The revolt failed in overthrowing British Rule. was the rumour that the newly issued rie cartridges would be greased either with tallow, derived from beef and thereby oensive to Hindus, or lard, derived from pork and thereby oensive to Muslims. "useRatesEcommerce": false "The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857." [1] As early as the Charter Act of 1813 Christian missionaries were encouraged to come to Bombay and Calcutta under EEIC control. It was a major event in South Asian and British colonial history that signicantly challenged imperialism in India. Rich people like the merchants and moneylenders were, therefore, able to speculate in British land sales and drive out the most vulnerable peasant farmers. The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010);Andrew Ward. I had no conversation with the King on the subject; but others talked in his presence about it, wondering what could be the object. [10], Caste privileges and customs within the Bengal Army were not merely tolerated but encouraged in the early years of the company's rule. There is reason to believe that this was originated by some intriguers of the old Court of Lucknow. Ferocity led to grave excesses on both sides, distinguishing this war in horror from other wars of the 19th century. Another important source of discontent among the Indian rulers was that the British policies of conquest had created significant unrest. Or it might have been an aristocratic plot, set off too soon by the Meerut outbreak. Host of Midian: the chapati circulation and the Indian Revolt of 1857-58. Studies in History 16 (2000);Christopher Hibbert. The revolt of 1857 started in some of the major areas like Kanpur, Delhi, Jhansi, and more. A rumour spread that the cartridges of the new enfield rifles . Is the sending of such articles about the country a custom among the Hindoos or Mussulmans; and would the meaning be at once understood without any accompanying explanation? The Siege of Delhi. The British Governor-General of India from 1848 to 1856 was Lord Dalhousie who passed the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 which allowed widows to remarry, like Christian women. #Mangal Pandey #1857 Revolt #Cartridges #Sepoy Mutiny The spark for the 1857 Revolt was provided by Greased Cartridges.Why Greased Cartridges triggered the R. The Revolt of 1857 started as a Mutiny of the sepoys. The events of 1857 have been considered the first outbreak of an independence movement against British rule. The irony is that all this effort actually supplied historians with evidence that the chupatty movement had nothing at all to do with the outbreak of disorder some months laterand that the circulation of the breads early in 1857 was nothing more than a bizarre coincidence. It came as a greater shock than the loss of the American colonies, and prompted reprisals far more hysterical and vicious than those visited on rebellious subjects elsewhere in the Empire. The next phase was the central Indian campaign of Sir Hugh Rose. Mangal Pandey was an Indian soldier who played an important role in incidents prior to the uprising of 1857, known by different names like the 'Indian Rebellion of 1857,' the 'Sepoy Mutiny' and 'India's First War of Independence.'. To be loaded, this cartridge had to be torn open so that the powder it contained could be poured down the barrel of the muzzle-loading gun; because the soldiers hands were full, this was done with the teeth. He survived and was put on trial and hanged on April 8, 1857. Outraged by events such as the massacre of women and children at Cawnpore, some British officers believed that hanging mutineers was too humane. Famous For: Revolt of 1857. In contrast to their Indian predecessors, the British considered such refusals at times to be outright "mutinies" and therefore to be suppressed brutally. The general factors that turned a military mutiny into a popular revolt can be comprehensively described under the heading of political, economic, social, and cultural Westernization. To these points may be added the fact that the British garrison in Bengal had been reduced at this time to 23,000 men because of troop withdrawals for the Crimean and Persian wars. More disturbing to traditional sensibilities were the interventions, in the name of humanity, in the realm of Hindu custome.g., the prohibition of suttee, the campaign against infanticide, the law legalizing remarriage of Hindu widows. Hostname: page-component-7f44ffd566-7cttp The Sepoy Mutinywas a violent and very bloody uprising againstBritish rule in Indiain 1857. What are the oldest known civilizations of India? In 1885, however, the founding of the Indian National Congress marked the beginnings of effective, organized protest for national self-determination. The rapid spread of disorder in 1857when regiment after regiment had mutinied, and revolts against British rule had sprung up throughout most of northern and central Indiamade it almost impossible to believe that the rebellion could have been spontaneous (as most modern historians concede it was), and considerable effort was made to chronicle the movement and trace the spread of the anomalous chapatis. As the mutiny spread, the British began called mutineers "pandies." Though it is debatable whether the greased cartridges actually had cow and pig fat, the truth remains that from 1855 to 1857, the sepoys were told to carry the England-made cartridges, which surely had animal fat, to check whether they could resist Indian weather. Revolt Of 1857 India Causes Eects History Facts N Info 1 . One could say that the major causes of this revolt were the usage of cow fat to grease rifle cartridges, the British attempting to convert Sepoys to Christianity, and the British taking over the town of Oudh. Before loading these rifles the sepoys had to bite off the paper on the cartridges. Government was ostentatiously neutral, but Hindu society was inclined to regard the missionaries as eroding Hindu society without openly interfering. Advertising Notice [5], Dalrymple further points out that as late as 6 September, when calling the inhabitants of Delhi to rally against the upcoming Company assault, Zafar issued a proclamation stating that this was a religious war being prosecuted on behalf of 'the faith', and that all Muslim and Hindu residents of the imperial city, or of the countryside were encouraged to stay true to their faith and creeds. The . Did an Ancient Magnetic Field Reversal Cause Chaos for Life on Earth 42,000 Years Ago? Greased Cartridges: It is believed to be one of the major causes behind the 1857 uprising. The serving high-caste sepoys were fearful that this requirement would be eventually extended to them, violating observance of the kala pani prohibition on sea travel. Thereafter he headed the National Mineral Water Company in Muscat, Oman. It was initiated by sepoys in the Bengal Presidency against the British officers. Greased Cartridges: The Revolt of 1857 was triggered by the use of new Enfield rifles whose cartridges were believed to be greased with cow and pig fat, leading to the refusal of both Hindu and Muslim sepoys to use them. The restoration of peace was hindered by British cries for vengeance, often leading to indiscriminate reprisals. It was alluded to , and it was supposed to portend some coming disturbance, and was, moreover, understood as implying an invitation to the whole population of the country to unite for some secret objective afterwards to be disclosed. A private company which first entered India to trade in the 1600s, the East India Company had eventually transformed into a diplomatic and military operation. An uprising in several sepoy companies of the Bengal army was sparked by the issue of new gunpowder cartridges for the Enfield rifle in February 1857. This revolt had shaken the foundation of . Your Privacy Rights But the only evidence for either of these was the circulation from village to village of chapatis, or cakes of unleavened bread, a practice that, though it also occurred on other occasions, was known to have taken place at any time of unrest. This seems to have been a very important reason for the spread of the rebellion, keeping in view the speed at which they ignited in many villages in northern India where farmers rushed to get back their unfairly grabbed title deeds. Down-country operations centred on the relief of Lucknow. A keen cricketer and tennis player, he now lives in Delhi and serves as director of a few companies. Pandey, it should be noted, is considered a hero in India, and has been portrayed as a freedom fighter in films and even on an Indian postage stamp. The grotesque executions by cannon became even became widely known in America. It is not known who first projected the plan. Increasing numbers of Christian missionaries began arriving in India, and their presence gave credence to rumors of impending conversions. In spite of their apparently desperate situation, the British possessed long-term advantages: they could and did receive reinforcements from Britain; they had, thanks to the resolution of Sir John Lawrence, a firm base in the Punjab, and they had another base in Bengal, where the people were quiet; they had virtually no anxiety in the south and only a little in the west; and they had an immense belief in themselves and their civilization, which gave resolution to their initial desperation. Tall tales, panic and misapprehension spread readily in such a climate, and plenty of people felt a certain disquiet in the early months of 1857. In a few hours the whole country was in a stir, from Chowkeydars flying around with these cakes. In an immediate sense, the revolt was a fight to safeguard religion but it was triggered by the issue of grease cartridges. But in the 1830s and 1840s, tensions began to emerge. A chowkidaran Indian village watchman. In the altercation, Pandey was surrounded by British troops and shot himself in the chest. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Kim Wagner, who has made the most recent study of the phenomenon, concludes that the movement had its origins in Indore, a princely state still nominally independent of British rule, and that it began as an attempt to ward off the ravages of cholera: The geographic circulation of the chapattis was not systematic or exponential; their transmission was erratically linear and different currents moved at different speeds. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/sepoy-mutiny-of-1857-1774014. Thornhill came into his office one morning to find four dirty little cakes of the coarsest flour, about the size and thickness of a biscuit lying on his desk. Sympathetic rulers, such as Lord William Bentinck were replaced by arrogant aristocrats, such as Lord Dalhousie, who despised the troops and the populace. Mopping-up operations followed, lasting until the British capture of rebel leader Tantia Topi in April 1859. The greased cartridge - what was it all about? Mason, Philip (1974), pages 305-306 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. To save content items to your account, It was a source of inspiration for the national liberation movement, which later achieved what the revolt could not. [11] If the caste of high-caste sepoys was considered to be "polluted", they would have to expend considerable sums of money on ritual purification before being accepted back into society. In 1877, outside Delhi, essentially in the spot where bloody fighting had taken place 20 years earlier, an event called the Imperial Assemblage was held. The soldiers performed well on the field of battle in exchange for which they were rewarded with symbolic heraldic rewards such as battle honors in addition to the extra pay or "batta" (foreign pay) routinely disbursed for operations committed beyond the established borders of Company rule. The revolt was sparked by a number of reasons, including economic exploitation, cultural repression, and mistreatment of Indian soldiers. By the time the British came to examine the causes of the rebellion, therefore, the chupatty movement had assumed a fresh significance. https://www.thoughtco.com/sepoy-mutiny-of-1857-1774014 (accessed March 1, 2023). By the 1850s the East India Company controlled much of India. A rumour spread that the cartridges of the new enfield rifles were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. The greased cartridges thus posed precisely the same threat to observant sepoys as would flour adulterated with the blood of pigs and cows, and though the British recognized the problem early on, and never issued a single greased cartridge to any Indian troops, fear that the Company was plotting to defile them took hold among the men of many Indian regiments and resulted in the outbreak of rebellion in the cantonment of Meerut in April 1857. This book is essentially about the heroes - Tatya Tope, Nana Saheb, Rani Lakshmi Bai, Kunwar Singh of Jagdishpur - and not to forget, a few villains. And yet its just as possible to see the bloody results of the mutual incomprehension between the British and native communities in India as a potent reminder that mistrust and panic can have serious consequences. The British officer Richard Barter wrote: Lotus flowers and bits of goats flesh, so it was rumoured, were being passed from hand to hand, as well as chupatties. Post this, India was directly ruled by the British government through representatives known as Governor-General. There has been much controversy over its nature and causes. Map: Wikicommons. The military cause was both particular and general. British and Indian military drills of the time required soldiers to bite off the end of the Beeswax paper cartridge, pour the gunpowder contained within down the barrel, stuff the remaining paper cartridge into the barrel, ram the paper cartridge (which included the ball wrapped and tied in place) down the barrel, remove the ram-rod, return the ram-rod, bring the rifle to the ready, set the sights, add a percussion cap, present the rifle, and fire. The traditional story of the Sepoy Mutiny is that the introduction of a new cartridge for the Enfield rifle provoked much of the trouble. Yet discreet inquiries soon revealed that many hundreds of chapatis were passing through his district, and through other parts of India as welleverywhere from the Narmada river in the south to the border with Nepal several hundred miles to the north. From the interrogation of an official at the King of Delhis court: I did hear of the circumstance. He is on the expert panel on weapons for several museums of Rajasthan. However much of this sense of the invincibility of the British was lost in the First Anglo-Afghan War where poor political judgment and inept British leadership led to the massacre of Elphinstone's army (which included three Bengal regiments) while retreating from Kabul. At some point the chapattis passed beyond the limits of their meaningful transmission and simply continued through the country as a blank message. The uprising was officially declared over on July 8, 1859. The Revolt of 1857, also known as the First War of Indian Independence, was a significant uprising against British colonial rule in India. As mutineers were captured, they were often killed on the spot, and many were executed in dramatic fashion. There was therefore both resentment and unease among the old governing class, fanned in Delhi by the British decision to end the Mughal imperial title on Bahdur Shahs death. [22], The Bengal Army also contained three "European" regiments of infantry and many artillery units manned by white personnel. However, nearly every sepoy was either Muslima religion that forbids eating the fat or any other part of a pig, or Hinduwhere the same rule applies to cows. Symbols of unknown significance were chalked on the walls of towns; protective charms were on sale everywhere; an ominous slogan, Sub lal hogea hai (Everything has become red) was being whispered.. A rumor spread that the cartridges of the new Enfield rifles were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. This made them more accurate and gave them a longer range. There was rumor about an old prophecy that the company's rule would end after a hundred years. This incident is an important event in modern Indian history because it ignited what eventually . To load both the old musket and the new rifle, soldiers had to bite the cartridge open and pour the gunpowder it contained into the rifle's muzzle, then stuff the paper cartridge (overlaid with a thin mixture of beeswax and mutton tallow for waterproofing) into the musket as wadding, the ball being secured to the top of the cartridge and guided into place for ramming down the muzzle. The new Enfield rifles, which were now being issued, had grooved or rifled barrels. Mason, Philip (1974), pages 203-204 A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. The Revolt ended the rule of the English East India Company. On the fourth side of the . [7] Several years before the sepoys' mutiny, Lord William Bentinck had attacked several jagirs in western Bengal. A few suggested that the chapatis might conceal seditious letters that were forwarded from village to village, read by the village chief, again crusted over with flour, and sent on in the shape of a chupatty, to be broken by the next recipient, but examination of the breads revealed no hidden messages. This is what led to the revolt of 1857 in many localized areas. The immediate cause of military disaffection was the deployment of the new breech-loading Enfield rifle, the cartridge of which was purportedly greased with pork and beef fat. (2021, July 31). [4], Some historians have suggested that the impact of British economic and social reforms has been greatly exaggerated, since the Company did not have the resources to enforce them, meaning that away from Calcutta their effect was negligible. Any British plans to reform Indian society, which had been one of the underlying causes of the revolt, were essentially set aside, and religious conversion of the Indian population was no longer viewed as a practical goal. A Chowkeydar ran up to another village with two chupatties. Wild stories circulated freely in the panic-stricken atmosphere of 1857, and there were enough real massacres and murders to make almost anything seem possible. "The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857." The revolt of 1857 was one of the greatest & most significant developments in the history of the 19th century. Some time in February 1857, a curious occurrence took place. But those who did would not have been surprised by what happened next, for some very similar beliefs were spreading in the early months of 1857. The cartridges were wrapped in paper, which had been coated in grease which made the cartridges easier to load in rifle barrels. Historians have identified diverse political, economic, military, religious and social causes of the Revolt of 1857 (First War of Indian Independence 1857). Most worryingly of all, some very similar rumors had once been recorded far to the south, in the Madras Presidency in 1806, at the time of a serious outbreak of mutiny among Indian soldiers stationed at Vellore. Before loading these rifles the sepoys had to bite off the paper on the cartridges. In an elaborate ceremony, Lord Lytton, the serving viceroy of India, honored a number of Indian princes. He was Amazon.com's first-ever history editor and has bylines in New York, the Chicago Tribune, and other national outlets. His name has become synonymous with the revolt of 1857. Whether the cartridge was unballed or balled, it was necessary, in loading a muzzle-loader, to open the end of the cartridge. In India, it has been viewed quite differently. Christian organisations from Britain had additionally created 222 "unattached" mission stations across India in the decade preceding the rebellion. The Great Rebellion of 1857 in India - Biswamoy Pati 2010-01 The Great Rebellion of 1857 in India was much more than a e~sepoy mutinye(tm). And, historically, much the same thing had happened before in times of trouble. 24 October 2009. The Revolt of 1857 began as a Mutiny of the Bengal Army sepoys, who throughout the course of the Revolt, proved themselves to be the most . The first sepoy who rebelled by aiming his loaded weapon at a British officer was Mangal Pandey who was later executed.[25]. In one sense, this was not surprising; since India had a large and settled British population, there were more women and children around for the rebels to kill. Discontent among the Indian National Congress marked the beginnings of effective, organized protest for National.... 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