1857 – 2017: The mutiny which helped the British create Hindu-Muslim divide  

Constant racial insults inflicted by white officers, regular news of peasants losing their meagre land holdings to the East India Company all over UP and Bihar and swirling rumours that the bullets that one had to bite open, before loading the newly introduced Pattern 1853 Rifle-Musket, were lined with pig and cow lard, these were the three irritants combined together in the hot summer of 1857 and worked as the proverbial spark that started the prairie fire. The Bengal Army, posted at Meerut, and at the receiving end of all three rose in revolt against their British officers, on the 10th of May 1857, 160 years ago.

They marched off to Delhi, but only after killing their officers and freeing their colleagues, all 85 of them, who had been court-martialled, given long prison terms for insubordination, made to parade throughout the cantonment chained and shackled and then jailed.

The rebels reached Delhi on the 11th, crossed the river of boats and entered the fort. Once inside they appealed to the last Mughal king, Bahadur Shah Zafar to lead them in the war against the Company. The rebels had control of Delhi for four months and four days, before the army of the Company was able to break through the defences and take the city. What followed was a massacre, designed to terrorise an entire people.

More than a century and a half has passed and eight generations have grown into adulthood in the subcontinent since those eventful days of 1857. The temptation to detail those heady days and months is strong and the desire to list what we have achieved as a people since we first raised the banner of revolt against imperialism and in the last seven decades of our existence as a free nation, is even stronger. What is, however, being attempted is to foreground the true heritage, of this first wide spread revolt against colonial rule. This piece would seek to focus on the creation of the real inheritance of that struggle and of the systematic callousness and cynicism which is at work destroying it without a thought about the consequences of this foolhardy enterprise.

Let us go back a little and try to understand a few developments that were to lead to the events of 1857.

According to studies of changing patterns of land ownership in UP in the early decades of the 19th century, almost a third of the poor and small peasants had lost their land due to their inability to meet the increasing tax demands being imposed by the East India Company. The sons of this impoverished peasantry were a very large part of the recruits of the Light Bengal Infantry. They were driven into becoming soldiers because they had lost the only means of survival they ever had–land. They knew that the Company was responsible and yet it is the Company that gave them employment.

Obviously, they were not happy. The racist slurs, punishment for minor breaches and harsh working conditions only added to disaffection. The news or rumour of lard-laced bullets, turned out to be the spark that ignited the fuse.

The Bengal Army, consisting of infantry, cavalry and artillery, was the largest of all the three armies raised by the Company; the other two were the Madras and the Bombay Armies. It will be worthwhile to remember the religious composition of the Bengal Army because there is much that we can learn from the foot soldiers of this Army, since they were the prime movers of the Rebellion.

Research conducted in this area, among others, by historians, Prof. Irfan Habib and Akhilesh Mithal and by Julian Saul Marham David (The Bengal Army and the Outbreak of the Indian Mutiny, PhD. Thesis-2001, Department of History, University of Glasgow) have all agreed on one thing, more than 60 to 65 per cent of the Bengal Army of the East India company consisted of Brahmins and Kshatriyas, the remaining 35 to 40 per cent consisted of Muslims and other Hindu castes (identified in the Army records as Hindus of Inferior Castes).

It is this army of 65 per cent upper caste Hindus that initiated the uprising at Meerut, led the revolt and suffered the worst consequence of the failure of the uprising. It was the soldiers of this army stationed at Meerut who had asked Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal King, to lead them in the revolt. It is said that when Bahadur Shah Zafar told the rebel soldiers, that he has neither an Army nor the resources to pay them a salary, they told them, “give us your blessings and lead us”.

Not only was the 82-year-old Bahadur Shah Zafar acceptable to the Indians as their sovereign, but also the rebels, who were prepared to lay down their lives in the cause of ridding India of foreign rule, were willing to wage this battle in his name and under his command, without promise of weapons or salary. His being a Muslim created no problems for this overwhelmingly Hindu army. Bahadur Shah Zafar was the King of India and their King and they were ready to fight for him and if necessary willing to die for him. Those busy re-writing our history on both sides of the border refuse to accept that the Hindu-Muslim divide was not a fact of history eight generations ago.

It was once again this overwhelmingly Hindu Army, upper caste Hindu army at that, which had no problem fighting under the leadership of Bakht Khan, a Bijnor-born Yusufzai Rohilla Pashtun, when Bahadur Shah Zafar gave him the command in July 1857. Those who insist on projecting their jaundiced view of the history of the subcontinent over the last 1,000 years through their communal glasses may not like this but the fact remains that the common people of this country had not become a victim of communal biases till 1857 and till almost half a century later.

The discourse of bitterness, animosity and hate towards those practicing a faith different from one’s own, that is sought to be presented as the mainstream of historical experience over the last 10 centuries, was systematically created by the British and their lackeys after the brutal suppression of the rebellion.

We continue to talk about the “Divide and Rule Policy” of the colonial administration, but rarely do we think of the psychological cleavages created by these divisive ideas and the extent to which they have vitiated our understanding of our own past.

Immediately after the recapture of Delhi and the massacre of thousands, the British began the campaign that the Muslims were against them. Muslims were systematically driven out of the city and once they stepped out of the city limits they were not allowed to return for years.

The goings on in the city were documented by many and details of what the city and its citizens went through come to us through diverse sources including descriptions in the letters that Ghalib, who lived till 1869, wrote to friends and disciples. We also get detailed descriptive accounts based on interviews of survivors put together by Khwaja Hasan Nizami, the keeper of the shrine of Nizam-ud-Din Auliya and a well-known columnist of late 19th and early 20th century. An idea of the scale of depopulation of Delhi and of the Muslims can be had from the exhaustive Delhi between the Two Empires 1803-1931 by Professor Narayani Gupta.

Those growing into adulthood in the 1870s, 80s and 90s and joining the ranks of those wanting to see a free India realised the importance of building an all India movement involving all Indians. Memories of the ruthless crushing of the rebellion were still fresh.

Sohail Hashmi is a Delhi-based writer and film-maker

Tomorrow: How the aftermath of the 1857 rebellion came to define nation and Religion as synonymous