| The Indian revolt of 1857 was violent, though nowhere near as bloody as its suppression. Ninety years later, India won its freedom... |
1857: not a mutiny, but a fight for independence
WORKERS, APR 2007 ISSUE
One hundred-and-fifty years ago, the people of India fought for their national sovereignty and for independence from the British Empire.
The revolt was called a "mutiny", to define it as illegitimate. But it was the foreign rule that was illegitimate, because it denied India democracy and self-rule. As G. B. Malleson, Adjutant-General of the Bengal Army and the revolt's first historian, wrote, what was "at first apparently a military mutiny ... speedily changed its character and became a national insurrection." Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs all played a full part.
Despotic
Imperialist imagery: a contemporary imagined scene of sepoys dividing up loot
The Raj was a despotic regime dependent on military power. General Henry Rawlinson, India's Commander-in-Chief, said in 1920, "You may say what you like about not holding India by the sword, but you have held it by the sword for 100 years and when you give up the sword you will be turned out. You must keep the sword ready to hand and in case of trouble or rebellion use it relentlessly. Montagu calls it terrorism, so it is and in dealing with natives of all classes you have to use terrorism whether you like it or not."
In 1793, the Empire's rulers had imposed a 'Permanent Settlement' on India which privatised the land and dispossessed the peasants. The Empire took 50-60% of the peasants' income in tax, more than the Mughal Emperors had taken, forcing the peasants into debt and then to sell their land. India's wealth was pillaged and her agriculture starved, in order to rack up profit and rent. The profits went to British investors, the rents to the Empire's allies, the landlords and princes.
The Empire's rule was vicious. Governor-General Lord Dalhousie wrote in 1855, "torture in one shape or other is practised by the lower subordinates in every British province."
Charles Ball, a historian of the revolt, wrote, "in Bengal an amount of suffering and debasement existed which probably was not equalled and certainly not exceeded, in the slave-states of America." The Report of the Commission for the Investigation of Alleged Cases of Torture at Madras, 1855, admitted "the general existence of torture for revenue purposes". Torture was also normal police practice.
The revolt of 1857 was violent, though nowhere near as bloody as its suppression. A British officer's wife justified killing all rebels, "Serve you right for killing our poor women and children who had never injured you." As if every single rebel was personally responsible for the very worst atrocities. Marx noted of Britain's newspapers, "while the cruelties of the English are related as acts of martial vigour, told simply, rapidly, without dwelling on disgusting details, the outrages of the natives, shocking as they are, are still deliberately exaggerated."
Vengeance
A British officer said, "We hold court-martials on horseback, and every nigger we meet with we either string up or shoot." Sir John Kaye wrote, "mothers and women and children ... fell miserable victims to the first swoop of English vengeance."
In a five-week rampage, Brigadier James Neill's Madras Fusiliers hanged every person they caught, some 6,000 people. Sir George Campbell wrote, "Neill did things almost worse than massacre, putting to death with deliberate torture in a way that has never been proved against the natives."
Major Renaud of the Madras Fusiliers "was rather inclined to hang all black creation." A recent historian writes, "volunteer hanging parties were roaming the Benares area with one gentleman executioner boasting of the 'artistic manner' in which he had strung up his victims in 'the form of a figure of eight'." Major Anson of the 9th Lancers admitted that in Fatehgarh, "There were fourteen men hung, or rather tortured to death (some of them), in the town here yesterday afternoon." On one occasion, British officers stood and watched while their Sikh soldiers slowly burnt a prisoner to death. At Peshawar, 785 captives were executed. At Lahore, Frederick Cooper, the Deputy Commissioner of the Punjab, ordered 500 unarmed soldiers, the entire 26th Native Infantry, to be killed. At Basaund, British forces killed all 180 adult males. The Magistrate of Meerut justified the massacre – "A severe example was essential and the slightest mawkish pusillanimity in such a cause would have spread the flame of revolt throughout the district."
'Drunk with plunder'
The sacking of Delhi, Jhansi and Lucknow was barbaric: The Times described the British soldiers as "drunk with plunder".
Although the revolt was defeated, it did overthrow the East India Company's rule and its regime of robbery and corruption; the Company was wound up in 1874. After suppressing the revolt, India's British rulers used the old tactic of divide and rule to crush India's strivings for democracy and self-rule. The British state promoted Muslim separatism and set up separate electorates, a sure way to tear people apart politically.
In the Punjab, the British won over the Sikhs by reminding them of the injuries and insults they had suffered under the Mughal Emperors. Sir Henry Lawrence, Chief Commissioner of Oudh, spread false rumours that Muslim rebels had desecrated Hindu temples.
Justification for continued rule
The Empire then used the revolt's failure to justify continued rule. If Indians could not revolt successfully, they could not rule themselves. Besides, as an MP said, "if we were to leave...we should leave it to anarchy."
A century later, Winston Churchill said in Cabinet in 1940 that the Hindu-Moslem division had long been "a bulwark of British rule in India". The Times agreed: "The divisions exist and British rule is certain as long as they do." John Colville reported that in Cabinet, "Winston rejoiced in the quarrel which had broken out afresh between Hindus and Moslems, said he hoped it would remain bitter and bloody."
After the revolt, the Indian people continued to oppose foreign rule, winning their independence in 1947.