The 1857-8 Sepoy Rebellion/ First Indian War of Independence was a failed rebellion against the rule of the British East India Company (EIC) in India. Initially a mutiny of the Indian soldiers (sepoys) in the EIC army, the movement spread to become a wider rebellion involving a broad spectrum of the Indian population in certain regions.

The rebellion was ultimately quashed, but the victor was also its immediate victim as the British state dissolved the EIC and took over governance of its possessions in India. The grievances that caused the rebellion and the acts of violence perpetrated by both sides would colour Anglo-Indian relations for the next century and beyond.

Sepoys in the EIC Army

Although the East India Company was established as a trading company, from the mid-18th century, it employed its own army to protect its interests and to expand its territorial possessions. From 1765, only Britishers could hold officer rank in the EIC armed forces, but the rank-and-file majority was made up of Indian soldiers. These latter troops were first known as peons and then sepoys – a corruption of the Persian term sipahi. Sepoys far outnumbered European soldiers. The average ratio of Indian troops to British in EIC armies in the 19th century was around 7:1. Many Indians joined the EIC for better pay than was possible elsewhere and as a chance to improve their status in traditional Indian society.

The sepoys were well-trained and well-equipped, and they helped the EIC expand its control across India, especially following the four Anglo-Mysore Wars (1767-1799) and the two Anglo-Sikh Wars (1845-1849). At the time of the Sepoy Mutiny, the EIC employed around 45,000 British soldiers and over 230,000 sepoys.

The main causes of the Sepoy Mutiny may be summarised as:

• Sepoys were unhappy with the pay inequality compared to British soldiers.
• Sepoys were suspicious that rifle cartridges used animal fats they could not touch as part of their religious beliefs.
• The sepoys’ unwillingness to serve abroad.
• Indian princes had lost their states or had to pay high protection fees to the EIC.
• An overtaxed population
• Concerns that traditional Indian cultural practices were under threat.
• Concerns for traditional Indian manufacturing industries facing unfair competition from EIC imports.
• British snobbery and institutional racism.

The sepoys had several grievances, which they felt, despite peaceful protest, were not being addressed by the EIC. There had been several small-scale uprisings since 1806, but these had been ruthlessly quashed. The sepoys were not happy that they received much lower pay compared to British EIC soldiers. Neither had sepoy wages been raised for over 50 years, meaning that in real terms their pay had lost half of its value since 1800. Indian soldiers were not happy either with the obligation to serve outside India, which would require Hindus to perform costly rites of purification, or the institutional racism that prevented them from ever becoming officers. The final straw was the introduction of greased cartridges for compulsory Enfield rifles. The animal fat grease of pig or cow offended Hindu and Muslim beliefs since the cartridges had to be prepared by mouth (as it happened the grease came from neither of these taboo animals).

There were other discontents besides the sepoys. 1857 saw the collapse of the Mughal Empire, which had been crumbling for quite some time, its institutions of rule in India now all but invisible. Many of the independent Indian princely states were far from happy with the EIC, in many places the Mughals’ successor. Another serious bone of contention was the EIC’s policy of taking over princely states whenever it could get away with it.

The Rebellion Spreads

The initial spark that set off the sepoys was the punishment of one of their own, Mangal Pandey (aka Pande), in March 1857. Pandey had wounded a European EIC officer near Calcutta, and for his crime, he was executed. This was a matter of justice perhaps, but the outrage sprang from the decision to also flog Pandey’s entire sepoy company. Then, on 10 May 1857, the EIC sepoys at Meerut raised arms. They protested the 10-year prison sentences handed down to 85 fellow sepoys for refusing to use greased Enfield cartridges. The mutineers killed their British officers and then went on a rampage. As one mutineer lamented: “I was a good sepoy, and would have gone anywhere for the service, but I could not forsake my religion” (James, 239).

The EIC leadership was unprepared for the rising, which saw the sepoys promote the retired Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II (1775-1862) as their leader. Then the rebellion spontaneously spread across India, involving not just sepoys but landlords, merchants, and peasant farmers of both the Hindu and Muslim faiths.

The sepoy cause was then taken up by a host of Indian princes disgruntled at their poor treatment by the EIC. Queen Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi (1835-1858) and Nana Saheb, claimant to the Maratha title of Peshwa, were examples of rulers who raised arms against the EIC. Some princes remained loyal to the EIC such as the Maharajas of Gwalior and Jodhpur.

The rebellion continued to spread with remarkable speed, helped by agents sent out for that very purpose and new people joining it after they witnessed the rebels’ success and the weakness of the British. In many cases, too, the rebels had nothing to lose. Most of northern and central India was literally up in arms, particularly in the Ganges and Narmada valleys. As the EIC mobilised loyal troops, fierce fighting broke out at Banaras, Gwalior, Jhansi, Kampur, and Lucknow.

To fight the rebels, the EIC now employed the regular British Army regiments, which it typically hired out, along with loyal Sikh troops and new allies such as the Gurkhas from Nepal. Delhi was retaken on 18 September 1857 after a brutal six-day battle, then Kanpur and Lucknow in March 1858.

The rebellions were ultimately quashed by the spring of 1858 for two reasons: the far superior resources of the EIC and the lack of coordination amongst the rebels in terms of command and demands. These different groups might have all agreed that they wanted the British out of India, but they could not agree on who would replace them. In the end, 40,000 British troops shipped in from Europe decided the conflict in the EIC’s favour.

Aftermath

Casualties were high on both sides, but far more so on the Indian side, as here summarised by Barrow:

2,600 British enlisted soldiers and 157 officers were killed. Another 8,000 died of heatstroke and disease, while 3,000 were severely injured. Indian deaths from the war and the resulting famines may have reached 800,000.

Atrocities and massacres were committed on both sides against military personnel and civilians in cities and rural areas. This bloodbath understandably led to much ill feeling and mutual suspicion over the next century.

In the aftermath, the EIC ruthlessly dealt with the rebellion’s leaders. Bahadur Shah II was exiled to Burma, but his sons were executed. The British, for reasons unbeknown but to themselves, blamed Muslims for the rebellion far more than Hindus, and British soldiers were often guilty of harsh treatment or worse of captives of the former religion. There were so many lootings, kangaroo courts, and hangings that even the EIC directors had to issue a resolution to its employees to show more restraint. The historian W. Dalrymple describes the thousands of revenge hangings and murders as “probably the bloodiest episode in the entire history of British colonialism” (391).

The British state, already unimpressed with the EIC’s governance in India, took the final step in what had been a gradual process of regulation and control to finally take full possession of EIC territories in India on 2 August 1858.

On 1 June 1874, Parliament formally dissolved the East India Company. The sepoys and the Indian civilians who had joined them had seen off one oppressor only for it to be replaced by another, or rather the same but with a different mask. In 1877, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, and British rule continued to squeeze what resources it could from India until independence was gained in 1947, a movement that drew much inspiration from the mutiny almost a century before.

https://www.worldhistory.org/Sepoy_Mutiny/

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