What were the reasons of failure of the revolt of 1857
Answers
Let us first understand why the revolt took place in the first place.
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 occurred as the result of an accumulation of factors over time, rather than any single event. The major events to constitute to it were as follows:
1. The doctrine of Lapse: The Company had interfered with a traditional system of inheritance in the name of Doctrine of Lapse, which refused to recognise the adopted children of princes as legal heirs. Many of the Nobility had lost titles and domains under the Doctrine of Lapse and felt that the company had taken away their birthright.
2. Company Rules and Regulations: The second group, the taluqdars, had lost half their landed estates to peasant farmers as a result of the land reforms that came in the wake of annexation. It has also been suggested that heavy land-revenue assessment in some areas by the British resulted in many landowning families either losing their land or going into great debt to money lenders and providing ultimately a reason to rebel; money lenders, in addition to the Company, were particular objects of the rebels' animosity.
3. A general Anger: The justice system was considered to be inherently unfair to the Indians. The official Blue Books, *East India (Torture) 1855–1857*, laid before the House of Commons during the sessions of 1856 and 1857, revealed that Company officers were allowed an extended series of appeals if convicted or accused of brutality or crimes against Indians.
4. The insecurity of losing religion: There was a common resentment against social changes that British tried to bring with abolishing Sati, child marriage and promotion of education of the Girl Child which made Indians feel a change in their age-old religious beliefs and thus it was taken as a step to increase conversions to Christianity. The Indian of those times would prefer dying instead of changing their religion. Not that there were any inferences of conversion but the feeling of insecurity itself raise the tension got multiplied becoming one of the prominent reasons for the revolt of 1857 or the sepoy mutiny or the first war of independence.
The prominent rulers who fought for the uprising were:
Rani Laxmibai ( Rani of Jhansi )
Tanya tope
Mangal Pandey
Hakim Ahsanullah (Advisor of Bahadur Shah 2)
Bakht Khan
Bahadur Shah 2
Nana Sahib
Begum Hasarat Mahal
Babu Kumar Singh
Drig Narayan Singh
Jung Bahadur Rana
Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah
Veer Kunwar Singh
Shah Mal
The factors resulting in failure of the Uprising were:
1. Lack of one common Goal and Central leadership: As already stated above the Uprising was distributed and disoriented on social, political, religious and survival grounds. Everybody played their part on their own set of rules and beliefs. The princes joined the revolution to regain their lost prestige; the Taluqdars joined it to get back their privileges, and the peasants fought on it for their economic discontent.
There was no great idea to unite all Indians on a common platform.
2. The absence of Nationalist idea: The India of 1857 was still fragmented and was majorly divided into several princely states which claimed themselves as distinct kingdoms and had their own set of demands and discounts from the British. Thus it is not wrong here to understand that the idea of One INDIA was absent from the regional politics and the common man was as aloof as he is today of what happened at the central level.
3. Lack of Unity: As many kingdoms as many were rivalries. Each of them had one or another ancestral rivalry with more than one of the neighbouring states. And thus the kings or rulers could not come to a common need of fighting the foreigner. In fact opting the policy of “enemy of the enemy is friend” many of the rulers end up helping the British to kerb them in their goals which here happens to be freedom from foreign rule. Like In 1874, Maharaja Sindhiya turned in Nana Sahib and Tantiya Tope to the British.The Nizam of Hyderabad, the Begum of Bhopal and the King of Nepal extended their helping hands to the British.
The Bengalis, the Marathas, the Madrasis and the Malabaris, whose love for the independence of India has been in no way less than that of anyone else in the country, took no part in it. The Rajputs, the Jats, the Dogras and the Garhwalis kept studiedly aloof.
Also, Many Indians supported the British, partly due to their dislike at the idea of the return of Mughal rule and partly because of the lack of a notion of Indianness.
Out of the three Presidency Armies—Bengal, Madras and Bombay—it was only a part of the Bengal Army that had mutinied. The other parts fought on the side of the British Government to suppress it. The Madras and Bombay armies remained quiet and loyal
These reasons also clarify why the nature of the fight was more inclined to the ‘Revolt’ or ‘Mutiny’ as suggested by many historians that the political phrase of ‘First War of Indian independence.