India Under British Rule

Lord Dalhousie leaves India, 1856.

§15. In 1856 Lord Dalhousie left India for ever. He had alarmed Anglo-Indians of the old school by his energetic promotion of moral and material progress without regard to the ignorance or prejudices of the Asiatic populations; but besides his grander measures, he carried out a thousand and one smaller reforms which to this day are felt and appreciated by Asiatics as well as by Europeans. It was Lord Dalhousie who introduced cheap postage; who caused Calcutta to be lit with gas; who purified the south-west breezes of fever and malaria by clearing the jungles of the Sunderbunds; who sat by the cradle of the new legislative council of 1854, and thus nourished the earliest germ of representative government which British rule had planted in India. In a word, Lord Dalhousie prepared the way for that great measure which will be told in a future chapter, namely, the transfer of the government of India from the East India Company to the British Crown.

Lord Canning 1856-62. War with Persia, 1856-7.

§16. Lord Canning succeeded Lord Dalhousie in 1856. To all outward appearance there was no cause for alarm in any part of India. Persia had again laid siege to Herat, as she had done in 1837; but the British government had come to an understanding with old Dost Mohammed of Cabul, and had given him money and arms. A mission was sent to Candahar under Major (now Sir Peter) Lumsden. A British expedition was sent to the Persian Gulf under Sir James Outram, and captured Bushire. Eventually Persia withdrew her pretensions as regards Herat, and peace was concluded in March, 1857.

Status of the "king" at Delhi.

Proposed removal from Delhi.

Meanwhile the status of the so-called king of Delhi, the relic of the Great Mogul, was under consideration. For more than half a century the family had lived in a palace at Delhi on a yearly pension from the British government. There was much marrying and giving in marriage, and the palace was a hive of princes and princesses without any apparent occupation save that of petitioning for increased pensions. Lord Ellenborough contemplated removing the family from Delhi, but the measure was postponed. At last Lord Dalhousie took action. The so-called king was very old, and could not live many years. Lord Dalhousie recognised a grandson as successor to the pageant throne, on the condition that when the old king died, the whole family should clear out of Delhi and take up their abode in a royal residence some miles off, known as the Kutub.

Palace intrigues.

This design was frustrated. The old king had married a young wife, and she had a son, and she determined that her son should be king. The grandson, who had been recognised by Lord Dalhousie, died suddenly; it was said that she had poisoned him. Lord Canning ignored her son, and recognised a brother of the dead prince as heir to the title, on the same conditions. Henceforth the queen, like the princess of Jhansi, bottled up her wrath and waited for revenge.

Land settlement in Oudh.

Lord Canning, however, was somewhat uneasy about Oudh. A British administration had been introduced under a chief commissioner, with commissioners of divisions and deputy commissioners of districts, but nothing was done to reconcile the talukdars in the provinces to the change of rule. On the contrary, a land settlement was introduced corresponding to that which had been effected in the North-West Provinces. But half a century had elapsed since the acquisition of the North-West Provinces. Meanwhile the talukdars of Oudh had ceased to be mere middle men, and had grown into landed proprietors; whilst the rights of village proprietors, individual or joint, had been ignored or stamped out by the new landlords.

Disaffection of talukdars.

The early British administrators settled the revenue direct with the villagers, and told the talukdars that their claims to proprietorship, if they had any, would be considered hereafter, or might be settled in the law courts. Under such cool treatment the talukdars of Oudh might well be disaffected towards their new British rulers. Rightly or wrongly, by long possession, or by recent usurpation, they had become de facto landlords, and under the new system they saw their estates transferred to their tenants. Early in 1857, however, Sir Henry Lawrence was appointed chief commissioner of Oudh, and he was expected to reconcile all parties.

Imagined wrongs of Oudh villagers.

Strange to say, the villagers of Oudh, who had profited so much by the new land settlement, had a secret grievance of their own which no one seems to have suspected. They held their lands on better terms than their fathers or grandfathers, but many families had lost position in the eyes of their neighbours. For generations Oudh had been the chief recruiting ground for the Asiatic soldiery of the Bengal army; and under Mohammedan rule every sepoy was the great man of his family, and indeed the patron of his native village. If any villager had a grievance, he applied to the sepoy, and the sepoy applied to his British officer, and his petition was forwarded to the British Resident at Lucknow; and the Mohammedan court was too anxious to please the Resident to make any difficulty about redressing wrongs so strongly supported, whatever might have been the abstract merits of the case. When, however, the king was replaced by a chief commissioner, the sepoy was referred to a British court for justice, and was no better off than his neighbours. This loss of privilege and prestige rankled in the heart of sepoys from Oudh, and they began to look upon annexation as a wrong done to themselves, although they had not, and could not have, any sympathies for the deposed king.

Coming catastrophe.

Such was the state of affairs in India when the storm of 1857 was about to burst upon Hindustan, which was to shake British power in Northern India to its very foundations, and sweep away the East India Company for ever. The outbreak was hardly felt in the older presidencies of Bengal, Madras, or Bombay, nor in the Punjab or Pegu, nor in Nagpore or Satara, the provinces recently annexed without conquest, nor, with few exceptions, in the feudatory states under British suzerainty. The main fury of the storm was spent on Oudh and the North-West Provinces; and the significance of this localisation will appear in the after history.

CHAPTER V.—SEPOY REVOLT: BENGAL, DELHI, PUNJAB.—1857

§1. European soldiers and Asiatic sepoys. §2. Three British armies in India: Bengal, Bombay, and Madras. §3. Sepoy army of Bengal: Brahmans and Rajputs. §4. Enfield cartridges: general horror of pork: Hindu worship of the cow. §5. Agitation of the sepoys at Barrackpore. §6. First mutiny against the cartridges: Berhampore. §7. Second mutiny: Barrackpore. §8. Oudh: mutiny at Lucknow: suppressed. §9. Mutiny and massacre at Meerut. §10. Mohammedan revolt and massacre at Delhi: general excitement. §11. British advance from the Punjab to Delhi. §12. Siege of Delhi by Europeans, Sikhs, and Ghorkas. §13. Punjab and John Lawrence: antagonism between Sikhs and Mohammedans. §14. Sepoy plots at Lahore and Mian Mir: quashed. §15. Peshawar and frontier mountain tribes. §16. Execution of sepoy mutineers at Peshawar. §17. Brigadier John Nicholson: worshipped by a Sikh brotherhood. §18. Proposed withdrawal from Peshawar. §19. Mutiny at Sealkote: wholesale executions. §20. Siege and storm of Delhi, September 1857: peace in the North-West.

Military rule in India.

It is a common saying that "India is held by the sword;" but the phrase is misleading, and in one direction it is absolutely untrue. The British army is not maintained to rivet a foreign yoke on the subject populations. Its main duty has been to keep the peace between rival princes, to put down fighting between antagonistic religions, and to protect India against foreign aggression.

Paucity of European troops.

§1. The small number of European troops in 1857 proves that India was free. In the Bengal provinces, which cover a larger area than Great Britain and Ireland, and a denser population, there were scarcely any European troops. A single regiment sufficed to garrison Calcutta; and of this regiment one wing was quartered in Fort William within the city, whilst the other wing was quartered in Dumdum arsenal, seven miles off. With this exception, there were no European troops within 400 miles of Calcutta. One European regiment was quartered at Dinapore, to the westward of Patna, and another at Rangoon, in the newly-acquired province of Pegu. There was also a European regiment at Lucknow in Oudh, and two European regiments at Meerut in the North-West Provinces, about forty miles from Delhi, and a thousand miles from Calcutta. But the bulk of the European regiments in India were quartered in the Punjab, the frontier province on the north-west. This frontier is the only vulnerable side of India. It faces Afghanistan; but it also faces a possible combination of European and Asiatic powers, which may some day menace the British empire in India.

Sepoys or Asiatics.

The army of the East India Company was mainly composed of native soldiers, known as sepoys. The term "native," however, is equivocal, and sepoys are best called Asiatics, to distinguish them from British soldiers, who are known in India as Europeans. They were formed into regiments corresponding to European battalions, and were drilled and commanded by European officers corresponding to regimental officers in Her Majesty's army. Each regiment had also an Asiatic staff of sepoy officers, known as naiks, havildars, jemadars, and subahdars—corresponding to corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, and captains. Such regiments were known as "regulars."

Army strength.

In 1857 the regular army of the East India Company comprised in round numbers about 200,000 Asiatics, commanded by 4,000 European officers, and about 45,000 British-born soldiers. But the European regiments were not all taken from Her Majesty's service. The East India Company had enlisted nine European regiments for exclusive service in India, who were known as Fusiliers and Locals. Moreover, in addition to the regular sepoys, there were battalions known as irregulars, because they had fewer regimental European officers. They were raised specially for service in particular provinces, and also for service in the contingent and subsidiary forces maintained by feudatory states under existing treaties.

Tried fidelity.

The sepoy army had been the pride and glory of the East India Company for more than a hundred years. It won its first laurels in the old wars against the French in Southern India; and from the battle of Plassy in 1757, to the dawn of 1857, it had shared the triumph of the British army in building up the Anglo-Indian empire. For perfection of discipline, and fidelity to their European officers, the sepoys might for many years have been favourably compared with the soldiers of any continental army. Hindus and Mohammedans fought side by side with Europeans, and one and all were bound together by that brotherhood in arms, which grows up between soldiers of all races and climes who have been under fire together in the same campaign.

No religious distinctions.

On the parade-ground and on the battle-field all differences of race, caste, and religion were for the moment forgotten. Together, sepoys and soldiers fought, not only against the French, but against Nawabs and Sultans who were Mohammedans, and against Mahrattas and Rajas who were Hindus. Together, they had crossed the Indus and the Sutlej to fight against Afghans and Sikhs; climbed the shelves and precipices of the Himalayas to punish the aggressions of the Ghorkas of Nipal; and ascended the waters of the Irrawaddy to chastise the arrogance of Burmese kings. When the sepoys were called out by the British magistrate to repress riots between Hindus and Mohammedans, they put their religion into their pockets and fired with the utmost impartiality on both parties, although in their hearts they must have sympathised with one side or the other. But the pride of the sepoy, whether Hindu or Mohammedan, was to be "faithful to his salt"—in other words, to be loyal to the master from whom he drew his pay.

Sepoy ways.

But sepoys have ways of their own which Europeans cannot always understand, unless they have served with them shoulder to shoulder, and listened patiently and considerately to the outpourings of their grievances. A sepoy is proud of his corps, jealous for its reputation, and respectful to his officers. Hindus of the higher castes, such as Brahmans and Rajputs, and Mohammedans of noble and ancient families, are alike amenable to British discipline. But sepoys can be stung to insubordination by insult or injustice, like soldiers of other races. Sepoys have been known to sacrifice caste prejudices to help European officers in time of need, but they resented needless interference or looks of scorn with the sullen pride of Orientals. At Vellore, in 1806, the Madras sepoys were driven to mutiny by the contemptuous orders of the military authorities as regards caste marks and turbans, and above all by the jeers of the Mysore princes, who taunted them with becoming Christians. Yet during the first Cabul war and other distant campaigns, sepoys often forgot their caste in cases of emergency, and cheerfully obeyed orders which they would have resented in their own country, or in the presence of inconvenient witnesses.

Mutiny at loss of batta.

Injustice again, real or imagined, is as intolerable to sepoys as it is to children. More than once a regiment has been deprived of batta, or field allowances, under circumstances which kindled a burning sense of wrong. This batta is given during service in foreign territory, but is withdrawn after the return of the sepoys to British territory. Thus, sepoys who had borne the brunt of the wars in Sind and the Punjab, were suddenly deprived of batta when those countries became British provinces, and naturally rebelled against what must have appeared to them a crying injustice. The sepoy complained that he had helped to conquer Sind for the East India Company, and was then punished by the loss of batta. The paymaster pointed to the regulations, but the result was disaffection amounting to mutiny.

Disbandment.

Under such circumstances there was no alternative but disbandment. There can be no pardon for mutineers, yet capital punishment, or even a long term of imprisonment, would be needlessly severe in dealing with ignorant sepoys. As it was, their doom was terrible in the eyes of their fellows. In a moment they were deprived of all hope of pension, which secured to every sepoy, a life provision in his native village when age or infirmity compelled him to retire from the army.

Three armies: Bengal, or Northern India.

§2. The Company's regular forces in India were formed into three distinct armies, namely, those of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, and each army had its own commander-in-chief. The armies of Madras and Bombay were mostly recruited in their respective presidencies; but the people of Bengal are not a fighting race, and the Bengal army was mostly recruited from the warlike populations of Oudh and the North-West Provinces. Again the Bengal army was not kept within the limits of the Bengal presidency, but was distributed over the whole of Northern India as far as the north-west frontier. It was consequently larger than the two other armies put together. It garrisoned Bengal, the North-West Provinces, and the newly-acquired provinces of Oudh and the Punjab; whilst it overlooked, more or less, the Asiatic states to the south and west of the Jumna, including the principalities and chiefships of Rajputana, the territories of Sindia and Holkar, and the smaller domains of a host of minor feudatories.

Bombay in the Deccan; Madras in the South.

The Bombay army garrisoned the Western Deccan and Sind, and the Madras army garrisoned Southern India and Pegu; but neither of these armies played any prominent part in the great sepoy revolt of 1857-58. Some disaffection was shown in the Bombay army which was nearest to the Bengal sepoys, and caught something of the contagion. The Madras army was for the most part still further south; and only one regiment caught the infection, and was promptly disbanded.

Hindus in Bengal army.

§3. The sepoy army of Bengal was mainly composed of Hindus. Taking the average strength of every regiment at 1,000 sepoys, there would be 800 Hindus and 200 Mohammedans; and the antagonism between the two religions was supposed to secure an additional safeguard against mutiny or disaffection.

High castes: Brahmans and Rajputs.

High caste was the main characteristic of the Hindu sepoys in the Bengal army. Of the 800 Hindus in every regiment, about 400 were Brahmans, the sacred caste of India, who claim to be gods, and are supposed to be endowed with supernatural powers. Next to the Brahmans were about 200 Rajputs, the royal caste of India, who claim to be "sons of Rajas," and are soldiers by birth as well as calling. The remaining 200 Hindus were men of low caste, who were regarded as inferior beings. The Brahmans were powerful over all, and were worshipped by the Rajputs as well as by the low castes.

Discipline and caste.

Pride of caste was thus the moving spirit of the Bengal army. This, however, was not perceptible on the parade ground or field of battle, except in the lofty mien, haughty bearing, and splendid physique of the men. The Bengal sepoys were taller on the average than any European armies, excepting perhaps the Russian guard.27 On duty the Brahman and Rajput obeyed the word of command when given by a low caste sepoy officer. Off duty, the low caste sepoy officer prostrated himself in token of worship before the Brahman soldier under his command.

Growing insubordination of the Bengal sepoys.

But pride of caste had its disadvantages, and for years the Bengal sepoys had displayed a laxity of discipline, and a spirit of insubordination towards their European officers, which had been unknown in the older days. They had been pampered and humoured to an extent which diminished their efficiency, and many officers of experience lamented the change. But any report to that effect was naturally offensive to the higher military authorities; and those who were most alive to the growing evil found that it was best for their own interests to keep their opinion to themselves.

Calcutta, Dumdum, Barrackpore, Berhampore.

It has been seen that Calcutta was garrisoned by a single regiment of Europeans, one wing being quartered in Fort William and the other in the arsenal at Dumdum, about seven miles off. Nine miles north of Dumdum, and sixteen miles north of Calcutta, is the pleasant station of Barrackpore, where the Governor-General has a park and country mansion, and where four sepoy regiments were cantoned with their European officers, but without European troops. About 100 miles still further north is the station of Berhampore, hard by the old capital of Murshedabad; and here a regiment of sepoy infantry was posted, with half a regiment of sepoy cavalry and a battery of sepoy artillery.

Sepoy huts and lines.

A sepoy regiment in the Bengal army was cantoned in ten rows of huts, a company of 100 sepoys in each row. The arms and ammunition of each company were kept in a circular magazine in the front of each line. The European officers, with or without wives and families, lived round about in one-storied houses with thatched roofs, known as bungalows. The European officers rarely visited the sepoy lines during the heat of the day, but two European sergeants were appointed to each regiment to lodge close to the lines and report all that was going on.

Enfield rifle: musketry schools at Dumdum, Meerut, and Sealkote.

§4. In 1856 the Russian war was over, and the Enfield rifle, which had been used with such success in the Crimea, was introduced into India. Accordingly three musketry schools were established in Northern India for teaching the sepoys of the Bengal army the use of the new rifle. One school was established at Dumdum for the instruction of the sepoys in the Bengal presidency; another at Meerut, forty miles from Delhi, for those in the North-Western Provinces; and the third at Sealkote for those in the Punjab. Under this arrangement, detachments from the different regiments were to be sent from time to time to one or other of these schools until the whole Bengal army was familiar with the use of the Enfield. It will be seen hereafter that the three most dangerous mutinies in India grew out of these musketry schools.

Greased cartridges.

In those days every sepoy and soldier had been accustomed for generations to bite off the end of his paper cartridge before loading his musket. Accordingly a supply of cartridges for the new rifle was received from England, and forwarded to each of the three schools, and further supplies of the same pattern were manufactured in the arsenal at Dumdum by low-caste workmen known as Lascars. Suddenly it leaked out that the new cartridges were greased with the fat of cows, or with the fat of pigs. Thus every Hindu sepoy who bit the cartridge would lose his caste and religion as if he had eaten beef; whilst every Mohammedan sepoy would be polluted by contact with pork, and not only lose his religion, but be barred out for ever from the heaven of celestial houris.

Discovery at Dumdum.

A Lascar employed in Dumdum arsenal met a Brahman sepoy going to Barrackpore, and asked him for a drink of water out of his brass lotah. This was an unusual request, intended to vex and annoy the Brahman. A thirsty low-caste Hindu might ask a high-caste man to pour water into his mouth, but would not offend the Brahman by the bare suggestion of drinking out of his lotah. The Brahman turned away in disgust at the idea of low-caste lips polluting his drinking-cup. The Lascar retorted that the Brahman would soon be as impure as himself, for he would bite the new cartridges which had been smeared with the fat of cows and pigs, and would lose caste altogether.

Horror of Hindus and Mohammedans.

The Brahman was thunderstruck at this taunt. Europeans who have never visited India can scarcely realise the horrors that must have seized on his Brahmanised imagination. Suet and lard are such familiar ingredients in European cookery, that no one in the British Isles could have been surprised at their being used for greasing Enfield cartridges. But to Europeans that have lived in India, the bare fact that cartridges should have been greased with suet or lard, to be bitten by Hindu or Mohammedan sepoys, seems a mad freak of fortune which is altogether incomprehensible. In the fierce antagonism between the two religions, Hindus have thrown dead pigs into Mohammedan mosques, and Mohammedans have thrown slaughtered cows into Hindu temples; but the British government stood on neutral ground. It had always professed to hold an even balance between the two religionists, and any attempt to destroy the caste of Hindus, or the religion of Mohammedans, was altogether foreign to the ideas of Asiatics or Europeans.

Pigs unclean.

It is easy to understand why both Hindus and Mohammedans regard swine as unclean. The Jews have had the same horror of pigs and pork from time immemorial. To this day, both Hindus and Mohammedans shudder, or affect to shudder, at the idea of Europeans cleaning their teeth with brushes made of bristles; and none but those of enlarged experiences, who have been Europeanised out of their religious prejudices, or smitten with a passion for European luxuries, would venture to eat a slice of ham.

Cow worship.

The cow is not more to Mohammedans than it is to Europeans, but the Hindus worship it as a deity. Gratitude for the milk and butter which she gives to the family has swelled into affection and adoration, which have invested a common-place animal with attributes that are at once mystic and divine. The cow is the living representative to the Hindu of all that is beautiful and spiritual in women, and of all that is mysterious in the sex. The cow is the incarnation of the earth, the mother of all things, the goddess of good fortune, the living manifestation of Lakshmi; she who was created by the gods, who descended from the heaven of Indra and churned the ocean, until the bright goddess rose out of the waves, like a Hindu Aphrodite, to become the wife of the supreme spirit, Vishnu. To kill a cow is a sacrilegious crime, like killing a Brahman, a woman, or a Raja. To taste the flesh of a cow is as revolting to the Hindu imagination as tasting the flesh of a mother.