1757- East of the Cape of Good Hope

by Narendra Mehra

  Indian Mutiny 1857

  The Mutiny started on 10 May 1857 at Meerut, a small town in UP (United Provinces) east of Delhi. The most proximate cause of the revolt was the greased cartridges of the Enfield rifles, which was coated with pork and beef fat. In Meerut, the native cavalry refused to use the cartridge because the ends had to be bitten off before use. On May 9, the British dismissed some of the native cavalry, imprisoned others and put them in chains, the usual choice of control and subjugation. They used to do the same to the slave captives in the dungeons of Cape Coast Castle in Ghana. The next day, the soldiers mutinied, killed the officers and released their comrades and set off to Delhi.

  Delhi still had the last remnant of the mighty Mughal dynasty, in the person of Bahadur Shah Zaffar, the seventy year old king, who was a pensioner of the British. About two decades earlier, the British had just walked in to his territories after the Sikhs, Marathas and the Mughals had exhausted fighting each other, when the British watched them from the Eastern end of the Sutlej River. The British took over Delhi unopposed, exhausted and emptied the Mughal Treasures and carted everything to their homeland. That was their ultimate goal all along and offered Bahadur Shah a small pension in the deal that was the Indian money anyway. The mutineers set fire to the tollhouse on May 11, a symbol of the British economic exploitation, and begged the aging King to assume command of the rebel cause. The king vacillated, but by the end of the day, a twenty one gun salute announced that the aging king has assumed the reigns of the government as the Shahenshah-e-Hindustan (Emperor of India). The revolt in Meerut was not isolated but endemic of the British behavior towards the natives. People in India hated the British tooth and nail and at the announcement of the Mughal Emperor, people rejoiced in the streets and took over the cause of freedom spontaneously. The relations between the British and the populace had reached a breaking point and all that was needed was a spark and the British tested the native patience with all the hubris they were known for. Earlier, on March 27, 1857, the British hanged a soldier Mangal Pande in Barrack pore, near Calcutta, for insubordination. Also, in 1824, the 47th regiment of the sepoys at Barrack pore was disbanded and its leaders were shot dead for refusing to serve in the Burma campaign.

  After the Mutineers captured Delhi, the revolt spread to Oudh, the Rohilkhund, the Doab, Bundelkhand, Central India and large parts of Bihar and East Punjab. Delhi, Lukhnow, Cawnpore, Bareiley Jhansi and Arrah were the main centers of revolt. The anger over massive economic exploitation, insults and humiliation, loss of liberty, loss of industry, wage fraud and excessive taxation just boiled over. It was not a planned struggle for independence, nor there any leader of the movement. That came later, with the first meeting of the Indian National Congress at Bombay. The local uprising was leaderless but the struggle started to coalesce as the word reached other Districts.

  The news reached London six weeks later on 26 June. Within days, in the first week of July, the reinforcements sailed for India. The fast reaction was the Imperial solution, as there was fear of the loss of the goose that was laying the golden eggs. The British position worsened however, and around December 18, more troops were summoned from other British Presidencies, Bombay and Madras, who were far removed from the seat of power. The British also summoned troops from Ceylon, Mauritius, the Cape and Australia. The White dominions of the Crown joined in, which was typical for the colonization to succeed. Colonialism essentially was the domination by the Whites for the resources and wealth of the non-whites, brown and black people. It is not surprising that none of the white nations suffer from poverty as they were partners during the colonial era. The force steaming to China was also diverted to Bengal. Reinforcements from England continued to pour in. By the end of 1858, fifty-one of Queen’s regiments were serving in Bengal compared to only thirteen before May 1857. To make it appear as a local uprising, the British historians however severely downplayed the force required to put down the Mutiny

  The Mutiny interrupted the British Shangri-La. May and June were the hottest months in North India and when the mutiny erupted, the two regiments of the Bengal Presidency army were spending the hot weather at their depot at Dugshaie and Subathoo in the foot hills of Simla, a place that served as the British Capital in India during the hot summer months. It was about two hundred miles from Delhi. Simla was a picture of serene beauty in summer, with its fruit trees, 7000-ft elevation and its majestic peaks and valleys, pristine mountain trout streams and lush pine forests. Some of the infantry regiments were at Agra, at the banks of the Yamuna River, a hundred miles south east of Delhi, basking in the glow and beauty of the Taj Mahal, the immortal monument celebrating the life and beauty of the Mughal Empress Mumtaz Mahal. The other forces of the British army were trapped and besieged at Lucknow, which became the focal point of the mutiny. The British soldiers, administrators, clergy and businessmen, merchant bankers, the British retirees and managing agency houses in ownership of the plantation industries along with their families were scattered all over the northwest in cooler places. The infantry and foot artillery companies were scattered all along the vast Indo-Gangetic plains from Peshawar in the West to Burmah on the Far East, covering a distance of about fifteen hundred miles. The horse artillery was mainly located in NWFP (northwestern frontier province) and Punjab, on account of the military requirement as it faced the fierce Pashtuns and the Sikhs. The Headquarters of the Artillery were located in Bengal Presidency and they were thrown into panic and the mutiny cascaded for three weeks at cantonments down the Ganges from Lucknow to Calcutta.

  Delhi, the former capital of Mughal Emperors, was in rebel hands and its defenders, stood by their newly declared Monarch, Bahadur Shah, representing a powerful challenge to the British who so far had depended upon the local militia, the sepoys, for defense and expansion. For most of 1857, the British lost control over a vast area of Northern India, from Punjab, down the Ganges to Patna. The mutiny was confined to Bengal Presidency. The freedom fighters were severally handicapped. The Indian soldiers, the sepoys, were away fighting the Crimean War for the British. The other political considerations also played a part in the unsuccessful attempt by the leaderless mutineers. The Sikhs did not want the Muslim rule to come back to power as Aurangzeb, the Mughal Emperor, had executed their Guru. They helped the British defeat the mutineers. So, did the Jagat Setts, the Indian Rothschild’s, who were owed vast sums by the British and the Gurkha soldiers from Nepal, who were the hired hands at India’s dime. And the Afghans, as the British signed a treaty with Dost Muhammad, promised him subsidies and India bankrolled the money. The treaty coincided with the Indian Mutiny and Britain even appeased him as the ‘Amir of Afghan’, by providing him an annual subsidy of 18 lac rupees (£180,000) from the Indian Treasury. The dichotomy of the Afghan -British relations continued to be bewildering and surprising considering that Dost Muhammad Khan got embroiled in the Second British-Afghan War soon after the Mutiny.

  Dost Muhammed fulfilled his part of the Treaty obligation and his militia, the fierce frontier Pashtuns, enlisted in the British militia, marched to Delhi and helped crush the mutiny. Dost Muhammed died in 1863 and so did the Anglo- Afghan d´etente. Some of the British European units, stationed at Cawnpore, were annihilated by the local militia; In return, the British executed the mutineers by blowing them from their guns, which was not out of the ordinary as it was typical of the British inhumanity towards the natives.

  The British in the meantime had mobilized its resources to dispatch a huge field force to India. This mobilization unfortunately coincided with the growing shortage of cotton in the textile industry preliminary to the onset of the American civil war. Unemployment in the textile industry was growing for want of the staple and there were many textile workers who joined the ranks of those sailing to India. There was a general perception and rightly so, that the opportunity to go to India was once in a life time opportunity to get rich quickly. Ingham Britcliff, a cotton spinner, who was laid off too joined the force and he participated in the
siege of Delhi in October 1857. After having amassed a huge force, the British advanced to the back streets of Delhi supported by the Sikhs, which turned out to be a most terrible fight. On 14 September, Punjab Sikh regiment and the British soldiers attacked Kashmiri Gate, an inner city bastion of Muslims, the Hindus and other ethnicities, thickly populated in multi storied housings. The inner city lanes, by lanes and dead ends closed all avenues of escape to men, women, children and the infirm and they were hacked to death. The mutineers were ordinary people, not militarily trained and they found themselves facing a brute foreign force destroying their life, liberty and honor. Another contingent of British and Sikh forces attacked local militias camping on the bank of the Jumna River, about two miles from the fighting forces inside the Kashmiri gate residencies of the population. Overlooking the Jumna River was the Red Fort, an imposing Fort built about two centuries earlier by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jehan, was also the residence and the seat of power of Bahadur Shah who had declared himself the Emperor of India at the behest of the Mutineers. After six days of fighting, the British took the Red Fort and captured Delhi, giving a real set back to the cause of the Mutineers. The Mutineers celebrated freedom and independence from the British for about five months, while the British regrouped and amassed a huge fighting force with guns, cannons, artillery and a well-trained fighting force with modern European weaponry. Both Sikhs and sepoys made a difference in the outcome of the battle, which was the recapture of Delhi. Thirty two hundred Sikh soldiers fought with the British and the suddenness of the attack took people by surprise, though they never believed that the rebel had a chance in the absence of any trained military force and a real leader. Bahadur Shah Zaffar, the last Mughal ruler, who declared himself the Shahenshah-e-Hindustan, was arrested and exiled to Burma, where he died and was buried. Bahadur Shah Zaffar died with a broken heart, he was a poet and he summed up his feeling in an Urdu couplet. He bemoaned the denial of two yards of space for his grave in India.

  The siege of Delhi cost the British a big loss of life, by some estimates, over a thousand of the British field force perished in the street to street combat and thousands were wounded. The resistance put up by the rag tag group of mutineers was remarkable considering the odds against their success. Following the capture of Delhi and amid all the chaos of the fighting, the British soldiers resorted to looting the inner city, which continued for weeks. Ingham Britcliff, the cotton spinner in our story wrote to his parents in Haythornethwaite, that his loot was two hundred rupees (£20), precious stones, a gold ring, a gun and a Kashmir shawl. Back home, Britcliff earned eight shillings a week when he could find work and twenty pounds represented a year’s salary. Both British men and officers attached great importance to the material rewards- in loot, immediately after the assault, and generous issue of prize and batta money. The loot was valued at about five million pounds. Freebooting reduced the reported loot, as a large amount was embezzled by the prize agents, who were appointed by the British field force. In March 1858, while looting Lucknow, the British troops destroyed all that they could not carry off, to foil the government’s profiting. That was the story of the lives of those people; the only game they played was the game of money. When it came to money they did not trust their own Government. Every one of those people was unto himself, in search of money and riches. They were not even partners in crime. It was free for all. They were all after the loot, the British army, the British government and the British soldiers. After the fall of Delhi, which was the symbolic capital of the freedom fighters, the initiative shifted to the rest of the British spread all over Northern India. That initiative picked up momentum after the arrival of the fresh British reinforcements.

  The revolt continued for about a year and a large swath of Northern India was lost to the British. In Cawnpore, Nana Sahib, joined the revolt, expelled the British and declared himself the Peshawar (ruler). In Oudh, Begum Hazrat Mahal proclaimed her son, Birjis Qadr, the Nawab of Oudh. The most iconic struggle came from Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, a young queen of Jhansi, who was being hounded by the British to annex her State and the State Treasury. Rani Laxmibhai was married to Gangadhar Rao, the Maharaja of Jhansi. At age 16, she gave birth to a male child who was the sole heir to the throne, but the infant died within months of the birth. The Maharaja was married before and his first wife had died too without a child. The British invoked the notorious ‘Doctrine of Lapse’, in order to annex the princely states, as there was no heir to the throne.

  Dalhousie, the British viceroy in India, had started annexing the Indian princely states, challenging the Hindu custom of accession. The British thus far had systematically denuded the country of all its wealth, starting with the Mughal treasury at Murshidabad. It was followed by exclusive rights to internal trade and monopoly practices maximized the revenue collection by land revenue policies when hereditary properties were auctioned and the zamindars were imprisoned who could not meet the revenue demands. They used political power to force producers of silk cocoons, opium, and indigo to sell below cost. The local capital was embezzled by the British Agency Houses, shielded by the British Insolvency courts and they took over the tropical produce by the plantation industries including the output from the various mines. What was left were the various princely states and their treasuries which Dalhousie was targeting to usurp. Finding the situation untenable, the Maharaja adopted the cousin of his dead child, which was quite normal in the Indian culture. The British were already breathing down his neck and were obviously piqued at the adoption of an heir. The child was adopted in November 1853 and the very next day, the Maharaja suddenly died. Here was another sudden death, a death that played in favor of the British. One is reminded of an Indian couplet: Na rahe ga bans, Na baje gi bansri (If there was no bamboo, there will be no flute to play.)

  Immediately after the death of the Maharaja, Dalhousie, the British viceroy, annexed the State and ordered the widow, Rani Laxmibhai to vacate the palace. Rani Laxmibhai stood up to the British bully in her just cause and fought back against a well-trained military machine of the British. She died a heroic death on the battlefield, on June 17, 1858, at the tender age of twenty-three, and became a part of the folklore of India. General Hugh Rose of the Bombay Presidency conducted the battle against the Jhansi volunteer force. He marched with a huge force, to assert British control in Central India and was rewarded the post of Commander-in Chief, India and later was promoted to the post of Field Marshal. Indians did not consider him a hero as he fought an unjust war against a widow who was defending her home, her rights, her honor and the honor of her people. The British also denied inheritance to the young adopted son Anand, and usurped all the wealth of the State. They also hanged the father of Rani Lakshmibhai. Lakshmibhai became a national heroine and an icon of India’s freedom movement. Her resistance to the British predatory attacks became an epitome of bravery and righteous national cause. The British liked ‘battas’ or rewards after every looting episode in India, and the Viceroy got his share of the loot, more they looted, bigger purse they got. Dalhousie, at the end of his term in India, became a very wealthy man.

  For about a year, the assault on the mutineers did not go very well for the British. So, they sent highly experienced generals. One of them was General Colin Campbell, Commander-in Chief in India from 1857-60, who took command of the British forces for the recapture of Lucknow. He was the veteran of Peninsular War, the first Anglo-Chinese war, the First Punjab War and Brigade Commander in the Crimea. He was the son of a Glasgow carpenter. Campbell commanded a massive British force against a leaderless rebel force and it was not until December 1858, that he could subdue Lucknow, though vast areas of Oudh still remained in the rebel hands. Their fighting record was marred and sullied by the looting, both by the Queen’s and the companies (EIC) European soldiers. Property of the civilians became an easy target and an orgy of greed set in. Homes were looted, private properties were sacked and nothing was spared and the looting continued. The British government in India appropri
ated most of the loot as a means to reduce the debt, caused by the rebellion. The soldiers got minor amounts towards ‘batta’ or Prize money. The British troops were in rage; they took to the streets of London, complaining that they were badly treated. Soldier’s complaints were published in the British newspapers. The Times, 1st June 1858, published the soldier’s complaints and the protest had an effect. In 1861, each private soldier received one share, amounting to about £17, with captain receiving 12 shares, colonels 17, and Major General 76 each and up the ladder to the Generals and the viceroy. India produced a lot of ‘nobabs’ of the British Empire.

  About fifteen thousand British soldiers joined the service of EIC between 1825 and 1857 and they came from a broad stratum of the Anglo-Irish society. The company’s service was seen as a refuge from poverty and a quick route to prosperity, where humble men acquired fabulous riches. After discharge from the service, many men remained in India and joined the service as clerks or joined the service of European merchants. Men were able to save, as discerned from the accounts of the estates of the deceased from India Office Collections.