicated his character by proving that he had saved the Lahore division.”— Holmes’s History of the Indian Mutiny, p. 363. “ It is related that, in the absence of tangible enemies, some of our soldiery, who turned out on this occasion, butchered a number of unoffending camp-followers, servants, and others who were huddling together in vague alarm, near the Christian church-yard. No loyalty, no fidelity, no patient good service on the part of these good people could extinguish, for a moment, the fierce hatred which possessed our white soldiers against all who wore the dusky livery of the East.” — Kaye and Malleson’s Indian Mutiny, vol. II, p. 438 Lucknow and Cawnpore, the writer remarks: “ Their mutiny memories are quite distinct, as are the impressions they leave on the pilgrim to these shrines of heroism and devilry. The battered ruins of Lucknow, testifying to a heroism so splendid as to rob even death of its sting, bring an inspiration that is almost joyous. Every crumbling gateway and every gloomy cellar has its tale of heroic endurance and magnificent defence, and the final relief of the beleaguered garrison wrote such a finis to the story as erased much of its earlier bitterness. . . . “ None of this forgiveness is conceivable in those who visit Cawnpore. Even the sculptured angel over the unspeakable Well bears, on one profile at any rate, an expression of stern condemnation that holds out no promise of pardon. The atmosphere of historic Cawnpore is one of haunting horror and a sadness that will not pass with the years. Time seems powerless to heal this rancour. I care not whether the pilgrim wanders through the beautiful Memorial Gardens (in which, significantly, no native is allowed to enter), feasting his eyes on the blaze Bougainvillea, or resting them in the shade of the peepul and the banyan, or whether he lingers in the strangely Italian-looking Memorial Church and reads the roll of honour that fills a series of mural tablets ; everywhere his soul will be filled with gloom and will cry for eternal vengeance on the authors of the massacre and on those who threw the dying with the dead into the awful blackness of the pit. These memories hold nothing but hate and horror, without one redeeming chapter to leave them with comfort or forgiveness.”