sepoy mutiny 1857 revolt write in 400 words
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The year 1857 marked the completion of 100 years of British rule. Lord Dalhousie’s regime (1849-56) marked the high watermark of the expansion of British domination in India when he implemented the Doctrine of Lapse which postulated that Indian states having no natural heir would be annexed to the Empire.
So far as the military causes of Indian National Movement are concerned—there was great inequality in the treatment between the Indian sepoys and their British counterparts in terms of salary and benefits.
Indian soldiers were considered inferior and higher posts were exclusively reserved for Britishers. What hurt Indian soldiers most was the ban to ware caste and religious mark while on service which amounted to interference in their personal affairs.
The British suffered defeats in first Afghan war (1838-1842) and in Punjab war (1845-1849). These defeats shattered the belief that the Britishers are invincible. As for economic reasons of Indian National Movement, under the British rule India was converted into colonial economy to serve the British capitalists interests. Our traditional handicrafts industry was ruined. Many people were rendered jobless.
As a result there was overcrowding in agricultural sector. Beside a large number of Zamindars were dispossessed of their lands and estates due to British revenue settlement. Both peasants and Zamindars were forced to produce more to appropriate maximum revenue.
The socio-religious causes responsible for the revolt were many and different. The British looked down upon the Indians as inferior race and discriminated against them racially. Abolition of Sati Pratha in 1829 by William Bantick and introduction of Widow Remarriage act in 1856 created suspicion in the minds of conservative Hindus that the British were trying to anglicise them. The policy to tax religious schools further anguished both Hindus.
Apart from these factors, there were immediate causes of 1857 revolt. The introduction of greased cartridges enraged both Hindus and Muslims. The cartridges had to be bitten off before loading and the grease was reportedly made of beef and Pig fat.
On March 29, 1857, the Indian soldiers of Barrackpur refused to use the greased cartridges. A young sepoy of 34th Native infantry, Mangle Pander killed the Sergeant Major of his regiment.
On May 10,1857, the sepoys of third cavalry of Meerut also refused to use the greased cartridges and broke out in open rebellion. These sepoys were immediately joined by the men of 11th and 20th Native Infantries.
At Delhi the command of revolt was in the hands of Bakhtkhan at Kanpur, revolt was led by Nan Sahib, the adopted son of the last Peshwa Baji Rao II. He was assisted by Tantya Tope and Azimullah Khan in the revolt. At Lucknow, the revolt was led by Hazrat Mahal, the Begum of Awadh. Harry Laurance the British resident was killed at Lucknow and Hazrat Mahal proclaimed her son Brijis Kadir as Nawab of Awadh.
After being defeated at Jhansi Rani Laxmi Bai fought to guard the fort of Gwalior. She was killed by General Hugh Rose. At Barailly, Khan Bahadur Khan raised the banner of revolt and proclaimed himself Nawab. Kunwar Singh, a discontented Zamindar of Arrah was a leader of the revolt in Bihar. The rebels who revolted in Banaras were crushed by Colonel Neills. Maulvi Ahmadullah inspired the revolt in Faizabad.
Finally Delhi fell on 20 September 1857. Bahadur Shah was captured, tried and deported to Burma where he died in 1862. With his death the back of the revolt was broken. The Rani of Jhansi died fighting on 17 June 1857. Nana Saheb refused to give in and escaped to Nepal. Kunwar Singh who fought British army led by William Taylor died in 1858. Tantya Tope was captured by British general Havelock and Sir Campbell and put to death. He fought guerilla war against the British. Sir Campbell defeated Begum Hazrat Mahal in Lucknow.
Even in north India, Rajasthan, Punjab, Sindh and Gujrat remained quite. Almost half the Indian soldiers not only kept aloof from participating in the revolt but also fought against their own countrymen. The Indian prince such as Sindhia of Gwalior, Nizam of Hyderabad and princes of Rajasthan remained loyal to the British.
The rebel leaders lacked in experience, organizing ability and their operations were not concerted. Even after its failure the revolt of 1857 served a grand purpose. It was a source of inspiration for the national liberation movement. It was not a pure historical tragedy.
The immediate fall out of this revolt was that East India Company was abolished. Administration was transferred from East India Company to the crown of Britain. Beginning was made by Indian Council Act 1861 to associate Indians legislative matters. The Civil Service Act was passed which provided for competitive examination of 1861 transferred the European troops of the company to the crown.
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major, but ultimately unsuccessful, the 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.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 miles northeast of Delhi (now Old Delhi). It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east. The rebellion posed a considerable threat to British power in that region and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858.On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities formally to have ended until 8 July 1859. The rebellion is known by many names, including the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, the Indian Insurrection, and India's First War of Independence.
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, as well as scepticism about the improvements brought about by British rule.Many Indians did rise against the British, however, very many also fought for the British, and the majority remained seemingly compliant to British rule. 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.
After the outbreak of the mutiny in Meerut, the rebels very quickly reached Delhi, whose 81-year-old Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar, they declared the Emperor of Hindustan. Soon, the rebels had also 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.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.Other regions of Company-controlled India—Bengal province, the Bombay Presidency, and the Madras Presidency—remained largely calm. In the Punjab, the Sikh princes crucially helped the British by providing both soldiers and support.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.
In some regions, most notably in Awadh, the rebellion took on the attributes of a patriotic revolt against European presence.However, the rebel leaders proclaimed no articles of faith that presaged a new political system.Even so, the rebellion proved to be an important watershed in Indian- and British Empire history.It led to the dissolution of the East India Company and forced the British to reorganize the army, the financial system, and the administration in India, through a passage of the Government of India Act 1858.India was thereafter administered directly by the British government in the new British Raj. On 1 November 1858, Queen Victoria issued a proclamation to Indians, which while lacking the authority of a constitutional provision, promised rights similar to those of other British subjects. In the following decades, when admission to these rights was not always forthcoming, Indians were to pointedly refer to the Queen's proclamation in growing avowals of a new nationalism.