History: Class 12 (Book 3) — Chapter 2: Rebels and the Raj: The Revolt of 1857 and Its Representations

• Bell of arms: A storeroom in which weapons are kept.
• Firangi: A term of Persian origin, possibly derived from Frank (from which France gets its name), used in Urdu and Hindi, often in a derogatory sense, to designate foreigners.
• Mutiny: A collective disobedience of rules and regulations within the armed forces.
• Revolt: A rebellion of people against established authority and power. In the context of 1857, "revolt" refers primarily to the civilian population (peasants, zamindars, rajas, jagirdars), while "mutiny" was of the sepoys.

The sepoys began their action with a signal: in many places it was the firing of the evening gun or the sounding of the bugle. They first seized the bell of arms and plundered the treasury. They then attacked government buildings – the jail, treasury, telegraph office, record room, bungalows – burning all records. Everything and everybody connected with the white man became a target. Proclamations in Hindi, Urdu and Persian were put up in the cities calling upon the population, both Hindus and Muslims, to unite, rise and exterminate the firangis.

When ordinary people began joining the revolt, the targets of attack widened. In major towns like Lucknow, Kanpur and Bareilly, money-lenders and the rich also became the objects of rebel wrath. Peasants not only saw them as oppressors but also as allies of the British. In most places their houses were looted and destroyed. The mutiny in the sepoy ranks quickly became a rebellion. There was a general defiance of all kinds of authority and hierarchy.

Source 1: Ordinary life in extraordinary times

What happened in the cities during the months of the revolt? How did people live through those months of tumult? Read these reports from the Delhi Urdu Akhbar, 14 June 1857:

"The same thing is true for vegetables and saag (spinach). People have been found to complain that even kaddu (pumpkin) and baingan (brinjal) cannot be found in the bazaars. Potatoes and arvi (yam) when available are of stale and rotten variety, stored from before by farsighted kunjras (vegetable growers)... ... There is something else that needs attention which is causing a lot of damage to the people which is that the water-carriers have stopped filling water. Poor Shurfas (gentility) are seen carrying water in pails on their shoulders... The halalkhors (righteous) have become haramkhors (corrupt)... decay, death and disease will combine together to spoil the city’s air and an epidemic will spread..."

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Analytical Historical Context & Interpretation: Reconstructs the internal societal breakdown inside rebel-controlled Delhi, showing how basic supply lines, public market access, and structural urban hygiene dissolved when normal civil operations were replaced by wartime siege pressures.

The reason for the similarity in the pattern of the revolt in different places lay partly in its planning and coordination. It is clear that there was communication between the sepoy lines of various cantonments. After the 7th Awadh Irregular Cavalry had refused to accept the new cartridges in early May, they wrote to the 48th Native Infantry that "they had acted for the faith and awaited the 48th’s orders". Sepoys or their emissaries moved from one station to another. People were thus planning and talking about the rebellion.

Source 2: Sisten and the tahsildar

In the context of the communication of the message of revolt and mutiny, the experience of François Sisten, a native Christian police inspector in Sitapur, is telling. He had gone to Saharanpur to pay his respects to the magistrate. Sisten was dressed in Indian clothes and sitting cross-legged. A Muslim tahsildar from Bijnor entered the room; upon learning that Sisten was from Awadh, he enquired, "What news from Awadh? How does the work progress, brother?" Playing safe, Sisten replied, "If we have work in Awadh, your highness will know it." The tahsildar said, "Depend upon it, we will succeed this time. The direction of the business is in able hands." The tahsildar was later identified as the principal rebel leader of Bijnor.

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Analytical Historical Context & Interpretation: Demonstrates that extensive networks of political solidarity existed underneath official administrative boundaries, showing that local Indian officials covertly used informal greetings to track and organize the spreading coordinates of the rebellion.

To fight the British, leadership and organisation were required. For these the rebels sometimes turned to those who had been leaders before the British conquest. One of the first acts of the sepoys of Meerut was to rush to Delhi and appeal to the old Mughal emperor to accept the leadership of the revolt. Bahadur Shah’s first reaction was one of horror and rejection. It was only when some sepoys had moved into the Mughal court within the Red Fort, in defiance of normal court etiquette, that the old emperor agreed to be the nominal leader of the rebellion.

Elsewhere, similar scenes were enacted:

• Kanpur: The sepoys and the people of the town gave Nana Sahib, the successor to Peshwa Baji Rao II, no choice save to join the revolt as their leader.
• Jhansi: The rani (Rani Lakshmi Bai) was forced by popular pressure around her to assume the leadership of the uprising.
• Bihar (Arrah): Kunwar Singh, a local zamindar, assumed leadership.
• Awadh (Lucknow): The populace celebrated the fall of British rule by hailing Birjis Qadr, the young son of the deposed Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, as their leader.

Shah Mal: Lived in a large village in pargana Barout in Uttar Pradesh. He belonged to a clan of Jat cultivators whose kinship ties extended over chaurasee des (eighty-four villages). He mobilised the headmen and cultivators, moving at night from village to village, urging people to rebel against the British. He turned an officer's bungalow into a "hall of justice", settling disputes and dispensing judgments. Shah Mal was killed in battle in July 1857.

Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah: Educated in Hyderabad and became a preacher when young. In 1856, he was seen moving from village to village preaching jehad (religious war) against the British. Popularly called Danka Shah (the maulvi with the drum), he was elected by the mutinous 22nd Native Infantry as their leader and fought in the famous Battle of Chinhat.

Rumours and prophecies played a part in moving people to action. The sepoys who arrived in Delhi told Bahadur Shah about bullets coated with the fat of cows and pigs, referring to the cartridges of the newly introduced Enfield rifles. Biting these cartridges would corrupt their caste and religion.

Another rumour claimed that the British government had mixed the bone dust of cows and pigs into the flour (atta) sold in the market. Panic spread fast, reinforced by the prophecy that British rule would come to an end on the centenary of the Battle of Plassey, on 23 June 1857. There were also reports of chapattis being distributed from village to village at night, read by many as an omen of an upheaval.

The rumours in 1857 begin to make sense when seen in the context of the policies the British pursued from the late 1820s. Under the leadership of Governor General Lord William Bentinck, the British adopted policies aimed at "reforming" Indian society by introducing Western education, Western ideas and Western institutions. They established laws to abolish customs like sati (1829) and to permit the remarriage of Hindu widows.

On a variety of pleas, like misgovernment and the refusal to recognise adoption, the British annexed kingdoms like Awadh, Jhansi, and Satara, introducing their own systems of administration, land settlement, and revenue collection. This cumulative impact made people feel that all they cherished was being destroyed and replaced by an oppressive, alien system.

In 1851 Governor General Lord Dalhousie described the kingdom of Awadh as "a cherry that will drop into our mouth one day". In 1856, the kingdom was formally annexed to the British Empire. The conquest happened in stages, starting with the imposition of the Subsidiary Alliance in 1801.

The Subsidiary Alliance System

Devised by Lord Wellesley in 1798, the terms of this alliance required that:

1. The British would protect their ally from external and internal threats.
2. A British armed contingent would be stationed in the territory of the ally.
3. The ally had to provide resources for maintaining this contingent.
4. The ally could enter into agreements with other rulers or engage in warfare only with the permission of the British.

Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was dethroned and exiled to Calcutta on the plea that the region was being misgoverned. Contrary to British assumptions, the Nawab was widely loved. His departure from Lucknow was deeply mourned, with contemporary observers writing that "The life was gone out of the body, and the body of this town had been left lifeless..."

The annexation displaced not just the Nawab but also dispossessed the taluqdars of the region. Before the coming of the British, taluqdars maintained armed retainers, built forts, and enjoyed a degree of autonomy. The British land revenue policy, specifically the Summary Settlement of 1856, proceeded to remove the taluqdars wherever possible, reducing their landholdings from 67% to 38% of the villages in Awadh.

This dispossession disrupted the ties of loyalty and patronage that had bound the peasant to the taluqdar. Under the British, peasants were exposed to overassessment of revenue and inflexible methods of collection, with no guarantee of support during crop failures.

Rebel proclamations repeatedly appealed to all sections of the population, irrespective of caste and creed. The rebellion was seen as a war in which both Hindus and Muslims had equally to lose or gain. The Azamgarh Proclamation of 25 August 1857 is one of the main sources showing how the rebels appealed to different social groups (Zemindars, Merchants, Public Servants, Artisans, and Pundits/Fakirs) to unite against British rule.

The proclamations completely rejected everything associated with British rule or firangi raj. They condemned the British for broken treaties and land revenue settlements that dispossessed landholders and ruined native artisans and weavers. The rebels wanted to restore a familiar and cherished pre-British world.

Once British rule collapsed in places like Delhi, Lucknow, and Kanpur, the rebels tried to establish structures of authority and administration. These were short-lived but aimed to restore the pre-British world of the eighteenth-century Mughal court, establishing administrative structures primarily to meet the demands of war.

British paintings often commemorated the heroes who saved the English and repressed the rebels. An example is "Relief of Lucknow", painted by Thomas Jones Barker in 1859, which celebrates the entry of Colin Campbell, James Outram, and Henry Havelock into the besieged city.

Paintings like "In Memoriam" by Joseph Noel Paton (1859) depicted English women and children huddled in helplessness, representing the rebels as violent and brutish. Other representations, like the depiction of Miss Wheeler in Kanpur, showed English women heroically defending themselves against rebel attacks.

As anger grew in Britain, demands for retribution became louder. Cartoons in the British press, such as those in Punch, sanctioned brutal repression. Rebels were executed publicly by being blown from guns or hanged from the gallows to perform a spectacle of terror and instil fear in the population.

In the twentieth century, the nationalist movement drew inspiration from the events of 1857. It was celebrated as the First War of Independence. Art, literature, and poems (like Subhadra Kumari Chauhan's famous lines on Rani Lakshmi Bai: "Khoob lari mardani woh to Jhansi wali rani thi") helped keep the memory of the revolt alive, presenting its leaders as heroic figures fighting against oppressive imperial rule.