Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
101: The Sepoy Uprising of India (1857-58)
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
By the middle of the 19th century, European arms had subjugated a large portion of Asia and Africa. Pax Britannica ruled the oceans and the Indian Ocean had become a British lake. The Dutch and the French tagged along and occupied some of the littoral states like Indonesia and Vietnam. Japan held on, but the subversion of China through opium and hard drugs was in full swing. The West African slave trade had ended, leaving Africa exhausted and depleted of its manpower. Asia was in deep slumber and international trade was firmly in the hands of European companies.
India was the first great Asian civilization to fall to the European onslaught. The British made their first attempt to get a foothold in the subcontinent in 1686 during the reign of the Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb. Directed by Sir Josiah Child, the governor of the East India Company, a British fleet made an attempt to capture the harbor of Chittagong. The response of the Emperor was swift. The British were driven out and had to give up all their fortifications in Bengal. Similarly, on the west coast, they incurred the wrath of the Emperor when they engaged in piracy directed against the pilgrims to Mecca. They were expelled from Surat but were later allowed to return after paying a substantial fine.
However, the fortunes of India turned as the Moghul Empire disintegrated in the 18th century. Bengal fell at the Battle of Plassey (1757). Tippu Sultan waged a valiant struggle to contain and expel the British from India but he fell at the Battle of Srirangapatam (1799). The Marathas in Poona sued for peace in 1803. In 1806 British armies were camped near the Red Fort in Delhi. The Sikhs in the Punjab held out a little longer, but by 1850, they too succumbed to the force of British arms and the subcontinent, save for the tribal areas of the Northwest Frontier, was in British hands.
It would seem astonishing that a great and prosperous landmass like India would fall with such ease to a handful of merchants from the British Isles. We have covered in some detail the march of global events that contributed to the rise of England. India imploded due to its own weight. The tensions introduced by power struggles between the princes, the absence of a national consciousness, lack of accurate information and intelligence about the global forces at work, neglect of naval technology and a general decay in the ethical standards of the ruling classes were all contributing factors. The British took advantage of these implosive forces and with an astonishingly small investment in men and material, made themselves masters of a great empire.
The rapacity of the British East India Company did not go unnoticed. During the hundred years since the fall of Bengal (1757), Company rule had reduced much of India into abject poverty. During the Moghul period, Bengal was the richest province of India and one of the richest in Asia. Blessed with the fertile delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers, it produced a surplus of food. Its manufactured goods included fine muslin cloth, brass work and sugar. Its cotton goods were in high demand the world over. Within eight years of its conquest by Robert Clive, Bengal was on its knees and what was once one of the richest provinces in Asia became one of the poorest. The accumulated capital in the possession of the Nawab of Bengal was looted and more than three million pounds were taken out of Calcutta. The manufacturing base was debilitated through heavy taxation and the market was flooded with cheap goods from England. The successors of Robert Clive were even more ruthless in their exploitation. Warren Hastings, the Governor General who succeeded Robert Clive, starved the begums (queens) of Oudh to extract from them their collection of jewels (1765). When Srirangapatam fell, the state treasury of Tippu was looted and a sum of over two million rupees fell into British hands. The golden throne of Tippu was broken up, melted down and distributed among the conquering British troops. Similar episodes were repeated in the kingdoms where the Company managers, exploiting internal rivalries for succession, extracted large sums from the rajas and the nawabs. Surplus capital disappeared from India. The taxation imposed by the Company ensured that additional capital growth in native hands would be impossible. The Company’s objective was profit and its relentless pursuit made the Company managers oblivious of the welfare of the general population.
The rise of Company rule had two concurrent effects. The martial races in India, the Pathans, Rajputs, Afghans and the Marathas lost their power. Indeed, in many cases the Company troops went after the Indian warriors with a vengeance, as they did against the Afghan Rohillas in the Gangetic Plains (1765). As the warriors lost their power and faced impoverishment, the moneylenders spread their tentacles. In Bengal, for instance, the double blows of British taxation and exploitative usury by Indian moneylenders devastated the peasant and merchant alike. Resentment against the British grew.
A second element in this growing resentment was the takeover of some of the native states by the Company in total disregard of treaty obligations. During its relentless military advance on Indian soil, the Company had entered into a series of treaties with a host of native princes as its “allies”. By 1850, the British stranglehold on India was so secure that they no longer needed these “allies” and the takeover of the native kingdoms began in utter disregard of legalities or treaty obligations. The motivation was greed and increased revenues for the Company. A variety of excuses were invented for such takeovers. One was the doctrine of “lapse” under which a kingdom could be taken over if a prince had no male heir. Another was the doctrine of “paramountcy” which was a catchall for supposed mismanagement by a local prince. During the tenure of Dalhousie as Governor General (1848-1856), the takeover of Indian territories was pursued with relentless vigor. First to fall was the kingdom of Satara (1848), once ruled by the mighty Peshwas. This was followed by the Rajput principalities of Jaipur, Udaipur and Jhansi, the Maratha stronghold of Nagpur, the kingdom of Sambalpur in Bengal and Baghat in the Punjab. Each takeover netted the British considerable cash from the native treasuries and ensured recurrent revenues from the land.
The annexation that tipped the scale in favor of an uprising was that of the large and prosperous kingdom of Oudh, which occupied the central plains of the Ganges River. In total disregard of a treaty made more than a half a century earlier, Company troops marched from Kanpur and forced the Nawab of Oudh, Wajid Ali Shah to give up his kingdom. Wajid Ali did not resist. Believing in his legal rights and in the rule of law, he appealed first to the British Commissioner James Outram and then to the Governor General Dalhousie. Both turned a deaf ear to his protestations. Wajid Ali then took his case to London where his presentation received an equally cold shoulder. Wajid Ali, a prince schooled in the old paradigm of honor and contractual obligations, did not understand the paradigm of a merchant. To the East India Company, a treaty was only a piece of paper, to fall back on when it suited their self-interest but to be torn up if it was to their advantage. Wajid Ali returned to India a bitter man and resolved to take up arms against the wily “Firangis” (from the word Frank, meaning a European).
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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