Indian Mutiny

The 'Indian Mutiny' (1857-58) was a rebellion against British rule started by Indian soldiers in the service of the East India Company (EIC). After the suppression of the rebellion, India was turned into a British crown colony.

Terminology

Still widely used, the term 'Indian Mutiny' is increasingly regarded as problematic as it does not account for the involvement of Indian civilians in the rebellion. Suggestions for alternate terms include the 'Uprising of 1857' and 'Indian War'. Indian nationalist historians have dubbed the uprising the first 'Indian War of Independence', a term in turn disputed by western scholars.

Causes

The outbreak of the rebellion was preceded by mounting discontent with British rule among various sections of the Indian population. Contributing factors were:

• the increased Christian missionary activity
• drastic social and economic reforms intended to 'anglicise' India
• further territorial annexations by the EIC (the Punjab in 1848 and Oudh in 1856)
• the reduction of pensions paid to displaced native rulers
• the decline in the wages for Indian mercenaries and the cultural insensitivity of their British officers

Trigger

The British EIC, which had risen from a private commercial venture to paramount territorial power in India in the 18th century, had equipped its troops with a new weapon – the Enfield rifle. In order to load it, the soldiers had to bite off the ends of greased cartridges.

Soon rumours were circulating among the EIC's Indian mercenaries (sepoys) that the grease used for the cartridges consisted of a mixture of pork and beef fat. Using them would thus have resulted in a serious breach of religious laws for both Hindu and Muslim sepoys.

On 9th May 1857, 85 sepoys stationed in Meerut near Delhi were publicly degraded and imprisoned for refusing to use the cartridges. On the following day, their comrades mutinied: they released the prisoners, killed their British officers and other Europeans, and then set off for Delhi.

Course

The mutineers seized Delhi and proclaimed Bahādur Shāh II, the disempowered last Mughal Emperor, their leader. The rebellion spread rapidly throughout northern and central India. In some regions, military mutinies were accompanied by civil uprisings that involved almost all sections of the population. However, most of the Indian princes stayed aloof from the hostilities.

In British representations of the uprising, two events in particular were emphasized, both of which concerned the suffering of British civilians at the hands of Indian insurgents: the murder of 200 British women and children in Cawnpore and the five-month siege of the provincial capital of Lucknow by rebel forces.

By contrast, Indians came to remember the British campaign of retaliation as 'the Devil's Wind'. Native villages were razed to the ground; Indian civilians and fighters were tortured, summarily hanged or bound to the mouths of canons which would blow their bodies to pieces.

After more than a year of fighting, the British succeeded in suppressing the rebellion, and peace was officially declared on 8th July 1858, although guerrilla warfare went on for some time.

Consequences

The major political results of the uprising were the dissolution of the EIC and the transfer of its powers and territories to the British Crown. In 1858, India was turned into an 'official' colony ruled by a British viceroy. Queen Victoria was proclaimed 'Empress of India' in 1877. The subcontinent, often called Britain's 'jewel in the crown', became a very profitable part of the Empire in economic terms.

Gradually, British collective memory transformed the uprising into a Social Darwinist 'myth', in which the British victory seemed to prove that they were the 'fitter’ race. This feeling of racial superiority was to serve as the new legitimation of British rule. Disappointed at the perceived ingratitude of the Indians, the British now increasingly saw them as uneducable and unfit for self-government.

Literature

Erll, Astrid, and Ansgar Nünning. “Der indische Aufstand (Indian Mutiny) (1857).“ Handbuch der britischen Kulturgeschichte. Daten, Fakten, Hintergründe von der römischen Eroberung bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Rudolf Beck and Konrad Schöder. Paderborn: Fink, 2006. 301-307.

Judd, Denis. Empire: The British Imperial Experience, from 1765 to the Present. London: HarperCollins, 1996.

Kuah, Desmond. “The Epic of Race: The Indian Mutiny, 1857.” The Victorian Web: Literature, History & Culture in the Age of Victoria. George P. Landow, et. al., gen. eds. 26 March 2002. 31 August 2009 <http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empire/1857/epic.html>.

Landow, George P. “The 1857 Indian Mutiny (Also Known as the Sepoy Rebellion, the Great Mutiny, and the Revolt of 1857).” The Victorian Web: Literature, History & Culture in the Age of Victoria. George P. Landow, et. al., gen. eds. 26 March 2002. 31 August 2009 <http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empire/1857/1857.html>.

Porter, Bernhard. The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850-1995. 3rd ed. London: Longman, 1996.

Rothermund, Dietmar. Geschichte Indiens: Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. 2nd, rev. ed. München: C.H. Beck, 2006.

Streets, Heather. “Indian War.” Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World. Ed. Peter N. Stearns. Oxford University Press 2008. 24 April 2009 <http://www.oxford-modernworld.com/entry?entry=t254.e750>.

Wilson, A.N. The Victorians. New York: Norton, 2004.