The Revolt of 1857
Late in the afternoon of 10 May 1857, the sepoys in the cantonment
of Meerut broke out in mutiny. It began in the lines of the native
infantry, spread very swiftly to the cavalry and then to the city.
The ordinary people of the town and surrounding villages joined
the sepoys. The sepoys captured the bell of arms where the arms
and ammunition were kept and proceeded to attack white people,
and to ransack and burn their bungalows and property.
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Government buildings � the record office, jail, court, post office,
treasury, etc. � were destroyed and plundered. The telegraph line
to Delhi was cut. As darkness descended, a group of sepoys rode
off towards Delhi.
The sepoys arrived at the gates of the Red
Fort early in the morning on 11 May. It was
the month of Ramzan, the Muslim holy month
of prayer and fasting. The old Mughal emperor,
Bahadur Shah, had just finished his prayers
and meal before the sun rose and the fast
began. He heard the commotion at the gates.
The sepoys who had gathered under his window
told him: �We have come from Meerut after
killing all the Englishmen there, because they
asked us to bite bullets that were coated with
the fat of cows and pigs with our teeth. This
has corrupted the faith of Hindus and Muslims
alike.�� Another group of sepoys also entered
Delhi, and the ordinary people of the city joined
them. Europeans were killed in large numbers;
the rich of Delhi were attacked and looted. It
was clear that Delhi had gone out of British
control. Some sepoys rode into the Red Fort,
without observing the elaborate court etiquette
expected of them. They demanded that the
emperor give them his blessings. Surrounded
by the sepoys, Bahadur Shah had no other
option but to comply. The revolt thus acquired
a kind of legitimacy because it could now be
carried on in the name of the Mughal emperor.
Through 12 and 13 May, North India remained quiet. Once
word spread that Delhi had fallen to the rebels and Bahadur
Shah had blessed the rebellion, events moved swiftly.
Cantonment after cantonment in the Gangetic valley and some
to the west of Delhi rose in mutiny.
Pattern of the Rebellion
If one were to place the dates of these mutinies in
chronological order, it would appear that as the news
of the mutiny in one town travelled to the next the
sepoys there took up arms. The sequence of events
in every cantonment followed a similar pattern.
How the mutinies began
The sepoys began their action with a signal: in many
places it was the firing of the evening gun or the
sounding of the bugle. They first seized the bell
of arms and plundered the treasury. They then
attacked government buildings � the jail, treasury,
telegraph office, record room, bungalows � burning
all records. Everything and everybody connected
with the white man became a target. Proclamations
in Hindi, Urdu and Persian were put up in the cities
calling upon the population, both Hindus and
Muslims, to unite, rise and exterminate the firangis.
When ordinary people began joining the revolt,
the targets of attack
widened. In major towns
like Lucknow, Kanpur
and Bareilly, moneylenders
and the rich
also became the objects
of rebel wrath. Peasants
not only saw them
as oppressors but also
as allies of the British.
In most places their
houses were looted and
destroyed. The mutiny
in the sepoy ranks quickly
became a rebellion.
There was a general
defiance of all kinds of
authority and hierarchy.
In the months of May and June, the British had no
answer to the actions of the rebels. Individual Britons
tried to save their own lives and the lives of their
families. British rule, as one British officer noted,
�collapsed like a house made of cards��.
Lines of communication
The reason for the similarity in the pattern of the revolt
in different places lay partly in its planning and
coordination. It is clear that there was communication
between the sepoy lines of various cantonments. After
the 7th Awadh Irregular Cavalry had refused to accept
the new cartridges in early May, they wrote to the 48th
Native Infantry that �they had acted for the faith and
awaited the 48th�s orders�. Sepoys or their emissaries
moved from one station to another. People were thus
planning and talking about the rebellion.
The pattern of the mutinies and the pieces of
evidence that suggest some sort of planning and
coordination raise certain crucial questions. How
were the plans made? Who were the planners? It is
difficult on the basis of the available documents to
provide direct answers to such questions. But one
incident provides clues as to how the mutinies came
to be so organised. Captain Hearsey of the Awadh
Military Police had been given protection by his
Indian subordinates during the mutiny. The 41st
Native Infantry, which was stationed in the same
place, insisted that since they had killed all their
white officers, the Military Police should also kill
Hearsey or deliver him as prisoner to the 41st. The
Military Police refused to do either, and it was
decided that the matter would be settled by a
panchayat composed of native officers drawn from
each regiment. Charles Ball, who wrote one of the
earliest histories of the uprising, noted that
panchayats were a nightly occurrence in the Kanpur
sepoy lines. What this suggests is that some of the
decisions were taken collectively. Given the fact that
the sepoys lived in lines and shared a common
lifestyle and that many of them came from the same
caste, it is not difficult to imagine them sitting
together to decide their own future. The sepoys were
the makers of their own rebellion.
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