People's Democracy

Background To The Great Rebellion

Biswamoy Pati

THE Revolt of 1857, the largest armed anti-colonial insurrection in the history of India, though it began with the sepoys of the Bengal Army soon received the support of various classes of the civilian population of northern and central India cutting across region and religion, clearly giving lie to its characterization as a Sepoy Mutiny. The centres of the revolt spanned a huge expanse of the subcontinent from Bengal in the east to Delhi and Haryana in the north-west and extended south to central India and Satara in the south-west.

Why did millions of civilians from different classes and regions across northern India support the rebels? One major reason was the adverse economic impact of Company rule on their livelihoods. The pattern of exploitation, though varying in detail and impact was basically similar across the country. 

TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

From the time Vasco da Gama landed in Calicut in 1498, European maritime trading companies began to operate in India, chiefly to procure Indian spices and textiles. The main difference between the European companies and the earlier foreign traders in India such as the Arabs was that the Europeans used military force to weaken their competitors and force the sellers to lower prices. This led to increased conflict between European merchant companies finally resulting in the emergence of the English East India Company as the predominant European mercantile and military power in India. In 1757 English East India Company forces under Clive defeated the army of Sirajudaula, the Nawab of Bengal. This victory was soon followed by the defeat of Mir Qasim in the Battle of Buxar in 1764. By the Treaty of Allahabad (1765) the Mughal emperor in Delhi granted the Diwani of Bengal to the Company. From then onwards, the British rapidly pushed up the Ganga-Jamuna basin, adding new territories through unequal treaties and wars. In 1793 the acquisition of Benares, provided the Company a toehold for further expansion into northern India. Allahabad and adjoining districts, were ceded in 1801 by the Nawab of Awadh. These came to be known as the Ceded Provinces. After defeating the Marathas in 1803, Lord Wellesley added Delhi, Agra and the districts of the Ganga basin. All these possessions together came to be known as the Ceded and Conquered Provinces. In 1835 they were renamed North West Provinces. The British conquest of northern India was complete with the annexation of the whole of the Punjab after the first and second Sikh Wars in 1846 and 1849.

After the grant of Diwani, the revenue surpluses of Bengal, now paid for the Company’s exports, obviating the need to import bullion. As the profits and territories of the Company grew, Britain exerted greater control over it by The Regulating Act of 1773 and the Pitt’s India Act of 1784. Finally, the Charter Act of 1833 ended the commercial monopoly of Company, transforming it into a political adjunct of the British imperial state in India.It has been plausibly argued recently that between 1757 and 1815 there was an unrequited transfer of 30.2 million pounds from India to Britain which played an important role in financing Britain’s war with France. A fact corroborated by contemporary observers.

What did this change of political control mean for the people of India? The English East India came to trade in India. India was conquered by the British certainly not “in a fit of absence of mind” as apologists of empire have tried to argue but for profit maximization. The Company soon realized that military conquest and political control would enable them to increase their profits from India by reducing the need to finance the Company’s purchases using bullion. Bengal soon financed the Company’s exports. Territorial aggrandizement of the rest of the country thus followed as a logical requisite for further increasing the profitability of the Company.

PREDATORY EXPLOITATION

The English East India Company having vaulted to the status of a ruler, took a long time in devising a suitable system of administration. The only constants in the story of Company’s rule over India till 1857 were its preoccupation with earning a large profit from its operations in India and the suffering that this caused to most sections of Indian society. It used extra-economic means to establish itself as a monopsonist in Bengal’s market for manufactured goods and subjugate or exclude other Indian trading groups. Apart from the obvious advantages of this arrangement for the Company, its employees and agents made personal fortunes in Bengal taking advantage of the dastak system that allowed the Company’s servants to trade without paying customs. The result was a drain of wealth from Bengal, a process that was in later years to be improved to reach great levels of institutional sophistication, ensuring that India’s gains in the international market place finally benefited Britain. As a consequence of this predatory exploitation, artisanal industry declined. Some industries such as iron smelting were completely destroyed, while others survived by combining manufacturing with other work and abandoning the export market to exclusively service the domestic market.

Despite a rapidly increasing rate of revenue collection across Company controlled territories little public investment was made for public welfare. The Company’s Court of Directors in their eagerness to increase Investments displayed unprecedented parsimony when it came to building and repairing roads, irrigation works, etc.

Agriculture was affected by an increase in land revenue and a tightening of tax collection. Zamindars, even before the Permanent Settlement of 1793 were being impoverished by high revenue demand and a shortage of credit. Between 1840 and 1857 the revenues of Bengal increased by 72 per cent. This increased burden was often passed on by them to the peasants. To further worsen matters, Bengal was ravaged by a famine in 1769-70,which killed a third of the province’s population and further delayed agricultural recovery. After the recovery from the famine there were two very significant developments in Bengal --- the introduction of the Permanent Settlement of land revenue and the expansion of cultivation of commercial crops. Neither of these changes, however, helped in transforming traditional agriculture by encouraging new technologies, greater capital formation or fundamentally changing the composition of the landholders.

In England, the new capitalist class, wanting a share of the profitable trade with the East, was critical of the EIC with its monopoly of the India and China trade. The EIC was criticized in Parliament for ruining India with its unjust commercial policies. According to Edmund Burke, “ But at, or very soon after, the Acquisition of the Territorial Revenues to the English Company…a very great Revolution took place in Commerce as well as in Dominion;….From that Time Bullion was no longer regularly exported by the English East India Company to Bengal, or any part of Hindustan;.… A new Way of supplying the Market of Europe by means of the British Power and Influence, was invented; a Species of Trade (if such it may be called) by which it is absolutely impossible that India should not be radically and irretrievably ruined….”

The EIC directed that the surplus revenues from India were to be used for maintaining the military, liquidation of the debt and interest payment on it, pay for its establishments, set aside money for Madras and Bombay and finally make an annual Investment of Rupees ten million. Thus, it is clear that the EIC’s doings in India, despite the criticism of Free Traders had the full support of the British Parliament. Wars and Investments soon pushed the EIC’s budget into deficit, forcing it to borrow both in India and London.

The story of high land revenue, a partial restructuring of precolonial tenurial arrangements, increased cultivation of commercial crops, expansion of trade and weakening of the manufacturing sector that we narrated was repeated all over northern India as the colonial government expanded. Northern India or more specifically the Ganga-Jamuna doab, constituted the core region of the 1857 Revolt. What prompted large sections of the rural society to resort to armed rebellion? 

After the introduction of the Permanent Settlement in Bengal, the EIC debated for long without any result the ideal revenue system for India. At first an extension of the Pemanent Settlement into the Conquered and Ceded Provinces was made, but this was finally given up. Regulation VII of 1822 directed revenue officers, under the assumption that the ownership of the land was known, to assess revenue village by village and mahal by mahal. In this process many lower revenue officers became landlords while the traditional rights of taluqudars and zamindars often got ignored. The only essential element in these settlements was revenue maximization. Rent theory, traditional rights, village boundaries, etc. did not concern the settlement officials who made the actual revenue assessment. When Collectors were hesitant to raise the revenue demand on grounds of low yield, Calcutta responded with the comment, “that grass was a good product; he should have it cut and sold.” (Michael Mann, British Rule on Indian Soil, Delhi, 1999) As late as 1832 only 5 of the 32 districts had confirmed settlements. The question of establishing ownership, estimating the actual yield of the land, the disregard of traditional rights and claims, continued to bedevil the revenue system of the NWP right up to 1857. 

The impact of the already chaotic and oppressive land revenue policies was further exacerbated by the standardization of Indian currencies. The significant difference of 2.28 per cent in the gold: silver rate between Calcutta and London made Company remittances even more profitable. 

RUINOUS MONETARY POLICIES

An associated development, in the early nineteenth century was the extension of cash crop cultivation in northern India. To meet the increased demand for indigo, British planters, financed by bank and Agency House loans, extended its cultivation in the NWP. The fall in the indigo prices in the London market wreaked havoc for the indigo farmers of northern India. Credit was withdrawn while high revenue had to be paid, even when faced by falling prices. Similarly the reduced demand for Indian cotton after the Napoleonic Wars also hit some of the districts of the NWP.

The closure of the Farrukhabad mint caused the ruin of about half of the towns bankers. Early colonial financial, revenue and monetary policies acted on one another to increase the economic burden on the country.

Finally, before we conclude, it must the noted that the main protagonists of the Revolt, the sepoys, had seen a progressive decrease in numbers. The low pay and poor promotion opportunites of the Indian soldiers, the dismissal of about 60,000 Awadh troops with only small severance benefits and the General Service Enlistment Act of 1856 requiring the sepoys to serve outside India, played an important role in heightening sepoy discontent. 

Demobbed soldiery, a country that had been recently conquered and exposed to unprecedented revenue exactions and social churning provided the perfect recipe for the outbreak of large-scale civil rebellion in support of the military mutiny. Not only economic decline but the perceived threat of impending loss also played a major role in different social groups extending their support for the Rebellion.

This opposition of the people of northern and central India led in name by the Mughal Emperor was the last time that the ordinary people of the country looked to the old order for leadership. With the bloody repression that followed, Indians were forced to devise more democratic and inclusive methods of protest to end colonial exploitation. 

This account has recounted facts well known to students of Indian history. What makes this reiteration necessary, in today’s context of US led imperialism, is that we should not forget that imperialist expansion is never harmonious. To characterize the British conquest of India as “a meeting of two great civilizations” (Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Oxford, 2005) is not only a travesty of history but a denial of the horrors of imperialist conquest.