Soldiers were the heroes of 1857

Few historians have documented the authentic story of these soldiers who aimed at nothing less than the dissolution of the East India Company

Soldiers fall from the pages of history like dry twigs mingling in the dust of oblivion. But in the annals of Indian history their contribution remains evergreen. Sepoy Mangal Pandey can still be visualised sounding the clarion call of India’s first war of Independence. Although the unrest among Indian soldiers had commenced in the beginning of the 19th century, it took a few more decades to have an impact.

The East India Company that had managed trading concessions from the Mughal emperor in 1612 had initially sought permission to maintain an army of native soldiers for self-protection. In less than 150 years, this army had defeated the nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Dualah, in the battle of Plassey of June 23, 1757. The nawab was not defeated because of lack of personal valour or the shortcomings of his soldiers, but because of the treachery of the army commander who was bought over by the British.

By the year 1857, the British East India Company had on their rolls 2,57,000 troops, the great majority of them Indian. This was more than the number on the rolls of the regular army of Great Britain. In the final count, the rising of 1857 could be suppressed only by 1859, and only for two reasons: one, not every Indian actively sympathised with the soldiers rebelling for a free India; two, it was possible for the British to still find many Indians who were willing to fight on their side.

The factor that triggered the rebellion in the Bengal Army at Meerut Cantonment a hundred years after the battle of Plassey, was not solely the use of rifle cartridges lubricated with animal fat, as many historians would have us believe, but the nascent desire to throw off the foreign yoke and resurrect the dying Mughal Empire under Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. But the Last Mughal could not understand the importance of this uprising by humble soldiers. Not only did Bahadur Shah Zafar fail to channelise the inferno, there were many other powerful Indian players who slighted these men in uniform as mere mercenaries with their brains in their boots.

I have often maintained that the history of a nation is shaped by its soldier; but when the soldier is forgotten, history is forgotten and when history is forgotten, only nemesis follows. In fact the story of India’s unusually long domination by foreigners is the story of the native neglect of the art of soldiering.

Coming back to the 1857 uprising, discontent started brewing in January that year. By May, a large-scale rebellion had broken out. The first outbreak occurred in Meerut and in Barrackpur in January-May 1857, and spread to Lucknow, Allahabad, Ghaziabad, Delhi, Allahabad, Kanpur, Jhansi, Gwalior, Bareilly, Madras, Bombay, and several places in Punjab.

The soldiers of 1857 were neither organised nor did they possess any noteworthy powers of military leadership. Many, though, were fired by the zeal of patriots like Nana Sahib, Tantia Tope, Bakht Khan, Azimullah Khan, Rani Lakshmi Bai, Begum Hazrat Mahal, Kunwar Singh, Maulvi Ahmadullah, Bahadur Khan, Rao Tula Ram and Raja Nahar Singh of Punjab, all of whom led local uprisings.

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As far as the common soldiers were concerned, they lacked a clear and unified vision and there was no communication between them. When the soldiers needed legitimacy, they marched from Meerut to Delhi to seek the blessings of an ailing Bahadur Shah who offered his son to lead them. Merchants, landlords and the ordinary peasant joined the rebel soldiers in great numbers and their numbers multiplied. British chroniclers and many of their Indian counterparts, too, tended to describe the 1857 uprising as a minor revolt by the East India Company’s Bengal Army confined only to a narrow east-west belt. It was certainly not minor. As a contemporary British chronicler, Thomas Lowe, in Central India, wrote in 1860: “To live in India, now, was like standing on the verge of a volcanic crater, the sides of which were fast crumbling away from our feet, while the boiling lava was ready to erupt and consume us.” Clearly, the years 1857-1859 witnessed passionate fighting by Indian soldiers, although they were not knit by a common purpose or leadership.

Despite the importance of 1857, few historians have documented the authentic story of these soldiers who aimed at nothing less than the dissolution of the East India Company. In response, the British government had to assume direct control of the governance of India, and introduced long-needed reforms.

As for the vanquished Indian soldiers of this country’s first war of independence, they deserve to be acknowledged as India’s true heroes.

The writer is director, Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi