Q. Discuss the causes of the Outbreak of the revolt of 1857 in Bihar and account for its failure? [47 BPSC/2007]

Q. Discuss the causes of the Outbreak of the revolt of 1857 in Bihar and account for its failure? [47 BPSC/2007]
Ans:
The revolt of 1857 shook the British empire in India to it’s very foundations. It was cumulative effect of British expansionist policies, economic exploitation and administrative innovations which over the years had adversely affected the position of all sections of society- Zamindar, peasants, traders,, artisans, Pandits, Moulvis. Thus the causes emerged from all aspects—socio-cultural, economic and political—of daily existence of Indian population cutting through all sections and classes. These causes are discussed below.
The revolt in Bihar was an inseparable part of the revolt in other parts of India. The causes were also the same.

The causes of the Outbreak of the revolt of 1857 in Bihar:

• Economic Causes:
  • The colonial policies of the East India Company destroyed the traditional economic fabric of the Indian society.
  • The peasantry were discontented due to the disabilities imposed by the new and a highly unpopular revenue settlement.
    • Heavy taxation caused them to take loans from the moneylenders/traders at usurious rates, the latter often evicting the former from their land on non-payment of debt dues.
  • British rule also meant misery to the artisans and handicrafts people. The annexation of Indian states by the Company cut off their major source of patronage—the native rulers and the nobles, who could not now afford to be patrons of the crafts workers.
    • Added to this, British policy discouraged Indian handicrafts and promoted British goods. The highly skilled Indian craftsmen were forced to look for alternate sources of employment that hardly existed, as the destruction of Indian handicrafts was not accompanied by the development of modern industries.
  • The Indian trade and mercantile class was deliberately crippled by the British who imposed high tariff duties on Indian-made goods.
    • At the same time, the import of British goods into India attracted low tariffs, thus encouraging their entry into India.
    • By mid-nineteenth century, exports of cotton and silk textiles from India practically came to an end.
    • Free trade—one way, that is—and refusal to impose protective duties against machine-made goods from Britain simply killed Indian manufacture.
  • Zamindars, the traditional landed aristocracy, often saw their land rights forfeited by the administration.
    • This resulted in a loss of status for them in the villages.
    • e.g. Kunwar Singh was deprived of his estate, so he was already preparing to launch movement against British even before mutiny in Danapur.
    • In Awadh, the storm centre of the revolt, 21,000 taluqdars had their estates confiscated and suddenly found themselves without a source of income, “unable to work, ashamed to beg, condemned to penury”. These dispossessed taluqdars seized the opportunity presented by the sepoy revolt to oppose the British and try to regain what they had lost.
  • The ruin of Indian industry increased the pressure on agriculture and land, which could not support all the people; the lopsided development resulted in pauperisation of the country in general.
• Political Causes:
  • The East India Company’s greedy policy of aggrandisement accompanied by broken pledges and promises resulted in contempt for the Company and loss of political prestige, besides causing suspicion in the minds of almost all the ruling princes in India, through such policies as of ‘Effective Control’, ‘Subsidiary Alliance’ and ‘Doctrine of Lapse’.
  • The right of succession was denied to Hindu princes.
  • The Mughals were humbled when, on Prince Faqiruddin’s death in 1856, whose succession had been recognised conditionally by Lord Dalhousie, Lord Canning announced that the next prince on succession would have to renounce the regal title and the ancestral Mughal palaces, in addition to the renunciations agreed upon by Prince Faqiruddin.
• Administrative Causes:
  • Rampant corruption in the Company’s administration, especially among the police, petty officials and lower law courts, was a major cause of discontent.
  • Also, the character of British rule imparted a foreign and alien look to it in the eyes of Indians: a kind of absentee sovereignty.
• Socio-Religious Causes:
  • Racial overtones and a superiority complex characterised the British administrative attitude towards the native Indian population.
  • The activities of Christian missionaries who followed the British flag in India were looked upon with suspicion by Indians.
  • The attempts at socio-religious reform such as abolition of sati, support to widow-marriage and women’s education were seen by a large section of the population as interference in the social and religious domains of Indian society by outsiders.
  • These fears were compounded by the government’s decision to tax mosque and temple lands and making laws such as the Religious Disabilities Act, 1856, which modified Hindu customs, for instance, declaring that a change of religion did not debar a son from inheriting the property of his ‘heathen’ father.
• Influence of Outside Events:
  • The revolt of 1857 coincided with certain outside events in which the British suffered serious losses—the First Afghan War (1838-42), Punjab Wars (1845-49), and the Crimean Wars (1854-56).
  • These had obvious psychological repercussions. The British were seen to be not so strong and it was felt that they could be defeated.
• Discontent Among Sepoys:
  • The conditions of service in the Company’s Army and cantonments increasingly came into conflict with the religious beliefs and prejudices of the sepoys.
  • Restrictions on wearing caste and sectarian marks and secret rumours of proselytising activities of the chaplains (often maintained on the Company’s expenses which meant at Indian expense) were interpreted by Indian sepoys, who were generally conservative by nature, as interference in their religious affairs.
  • To the religious Hindu of the time, crossing the seas meant loss of caste. In 1856, Lord Canning’s government passed the General Service Enlistment Act which decreed that all future recruits to the Bengal Army would have to give an undertaking to serve anywhere their services might be required by the government. This caused resentment.
  • The Indian sepoy was equally unhappy with his emoluments compared to his British counterpart.
    • A more immediate cause of the sepoys’ dissatisfaction was the order that they would not be given the foreign service allowance (bhatta) when serving in Sindh or in Punjab.
  • The annexation of Awadh, home of many of the sepoys, further inflamed their feelings.
  • The Indian sepoy was made to feel a subordinate at every step and was discriminated against racially and in matters of promotion and privileges.
  • The discontent of the sepoys was not limited to military matters; it reflected the general disenchantment with and the opposition to British rule. The sepoy, in fact, was a ‘peasant in uniform’ whose consciousness was not divorced from that of the rural population.
• Long tradition of resistance:
  • There had been a long history of revolts in the British Indian Army—in Bengal (1764), Vellore (1806), Barrackpore (1825) and during the Afghan Wars (1838-42) to mention just a few.
  • Similarly, civilian rebellions were also continuing feature during British rule: e.g. Paikas rebellion in Odissa and Santhal revolt in Bihar (1855-56).
• Immediate cause:
  • The reports about the mixing of bone dust in atta (flour) and the introduction of the Enfield rifle enhanced the sepoys’ growing disaffection with the government.
  • The greased wrapping paper of the cartridge of the new rifle had to be bitten off before loading and the grease was reportedly made of beef and pig fat.
  • The cow was sacred to the Hindus while the pig was taboo for the Muslims. The Army administration did nothing to allay these fears, and the sepoys felt their religion was in grave danger.
  • The greased cartridges did not create a new cause of discontent in the Army, but supplied the occasion for the simmering discontent to come out in the open.

The these causes led to outbreak of revolt first in Meerut on May 10, 1857 and then, gathering force rapidly, soon embraced a vast area from the Punjab in the north and the Narmada in the south to Bihar in the east and Rajputana in the west.
In Bihar, personalities like Kuwar Singh, Pir Ali, Amar Singh, Nilambar and Pitambar (brothers) played prominent role during the revolt.

However, this protracted struggle ultimately subsided by 1859. Account for its failure:

• All-India participation was absent:
  • Limited territorial spread was one factor; there was no all India veneer about the revolt.
  • The eastern, southern and western parts of India remained more or less unaffected. This was probably because the earlier uprisings in those regions had been brutally suppressed by the Company.
• All classes did not join:
  • Certain classes and groups did not join and, in fact, worked against the revolt.
  • Big zamindars  and planters acted as “break-waters to storm”.  e.g. Zamindars of Dumra, Deoria, Bakhra all helped British dealing with revolters. British also gave them powers for magistrate to effective check the rebellious activities.
    • Bakhra Babu was highly appreciated and reciprocated by the Britishers for such jobs.
  • Nilaha Sahibs (Indigo factory owners) helped British and provided clue to about the rebels.
  • The house of the Darbhanga Maharaj was chosen to be developed like a fort to provide shelters for the European indigo planters of the district.
  • Money-lenders and merchants suffered the wrath of the mutineers badly and anyway saw their class interests better protected under British patronage.
  • Educated Indians viewed this revolt as backward looking, supportive of the feudal order and as a reaction of traditional conservative forces to modernity; these people had high hopes that the British would usher in an era of modernisation.
  • Most Indian rulers refused to join, and often gave active help to the British. Rulers who did not participate included the Sindhia of Gwalior, the Holkar of Indore, the rulers of Patiala, Sindh and other Sikh chieftains and the Maharaja of Kashmir. Indeed, by one estimate, not more than one-fourth of the total area and not more than one-tenth of the total population was affected.
• Poor Arms and Equipment:
  • The Indian soldiers were poorly equipped materially, fighting generally with swords and spears and very few guns and muskets.
  • On the other hand, the European soldiers were equipped with the latest weapons of war like the Enfield rifle.
  • The electric telegraph kept the commander-in-chief informed about the movements and strategy of the rebels.
• Uncoordinated and Poorly Organised:
  • The revolt was poorly organised with no coordination or central leadership.
  • The principal rebel leaders—Nana Saheb, Tantia Tope, Kunwar Singh, Laxmibai—were no match to their British opponents in generalship.
    • Though Kunwar Singh tried to form an alliance by visiting to other revolting leaders, it couldn’t be realized into a concrete form.
  • On the other hand, the East India Company was fortunate in having the services of men of exceptional abilities in the Lawrence brothers, John Nicholson, James Outram, Henry Havelock, etc.
• No Unified Ideology:
  • The mutineers lacked a clear understanding of colonial rule; nor did they have a forward looking programme, a coherent ideology, a political perspective or a societal alternative.
  • The rebels represented diverse elements with differing grievances and concepts of current politics.
  • The lack of unity among Indians was perhaps unavoidable at this stage of Indian history. Modern nationalism was as yet unknown in India.

Thus, due to various limitations, the revolt was finally crushed by British. Though it failed in overthrowing British rule, it did have some important outcomes e.g. end of Company rule, Break to expansionist policy etc.  And in long run, the revolt of 1857 played an important role in bringing the Indian people together and imparting to them the consciousness of belonging to one country. later, V.D. Savarkar and J. L. Nehru came to view it as first war of Independence.