Course and Events of the 1857 War of Independence
Introduction
The narrative of the 1857 Uprising has a classic sequence of events just like any good novel — an emotionally charged background, high drama, an anticlimax, and a doomed ending.
The Environment of Rumours:
According to one well-known prophecy, the East India Company, which had ruled over large portions of the country for almost a century, was due to be unseated at that century’s end. With the impending centenary of Plessey (1757), this belief gained widespread currency. Wandering faqirs and sadhus of both faiths (the Hindu and the Muslim), spread these beliefs in the nooks and corners of India, creating a sense of foreboding.
Frequent eruptions of fire were being interpreted as a forerunner of some mysterious order to come. The humiliating defeat of the British Indian forces in the First Afghan War of 1840 had shaken their prestige. Rumours of their disasters during the Crimean War (1853–1856) further broke the myth of their invincibility.
In this atmosphere of charged emotions, rumours of the mysterious distribution of many thousands of chapatis — unleavened Indian pieces of bread — from hand to hand and from village to village throughout the interior of the Subcontinent further thickened the mystery. The majority of Indians thought it was a message from the East India Company that after one hundred years of its rule, the time had come to Christianise India; one country, one bread, and one religion.
Soon rumours started spreading that additional troops were to be recruited for service in Burma, where they could not follow all their religious rules, and that Christian missionary efforts among the troops were to receive official encouragement, which strengthened these beliefs. On the other hand, the British guessed the loaves of bread were a piece of mischief-making on the part of the Indians.
Although extensive inquiries into the meaning of the loaves of bread produced plenty of theories but few facts, the eerie feeling they created, provided a perfect backdrop to the events of 1857.
The Simmering:
On February 26, 1857, the 19th Bengal Native Infantry (BNI) regiment posted at Barrackpore came to know about the orders to use new cartridges, which were rumoured to be encased in paper greased with the fat of cows and pigs, offensive equally to Hindus and Muslims. Upon their refusal to obey these orders, their Colonel first tried to forcibly implement these orders by threatening to use artillery, but then relented in the face of powerful resistance, accepted their demand to withdraw the artillery, and cancelled the next morning’s parade.
On March 29, 1857, at the Barrackpore parade ground, near Calcutta, Mangal Pandey of the 34th BNI attacked and injured the adjutant, Lt. Baugh, with a sword. General John Hearsey ordered Jemadar Ishwari Prasad to arrest Mangal Pandey. He refused to obey the orders. The whole regiment, with the single exception of a soldier called Shaikh Paltu, followed suit and refused to arrest Mangal Pandey.
Mangal Pandey tried to incite his comrades into an open and active rebellion; after failing to achieve his objective, he tried to commit suicide but did not succeed. He was court-martialed on April 6 and hanged after two days. Jemadar Ishwari Prasad, too, was sentenced to death and hanged on April 22. The whole regiment was disbanded.
The Revolt:
It started on May 9, when 85 soldiers of the 3rd Light Cavalry at Meerut refused to use the cartridges of the new Enfield rifle. The prescribed drill for loading the new rifle required the end of the cartridge to be bitten off by the soldiers, an act that would effectively pollute them. The whole purpose, according to the rumour, was that the polluted Sepoys should be left with no option but to embrace the Christian faith. All of them were imprisoned, sentenced to ten years of hard labour, and stripped of their uniforms in public. Since their comrades had acted only in deference to their religious beliefs, the punishment meted out by the British colonial rulers was perceived as unjust by many.
The Rebellion:
When the 11th and 20th native cavalry of the Bengal Army assembled in Meerut on May 10, they broke rank and turned on their commanding officers. They then liberated the 3rd Regiment and attacked the European cantonment, where they are reported to have killed all the Europeans they could find, including women and children, and burned their houses. The rebellious forces were then engaged by the remaining British forces in Meerut, which had the largest percentage of British troops of any station in India, i.e., 2,038 European troops with 12 field guns versus 2,357 Sepoys, lacking artillery.
Some commentators believe that the British forces could have stopped the Sepoys from marching on Delhi, but the British commanders of the Meerut garrison were extraordinarily slow in reacting to the crisis. They did not even send immediate word to other British cantonments that a rebellion was in process. It seems likely that they believed they would be able to contain the Indians by themselves. This misjudgement would cost them dearly.
The March:
Hearing the news, other disaffected regiments in the Bengal Army quickly followed suit. Meanwhile, the 3rd Cavalry, who had revolted against their British officers, marched to Delhi, where they were welcomed by Indian soldiers, who had left the gates of the city open. There were very few British soldiers in Delhi who were overwhelmed easily. The rebel force quickly proclaimed the eighty-three-year-old figurehead, Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, the leader of their cause, despite all his reluctance. More and more regiments in the Bengal Army revolted; rebel soldiers came in large numbers to reinforce those who had reached Delhi, which became the centre of the rebellion.
The War:
Over the next few months, the revolt took the shape of a full-fledged war in much of north-central India, where people started pitching battles with the British army. It turned into an all-out popular revolt that enveloped all classes of the population. Due to the paucity of British troops throughout the region, the Company forces found it difficult to suppress these outbreaks and had to struggle hard to control or stop the progress of the revolt.
After taking Delhi, on May 30, rebel forces laid siege to the British garrison at Lucknow, home to nearly five hundred British women and children. In late June, they forced the surrender of the small British garrison in nearby Kanpur (Cawnpore). Although the terms of surrender had promised the British population free passage to Allahabad, three hundred fifty men of the garrison were murdered near the Ganges River, and a week later, one hundred twenty-five women and children were also killed, and their bodies were thrown into a well.
The Counterstroke:
In the autumn of 1857, the British counter-rebellion measures began to show results that had a serious impact on the progress of the revolt. With the help of reinforcements from Punjab, the British and Indian forces that had been besieging Delhi for months successfully recaptured the city on September 21, 1857. On November 17, a force under the command of General Sir Colin Campbell, Commander-in-Chief in India and former hero of the Crimean War, successfully broke the siege at Lucknow and evacuated the Residency after much hard fighting.
However, combat continued around Lucknow, Jhansi, Gwalior, and Bareilly until the middle of 1858. The woman ruler of Jhansi, Rani of Jhansi, and Tantya Tope, Nana Sahib’s artillery expert, kept on fighting and proved difficult to defeat until both leaders were killed.
The End:
Although the rebellion was over by the end of 1857, there were some pockets of resistance that prolonged the formal end of the war. The last rebels were defeated in Gwalior on June 20, 1858. On July 8, 1858, a peace treaty was signed, and the war ended. Rebel leaders Bakht Khan and Nana Sahib were never heard of again; probably both had been slain while fleeing.
The Retribution:
The end of the war was followed by the usual retribution, whose graphic descriptions are now available in some of the books written on this issue. There were four cardinal principles, religiously followed while meting out the punishment;
1. No prisoners were to be taken; every suspect must die
2. Maximum brutality to create awe and terror for effective deterrence
3. Collective punishment for the family, community and even villages suspected of harbouring any suspicion or ill-feeling towards the Company
4. Novelty and ingenuity in methods of punishment.
Adopting the old Indian style of punishment for the rebels, combatants on the Indian side as well as large numbers of civilians perceived to be sympathetic to the rebel cause were summarily executed. The method of execution depended on the whims of the British officer in charge of these summary trials. Some liked to kill the rebels and their sympathisers by lashing them to the mouth of the cannon and blowing them into pieces, probably the most humane method adopted by those selected for this. The majority were thoroughly tortured before being put to death, normally hanging them in groups to witness their comrades’ painful deaths. Whole villages were wiped out for apparent pro-rebel sympathies.
