Salute the Heroes of the 1857 Indian War of Liberation
LALKAR has been marking the 150th
anniversary of the outbreak of the First Indian War of Independence (1857-1859)
with a series of articles.
With part 1, in our November/December 2007 issue, we
showed the causes of this, the largest anti-colonial uprising anywhere in the
world in the 19th century, engulfing about 35 per cent of present-day India;
and in the March/April issue, in part 2, we dealt with the eventual brutal
suppression by the English forces of this independence war. With part 3, we
conclude this series .
We must now look, albeit briefly, at the reasons
for the failure of such a widespread revolt against the British Raj. There
were several causes of its failure. First, the revolt had been by and large a
spontaneous response to the economic and political policies of the East India
Company, the ruler of India, on the eve of 1857, which turned Indians of all
classes, from the topmost landed aristocracy to the downtrodden peasantry and
artisans, against the Raj. In the objective situation prevailing, feudal rulers,
with grievances of their own, joined the revolt, whose declared aim was to
expel the alien rulers from India. Their personal interests and Indian
national interest came to coincide at this point in time, with the result that
the feudal rulers and talukdars (big landowners – zamindars), by their
participation in this popular armed uprising played a patriotic role.
No centralised
organisation
However, there was no centralised organisation to
spearhead this revolt. There did not exist at the time in India either a bourgeoisie or a proletariat, the classes that could have given direction
and thrust to the revolutionary movement. As a result there were no political
parties (unlike the Jacobin clubs in Paris on the eve of the great French
Revolution). The economic and political developments in India at the time had not yet prepared the soil for the emergence of these conditions, so
necessary for the success of the struggle. Though the insurgents had a vision
of India, this vision was seriously impaired by a feudal mindset, lacking in
the clear concept of a modern state.
Absence of a centralised
command
Second, the absence of a single centralised
leadership, a single military command and a well-considered plan of action
proved to be a major factor in the defeat of the insurrection. While the
British could devise strategies and plan troop movements all across the
important centres of the rebellion and thus concentrate their military strength
at the vital points according to need, the rebel forces by and large lacked a
coherent strategy and plan of action. It was a serious weakness on the part of
the rebels that they had failed in finding a man “upon whom to bestow the
supreme command”, an essential precondition for organising “a serious
and protracted resistance” against the British forces. None
of the rebel sepoys had ever been officers in the army, never in command and
always fighting under the command of British officers. Although, as Engels
noted in his analysis of the successful British assault on Delhi, the
tactics of the rebels showed “that some notions of scientific warfare had
penetrated among the sepoys”, but either these tactics
“…were not clear enough, or not powerful enough, to be carried out with
any effect… or that disorganisation and want of command turned practical
projects into weak and powerless attempts” (Marx and Engels, The
Capture of Delhi, 16 November, page 126).
The British were able to storm Delhi, not through
“… an act of uncommon or extra-heroic bravery, although as in every battle
individual acts of high spirit no doubt occurred on either side…”, but by
showing “more perseverance, force of character, judgement and skill … (Engels, ibid page 122). The British forces were able to secure
reinforcements in time for the storming of Delhi, while the rebel forces were
being weakened by dissension, disorganisation and a sinking morale.
Feudal
decadence and treachery
Third, the internal weakness of the feudal
leadership played its part in the defeat of the revolt. Bahadur Shah Zaffar,
the disinherited air of the Great Moghal, and crowned emperor by the insurgent
sepoys, was old, inexperienced, indecisive, weak-willed, and was governed by
his favourite wife (Zeenat Mahal), who, along with some members of Zaffar’s own
family, was secretly in touch with the British to bring the rebellion to an end
through some compromise under which they would “… guarantee the pension
and privileges of the King and restore the status quo ante bellum” (Dr S N
Sen, Eighteen Fifty Seven, p 95).
Just as the virtues of patriotism, heroism, courage
and commitment to the cause of freeing India from the British yoke were
symbolised by such heroic feudal figures as Rani Jhansi, Nana Saheb, Maulavi
Ahmadullah, Tantya Tope, Begum Hazarat Mahal, Kumwar Singh and Amar Singh of
Jagdishpur, so was on full display all the putrefaction of the decaying feudal
order, with its selfishness, cowardice and treachery, hand in hand with
excessive indulgence, dissipation, debauchery and drunkenness. Allamah Fazle
Haq, who was close to the emperor and his court, having stated that the
indecisive Zaffar was ruled by his wife and his wazir, that the latter and some
members of the King’s family were the deadly enemies of the rebels and friendly
towards the British, provides us with this shocking portrayal of the life of
incompetence, uselessness and debauchery, led by the king’s sons and grandsons:
“[Bahadur Shah] appointed as officers of the
army some of his sons and grandsons, who were stupid, dishonest, and cowards.
They hated honest and wise persons. They had never witnessed the battle nor
had they any experience of the blows of swords and lances. They selected men
from the gutter to their society and consultation. These inexperienced fellows
drowned themselves in the ocean of luxuries and extravagance and submerged
themselves in the flood of debauchery. They were poverty stricken and
(suddenly) they became opulent; when they became opulent, they took to a life
of dissipation. They obtained enormous sums from the people under the pretext
of securing provision of the army and ate themselves all that they got. The
leading-most of the prostitutes made them negligent in the matter of the
leading the rebel forces and their association with mistresses kept them from
marching in the night with the army… they’ve passed their nights sleeping and
their days in intoxication. When they woke up and came to their senses, they
felt embarrassed and amazed” (The Story of the War of Independence, 1875-58,
pp 30-32).
Fazle Haq’s account is fully confirmed by the
accounts of British historians, officials and spies. Such treachery sowed
confusion among the rebel forces and undermined their morale.
The same Fazle Haq, a learned and patriotic
either-witness of the events, paints a similarly unpleasant picture of the life
and conduct of state affairs in the Oudh court during the last phase of the
revolt when the insurrectionary forces were losing to the British. This is
what he says:
“All the officers of his (Nawab’s) Government
and the ministers of the state were worthless, timid and cowardly and were
foolish and dishonest; they were neither wise nor trustworthy. Amongst them
were illiterates, ease-loving, impertinent, noise-making, lazy and feeble
fellows and flatterers, hangers-on and sycophants. They broke their pledges
and promises… they acted as hypocrites, began to favour the Christians [
the British], joined them and helped them to achieve victory” (ibid pp
42-43).
Dual
role of feudal leaders in Oudh
The words of Fazle Haq describe, without doubt, the
spiritual weakness that characterised the Oudh Court and its leadership. All
the same, a proper estimation of the role of the feudal leaders in Oudh during the uprising furnishes the following picture. In the first phase of the
uprising, with a few exceptions, the big landowners joined the ranks of the
rebellion but did not on the whole play an active role, adopting an attitude of
wait and see which side would come out on top. During the second phase, which
commenced with Lord Canning’s March 1858 proclamation, under which the land of
all except six named talukdars (landlords) were confiscated, the landlords en
masse enthusiastically threw themselves into the rebellion. During the last
phase, following the fall of Lucknow, it becoming clear that the British were
winning, most of the feudal leaders began seeking terms of submission with the
British. Even the Queen of Oudh, whose role had been largely patriotic, sent
her emissary to the British high command while she retreated in the direction
of Nepal with her remaining troops and supporters.
Thus it can be seen that feudal patriotism had two
sides. During the period of the upswing of the insurrection, through a
combination of mass pressure and shared general hatred of foreign rule, the big
landowners joined the uprising and played a decidedly positive patriotic role.
But when the revolutionary tide began to ebb, and the disintegration set in the
revolutionary camp, the weak side of their feudal character asserted itself and
they ended up acting as cowardly traitors. Thus, as a class, they “played a
dual role, neither pure patriotic nor downright selfish and treacherous”
(Joshi, ibid, page 49).
Treachery of the Princely
States
Fourth, in addition to the disinherited and
dispossessed sections of the feudals, there were the rulers of the princely
States. Though most of them, under the pressure of a powerful anti-British
sentiment that pervaded their kingdoms, and the existence of an organised
faction in each court which stood for active participation on the side of the
revolutionary insurrectionists, adopted an attitude of dubious neutrality, an
important section of them supported the British wholeheartedly. With the
revolutionary tide subsiding, all of them rushed to demonstrate their loyalty
to the British. The role of these princely states was to prove of strategic
and decisive importance in settling the fate of the revolt. The Princes
literally saved the British Raj in 1857-58 and helped to give it another 90
years’ lease of life, with all its attendant exploitation and misery for the
vast masses of the Indian people. Here are some notable examples of the timely
succour provided by a disgustingly fawning coterie of treacherous Princes to
the British rulers of India. The Nizam of Hyderabad, which was crucial to the
whole of southern India, dutifully lined up behind the British and prevented
the South from joining the rebellion. “If Hyderabad had risen” wrote
Norton, “we could not escape insurrection practically over the whole of the Deccan
and southern India” (Topics for Indian Statesmen, p.56).
The rulers of the princely States of Rajasthan, who
forever boasted of their venerable and ancient lineages and martial traditions,
proving to be cringing lickspittles and belying the hopes of their own subjects
and of the rest of the Indian people, handed over their troops to the British
for the suppression of the great revolt. “Had Rajputana risen”, wrote
Malleson, “it is difficult to see how Agra could have held out, how our
force before Delhi could have maintained its ground” (op cit. Vol 1,
p 261).
Gwalior occupied a key position in central India. Scindia was under intense popular pressure to join the rebels, but he resisted it.
Had he put himself at the head of his own 20,000 soldiers, who were eager to
join the revolt, it would have proved disastrous for the British – Agra and
Lucknow would surely have fallen to the rebels, General Havelock would have
been boxed in Allahabad and, having either taken the fortress there or bypassed
it, Scindia’s troops would have marched through Benares on to Calcutta, for
there were no British troops or fortifications to stop them (see the Red
Pamphlet, page 194). “Scindia’s loyalty saved India for the British”, wrote
Innes (p 123).
The Sikh rulers of Patiala and Jind, as well as the
Nawab of Karnal, put their forces and resources at the disposal of the British
usurpers and undertook to keep open, with their own conscripts, the road
between the main British base at Ambala and Delhi, thus facilitating the flow
of reinforcements to the British troops laying siege to the insurgent capital.
On reading newspaper accounts, Marx recorded in his
chronological notes thus: “Scindia loyal to the ‘English dogs’, nicht so his
‘ troopers’; Rajah of Patiala – for shame – sends large bodies of soldiers in
aid of the English!” (quoted in Joshi, p 54).
Let it be remarked in passing that, though their
rulers sided with the British, the soldiery of the princely States and their
people had become infected with the revolutionary spirit. The troops of the
maharaja of Indore mutinied, forcing the British to quit the state. In a most
dramatic incident, when the Rani of Jhansi and Tantya Tope reached Gwalior, a
large body of Scindia’s soldiers went over to their side, forcing Scindia, with
a handful of followers, to flee for the safety of the British Fort at Agra.
The troops of the Maharaja of Udaipur and of quite a few other princely states
of Rajasthan on many an occasion showed little willingness to fight the
insurgents. These episodes obliged Malleson to conclude:
“It was plainly shown that when the fanaticism
of an Oriental people is thoroughly roused, not even their Raja, their father
as all consider him, their God as some delight to style him, not even their
Raja can bend them against their convictions” (op
cit, Vol I, p 552).
What to leave prejudiced British historian appears
as fanaticism was no less than the expression of a fiercely nationalist and
patriotic anti-British sentiment, transcending, and expressing the breakdown
of, traditional feudal loyalties. As a result, during 1857, while the Princes
were swearing undying loyalty to the hangmen and butchers of the Indian people,
their soldiers in many cases came out as the true defenders of India’s honour and independence. However, being still under feudal influence, the mass of
the people in the princely states, while entertaining sympathy with the
rebellion, awaited their rulers to lead them in the struggle against the
British. Since the Princes deserted to the British side, the masses were left
leaderless and their discontent remained unexpressed, except for a few
localised rebellions, which were easily brought under control.
Why did the Princes act
so shamelessly?
The question arises: what made the Princes so
bereft of honour and sense of national duty as to shamelessly enlist themselves
in the menial service of British colonialism? The answer lies, first, in the
corroding effect of the system of subsidiary alliances, which had long trapped
them all. Under it the Company’s troops were quartered in every state and the
British Resident (Agent) was the real ruler. This system had “… a natural
tendency to render the Government of every country in which it exists weak and
oppressive; to extinguish all honourable spirit among the higher classes of
society, and to degrade and impoverish the whole people. The natural remedy of
a bad government in India is a quiet revolution in the Palace, or a violent one
by rebellion, or foreign conquest. But the presence of a British force cuts
off every chance of remedy, by supporting the Prince on the throne against
every foreign or domestic enemy” (quoted by Nehru in his Discovery of
India, pp 266-8).
In the second place, the British were able to use
feudal divisions, mutual distrust, historic memories of the Sikhs and Rajputs
against the Mughals, of the Maratha Princes against the Nizam in the South and
the Mughals in the North, to their own advantage. In short, the British
successfully played the same game of divide and rule to suppress the revolt of
1857-58, which they had so successfully played in the first place in the
conquest of India. The revolt was crushed ultimately with Indian help, just as
the subjugation of India had been achieved with the help of Indians.
“If we knew nothing of the past history of
Hindustan,” wrote Marx in 1853, “would there not be one great and
incontestable fact, that even at this moment India is held in English thraldom
by an Indian army maintained at the cost of India?” (The Future Results of
British Rule in India).
“The Roman ‘divide et imperia’ was the great
rule by which Great Britain, for about 150 years, continued to retain the
tenure of her Indian Empire. The antagonism of the various races, tribes,
castes, creeds, and sovereignties, the aggregate of which forms the geographic
unity of what is called India, continued to be the vital principle of British
supremacy”. So wroteMarx in his first article, published in
the NYDT on 15 July 1857, after the great revolt had begun (Marx
and Engels, page 41).
Through the planting of British residents in the
capitals of the princely States, the British brought them to ruin, for one of
the “duties of these officers was to foment dissensions” (Grant Duff,
History of Marathas, Vol I, p.340). The British intruders,
having decided to hold India, broke the power of the native rulers “by
force or by intrigue” and, following in the track of Roman
politics, they adopted “a system of fattening allies as we fatten
oxen till they were worthy of being devoured” (quoted by Marx
in The Native States, July 25, 1858).
At the time (1858), the Indian states covered an
area of nearly 700,000 square miles with a population of close to 53 million.
They had, however, now ceased to be allies but had become “… dependants of
the British government upon multifarious conditions and under various forms of
the subsidiary and of the protective systems. These systems have in common the
relinquishment by the Indian states of the right of self-defence, of
maintaining diplomatic relations and of settling disputes among themselves
without the interference of the Governor-General.
“The conditions under
which they are allowed to retain their apparent independence are, at the same
time, the conditions of a permanent decay and of an utter inability of
improvement. Organic weakness is the constitutional law of their existence, as
of all existence living upon sufferance” (ibid).
It was this system of subsidiary alliances, and the
policy of divide and rule, used by the British with such devastating effect
during 1857-58, that Fitchett described in the following maliciously gleeful,
racist and arrogant tone:
“What a demonstration
the whole story is, of the Imperial genius of the British race! ‘A nation’, to
quote Hodson – himself one of the most brilliant actors in the great drama –
‘which could conquer a great country like the Punjab with a Hindoostanee Army,
then turn the energies of the conquered Sikhs to subdue the very army by which
they were tamed; which could fight out a position like Peshawar for years, in
the very teeth of the Afghan tribes; and then, when suddenly deprived of the
regiments which effected this, could unhesitatingly employ these very tribes to
disarm and quell those regiments when in mutiny – a nation which could do this,
is indeed, destined to rule the world’” (W H Fitchett, The
Tale of the Great Mutiny, pp.48-49).
The aftermath of 1857
The revolt of 1857 constitutes a historic landmark
occupying the boundary line between the end of one phase and the beginning of a
new one in the history of India. As for the British side, it put an end to the
East India Company’s rule in favour of the assumption of direct rule by the
British Crown, thus sealing irrevocably the victory of the industrial
bourgeoisie in Britain over mercantile monopoly.
Further, realising how close it had come to losing India through the alienation and disaffection of the Indian feudal elements, the British
ruling class made a drastic revision of its policy towards the Indian feudal
rulers. Discarding the policy followed hitherto of attacking feudal interests,
the cardinal principle of British policy after 1857 was the reconciliation of
feudal rulers as the chief social base for Britain’s rule over India. The former policy of annexations of princely states made way for the respect for “the rights, dignity and honour of native princes as our own” for the “safety of our [British] rule is increased, and not
diminished, by the maintenance of native chiefs well affected to us” (see
Queen Victoria’s Proclamation and Lord Canning’s Minute of 30 April 1858).
Under this new dispensation, the Indian princes were to play the role of Britain’s fifth column in India and used for disrupting the unity of the Indian people.
The process of bribing the princes began at the
very height of the uprising. As a reward for their treachery to the cause of
Indian liberation, two thirds of the talukdars (big landowners) got back their estates on terms more favourable than
those under which they had held them before the beginning of the revolt. Showing
indulgence towards the landlords and handing over the peasantry to their tender
mercies became the hallmark of British policy after the suppression of the
revolt of 1857.
Since the revolt of the Indian army had rocked
British rule in India to its very foundations, the army was, following the
suppression of the revolt, reorganised. While the proportion of British troops
was enhanced, the artillery was taken away from Indian soldiers. Reserving all
senior appointments for the British, the Indian regiments were reorganised on
divisive communal lines, with recruitment being confined to allegedly ‘martial
races’, i.e., those like the Punjabis who had been conquered by the East India
Company with Indian soldiers recruited from ‘non-martial races’, who had proved
so dangerous to British rule during the revolt of 1857.
On the social front, whereas prior to the revolt
the British rulers had been associated with some measures of social reform,
such as the outlawing of Sati and
allowing widows to remarry, after the fearful experience of 1857 and with the
subsequent close alliance of the British with feudal reaction, they became
vehemently opposed to all progressive social reform, instead supporting
everything that was socially regressive in Indian society. Somewhat later,
being forced to introduce some form of limited representation for the Indians,
the British rulers instituted separate electorates for Hindus and Muslims – the
first expression of the pernicious two-nation theory, which was to end in the
tragic partition of India at the time of its Independence in 1947.
All to no
avail
In the end, none of these measures succeeded in
preventing the rout of the British Raj at the hands of the Indian people. The
memory of 1857 and the exploits of the rebels never faded away. Even the
reorganised army was never free from the memory of those heroic days, with the
growth of the modern Indian national movement in the earlier part of the 20th Century, the army could hardly remain
untouched by the momentous events then unfolding. At the height of the
national movement in April 1930, the Garhwali soldiers refused the order to
fire on the people – Hindu troops in the midst of a Muslim crowd refused the
order to shoot, broke ranks, fraternised with the crowd, with a number of them
handing over their arms. In the aftermath of the Second World War, in the
midst of the rising tide of the liberation struggle, after a number of revolts
in the Indian Army and Air Force, the Royal Indian Navy staged a historic
revolt on 18 February 1946, forcing the British Prime Minister (Clement Attlee)
the following day to announce the despatch of the Cabinet Mission to India to
begin negotiating for India’s independence from Britain.
Even the English-educated intelligentsia, created
by the British to secure cheap, efficient and depoliticised cadres for manning
the essential lower layers of the administration, and which by and large had
stayed loyal to the British during 1857-58, soon became disillusioned with the
oppressive, racist and exploitative British rule. It soon learned that the
much-trumpeted British ideals of human equality and political democracy were
not meant to be put into practice in India; that India had not been conquered
by the British for the benefit of Indians; that India had been conquered by the
British by the sword for the benefit of Britain; and that it was held by the
sword solely in the interests of Britain.
The transition in the mindset of the Indian
intelligentsia, from being loyal supporters of the British Raj during 1857 to
being its disillusioned opponents in the aftermath of 1857, is typified by the
person of Rabindranath Tagore.. In his address to mark his 80th
birthday in May 1941, he made the following moving and sincere assessment of
his own change of attitude towards the British rulers:
“As I look back on the vast
stretch of years that lie behind me and see in clear perspective the history of
my early development, I am struck by the change that has taken place both in my
own attitude and in the psychology of my countrymen – a change that carries
within it a cause of profound tragedy.
“The educated of those days had
recourse to English language and literature. Their days and nights were
eloquent with the stately declamations of Burke, with Macaulay’s long-rolling
sentences, discussions centred upon Shakespeare’s drama and Byron’s poetry and
above all upon the large-hearted liberalism of the nineteenth century.
“At the time, though tentative
attempts were being made to gain our national independence, at heart we had not
lost faith in the generosity of the English race. This belief was so firmly
rooted in the sentiments of our leaders as to lead them to hope that the victor
would of his own grace pave the path of freedom for the vanquished…
“Certainly that spirit of abject
dependence upon the charity of our rulers was no matter of pride. What was
remarkable, however, was the whole-hearted way in which we gave our recognition
to human greatness even when it revealed itself in the foreigner …
“I naturally set the English on
the throne of my heart. Thus passed the first chapter of my life. Then came
the parting of ways accompanied with a painful feeling of disillusion when I
began increasingly to discover how easily those who accepted the highest truths
of civilisation disowned them with impunity whenever questions of national
self-interest were involved” (quoted by J Nehru in his
Discovery of India, pp. 276-278).
Material
basis
The material basis for the change in perception and
attitude of the Indian intelligentsia towards British rule was furnished by the
economic developments in the subcontinent following changes in Britain’s policy for exploiting India. It was already becoming clear before 1857 that India could no longer simply be looted and its productive capacity destroyed with reckless
abandon, in the way the Company had been wont to do. For India to be a
continuing source of profit to the triumphant industrial bourgeoisie in
Britain, its productive powers had to be developed, for Britain could not
continue to export her products – cloth in particular – without importing
products from India. And, in order for India to be in a position to export,
her productive capacity had to be literally built anew after the devastation
caused by a century of the Company’s misrule. This is how Marx, with his
inimitable prescience, stated the position nearly four years before the
outbreak of the great revolt:
“The ruling classes of Great Britain have had, till now, but an accidental, transitory and exceptional interest in the
progress of India. The aristocracy wanted to conquer it, the moneyocracy to
plunder it and the millocracy to under sell it. But now the tables are
turned. The millocracy have discovered that the transformation of India into a
reproductive country has become of vital importance to them, and that, to that
end, it is necessary, above all, to gift her with means of irrigation and of
internal communication” (Marx, ‘The future results of
British rule in India’, New York daily Tribune, 8 August 1853, in Marx
and Engels on India, p.35).
After the suppression of 1857, Britain had no choice other than to take important economic measures to develop India’s economic powers. The matter acquired added urgency when the American Civil War
followed hot on the heels of 1857. During this War, with the Union forces
blockading the Confederates, the supply of cotton from the southern slave
states to the Lancashire cotton mills all but ceased. Finding alternative
sources of cotton made the question of turning India into a major producer of
cotton a matter of urgent and unprecedented necessity. What is more, cotton had
to be not just produced but also taken to ports hundreds of miles away before
being exported to Britain. This required the construction of a vast network of
railways – doubly needed as the British had found during the fateful years of
1857-58 how difficult it had been for them to transport troops, war materiel
and other supplies in their absence. Thus it was that Britain was forced to revive the productive powers of India through the introduction of steam,
railways and irrigation systems.
Whereas prior to 1857 Britain had succeeded in
breaking down “…the entire framework of Indian society,
without any symptoms of reconstitution yet appearing”,
with the result that this “…loss of his old world, with no gain of a new
one” imparted “a particular kind of melancholy to the … misery of the
Hindu,” and separated “Hindustan, ruled by Britain, from all its ancient
traditions, and from the whole of its past history”. Britain had also succeeded in destroying Indian agriculture through neglect of public
works. “British steam and science uprooted…the union between agriculture
and manufacturing industry”, said Marx (see ‘The British Rule in India, 10 June 1853, Marx and Engels, pp. 16 and 18).
A social
revolution
The period of regeneration, of reconstitution, was
to begin in earnest in the aftermath of 1857. Both in the destruction of the
old Indian society – the village system – and laying the basis for the regeneration
of India, Britain was “…actuated only by the vilest
interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them”. All the same, despite all her crimes, Britain “…was the
unconscious tool of history” in bringing about a fundamental revolution in
the social state of India (see Marx, op.cit. p.21).
Every measure taken by the British to ensure an
efficient administration of the country, to exploit it more thoroughly, in the
end served to undermine British domination of, and rule over, India. The political unity of India imposed by the British bayonet, augmented by the
electric telegraph, steam, railways and irrigation, and with it the beginnings
of India’s industrialisation, the organisation of the Indian army on modern
European lines, the introduction of the press and the creation of a native
intelligentsia “endowed with the requirements for government
and imbued with European science” – all these in the
end turned out to be so many sources of revolt against British rule. Of
course, the British ruling class undertook, inter alia, the construction of a
network of railways in India, principally for the purpose of securing, at much
reduced cost, cotton and other raw materials for processing into their
manufactures in Britain. But machinery, once introduced into the locomotion of
India, a country richly endowed with iron and coal, cold not but lay the
foundations for its fabrication in that country, for it is not possible “…to
maintain a net of railways over an immense country without introducing all those
industrial processes necessary to meet the immediate and current wants of
railway locomotion, and out of which there must grow the application of
machinery to those branches of industry not immediately connected with
railways. The railway system will therefore become, in India, truly the forerunner of modern industry” (Marx, ‘The future results of the British rule
in India’, July 1853, Marx and Engels p.37).
Marx was fully aware that the economic measures
which the British bourgeoisie was forced to undertake were not sufficient in
themselves either to emancipate or even cause material change in the social
conditions of the masses of India. For that to happen, in addition to there
being development of productive forces, the latter had to be appropriated by
the people. What he thought was beyond doubt, however, was that the British
bourgeoisie was laying down “…the material premises for
both,” adding “Has the bourgeoisie ever done more?
Has it ever effected progress without dragging individuals and peoples through
blood and dirt, through misery and degradation?” (ibid. p. 38).
Marx was rightly of the view that for the Indians
to harvest “…the fruits of the new elements of society
scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie,”
either the British bourgeoisie had to be overthrown by the industrial
proletariat of Britain or the Indians had to prove strong enough to throw off
the British yoke altogether. All the same, Marx was enthused at the prospect
of India’s regeneration, the material basis for which was then beginning to be
laid by the British rulers, even if out of the vilest and most selfish of
motives. He expresses himself on this score with great gusto in the following,
almost gushing, terms:
“At all events, we may safely
expect to see, at a more or less remote period, the regeneration of that great
and interesting country, whose gentle natives are, to use the expression of
Prince Saltykov, even in the most inferior classes, ‘plus fins et plus adroit
que les Italiens’ [more subtle and adroit than the
Italians], whose submission even is counterbalanced by a certain calm
nobility, who, notwithstanding their natural languor, have astonished British
officers by their bravery, whose country has been the source of our languages,
our religions, and who represent the type of ancient German in the Jat and the
type of the ancient Greek in the Brahmin” (ibid.).
New centres
of opposition
Surely, if slowly, events turned out just as Marx
had predicted. The steps taken by the British rulers created two new powerful
centres of opposition to British rule – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat –
in addition to the newly reorganised Indian army. During the second half of
the 19th century began the process of formation of an
Indian bourgeoisie. 1853 saw the establishment of the first successful cotton
mill in Bombay. A quarter of a century later, by 1880, there were 156 mills
employing 44,000 workers. By 1890 the number of mills had increased to 193 and
the workers employed in them to 161,000. By 1930 the number of workers
employed in factories, mines, on railways and in water transport was 3.2
million, and the number of factories stood at 8,148 (see R P Dutt, India
Today, Victor Gollancz, London, 1940, p.497). The textile industry from
its outset was mainly financed and controlled by Indians and had to struggle
for its existence against great difficulties put in its way by British
competition and the British rulers of India alike. The clash of economic
interests between the Indian rising bourgeoisie and the British bourgeoisie
came to the surface in 1882 when the authorities abolished all duties on cotton
imports into India as demanded by the Lancashire manufacturers. Such a measure
could not fail to hurt the interests of, and cause great resentment among, the rising
Indian bourgeoisie.
At the same time a new educated layer of
petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, composed of lawyers, doctors, teachers and
administrators, well-versed in western education and imbued with the ideals and
conceptions of democratic liberty and citizenship, was increasingly appearing
on the scene. Although both these developments – capitalist industry and the
new intelligentsia – were small to begin with, nevertheless a new class had
sprung up which was surely to find in the British bourgeoisie a competitor and
an obstacle to its own progress. This new class was to become the first, and more or less articulate, expression
of Indian national claims and provide leadership to the anti-British struggle.
Meanwhile, the second half of the 19th century witnessed the growing impoverishment and despair of the vast
peasant masses, resulting from the cumulative process of penetration by British
capital. If in the first half of the 19th century there took place seven
famines, which claimed the lives of 1.5 million people, the second half of the
century experienced 24 famines in which 28.5 million Indians perished. This
situation led to peasant uprisings, especially in the Deccan (south of the
country).
Thus from the 1870’s onwards conditions had been created
that served as a sure foundation for a truly modern Indian national movement.
There now existed a bourgeoisie and a proletariat, both small but growing, and
a vast mass of impoverished peasantry – all discontented and angry, and all
correctly attributing their miserable lot to the policies and actions of the
alien rulers. No wonder, then, that 1885 saw the formation, under the guidance
of an English administrator, A O Hume, of the Indian National Congress, albeit
as a safety valve to safeguard British rule against the Indian people’s then
impending revolutionary struggle. In view of the rising tide of anger against
British rule, British imperialism itself was forced to take the hazardous, if
mild, step of setting up, through Hume, for the rising Indian bourgeoisie, a
platform from which to articulate its demands and at the same time to act as an
organ of opposition to a truly revolutionary anti-imperialist and anti-feudal
programme and revolutionary methods of struggle to fulfil it. The Indian bourgeoisie,
through the Congress Party under Gandhi’s leadership, fulfilled this two-fold
despicable role very successfully indeed – in conflict with the British
bourgeoisie and desiring to provide leadership to the anti-British struggle,
yet shunning like the plague all revolutionary programme and methods which
might end up sweeping away its own privileges along with those of British
imperialism.
The honour of pursuing a genuinely anti-imperialist
programme, and employing revolutionary methods of struggle, belongs to the
revolutionaries of the Ghadar Party (the Party of Revolt), formed in April
1913, the Hindustan Republican Association (formed in January 1925) and its
successor the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (formed in 1928), the
Indian working class and peasantry. Through a combination of brutal
suppression and show trials of the revolutionaries on the one hand and making
concessions to the Congress Party, the representative spokesman of the Indian
exploiting classes, British imperialism succeeded in frustrating the
anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle of the Indian people, with the result
that the end of the British Raj was followed by the partition of India, the
establishment of two independent states following communal strife and mass slaughter,
with these states ruled by exploiting classes, in which the interests of the
vast masses were totally ignored, and continue to be ignored to this day. What
British imperialism could not succeed in achieving, however, was in preventing India slipping out of its grip altogether. And this, in no small measure, is attributable
to the glorious events of 1857-59, the first Indian War of Independence, and
the political and economic measures that the British rulers were forced to
institute in its aftermath.
For their part the Indian people drew entirely
different conclusions from the events of 1857-59 for the next phase of their
liberation struggle. Seeing that the princes and a large number of feudal
landlords, whom they had previously regarded as their natural leaders, had
betrayed them in 1857, the masses of the people concluded that, in order to be
successful, their struggle had to be anti-feudal as well as anti-British.
Inculcation of national consciousness
What is more, the revolt of 1857, as well as the
brutal suppression of it by the British authorities, managed to inculcate in
the masses the conception of India as the common home of all Indians. Prior to
1857, love of one’s country meant no more than the love of one’s own
principality ruled by a traditional ruler. The feudal rivalries and historic
memories of local conflicts between neighbouring rulers came in the way of the
realisation of such a conception as India being the home of all Indians. More
importantly, the material foundations to underpin such a conception – the
telegraph, the railways, steam, irrigation and machine industry – had not yet
been laid. The revolt of 1857 helped greatly in the growth of such a
conception. The Times of London noted the rise of this conception in the following terms:
“One of the great results that
have flowed from the rebellion of 1857-58 has been to make inhabitants of every
part of India acquainted with each other. We have seen the tide of war rolling
from Nepal to the border of Gujarat, from the deserts of Rejputana to the
frontiers of the Nizam’s territories, the same men overrunning the whole of
India and giving to their resistance, as it were, a national character. The
paltry interests of isolated states, the ignorance which men of one petty principality
have laboured under in considering the habits and customs of other
principalities – all this has disappeared to make way for a more uniform
appreciation of public events throughout India”.
Somewhat contradictorily, The Times concludes: “We may assume that
in the rebellion of 1857, no national spirit was roused, but we cannot deny
that our efforts to put it down have sown the seeds of a new plant and thus
laid the foundation for more energetic attempts on the part of the people in
the course of future years” (quoted by Savarkar, op.cit., pp.
534-535).
It is not true that no national spirit was roused in the rebellion of 1857. In fact, what
marks out 1857 from all previous anti-British wars is that whereas in previous
wars people of a single principality or nation fought against the British (the
Bengalis at Plassey, the people of Karnataka led by Tipoo Sultan in Karnataka
and Mysore, the Sikhs in Punjab), in 1857 by contrast, people over a large part
of India and belonging to several nationalities, religions and castes, coming
from different kingdoms, rose together, in a unity hitherto unprecedented, to
end British rule. In the words of Marx:
“Before there had been mutinies in
the Indian army but the present revolt is distinguished by characteristic and
fatal features. It is the first time that the sepoy regiments have murdered
their European officers; that Mussalmans and Hindus, renouncing their mutual
antipathies, have combined against the common masters; that disturbances
beginning with the Hindus, have actually ended in placing on the throne of
Delhi a Mohammedan Emperor; that the mutiny has not been confined to a few
localities” (‘The revolt in the Indian army’, 15 July
1857, Marx and Engels p. 42).
Even the Governor-General and Viceroy, Charles Canning,
in a communication of 8 August 1859 to Charles Wood, Secretary of State, was
obliged to observe that the “…struggle we have had has been
more like a national war than a local insurrection. In its magnitude,
duration, scale of expenditure and in some of its moral features, it partakes
of the former character” (quoted in Mahdu Prasad, People’s
Democracy, 19 August 2007).
The later use of the term ‘mutiny’, instead of a
national war, was yet another myth perpetuated by the victors to present this
national war as a minor disturbance of the peace, and its brutal suppression
and the subjugation of the Indian people as a supposed return of peace and
business as usual.
Conclusion
As a matter of fact, in the historical context of India’s liberation struggle against British rule, what needs to be emphasised “is not the limitation and narrowness of the 1857 uprising but its
sweep, breadth and depth” (P C Joshi, 1857 in our
history). Of course, there were negative aspects already enumerated above
which led to the defeat of this national revolt. All the same, the events of
1857 left a lasting impression on succeeding generations of freedom fighters.
The British rulers were never to rest easy after 1857, which acted as a
continuing source of inspiration to the modern national liberation movement in India, which broke out in the early years of the 20th century. The Ghadar
revolutionaries, linking themselves to, and regarding their struggle as a
continuation of the Ghadar (revolt) of 1857, named their party after it.
This revolutionary tradition was carried on by Bhagat Singh and his comrades of
the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, as well as the then
newly-emerging working-class and communist movement in India. Such was the sweep of the 1857 revolt, such was its inspiring effect on subsequent
generations, such was its hold on Indian national thought and consciousness,
that even a historian like Dr R C Mazumdar was constrained to conclude his
study of the revolt with the following words:
“The outbreak of 1857 would surely
go down in history as the first great and direct challenge to the British rule
in India, on an extensive scale. As such, it inspired the genuine national
movement for the freedom of India from British yoke which started half a
century later. The memory of 1857-58 sustained the later movement, infused
courage into the hearts of its fighters, furnished a national basis for the
grim struggle, and gave it a moral stimulus, the value of which it is
impossible to exaggerate. The memory of the revolt of 1857, … hallowed with
sanctity, perhaps did more damage to the cause of British rule in India than
the revolt itself” (The sepoy mutiny and the revolt
of 1857, p.279, quoted in Joshi, op.cit, p.9).
The memory of 1857 continued to haunt succeeding
generations of Indian freedom fighters. In 1944, in a ceremony held in Rangoon at the tomb of Bahadur Shah, the last Mogul ruler whom the British had exiled to Burma after the suppression of the Great Revolt, members of the Indian National Army, vowed
to free the country from British colonialism. In his call to arms, Subhash
Bose recalled the slogan of the 1857 heroes – the road to Delhi is the road to
freedom. And in 1947 it was from the Red Fort, the headquarters of the 1857
revolt, acknowledged throughout the subcontinent as the symbol of India’s pre-colonial sovereignty, that the flag of an independent India was hoisted.
While fully acknowledging that the Independence of
India under the leadership of the Congress Party, and that of Pakistan under
the Muslim League, did not bring in its train the economic liberation of the
masses; while recognising thus the mutilated character of this independence, it
was nevertheless an event of historic proportions, which set in train the
process of post-Second World War decolonisation of scores of countries in Asia
and Africa. Inter alia, with the loss of India, the British bourgeoisie lost
its position of being the pre-eminent colonialist and imperialist power and had
to accept the role of a junior partner of US imperialism.
For the people of the Indian subcontinent, a new
chapter opened up – that of their struggle for economic and social
emancipation, a struggle which is carrying on and which, by a number of
intermediary links, connects itself with the glorious spirit of 1857 and the
heroic exploits of its participants, as well as those of subsequent generations
who were inspired by the memory and legacy of those momentous days. It is
precisely because of this that we continue to honour and cherish 1857, with its
spirit of revolutionary patriotism, courage, unflinching defiance and
self-sacrificing heroism.