By Niyaz Ahmed [Edited by Katherine Simpson and Tayyiba Nasir]
On March 1857, in the British Cantonment of Meerut, the commanding British General Hearsay was informed of a riot amongst the Indian Sepoy troops. The cause of this disturbance was a soldier named Mangal Panday. Seemingly under the influence of an intoxicating drug, he screamed, “'Come out, you bhainchutes, the Europeans are here! Why aren't you getting ready? It is for our religion! From biting these cartridges, we shall become infidels. Get ready!”.[1] What followed changed the course of British colonial rule in India. This incident was seen as the start of the famous Indian rebellion of 1857. If we delve deeper into this notable chapter of India’s history, the reasoning behind Panday’s outburst was not merely the result of sepoy dissatisfaction, but a cumulative product of the very character and policies of colonial rule. In particular, his call for arms emphasised two very specific factors behind the emergence of the 1857 uprising: the role of rumours and religion.
This essay will argue that the feeling of discontent created by a hundred years of British rule caused rumours to expose the sensitivities of religion amongst the people. Through various policies, like the emergence of Christian missionaries, the Indian rebellion saw Hindus and Muslims unite for the first time against a common enemy. There was a fear that the British were now seeking to not only change how India runs, but change their ways of life. Using the works of historians from different schools of thought, such as Kim A. Wagner, Hibbert and others, it will become clear that rumours and religion were very influential short-term causes of the rebellion. While Whig historians saw the role of rumours as a conspiracy movement, others, such as Sayyid Ahmed Khan, countered this point by analysing the very nature and underpinnings of the events of 1857.[2] The first part of the essay will focus on the Indian reaction to the rumours, focusing on why rumours were accepted as fact in order to protect their religious rights. The second part will focus on the British reaction to rumours and the wild stories they concocted to appease their insecurities. Lastly, this essay will provide an analysis of Muslim perspectives of the events of 1857, using the works of Sayyid Ahmed Khan to show how religion was exploited by the British and used as a rallying call for the masses.
The immediate cause of the ‘mutiny’ and the “cartridges” that Panday referred to was the infamous Enfield rifles.[3] They required that cartridges be bitten and then lubricated with grease made of cow fat and pig fat, thus creating a possibility of the sepoy ingesting remnants of the grease. This caused a big predicament. Cows were sacred to Hindus and pigs were forbidden for Muslims. Despite the furore, the British maintained the composition of the Enfield rifles was only a rumour and not officially commissioned by them. Despite the British testing the rifles, in January 1857, the rumour persisted amongst the Sepoys.[4] They took this to be the final blow to their religious sentiments and rebelled spontaneously. Nevertheless, this incident was not an isolated one. The role of rumours was a common cause in inciting Indians to rebel. Whether they were true or not, they were an expression of the grievances of the Indian people, masses, and princes alike. To further understand why the rumours were so readily accepted, it is important to assess the importance of religion for those involved. In particular, the Hindus and Muslims were driven to protect their ways of life. The perceived attack on all Indian religions, Hinduism and Islam being the principal ones among them, united people from diverse religions to resist the threat to their faiths. Therefore, to protect ‘Dharma’, in the case of Hindus, and ‘Deen’, in the case of Muslims, the people kept passing on the rumours that heightened their hostility towards the British.[5] The incident of the Enfield rifle was only the final straw.
Despite the severity of the Enfield rumour, further stories exposed the sensitivities of religions and caused further discontent for the British. Many other rumours travelled around India that gave the people both hope and despair. News of the rebellion spread across India with many hoping it would be the end of British rule while others were more discouraging. 1857 saw rumours such as the horrific execution methods the British would enforce and the British mixing the flour in the markets with bone dust of cows and pigs.[6] This bone dust rumour was similar to the rumour of cartridges, as Hindus and Muslims were again forced to consume portions of animals that were forbidden to them. Not only would it affect their spirituality, it would make them outcasts, especially in the case of the Hindu caste system. As a result, Hindus and Muslims feared they may have to convert to Christianity.[7] This is just another example of the astonishing and immense impact of these rumours on the masses.
In a similar fashion, the British themselves were also not immune to the power of rumours. During the outbreak and in the aftermath, British authorities attempted to downplay the impact of the ‘mutiny’. As a result, they adopted a narrative that centred around conspiracy theories. From the western perspective, it was impossible that the enlightened western authority of the white man’s empire would be susceptible to rebellion, therefore resorting to the likes of evil conspirators that sought to rid the world of civilised British morality as reasons behind the uprising. Additionally, the scope of conspiracy was not isolated to India, with the British claiming the actions of the illuminati affecting the French revolution and the Jacobean ideology. In particular, the British were highly outlandish when it came to the official accounts of the rebellion. British writers Kaye and Malleson proposed that an “executive council,” which consisted of Nana Sahib, the Rani of Jhansi and the Maulvi of Faizabad, all worked in collaboration with the princes of India during the events of 1857.[8] Modern historians such as Kim A. Wagner, however, have argued that though they could seek benefit in the fall of the British; “there is nothing to suggest that they planned it and executed it, as is claimed in much of the conventional literature.”[9] The absurdity of the British claim only exposed the colonial insecurities of the authorities. The rebellion was an embarrassment to their rule, so they took advantage of rumours to push their agenda.
Furthermore, the quintessential example of British insecurities running wild with rumour was the so-called ‘chapatti movement’. The British were not only spreading ideas but shrouding their rumours in material forms or evidence, exposing their sinister motives. The first time this “movement” came to the attention of the authorities in February 1857 by Mark Thornhill in the Indian town of Mathura. Thornhill came into his office one morning to find four “dirty little cakes of the coarsest flour, about the size and thickness of a biscuit” lying on his desk.[10] After further inspection, there was no message to be derived from these chapattis, but there was great suspicion regarding the distribution of thousands of chapattis across India. No one really understood where and why they were moving around so much, but both parties started to blame each other with even the delivery people not knowing what they were doing.[11]
The most worrying part for the British, however, was that it was moving faster than the British mail chains. They were extremely worried about “seditious” information discreetly spreading across India. As these rumours spread, the British only became more insecure. They knew tales of panic and apprehension were particularly volatile in the early months of 1857 when the British were becoming more disenfranchised with the Indians. Anything that could affect the colonial hierarchy ensured that the British remained constantly afraid, even creating rumours amongst themselves.[12] As Kim Wagner puts it, “the British regarded with deep suspicion, bordering on paranoia, any type of communication in India which they could not understand.”[13] Suspicion from both parties could have severe consequences, as what happened only months later. The ironic and perhaps most tragic consequence of this rumour was that after much analysis, the movement had nothing to do with the rebellion. However, it was too late. Thousands of entirely blameless Indians who found themselves caught up in the hysterical aftermath of the rebellion were flogged, or mercilessly blown from a cannon.
Whilst the British used rumours for their own political means, many Indians sought to associate these rumours with the brutality of years of colonial rule, particularly the effect the British had on Indian religions. As aforementioned, the British casted vast and majestic theories to explain the mutiny and justify their actions in the aftermath. With malicious rumours spread by the British, Indians sought to fight back with explanations of their own. Specifically, the Muslims perspective of the Indian mutiny and the roles of rumour and religion was very important. Sayyid Ahmed Khan’s “The Causes of the Mutiny 1858” saw him criticise Company rule strongly and that the most powerful source of dissatisfaction was the activities of Christian missionaries. Much like the fear of forcing Indians to convert to Christianity by making them outcasts, people were overtly afraid by the obvious efforts of missionaries.[14] Religion again was being threatened by the British. Khan mentioned different policies adopted by the colonists that raised suspicion amongst the Muslim community in the build-up to the mutiny. In the famine of 1837, a large number of orphans were given to the missionaries to be brought up as Christians and missionary schools were given government grants which ensured a better way of life for Indians who studied the Bible were only a few examples mentioned.[15] This showed that despite the missionaries being active in India for a very long time, by 1857 many Sepoy soldiers were convinced that the Company was masterminding mass conversions of Muslims and Hindus to Christianity. Furthermore, despite Khan’s claim that Muslims did not join the rebellion in a spirit of ‘Jihad’, it was clear that Muslims were heavily inspired to protect their religion. An edict for armed Jihad was issued which carried the signature of thirty-four high ranking Islamic scholars. The people were moved when they saw that the scholars were at the forefront of the rebellion and had inspired the civilian population to rise up by using the sensitivities of religion to fight the British.[16]
In conclusion, the immense impact of religion and rumours before, during and after the uprising of 1857 is clear. By analysing the effect of rumours on the Indian population, it is easy to infer that the so-called ‘rebels’ wanted certain rumours to be true. Many dishevelled local people and princes sought to challenge British rule and the story of the Enfield rifle was convenient. Furthermore, it was evident that the British themselves were also susceptible to a large case of rumours. More seriously, the need to accept the rebellion as a carefully planned conspiracy would only prove the insecurity of colonial rule in India and subsequent violence that ensued afterwards. Finally, the Muslim perspective gave us an insight on how religion was used to motivate the people. In essence it is apparent that rumours became a key feature of the rebellion by using the sensitivities of religion to incite revolt. For British colonialism, it was a highly frustrating and a time full of paranoia. As the anti-colonial scholar Franz Fanon aptly described when Algerian women rebelled against French ideals using their head coverings, it was clear that “this woman who sees without being seen frustrates the coloniser”.[17]
Notes [1] Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny India 1857 (New York: The Viking Press,1978), p. 68. [2] Biswamoy Pati, “Historians and Historiography: Situating 1857”, Economic and Political Weekly, 42/19 (2007), p. 1686. [3] Kim A. Wagner, The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010), p. 1. [4] Wagner, “The Great Fear,”, p. 29. [5] Irfan Habib, “The Coming of 1857,” Social Scientist, 26/1-4 (1998), p. 8. [6] Wagner, The Great Fear, p. 70. [7] John Kaye, History of the Sepoy War in India, 1857-58 (London: WH Allen, 1864) p. 634. [8] Wagner, The Great Fear, pp. 5-6. [9] Wagner, The Great Fear, p.19 [10] “Pass it on: the Secret that Preceded the Indian Rebellion of 1857”, Smithsonian, <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/pass-it-on-the-secret-that-preceded-the-indian-rebellion-of-1857-105066360/> [Accessed 13 December 2019]. [11] Hibbert, The Great Mutiny (1857), p. 60. [12] “The Chupatty Movement”, A Blast From The Past, <https://mikedashhistory.com/2010/09/07/the-chupatty-movement/> [Accessed 13 December 2019]. [13] Wagner, The Great Fear, p. 63. [14] R.A Geaves, “India 1857: A Mutiny or A War of Independence? The Muslim Perspective,” Islamic Studies, 35/1 (1996), p. 25. [15] Geaces, “India 1857,” p. 26. [16] “Indian Revolt 1857: The Role of the Ulama 160 years on” Islam21c, <https://www.islam21c.com/islamic-thought/history/indian-revolt-1857-the-role-of-the-ulama-160-years-on/> [Accessed 13 December 2019]. [17] Franz Fanon, “A Dying Colonialism”, (New York: Grove Press, 1965) p. 66.
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Geaves, R.A. “India 1857: A Mutiny or A War of Independence? The Muslim Perspective.” Islamic Studies. 35/1, 1996
Habib, Irfan. “The Coming of 1857.” Social Scientist. 26/1-4, 1998
Hibbert, Christopher. The Great Mutiny India 1857. New York: The Viking Press, 1978
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Kaye, John. History of the Sepoy War in India, 1857-58. London: W.H. Allen, 1864
“Pass it on: The Secret that Preceded the Indian Rebellion of 1857.” Smithsonian. <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/pass-it-on-the-secret-that-preceded-the-indian-rebellion-of-1857-105066360/> [Accessed 13 December 2019]
Pati, Biswamoy. “Historians and Historiography: Situating 1857.” Economic and Political Weekly. 42/19, 2007
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“The Chupatty movement.” A Blast from The Past.<https://mikedashhistory.com/2010/09/07/the-chupatty-movement/>Accessed 13 December 2019
Wagner, Kim A. The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010
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