In 1857, the anger of the peasants quickly spread among the sepoys. Explain
Answers
Answer:
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major, but ultimately unsuccessful, uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown.[4][5] The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the Company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, 40 mi (64 km) northeast of Delhi (that area is now Old Delhi). It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India,[a][6][b][7] though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east.[c][8] The rebellion posed a considerable threat to British power in that region,[d][9] and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858.[10] On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8 July 1859. Its name is contested, and it is variously described as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, the Indian Insurrection, and the First War of Independence.[e][11]
Indian Rebellion of 1857
Indian Rebellion of 1857.jpg
A 1912 map showing the centres of the rebellion
Date 10 May 1857 – 1 November 1858
(1 year and 6 months)
Location
India
Result
British victory
Suppression of revolt
Formal end of the Mughal Empire
End of Company rule in India
Transfer of rule to the British Crown
Territorial
changes British Raj created out of former East India Company territory (some land returned to native rulers, other land confiscated by the British crown)
Belligerents
Sepoy Mutineers
Mughal Empire
Oudh
Forces of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi
Forces of Nana Sahib Peshwa II
Banda
Forces of Rao Tula Ram
Jagdishpur
Gwalior factions
Various other Rajas, Nawabs, Zamindars, Thakurs, Chaudharys, Taluqdars, Sardars, and chieftains
United Kingdom
East India Company
Patiala
Kapurthala
Rampur
Jodhpur
Nabha
Nepal
Commanders and leaders
Bahadur Shah II
Bakht Khan †
Begum Hazrat Mahal
Nawab Bijris Qadr
Rani Lakshmibai †
Tatya Tope Executed
Nana Sahib
Ali Bahadur II of Banda
Raja Rao Tula Ram
Kunwar Singh
Nahar Singh
Umrao Singh Bhati
Dhan Singh Gurjar
Mangal Pandey Executed
Vishwanath Shahdeo Executed
Pandey Ganpat Rai Executed
Tikait Umrao Singh Executed
Sheikh Bhikhari Executed
Victoria
Earl of Dalhousie
Earl Canning
Maj. Gen. George Anson †
Lt. Gen. Sir Patrick Grant
Gen. Sir Colin Campbell
Maj. Gen. Sir Hugh Rose
Maj. Gen. Sir Henry Havelock †
Maj. Gen. Sir James Outram
Brig. Sir Henry Lawrence †
Brig. Sir James Neill †
Brig. John Nicholson †
Jung Bahadur Rana[1]
Gen. Dhir Shamsher Rana[2]
Raja Sir Randhir Singh
Maharaja Sir Narinder Singh
Nawab Sir Yusef Ali Khan
Maharja Sir Takht Singh
Raja Sir Hira Singh
Casualties and losses
6,000 British killed[3]
As many as 800,000 Indians and possibly more, both in the rebellion and in famines and epidemics of disease in its wake, by comparison of 1857 population estimates with Indian Census of 1871.[3]
The Indian rebellion was fed by resentments born of diverse perceptions, including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, summary treatment of some rich landowners and princes,[12][13] as well as scepticism about the improvements brought about by British rule.[f][14] Many Indians rose against the British; however, many also fought for the British, and the majority remained seemingly compliant to British rule.[g][14] Violence, which sometimes betrayed exceptional cruelty, was inflicted on both sides, on British officers, and civilians, including women and children, by the rebels, and on the rebels, and their supporters, including sometimes entire villages, by British reprisals; the cities of Delhi and Lucknow were laid waste in the fighting and the British retaliation.[h][14]
After the outbreak of the mutiny in Meerut, the rebels quickly reached Delhi, whose 81-year-old Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was declared the Emperor of Hindustan. Soon, the rebels had captured large tracts of the North-Western Provinces and Awadh (Oudh). The East India Company's response came rapidly as well. With help from reinforcements, Kanpur was retaken by mid-July 1857, and Delhi by the end of September.[10] However, it then took the remainder of 1857 and the better part of 1858 for the rebellion to be suppressed in Jhansi, Lucknow, and especially the Awadh countryside.[10] Other regions of Company-controlled India—Bengal province, the Bombay Presidency, and the Madras Presidency—remained largely calm.[i][7][10] In the Punjab, the Sikh princes crucially helped the British by providing both soldiers and support.[j][7][10] The large princely states, Hyderabad, Mysore, Travancore, and Kashmir, as well as the smaller ones of Rajputana, did not join the rebellion, serving the British, in the Governor-General Lord Canning's words, as "breakwaters in a storm."[15]
Historians have identified diverse political, economic, military, religious and social causes of the Revolt of 1857 (First War of Indian Independence 1857).
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. Loading the Enfield often required tearing open the greased cartridge with one's teeth, and many sepoys believed that the cartridges were greased with cow and pig fat. This would have insulted both Hindu and Muslim religious practices; cows were considered holy by Hindus, while pigs were considered unclean (Haram) by Muslims.
Underlying grievances over British taxation and recent land annexations by the English East Indian Company (EEIC) also contributed to the anger of the sepoy mutineers, and within weeks, dozens of units of the Indian army joined peasant armies in widespread rebellion. The old aristocracy, both Muslim and Hindu, who were seeing their power steadily eroded by the EEIC, also rebelled against British rule.