Reliving the mutiny

William Howard Russell was perhaps the world’s first war correspondent. He reported on three great armed conflicts of the 19th century: The Crimean War, Indian Sepoy Mutiny and American Civil War. Newspaper reports are the first draft of history. And Russell, an Irishman uncertain about his Catholicism, chronicled all three for The Times of London. In sheer historical importance, his work remains unsurpassed 150 years later.

Because of intrepid correspondents like Russell, there was much global interest in the Indian mutiny, including in the US. Public opinion favoured the British against native barbarity, though some commentators compared the plight of the slaves with the Indian sepoys. Similarly, the Indian press reported faithfully what happened in the American Civil War.

But, apart from Russell, there was a lot common between the Indian mutiny and the American Civil War, says historian Rajmohan Gandhi. One, each was a clash of civilisations. The mutiny was, as some historians have said, the last attempt by the India of old to assert itself. Local kings had been dispossessed by the British, the deep religiosity of the masses hurt badly. The traditions of old were under threat. The greased cartridges that used beef and pig tallow were the straw that broke the camel’s back. The American Civil War was fought between the industrial North and the agrarian South. More than that, the South favoured slavery, while the North was opposed to it. Black slaves demanded freedom and many whites from the North supported them. The similarity doesn’t end here. There was much bloodshed in both. And in each case, the rebels were crushed. The two wars changed the course of the countries involved, India and the United States, for good.

These comparisons, though they may have never been put down in black and white, are obvious. The beauty of Gandhi’s work lies in the way he has told the story of the Indian mutiny. Recent historians like to call it India’s first war of Independence. But was it that? Gandhi suggests it wasn’t. It was a mutiny led by local chieftains who had been outwitted by the British and soldiers in the employ of the British — high-caste Hindus and Muslims.

There were large parts of the country, especially in the West and the South, where the call of the mutineers failed to strike a chord. The lower castes too did not come out in support. How was one oppressor better than the other? The British, at least, were open to the idea of social reform. Jotiba Phule, the Dalit leader from Pune, was a relieved man when the mutineers were defeated, says Gandhi. Similarly, reformists in Bengal kept their distance from the mutiny. All social reforms initiated by the British, like the ban on sati or widow remarriage, would grind to a halt, they reasoned, if the mutineers managed to overthrow the British.

Gandhi looks at the mutiny through the eyes of social reformers like Phule, Bankimchandra Chatterjee, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, British civil servant AO Hume and educationist Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan. When the mutiny broke out, Khan was a mulazim of the British in western Uttar Pradesh. He refused to collaborate with the mutineers, though they had driven the British out of Bijnore where Khan was posted. Much of this was because of his view that Muslims need to wake up and imbibe western education. And that was not possible if the British were thrown out of the country. Khan, who was later knighted by the British, went on to establish the Aligarh Muslim University for modern education.

Allan Octavian Hume was a young district official when the mutiny happened. He survived but not before he had shot down at least two sepoys. Clearly, the events played on his mind when he set up the Indian National Congress in 1885. It was, after all, supposed to be a safety valve for Indians to let off their steam from time to time.

Read A Tale of Two Revolts also for a good account of the sieges of Kanpur and Lucknow. Was Nana Sahib responsible for the massacre of European men, women and children at the Satichaura Ghat and Bibighar? How stubborn was the defence of the Lucknow Residency? No less than 16 Victoria Crosses were handed out on a single day at Lucknow. Were Henry Havelock and James Neill, who were brought in to help recapture the two cities, knights in shining armour? Or were they as barbarian as the sepoys? Have you heard of Theo Metcalfe’s vengeance of the innocent people of Delhi after the mutiny had been crushed? The truth is that in their reprisals, the British matched the horrors of the natives.

William Dalrymple some time back had stirred a hornet’s nest when he said Indians were lazy historians. When out on research for his book on Bahadurshah Zafar, The Last Mughal, he found out that India has enough documentation from those times in the form of not just official documents but also newspaper reports. But there are not many takers for old newspaper files that can still be found in the archives. The jury on his take is still out, but the allegation will hardly hold true in Gandhi’s case. He has researched the files of newspapers that do not exist today — Hindoo Patriot, Bengal Harkaru and others. The result is a commendable piece of work.

A TALE OF TWO REVOLTS
India 1857 and the American Civil War
Rajmohan Gandhi; Penguin;
402 pages; Rs 599