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India marks uprising anniversary

Delhi, 1857: a bloody warning

By William Dalrymple

SOON after dawn on May 11, 1857, 150 years ago this week, the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was saying his morning prayers in his oratory overlooking the river Jumna when he saw a cloud of dust rising on the far side of the river. Minutes later, he was able to see its cause: 300 East India Company cavalrymen charging wildly towards his palace.

The troops had ridden overnight from Meerut, where they had turned their guns on their British officers, and had come to Delhi to ask the emperor to give his blessing to their mutiny. As a letter sent out by the rebels' leaders subsequently put it: "The English are people who overthrow all religions ... As the English are the common enemy of both [Hindus and Muslims, we] should unite in their slaughter ... By this alone will the lives and faiths of both be saved."

The sepoys entered Delhi, massacred every Christian man, woman and child they could find and declared the 82-year-old emperor to be their leader. Before long the insurgency had snowballed into the largest and bloodiest anticolonial revolt against any European empire in the 19th century.

Of the 139,000 sepoys of the Bengal army, all but 7,796 turned against the British. In many places the sepoys were supported by a widespread civilian rebellion.

There is much about British imperial adventures in the east at this time, and the massive insurgency it provoked, which is uneasily familiar to us today. The British had been trading in India since the early 17th century. But the commercial relationship changed towards the end of the 18th, as a new group of conservatives came to power in London, determined to make Britain the sole global power.

Lord Wellesley, the brother of the Duke of Wellington and governor general in India from 1798 to 1805, called his new approach the Forward Policy. But it was in effect a project for a new British century.

Wellesley made it clear he would not tolerate any European rivals, especially the French, and planned to remove any hostile Muslim regimes that might presume to resist the west's growing might.

The Forward Policy soon developed an evangelical flavour. The new conservatives wished to impose not only British laws but also western values on India. The country would be not only ruled but redeemed. Local laws which offended Christian sensibilities were abrogated - the burning of widows, for instance, was banned. One of the East India Company directors, Charles Grant, spoke for many when he wrote of how he believed providence had brought the British to India for a higher purpose: "Is it not necessary to conclude that our Asiatic territories were given to us, not merely that we draw a profit from them, but that we might diffuse among their inhabitants, long sunk in darkness, the light of Truth?"

The British progressed from removing threatening Muslim rulers to annexing even the most pliant Islamic states. In February 1856 they marched into Avadh, also known by the British as Oudh.

To support the annexation, a "dodgy dossier" was produced before parliament, so full of distortions and exaggerations that one British official who had been involved in the operation described the parliamentary blue book (or paper) on Oudh as "a fiction of official penmanship, [an] Oriental romance" that was refuted "by one simple and obstinate fact", that the conquered people of Avadh clearly "preferred the slandered regime" of the Nawab "to the grasping but rose-coloured government of the company".

The reaction to this came with the great mutiny, or as it is called in India, the first war of independence. Though it reflected many deeply held political and economic grievances, particularly the feeling that the heathen foreigners were interfering with a part of the world to which they were alien, the uprising was consistently articulated as a defensive action against the inroads missionaries and their ideas were making in India, combined with a generalised fight for freedom from western occupation.

Although the great majority of the sepoys were Hindus, there are many echoes of the Islamic insurgencies the US fights today in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Delhi a flag of jihad was raised in the principal mosque, and many of the resistance fighters described themselves as mujahideen or jihadis. There was even a regiment of "suicide ghazis" who vowed to fight until they met death.

Events reached a climax on September 14 1857, when British forces attacked the besieged city. They proceeded to massacre not only the rebel sepoys and jihadis, but also the ordinary citizens of the Mughal capital. In one neighbourhood alone, Kucha Chelan, 1,400 unarmed citizens were cut down. Delhi, a sophisticated city of half a million souls, was left an empty ruin.

The emperor was put on trial and charged, quite inaccurately, with being behind a Muslim conspiracy to subvert the empire stretching from Mecca and Iran to Delhi's Red Fort. Contrary to evidence that the uprising broke out first among the overwhelmingly Hindu sepoys, the prosecutor argued that "to Musalman intrigues and Mahommedan conspiracy we may mainly attribute the dreadful calamities of 1857". Like some of the ideas propelling recent adventures in the east, this was a ridiculous and bigoted oversimplification of a more complex reality.

For, as today, western politicians found it easier to blame "Muslim fanaticism" for the bloodshed they had unleashed than to examine the effects of their own foreign policies. Western politicians were apt to cast their opponents in the role of "incarnate fiends", conflating armed resistance to invasion and occupation with "pure evil".

Yet the lessons of 1857 are very clear. No one likes people of a different faith conquering them, or force-feeding them improving ideas at the point of a bayonet. The British in 1857 discovered what the US and Israel are learning now, that nothing so easily radicalises a people against them, or so undermines the moderate aspect of Islam, as aggressive western intrusion in the east.

The histories of Islamic fundamentalism and western imperialism have, after all, long been closely and dangerously intertwined.

In a curious but very concrete way, the fundamentalists of all three Abrahamic faiths have always needed each other to reinforce each other's prejudices and hatreds. The venom of one provides the lifeblood of the others. –Dawn/Guardian Service

The writer’s “The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857”, has just been published in paperback by Bloomsbury

http://www.dawn.com/2007/05/11/ed.htm#5
 
Friday, May 11, 2007

150th anniversary: War of Independence — a turning point

By Penny Macrae

British Raj really lasted just a blink in history - 89 years until India’s independence in 1947. But there’s no doubt it was the most important British colonial experience to capture the British imagination

THE 17th-century Red Fort in Old Delhi with its pockmarked stonework and peeling paint betrays only a glimpse of its former splendour as the seat of the sprawling Mughal Empire.

That world with its blend of Hindu and Muslim influences and poetry and art was finally brought crashing down with India’s bloody 1857 “War of Independence”, whose 150th anniversary the country celebrates on Friday. “Everything changed after 1857,” said British author and historian William Dalrymple whose latest book, “The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty,” traces the history of the bloody uprising and its brutal repression by the British.

“The British East India’s Company’s rule of the subcontinent ended, the Mughal emperor was dumped and (British Prime Minister) Benjamin Disraeli went to Queen Victoria and asked her if she wanted to be empress of India,” he said. “It marked the start of the British Raj,” Dalrymple told AFP in an interview.

The revolt, in which Indian soldiers rose up against the East India Company, the commercial venture of merchants that ruled India, was spurred by reports that the British were introducing bullets greased with cow and pig fat - unacceptable for religious reasons to Hindus and Muslims respectively.

Hundreds of mutinous foot soldiers, or sepoys, of the East India Company rode into the great Mughal capital of Delhi, massacring British men, women and children indiscriminately. They declared Bahadur Shah Zafar, the frail 82-year-old Mughal emperor, the leader of their insurrection against the world’s mightiest empire.

The revolt was “expressed unequivocally” as a war of religion as the rebels - Muslims and Hindus alike - believed the British were threatening their faith, said Dalrymple, who has written a string of best-sellers about pre-independence India and who makes his home in New Delhi.

The government is planning year-long celebrations to mark the revolt, long known as the Indian Mutiny. But many Indian historians now say the term belittles what they see as the country’s first “war of independence.” The emperor, who preferred penning poetry to waging war, knew the uprising of chaotic and officer-less soldiers was doomed and was a reluctant leader.

Delhi was surrounded by the British within a month. They began a pitiless siege, bombarding the capital with artillery, during the four hottest months of the searing Indian summer. The revolt ended on September 14, 1857, when the British, backed by Sikh and Pathan fighters, captured the city and crushed the uprising. They massacred great swathes of the population and left the jewel of the Mughal empire in ruins.

“The uprising was a period of enormous bloodshed, the rebels and British behaved in an incredibly bloodthirsty way,” Dalrymple said. The failed revolt had two immediate consequences. Though the royal family surrendered, all 10 of the emperor’s surviving sons were executed and Zafar, a name meaning paradoxically “victory,” was humbled from “divine highness” to state prisoner.

Zafar was exiled to Rangoon, now called Yangon, travelling under guard in a bullock cart, and died destitute in captivity five years later, the last of the Mughal emperors. He wrote just before his death, “Delhi was once a paradise, Where love held sway and reigned; But its charm lies ravished now, And only ruins remain.”

The revolt also led to the establishment of the British Raj as the East India Company was dissolved and India placed under direct British rule. “The East India Company controlled India from 1600 to 1858 while the British Raj really lasted just a blink in history - 89 years until India’s independence in 1947,” said Dalrymple. “But there’s no doubt it was the most important British colonial experience” to capture the British imagination, he said. “And now you have the implosion of empire - Miss Great Britain is a Desai (Preeti Desai) and so is the Booker Prize winner (Kiran Desai).” afp

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\05\11\story_11-5-2007_pg4_22
 
May 11, 2007

150 years after the 1857 War of Independence: ‘History teaches us how to tackle future challenges’ (Pakistan)

Federal Education Minister Lt Gen (r) Javed Ashraf Qazi addresses the two-day national conference on the 1857 War of Independence. app

ISLAMABAD: Speakers at a seminar on Thursday stressed the need for learning from the past mistakes in history to prepare effectively for future challenges.

The two-day national seminar on ‘1857 - 150 years of the War of Independence’ was organised by the National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, Quaid-i-Azam University and the National Centenary Committee of the Muslim League.

Federal Education Minister Lt Gen (r) Javed Ashraf Qazi said during the seminar that the events of the War of Independence embodied several lessons: an absence of leadership, weak unity, dependency and the lack of receptiveness to modern requirements - for the nation to prepare itself for present day challenges.

He said some conservative elements wanted to deprive the youth from real history but under the newly revised curriculum students would be taught history dating from the time of the Indus Civilisation.

He also underlined the need for making concerted efforts to revive Deeni Maddaris lost role as learning centres by making these institutions more receptive to modern requirements.

The minister said these religious schools could not presently produce any renowned scientist as they had in the past as they were not doing enough to equip their students with scientific knowledge.

He said, “We are living in an era of Science and Technology and we have to make progress in this field for the country’s socio-economic development.”

Referring to changing requirements and demands, the minister remarked, “Intentions can change overnight but capabilities cannot, so we have to make ourselves self-sufficient through acquiring a scientific education.”

Sindh Education Minister Hameeda Khoro said British historians had distorted the history of the War of Independence as ‘Mutiny’ and asked young historians to project history in its true perspective.

She said Sindhi sardars had also given their lives in the War of Independence, though they had been given little credit in various historic literatures.

Quaid-i-Azam University Vice Chancellor Prof Dr M Qasim Jan said such seminars helped students learn about important events.

Dr Ghazanfar Mehdi highlighted the programmes of the Muslim League’s National Centenary Committee. app

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\05\11\story_11-5-2007_pg11_8
 
Its not a freedom fight that happened in 1857. But one brahmin who went berserk when his beliefs were hurt by his very own boss. He was till then merrily killing indians and serving the british.

He fought for his beliefs, not for his country.
Exactly. This time around its being excessively celebrated by India. BBCW was reporting that they're projecting a sense of Hindu-Muslim unity. I guess its needed for Indian consumption. A PR campaign is what its all about.

This started the freedom movement, sure. But that's because this officiated the British Raj in India too. You cannot fight for freedom without first being oppressed.
 
A muslim sentiment was also hurt when they had to apply pig-oil. So it is hindu-muslim unity thingie, glued by their own personal interest, not a national commitment. 1857 revolt was held to restore muslim power, so yes it shows unity
 
A muslim sentiment was also hurt when they had to apply pig-oil. So it is hindu-muslim unity thingie, glued by their own personal interest, not a national commitment. 1857 revolt was held to restore muslim power, so yes it shows unity

true. I guess bahadur shah was the ruler in delhi then. They had made contact with him to take over as ruler if the mutiny succeeds.
 
1857 revolt was held to restore muslim power

There wasn't any centralised Muslim power in India during the revolt.

The company, Sikhs and Marathas had washed away the once huge Moghul Empire. The last Moghul 'Emperor' was a joke himself with dominions no bigger than the Delhi fort. He was a nice poet, I'd respect him for that, but having great grand dads such as Akbar and Babur ..this guy was spineless. A product of the times and his circumstances.

They made him Emperor again in a symbolic gesture. He was never going to be a real Emperor.
 
1857 revolt was held to restore muslim power
If you think there was any central Muslim power, you need to re-check history and stop reading the history you read in geocities and script kiddie websites.

There was always a coalition government! There was rivalry among muslims emperors as well.
 
If you think there was any central Muslim power, you need to re-check history and stop reading the history you read in geocities and script kiddie websites.

There was always a coalition government! There was rivalry among muslims emperors as well.

would you be telling me that my friend. do you think i read from geocities or kiddie websites

1857 revolt was held to restore the biggest empire of india, therefore rightly or wrongfully called the first fight of independence. It was for the first time, they had the feeling, that land belonged to the people of the land, therefore the IDEA of independence was born there.
 
1857 revolt was held to restore the biggest empire of india

And Which is that empire ?

that land belonged to the people of the land,

IIRC the Madras and Sikh regiments continued to loyal to the Company. A lot of people fighting a common enemy for their own selfish reasons including religion, territory, heirship etc.
 
And Which is that empire ?

that would be the Mughal Empire

IIRC the Madras and Sikh regiments continued to loyal to the Company. A lot of people fighting a common enemy for their own selfish reasons including religion, territory, heirship etc

So did lot of other kings, and south asians, how else did you think an faraway island controlled such a large amount of people.
 
that would be the Mughal Empire

It was already decimated. The 'Emperor' was a joker. His dominions were not bigger than that of his fort.

And what of the Maratta's ? And the Sikhs ? And the North East ?

They were the enemies of the Mughals.

Even at the height of its glory the Mughal Empire did not consist of all that is India today. The fight put up by the Sikhs, Marattas and the Assamese are blissfully ignored.
 
It was already decimated. The 'Emperor' was a joker. His dominions were not bigger than that of his fort.

you are not getting what i am trying to convey, it was an effort to restore the largest indian empire, idea behind the whole concept was " land of the brown man belongs to the brown man". Therefore taken as the first battle for independence though India did not exist at that point of time.

And what of the Maratta's ? And the Sikhs ? And the North East ?

They were the enemies of the Mughals.

Even at the height of its glory the Mughal Empire did not consist of all that is India today. The fight put up by the Sikhs, Marattas and the Assamese are blissfully ignored

Agreed, Mughal empire has never even set foot in the southern side, where we had the southern kingdoms.

I was trying to reason why Indian historians take 1857 revolt as the first war of independence.
 
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