It began on a point of caste pollution; its leaders were traditionalists who looked to reviving the past, while the small new Westernized class actively supported the British. His unit in the Bengal Army, which had refused to use the new rifle cartridges, was about to be disarmed and punished. The rifle's cartridges contained 68 grains of FF black powder, and the ball was typically a 530-grain Pritchett or a Burton-Mini ball. The British military commander Sir James Outram thought it was a Muslim conspiracy, exploiting Hindu grievances. It was against this backdrop of uneasiness in which the mutiny erupted in 1857. His name has become synonymous with the revolt of 1857. Tall tales, panic and misapprehension spread readily in such a climate, and plenty of people felt a certain disquiet in the early months of 1857. Illustrations of events tended to reinforce Victorian notions of honor and bravery. This book is essentially about the heroes - Tatya Tope, Nana. Revolt Of 1857 India Causes Eects History Facts N Info 1 . [11] If the caste of high-caste sepoys was considered to be "polluted", they would have to expend considerable sums of money on ritual purification before being accepted back into society. [9], Until the 1840s there had been a widespread belief amongst the Bengal sepoys in the Iqbal or continued good fortune of the East India Company. Most Indians thought they were the work of the British, whothrough the East India Companyhad ruled over large portions of the country for almost a century (and were, according to one well-known prophecy, due to be unseated at that centurys end). As the East India Company annexed Indian states in the 1840s and 1850s, the Indian soldiers in the company's employ began to feel offended. The particular reason, the greased cartridges for the Enfield rifles, was a mistake rectified as soon as it was discovered; but the fact that explanations and reissues could not quell the soldiers suspicions suggests that the troops were already disturbed by other causes. It consisted of the distribution of many thousands of chapatisunleavened Indian breadsthat were passed from hand to hand and from village to village throughout the mofussil (interior) of the subcontinent. Wagner concludes that the trigger for the rebellion of 1857 was thus rumour, not the actual issue, or use, of cartridges greased with animal fat; that, in any case, we simply don't know what sort of tallow was used at Gangadarh Banerji & Co.; and that - remarkable as it now seems - the truth of the matter never was established, even by the To load both the old musket and the new rifle, soldiers had to bite the cartridge open and pour the gunpowder it contained into the rifle's muzzle, then stuff the paper cartridge (overlaid with a thin mixture of beeswax and mutton tallow for waterproofing) into the musket as wadding, the ball being secured to the top of the cartridge and guided into place for ramming down the muzzle. With the British recovery of Gwalior (June 20, 1858), the revolt was virtually over. Western inventions such as the telegraph and railways aroused the prejudice of a conservative society (though Indians crowded the trains when they had them). In 1885, however, the founding of the Indian National Congress marked the beginnings of effective, organized protest for national self-determination. In spite of their apparently desperate situation, the British possessed long-term advantages: they could and did receive reinforcements from Britain; they had, thanks to the resolution of Sir John Lawrence, a firm base in the Punjab, and they had another base in Bengal, where the people were quiet; they had virtually no anxiety in the south and only a little in the west; and they had an immense belief in themselves and their civilization, which gave resolution to their initial desperation. Such measures were considered a valid negotiating tactic by the sepoys, likely to be repeated every time such issues arose. An uprising in several sepoy companies of the Bengal army was sparked by the issue of new gunpowder cartridges for the Enfield rifle in February 1857. Dalhousie had also appointed Inam Commission with powers to confiscate land. But the only evidence for either of these was the circulation from village to village of chapatis, or cakes of unleavened bread, a practice that, though it also occurred on other occasions, was known to have taken place at any time of unrest. Musket cartridges circa 1858 The Sepoys in the East India Company were first issued with the Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle-musket in 1857. The next phase was the central Indian campaign of Sir Hugh Rose. This revolt had shaken the foundation of . However, nearly every sepoy was either Muslima religion that forbids eating the fat or any other part of a pig, or Hinduwhere the same rule applies to cows. Though the revolt failed in its objective, even in failure it served a grand purpose. ThoughtCo, Jul. This allowed different meanings an interpretations to be attributed to them, and the chapattis became an index of peoples thoughts and worries. The transfer of the number 66th which was taken away from a regular Bengal Sepoy regiment of the line disbanded over refusal to serve without batta, and given to a Gurkha battalion, was considered by the Sepoy as a breach of faith by the company. The revolt began on May 10, 1857, at Meerut as a sepoy mutiny. Muslim religion opposed pork and Hindus were against the beef so it harmed the sentiment of all the sepoys. In addition, the General Service Enlistment Act of 1856 required recruits to serve overseas if ordered, a challenge to the castes who composed so much of the Bengal army. (See Barrackpore Mutiny.). The greased cartridges thus posed precisely the same threat to observant sepoys as would flour adulterated with the blood of pigs and cows, and though the British recognized the problem early on, and never issued a single greased cartridge to any Indian troops, fear that the Company was plotting to defile them took hold among the men of many Indian regiments and resulted in the outbreak of rebellion in the cantonment of Meerut in April 1857. It is also known by other names: the Indian Mutiny, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, or the Indian Revolt of 1857. The revolt of 1857 was one of the greatest & most significant developments in the history of the 19th century. Any British plans to reform Indian society, which had been one of the underlying causes of the revolt, were essentially set aside, and religious conversion of the Indian population was no longer viewed as a practical goal. No, it is not by any means a custom; I am 50 years old, and never heard of such a thing before. In contrast, foreign Christians such as Revd Midgeley, John Jennings, and Indian converts to Christianity such as one of Zafar's personal physicians, Dr. Chaman Lal, were killed. A rumour spread that the cartridges of the new Enfield rifles were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. He was Amazon.com's first-ever history editor and has bylines in New York, the Chicago Tribune, and other national outlets. Indian soldiers in the East India Company's armies believed they risked defilement because the new rounds were being issued greased with the fat of pigs and cowsuntrue, but sufficient to spark the most dangerous uprising against British imperial rule since the American Revolution. Match the Country with Its Hemisphere Quiz, Baron Strathnairn of Strathnairn and Jhansi. The grease used was tallow, probably containing both cow and pig fat. A few suggested that the chapatis might conceal seditious letters that were forwarded from village to village, read by the village chief, again crusted over with flour, and sent on in the shape of a chupatty, to be broken by the next recipient, but examination of the breads revealed no hidden messages. The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010);Andrew Ward. It was initiated by sepoys in the Bengal Presidency against the British officers. These changes caused widespread resentment not only among the landed aristocracy but also caused great havoc to a larger section of the middle-class people. The restoration of peace was hindered by British cries for vengeance, often leading to indiscriminate reprisals. A private company which first entered India to trade in the 1600s, the East India Company had eventually transformed into a diplomatic and military operation. However, in those two years, they were not ordered to use them. Numerous explanations were considered. It is no surprise, the historian Kim Wagner notes, that, faced with such a plethora of portents, the British regarded with deep suspicion, bordering on paranoia, any type of communication in India which they could not understand. The colonial administration well understood that rumors, however unfounded, could have serious consequences, and there were plenty of notably more dangerous urban legends about. "[4] Those European men and women who had previously converted to Islam such as Sergeant-Major Gordon, and Abdullah Beg, a former Company soldier, were spared. There is reason to believe that this was originated by some intriguers of the old Court of Lucknow. As the mutiny spread, the British began called mutineers "pandies." This meant that when they came to be threatened by modernizing regimes in Calcutta, from the 1840s onwards, the sepoys had become accustomed to very high ritual status, and were extremely sensitive to suggestions that their caste might be polluted. Though paid marginally less than the Bombay and Madras Presidency troops, there was a tradition of trust between the soldiery and the establishment the soldiers felt needed and that the company would care for their welfare. Due to the need for technical specialists, the artillery units generally had a higher proportion of British personnel. Under a British policy called the "doctrine of lapse," the East India Company would take control of Indian states in which a local ruler had died without an heir. The grotesque executions by cannon became even became widely known in America. [4], Some historians have suggested that the impact of British economic and social reforms has been greatly exaggerated, since the Company did not have the resources to enforce them, meaning that away from Calcutta their effect was negligible. Many Animals, Including the Platypus, Lost Their Stomachs. Queen Victoria, at the prompting of Benjamin Disraeli, announced to Parliament that her Indian subjects were "happy under My rule and loyal to My throne.". A number of Indians began to suspect that the British intended to convert the Indian population to Christianity. It is however also possible to enclose within the paper container the bullet as well as the powder and the cartridge then becomes a balled cartridge. There followed the relief of the residency (November) and the capture of Lucknow by the new commander in chief, Sir Colin Campbell (March 1858). But those who did would not have been surprised by what happened next, for some very similar beliefs were spreading in the early months of 1857. Before loading these rifles the sepoys had to bite off the paper on the cartridges. The Revolt of 1857 in India eventually broke out over the incident of greased cartridges. [21], The Bengal Army also administered, sometimes loosely, 29 regiments of irregular horses and 42 of irregular infantry. One of the first officials to encounter it was Mark Thornhill, magistrate in the little Indian town of Mathura, near Agra. "The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857." McNamara, Robert. . They bore no message, and were identical to the breads cooked in every home in India, a staple part (even today) of the locals diet. : WH Allen, 1864);Tapti Roy. Vital though their Indian empire was to them, they controlled the subcontinent with a comparative handful of menabout 100,000 in all, less than half of whom were soldiers, ruling over a population of 250 millionand they were all too aware of just how inadequate these numbers would be in the event of any serious rebellion. Indian sepoys believed that the cartridge was greased with either pig fat or made from cow fat. To load the rifle, the end of the cartridge containing the powder had to be bitten off so that the charge would ignite. The sepoys were generally under the command of British officers. In 1824, there was another mutiny by a regiment ordered overseas in the First Anglo-Burmese War, who were refused transport to carry individual cooking vessels and told to share communal pots. It was a source of inspiration for the national liberation movement, which later achieved what the revolt could not. When the mood of the sepoys turned against their masters, they remembered Kabul and that the British were not invincible. Seen from a distance of 150 years, the chupatty movement can appear a quaint anomaly, a strange and colorful rumor of interest mostly to historians and psychologists. All the people in the palace wondered what it could mean. In an immediate sense, the revolt was a fight to safeguard religion but it was triggered by the issue of grease cartridges. Thornhill examined the chapatis in his office. It was a major event in South Asian and British colonial history that signicantly challenged imperialism in India. The Great Mutiny: India 1857 (London: Penguin, 1978);House of Commons. Sepoy units in the south of India remained loyal, but in the north, many units of the Bengal Army turned on the British. The Indian papers are full of surmises as to what it means. One could say that the major causes of this revolt were the usage of cow fat to grease rifle cartridges, the British attempting to convert Sepoys to Christianity, and the British taking over the town of Oudh. All in all, the British were extremely spooked by the spread of the chapatis. Whether the cartridge was unballed or balled, it was necessary, in loading a muzzle-loader, to open the end of the cartridge. Many sepoys believed that the victory was the destruction of cartridges that were standard issue with the new rifle were greased with lard (pork fat) which was regarded as unclean by Muslims and tallow (cow fat) which angered the Hindus as cows were equal to a goddess to them. The moment at which the sepoys' grievances led them openly to defy British authority also happened to be the most favorable opportunity to do so.[24]. The magistrates tried to stop it, but, in spite of all they could do, it passed along to the borders of the Punjab. The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. To "the cow reverencing Hindu and the pig paranoid Muslims" having to bite this was repellent, defiling and deadly to their religious prospects. Rich people like the merchants and moneylenders were, therefore, able to speculate in British land sales and drive out the most vulnerable peasant farmers. Further, the British were becoming increasingly hostile toward traditional survivals and contemptuous of most things Indian. One thing did not change in this new weapon the loading process, which did not improve significantly until the introduction of breech loaders and metallic, one-piece cartridges a few decades later. In another, however, the appalling atrocities visited by the Companys armies on the people of northern India were far from justified, since the British proved to be just as prone to rumors and panics as their Indian subjects. Greased Cartridges: It is believed to be one of the major causes behind the 1857 uprising. 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