First Indian War of Independence:

Sepoy Mutiny:

India’s First War of Independence, termed Sepoy Riots by the British was a fight against the invading British, East India Company’s army, to restore power under the Mogul emperor Bahadur Shah. The fight could not be sustained due to lack of leadership and unity on the part of Indians and on the other side as to cruel suppression by the British Army. This Sepoy mutiny marked the end of the Mogul empire and India became a British colony for the next hundred years.

Causes of Revolt:

(i) In 1856 the news spread that Indian troops were to be recruited for the service in Burma where the Indian Force would not be allowed to follow their entire customary religious rule. Indians were religious from ancient times. Those Indians who were working for the British Army could not sacrifice their religious faith of deep rooted traditions.

(ii) To increase the efficiency, the British Force of East India Company introduced the new rifles; to operate the sepoys had to bite the cartridge open. It was believed that the paper cartridges were greased with lard (pork fat) which was unacceptable to Muslims or cow fat which was anathema to Hindus. All these created underground resentment in the minds of Indian personals in British Force.

(iii)There was recruitment in the British army on the basis of caste and not on merit. There was difference in the pay structure of the Army of different regions. There was no provision for pension. It was circulated in the London news paper that “This encouragement of high caste ritual status, however, left the government vulnerable to protest, whenever the sepoys detected infringement of their prerogative”. It was the belief of the common men that East India Company was masterminding mass conversion of Hindus and Muslims to Christianity by the missionaries.

 Action of Revolt:

It was May 10, 1857 Mangal Pandey, a soldier in the Army shot his commander for forcing the Indian troops to use controversial cartridge of rifles  spreading the violence quickly all over as the Indians constituted 96% of the 300,000 British Army. Delhi was besieged by the mutineers. Street fighting continued. Bahadur Shah, the descendant of the Mogul dynasty, was popularly acclaimed as the leader of the mutiny. On June 8 as soon as a British relief force arrived, they were themselves besieged by the mutineers. The British brought the army from other regions to Delhi. The fresh arrival of British Force increased the moral of the army. After six days of severe fighting, Delhi was recaptured with the arrest of Bahadur Shah who was exiled to Burma.

The capture of Delhi could not stop the revolt rather it spread to new areas. Meerut, the rural area of Delhi, Cawnpore (Kanpur), Lucknow, Jhansi, and Gwalior were the centers of rebellion. The revolt had quickly spread to Kanpur, a city controlled by the British on the bank of river Ganga 250 miles southeast of Delhi, and to Lucknow, forty-five miles away from Delhi. It also spread to the town of Meerut and largely to present-day Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and the Delhi region. The other regions such as Bengal province, the Bombay Presidency, and the Madras Presidency remained largely calm. The princely states such as Hyderabad, Mysore, Travancore, Kashmir, the states of Rajputana, the princes of Sikh did not join the rebellion.

In some other regions, the rebellion took the turn of patriotic revolt against European presence. The revel leader such as Rani of Jhansi became heroes in the nationalist movement in India at later stage. The Maratha General Taya Tope, spread the revolt by a roving band of rebels against the British Army. However in April 1859, he was captured and executed.

Suppression of Revolt: After the mutiny, the East India Company was dissolved in 1858 and India was thereafter directly ruled by the Crown in the new British Raj. Sir Colin Campbell, the British commander, took more than a year to quell the rebel in different places in spite of the loyalty of the Sikh troops, a well trained Indian Army troops.

Causes of Failure of Revolt: There were many causes for failure: (i) Many native Indian states were influenced by the powerful state like Hyderabad who prevented them to join the rebels. (ii) The strong, well trained Sikh soldiers of Punjab did not join in the revolt rather they helped the British to suppress the revolt. (iii) Bahadur Shah was neither a brave general nor an aggressive leader rather over burdened with the aging effect.

New Strategy of British Rule: In England, in the center of criticism and allegation against the East India Company, the British Crown assumed control of India from East India Company and hand over the political authority to a secretary of state in August 1858 for a better administration for the Government of India. In 1877, Queen Victoria was crowned as the Empress of India. It was only after the emergence of Indian National Congress in 1886 and Mahatma Gandhi in the beginning of twenty century that the Indians regrouped to focus the highest momentum for home rule.

Maniram Dewan, a martyr of Assam in Sepoy Mutiny:

India is a vast country consisting of more than five hundred princely states before independence. East India Company established their rules only in major cities and in few states only. The state Assam is far away from Delhi at the extreme eastern corner of present India. There was a time when the Ahom King lost its military strength due to infighting. Taking the advantage of royal chaos the Burmese established their influence over Assam and later started a rein of terror. To save Assam from the Burmese onslaught, Maniram Dewan, a visionary influenced the British administration at Calcutta to take over Assam. He first met the British Official of East India Co. at Jagighopa, Goalpara of Bengal wherefrom British Army marched to East to driven away the Burmese invaders and finally reached Nagaon. In the course of time British Rule prevailed in the territory of Ahom Kingdom. But Maniram Dewan later could realize that the British had arrived here to exploit the common people instead of doing anything good for them- administratively, economically or commercially. He was a pioneer in the Tea plantation of Assam. The popularity of Assam Tea was immense in the city of London. To get credit of Tea-plantation in Assam of India, the British removed him Tea Center and spread the news of success of Tea-plantation in Assam by the British. Maniram Dewan decided to high light the grievances of the people to Lt.Governor of Bengal, Sir John Campbell. He ventilated the grievances of the people of Assam to the British Raj at Sibsagar on 5 June 1853 and demanded the restoration of Ahom Kingdom. This made him an enemy to British Raj. Finding no response from the British administration he resolved to take direct action. This was the beginning of his secret plan to rouse the arms struggle in Assam. Although he rested at Calcutta, he established in every districts and every quarter, the center of training for arms struggle. He used to send information to these centers through secret letter of instructions being given in codes. One such letter by mistake went to Col.Holroyd, the Principal Assistant of Sibsagar. Holroyd, the clever English fellow, very skillfully arranged everything to arrest Maniram Dewan at Calcutta and also arranged to send him back to Jorhat of Assam. In the court a mockery of justice was done in a single day by giving him the judgment of death penalty and that was 23 February. He was sent to gallows on 26 February, 1958. The tragedy lied before the burnt of planned arm struggle.