The Indian Uprising of 1857-8: Prisons, Prisoners and Rebellion

by Clare Anderson

Overview

This fascinating book, based on extensive archival research in Britain and India, examines why mutineer-rebels chose to attack prisons and release prisoners, discusses the impact of the destruction of the jails on British penal policy in mainland India, considers the relationship between India and its penal settlements in Southeast Asia, re-examines Britain’s decision to settle the Andaman Islands as a penal colony in 1858 and re-evaluates the experiences of mutineer-rebel convicts there. This book makes an important contribution to histories of the mutiny-rebellion, British colonial South Asia, British expansion in the Indian Ocean and incarceration and transportation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781843312956
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	09/01/2007
Series:	Anthem South Asian Studies
Edition description:	First Edition, 1
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Clare Anderson is Senior Lecturer in the School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester.

Read an Excerpt

The Indian Uprising of 1857â"8

Prisons, Prisoners and Rebellion

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By Clare Anderson

Wimbledon Publishing Company

Copyright © 2007 Clare Anderson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84331-295-6

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

O come and look!
In the bazaar of Meerut.
The Feringi is waylaid and beaten!
The whiteman is waylaid and beaten!
In the open bazaar of Meerut.
Look! O Look!

Few events in the history of the British Empire have attracted as much interest or controversy as the Indian mutiny-rebellion of 1857–8. Since its immediate aftermath historical readings of the tumultuous events that swept across north India during these years have focussed largely on the causes of the revolt, and explanations for it are many and various. This reflects the multi-facetted character of the military and popular uprisings that fuelled and sustained events. Widespread mutiny in the Bengal army was accompanied rapidly by massive civil unrest, and few communities in rebellious areas in the North-West Provinces, Awadh, and western Bihar were unaffected. Though British and Indian historians have claimed variously that the unrest was 'mutiny', 'rebellion', or 'war of independence', it is impossible to capture the essence or meaning of the revolt in such simplistic, singular ways.

Mutiny first erupted in the cantonment of Meerut on 9 May 1857, provoked by the fettering and imprisonment of a group of sowars (cavalrymen) and sepoys (from the Persian sipahi, meaning native infantry) who had refused to use a new issue of cartridges allegedly greased with animal fat. Military mutiny fanned civil unrest and that night sepoys and rebels broke open the town's two prisons. This triggered a pattern of revolt that was repeated over and again during the military and civil disturbances that gripped north India during 1857–8. In a stark challenge to the notion that the nineteenth century witnessed an uncontested imperial expansion of the carceral continuum, altogether mutineers and rebels attacked 41 prisons, mainly in the North-West Provinces and western Bihar, and released just over 23,000 prisoners, many of whom subsequently slipped out of the purview of the colonial state. This left the British with an unprecedented penal crisis, for notwithstanding the many thousands of escaped prisoners hiding out in the districts, making for home or joining the rebel cause, rebels damaged and destroyed a large number of jails. Gradually, Company troops quelled the revolt, but in many towns and cities there were no secure buildings to hold either recaptured prisoners or mutineers and rebels under arrest. British fears about the further spread of rebellion in territories associated with India led to the temporary abandonment of the transportation of convicts to existing penal settlements in the Straits Settlements (Pinang, Melaka, Singapore) and Burma (Arakan, Tenasserim Provinces). In this context, extant yet still vague proposals to settle the as yet unsuccessfully colonized Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal rapidly took shape, and in 1858 the British established a penal colony for the reception of mutineer-rebel convicts at the new site of Port Blair.

This book's point of departure is mutiny-rebellion jail-breaking and its consequences. It is not an exhaustive rewriting of the events of 1857–8; rather its aim is to use the revolt and its aftermath to probe the nature and meaning of incarceration in colonial north India. The pages that follow will examine the reflexive processes that characterized the relationship between colonial cultures of confinement and north Indian communities during the period to the 1860s. The book's central premise is that the mutiny-rebellion was a decisive moment in the history of Indian imprisonment, for it consolidated the colonial jail as a crucial site of provocation and coalescence concerning British interventions into cultural affairs. As we will see, mutineer-rebels targeted jails during the revolt not only for practical purposes such as the acquisition of labour and supplies, but also because they saw them as one of the principal instruments of colonial rule and the multiple cultural and religious transgressions that implied. In turn, in seeking solutions to the crushing penal crisis facing north India post-1858, though in many ways the mutiny-rebellion assured continuity in long-term penal trends it also secured innovative changes in the agenda of overseas transportation. The revolt of 1857–8 thus marked an important moment in the colonial history of incarceration both as a mode of control and as a social institution.

The Indian Uprising

During 1857–8 over one hundred thousand troops - over two-thirds of the entire Bengal army – mutinied. Almost all the cavalry and artillery and 70 infantry regiments rose against their commanders. The enlisted men were mainly small landholders. The majority of the infantry (who made up the bulk of the army) were Brahmins (of the priestly caste) or other high-caste Hindus, and most of the cavalry (numbering about 19,000) were Muslims or Pathans. Forty thousand came from the newly annexed Kingdom of Awadh. Widespread social unrest both accompanied mutiny and spread across Awadh and the North-West Provinces to western Bihar, constituting the largest and most threatening rebellion in the history of the nineteenth-century British Empire. We know little about the impact of the revolt in other areas. Bombay in the west and Madras in the south were seemingly unaffected, though this seems rather anomalous for sepoy disaffection itself can be traced back to southern India.

In what historians view commonly as a precedent for the more general uprising of 1857–8, in 1806 several regiments mutinied at Vellore after soldiers were ordered to appear bare cheeked and wear new headgear with a leather cockade (rosette). Quranic mores meant that Muslims did not shave or in some cases even trim their beards, while Hindu religious tradition proscribed the wearing of leather. Further factors in the run-up to 1857–8 were army disquiet over the professional threat posed by the opening up of service to recruits from non-traditional regions or castes, ineffective army leadership, limited prospects for promotion, grumblings over discriminatory pay (British soldiers received better wages), and the General Service Enlistment Act (1856) which made service outside the Bengal Presidency (including in Awadh) compulsory. Not only did the act remove the financial benefits of foreign service, it threatened potentially customs relating to caste. Christian missionaries, and even military commanders like the evangelical General Hugh Wheeler who was commanding the troops at Kanpur at the outbreak of mutiny, were by this time preaching openly to sepoy regiments, and fears about loss of caste if not forced conversion to Christianity were widespread.

By the beginning of 1857 rumours about a new rifle cartridge issue were circulating among regiments. Allegedly, the cartridges were encased in gelatine-stiffened paper and greased with pig or cow fat. Because the ends needed to be bitten off before use they transgressed the cultural mores of Muslims, for whom pigs were unclean, and of Hindus, to whom cows were sacred. The first sign of discontent itself was in February, when the regiment at Berhampur refused to use new cartridges and so its officers disarmed and dismissed it. There was a further mutiny at the Barrackpur cantonment in March. A few weeks later, the third Bengal cavalry in Meerut also refused to accept newly issued cartridges. Officers arrested, court-martialled, and sentenced eighty-five sowars to ten years' imprisonment. Their fellow cavalrymen broke out in open defiance, shooting dead the lieutenant of the eleventh Bengal native infantry, John Finnis, and any other Europeans they could lay their hands on, looting and setting fire to cantonment bungalows, breaking open the city's two jails (and so releasing their fellow sowars), and in what marked the start of widespread military, social, and economic revolt made for Delhi where they framed a constitution and proclaimed the somewhat elderly and frail Bahadur Shah II Emperor of Hindustan. Some accounts claim that he was an unwilling leader, but whether or not this was the case his involvement gave the revolt a sort of legitimate sanction and over the course of the weeks that followed troops across the region followed the Meerut sowars, rising in protest and defiance. Their violent mood and interventions in the precipitation of disorder more generally shocked the British, who had not anticipated the extent and significance of widespread army discontent or the speed with which it instantaneously and dramatically spilled over into massive civil disturbance. The British were driven out of large areas of the North-West Provinces and Awadh. However, despite the anticipation of European communities elsewhere in northern India, there was no general rising in the Panjab or Bengal. The Company was able to use loyal soldiers reinforced by British troops diverted to India to begin the military campaign to defeat the rebels. Tactically, the rebels had failed to spread outwards and so the British were able to attack each of their north Indian city strongholds in turn. By January 1859, British forces had quashed the mutiny-rebellion, though of course sporadic local unrest continued unabated over the months and years that followed.

Certainly, the most famous single explanation for the cause of the mutiny-rebellion is the disaffection of sepoys around the rumoured issue of greased cartridges, in the broader context of increasing unease around racially or culturally discriminating pay and working conditions. And yet the close relationship between the mutiny and social revolt suggests that the rebellion meant something more to Indian communities. Some historians have contextualized the sepoys' growing sense of disaffection within general public fears of forced conversion to Christianity. By the middle of the nineteenth century, British and American missionaries were a familiar presence in Indian towns, cities, and villages. Some Company officials too were evangelical in their open proselytization, leading to the supposition among Indians that the government supported missionaries. Military commander General Wheeler, for instance, preached openly to the sepoys under his command in Kanpur. 'I have told them plainly that they are all lost and ruined sinners both by nature and by practice,' he wrote in April 1857. As to the question whether I have endeavoured to convert sepoys and others to Christianity, I would humbly reply that this has been my object. 'Educated communities viewed such attitudes as 'dangerously intrusive'. It is little wonder that many Indians regarded missionaries as the religious arm of the Company.

In this reading, the mutiny-rebellion was a local response to the general assault on 'native tradition' that invariably, some would say inevitably, accompanied East India Company expansion across South Asia, beginning with the utilitarian philosophy that characterized William Bentinck's 'Age of Reform' (1828–35). Like missionary activity generally, historians cite often the promotion of western education, the extension of the right of inheritance to religious converts (1850), and the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act (1856) as evidence of inappropriate and unpopular cultural interference in this respect. Though it did not mention Christian conversion directly, the first intervention in practice benefited Christian converts alone, as previously they had been unable to inherit property. The measure sparked protests from caste Hindus because Christians were unable to perform the religious duties associated with the appeasement of their ancestral spirits. The second act extended legislative interference on the social norms of widowhood. Large numbers of young girls were promised in marriage, and the not at all uncommon circumstance of their intended husband's untimely demise left many, often still pre-pubescent, as outcastes. The act's intention was to facilitate their remarriage and therefore mitigate the effect of the supposedly degrading practices to which widows were subject: the shaving of the head, living outside the family or even community compound, and taking water from separate wells. The act was unpopular among Hindus, not simply on religious grounds but undoubtedly also because it was bound up with the desire on the part of the colonial state to strengthen its hold over land, which the claims of remarried widows threatened potentially to disrupt through subdivision.

A number of contemporary Indian commentators explained the mutiny-rebellion in part through reference to the religious threat posed by Company administration. Rumours about the Company's adulteration of flour in the bazaars accompanied fears about the alleged introduction of greased cartridges, triggering and directing rebellion. As Ranajit Guha shows, such rumours were an important element of rebellion in a pre-industrial, pre-literate society. Indian perspectives were echoed in Britain where, although the causes of the mutiny-rebellion were debated fiercely, many contemporaries gave much import to religious interference in explaining the motive for revolt. To be sure, rebel cries of 'deen' and 'deen kajai' (religion, victory to religion) as also 'dharam' (duty) sounded in the countryside, towns, and cities throughout these turbulent months. Revolutionary Messianism was a further feature of unrest, with rumours about an imminent end to British rule circulating regularly during the first half of the nineteenth century. Marking one hundred years since British victory at the Battle of Plassey, 1857 assumed symbolism as the year in which Indians would drive Europeans, sometimes called firingi (Christian westerners) and sometimes Nazarenes (followers of Jesus of Nazareth), from India. Tapti Roy has argued persuasively that rebels perceived the revolt as 'an imperative course of action' for upholding religion. And religion, of course, was not a fixed and unchanging set of beliefs, but a vehicle through which new political concerns could be expressed and status claims made. In an important intervention on the political theory of the revolt, Rajat Kanta Ray shows how codes of personal conduct were linked to matters of public duty. Religion and realm became closely tied by communities uniting against a common enemy. 'In the people's own consciousness,' he wrote, 'these were wars of religion.' Or, as Rudrangshu Mukherjee puts it in an invocation of the social basis of religious protest noted by Karl Marx, religion was 'the sigh of the oppressed.'

British contemporaries could not understand the suddenness and extent of the revolt and so concluded that it must have been pre-planned. This led to a further explanation: that the revolt was not simply a religious response to threats posed by Christianity but a religious conspiracy. Some nineteenth-century British writers argued that the rebellion was a plot masterminded by high-caste Brahmin Hindus angry at the Company's evangelical zeal and fearful of the continuing loss of privilege that interventions like the remarriage of widows implied. Others claimed that it was a Muslim jihad (holy war), declared in the context of the decline in political authority experienced by Mughal elites. And yet while religious feelings and concerns were a central element of how rebels themselves viewed the revolt, evidence for religious conspiracies is at best limited. Hindu kingship was fragmented, localized, and in some cases allied to the Mughal regime. Despite famous Hindu leaders like Lakshmibai (the Rhani of Jhansi), Tantia Tope (in Central India) or Kuer Singh (in Bihar), Hindus generally did not share the common interests necessary to inspire the religious plot claimed by some contemporary observers. In the years running up to the mutiny-rebellion there was, on the other hand, a series of Islamic movements that combined religion with socio-economic protest. For instance, followers of Sayyid Ahmad (who had declared jihad against the Sikhs in 1826) in Rai Bareilly, later a rebel stronghold in southern Awadh, formed a fara'izi (dutiful observance) movement that melded revolt with religious duty in northern and eastern Bengal throughout the 1850s. Islamic revivalist groups had a strong presence during the mutiny-rebellion, and several maulvis (clerics, intellectuals) declared jihad against a foreign power that they believed was on the verge of defeat. Militant ghazis (warriors of the faith) promoted the rebel cause in Delhi; they were joined by Muslims in other cities like Allahabad and by peasants in the district of Awadh. Even Hyderabad, a native state largely unaffected by rebellion, faced a declaration of holy war and an attack on the British Residency. Yet these jihadis never presented a serious threat because theological and broader social divisions hampered leadership, organization, and unity. Moreover, during this period there is much evidence of the syncretism of Muslim-Hindu cultural practice. Often Hindus and Muslims were more united than divided in the intertwining of notions of religion and realm into the broad category of 'Hindustan', which hardly smacks of communal conspiracy. More generally, it is not clear why religious concerns fanned revolt in the north only.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Indian Uprising of 1857â"8 by Clare Anderson. Copyright © 2007 Clare Anderson. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; A note on the text; Map; Introduction; The Prison in Colonial North India; Dancing by the Lurid Light of Flames; Penal Crisis in the Aftermath of Revolt; The Andamans Penal Colony; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index of Prisons; Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

'This carefully researched book fills a major gap in the historiography of colonial India.'  —Sumit Guha, Professor of History, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

'…Yields fascinating insights into the lived experiences of individuals all too often silenced by history and in so doing makes an invaluable contribution to the historiography of colonial India.' —Douglas M Peers, Professor of History, University of Calgary

'Anderson makes a highly significant contribution to the understanding of subaltern lives and to the histories of residence and repression.' —David Arnold, Professor of History, University of Warwick

Editorial Reviews

'Scholars and general readers attentive to comparative colonial history, particularly concerning the relationship between the state and the colonized, as well as those engaged with the history of India, will find much rich material, perceptive analysis, and theoretical sophistication in this volume.' —Michael H. Fisher, ‘Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History’

From the Publisher