1857 War

Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1858, just after his show trial in Delhi and before his departure for exile in Rangoon. This is possibly the only photograph ever taken of a Mughal emperor.Courtesy British Library

This year was the 150th anniversary of the bloody events of 1857. The year marks the beginning of the end (for 90 years) of South Asia ruled by the sons of soil. The events that followed led the symbolic power change seat from the imperial palace in Delhi to Buckingham Palace in London by 1858. It was then even the Peacock Throne of the Indian emperors as well as the legendary dazzling diamond of the imperial crown, known as Koh-i-Noor (literally: the mount of light) was looted and physically taken to Britain by the mutineers.

In this year's commemorations in India and Pakistan, since most of the areas where conflagration started or the heaviest fighting took place, like Delhi, the imperial capital, Agra, Khansi, Ahmadabad and Meerut, lie in present day India, celebrations there were much more emotional.

Tens of thousands of Indian people marched from Meerut to Agra to trace the path of the imperial troops who came to succor the ailing emperor, exactly 150 years ago, and had declared his sovereignty over the whole of India.

At the Red Fort in Delhi, the prime minister of India Manmohan Singh addressed the celebration and paid rich tributes to the warriors of 1857 who laid down their lives for the defense of the empire. The prime minister reminded the South Asians that it was in the true spirit of inter-faith unity between Muslims and Hindus that all came together to defend the emperor who was a Muslim. In fact, all the seven major dynasties that ruled India since it started its journey towards a political unity had been Muslim ones.

In Pakistan, the National Commission for Historical and Cultural Research held a widely attended symposium in which the historians debated the causes and effects of the war and its real nature. President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan also in their messages paid rich tributes to the defenders of South Asia who tried to resist impending colonization of their land and tried to sustain the moribund empire from the Western powers' "scramble for Asia." Calls were made to make a monument to remember the countless heroes and heroines, five hundred thousands of whom were butchered mercilessly by British troops after the defeat of the emperor who was exiled to Rangoon, where he died and got buried five years later in 1862. It was also demanded that the remains of the emperor be brought back and re-buried with full military honours either in India or in Pakistan.

The British call the war of 1857 as the great Mutiny. Mutiny, it definitely was, but not a "great" one. It was a mutiny of British officers of the company in the service of the Indian emperor against him, and not the other way round. That is why I have chosen the word "unique" for this mutiny since it is the first major mutiny the facts of which have been so disfigured by the new British rulers that our own textbooks sixty years after independence still call it as a mutiny of the Indian emperor against his British servants/subjects. What a mutilation and dishonesty towards history as well as a linguistic paradox. Mutiny is a rebellion by servants against master. A master cannot be said to be rebelling against servants.

Let us understand the nature of the 1857 war first. In many parts of the Indian empire, it had been a franchise issue just like the governance itself in the last century of the imperial rule had been. Most provinces were fully or semi-independent and owed little or nominal allegiance to the emperor at Delhi. This all changed when the subjects of the emperor felt the existential threat to the empire due to the division and fragmentation. Bakht Khan, a military general from the independent state of Awdh, descended in and defended Delhi, while taking over the command of the imperial forces on the emperor's behalf. The Rani of Jhansi, Satay Ram, Maulvi Ahmadullah Khan, and many local political and military leaders rose to the occasion, professed their allegiance to the emperor and tried to expel the rapacious British servants of the East India Company from the India soil. It is a misfortunate that neither in India nor in Pakistan, any of the top military medals is named after the military heroes of the 1857 war.

Now, let us shed some light on theoretical part, on war's historiography, that is. 1857 was not a war of independence for the Indians since the British had not conquered India till that point in time. True, the Company was ruling three presidencies but that was area-wise less than one tenth of India, and in fact, even there it was ruling and collecting the taxes in the name of emperor to whom they paid an annual tribute.

Till as late as 1835, Persian had remained the imperial language for the court and the country and official one for the Company too. The Company's so-called governor of Bengal paid ritual obeisance to the emperor every year. The emperor's was the de jure government and Company was exercising de facto delegated authority mainly on revenue and law and order matters in a limited part of his domains.

Same was the case of around 564 other rulers, sultans, dukes and princes, who were ruling their own mini-kingdoms within the empire. Bahadur Shah Zafar, the 38th ruler of united India and the 17th and the last one from the Mughul dynasty, was on the throne.

At the beginning of the outbreak of hostilities, history tells us, the old and ailing poet-emperor was not hopeful of winning the war to expel the British intruders, but seeing the zeal of his subjects, he gave in and accepted to lead them as their symbolic head. Since it was the emperor who wanted to get rid of the British, it would be frivolous to call it as an independence struggle since emperor is not supposed to be getting "independence" from disloyal subjects. We can call his campaign as the one of retribution towards his British subjects who had shown seditionist tendencies, i.e. the officers of the British East India Trading Company that was operating under a license by the great ancestor of the incumbent, Emperor Shah Jehan in consideration of medical help that the British doctors had provided in a serious burn injury to a princess.

It may be recalled that Indian sub-continent boasts of one of the oldest civilisations of the known history. The Indus valley civilisation whose relics are found in Punjab province of what is now Pakistan, date back to 2500 BC when people lived in properly designed urban settlements and were fairly advanced in arts and learning. The Arab Muslims first conquered and annexed parts of India between 668 to 712 AD. The latter date marks the conquest of Deebal a town near the present day Karachi, now a bustling port metropolis of 12 million people, by the Arabs. Between 998 and 1030 AD the Afghans, who had by then turned Muslims under Sultan Mahmood of Gazna, invaded India seventeen times for plunder. By 1206, the Muslims had captured Delhi and at least the northern half of the sub-continent had become a political unity under Sultan Qutbuddin Aibak, the first Muslim ruler of Delhi and the founder of slaves' dynasty. The rule continued for around seven centuries under successive dynasties like the Tughlaqs, the Khiljis, the Syeds, the Lodhis, and the Suris. It was under the Mughals that the whole of India came under a single rule. By the early 19th century, anarchy and chaos best described Indian political landscape. A trading company, named East India Comapny became powerful and a time came that even the emperor was apprehensive of its power. Though the trouble started with Indian soldiers of the Company over the use of gun-lids allegedly made of cow fat, but once the emperor saw his opportunity to throw his weight behind and try to get rid of the British it became a national struggle. Now it was emperor and his loyalists fighting against the ones, whom the emperor wanted out of his realms.

Let's un-write the British-centric history of the 1857 war and let's unread their interpretation. Let us call it a mutiny on board HMS (sic) Indian empire, where the British servants mutinied, captured the palace, deposed the emperor, murdered the crown prince and four other princes, and than went on to slay countless of men and women on the streets in cold blood. The Company captured the Red Fort and turned for political guidance to Windsor Castle which decided to annex India to British domains and company's rule ended no sooner had it formally began. British rule had some positive effects, but, by and large, it was a 90 year-long spell of oppression and suppression.


Saad S. Khan

The writer is a Research Consultant with Juris-Consults and an Oxford-published scholar on politics of the Muslim world

The Daily Star