K. Marx. The Revolt in the Indian Army
The Roman Divide et impera* was the great rule by which Great Britain, for about one hundred and fifty years, contrived to retain the tenure of her Indian empire. The antagonism of the various races, tribes, castes, creeds and sovereignties, the aggregate of which forms the geographical unity of what is called India, continued to be the vital principle of British supremacy. In later times, however, the conditions of that supremacy have undergone a change. With the conquest of Scinde and the Punjaub,[348] the Anglo-Indian empire had not only reached its natural limits, but it had trampled out the last vestiges of independent Indian States. All warlike native tribes were subdued, all serious internal conflicts were at an end, and the late incorporation of Oude[349] proved satisfactorily that the remnants of the so-called independent Indian principalities exist on sufferance only. Hence a great change in the position of the East Indian Company. It no longer attacked one part of India by the help of another part, but found itself placed at the head, and the whole of India at its feet. No longer conquering, it had become the conqueror. The armies at its disposition no longer had to extend its dominion, but only to maintain it. From soldiers they were converted into policemen; 200,000,000 natives being curbed by a native army of 200,000 men, officered by Englishmen, and that native army, in its turn, being kept in check by an English army numbering 40,000 only. On first view, it is evident that the allegiance of the Indian people rests on the fidelity of the native army, in creating which the British rule simultaneously organized the first general center of resistance which the Indian people was ever possessed of. How far that native army may be relied upon is clearly shown by its recent mutinies, breaking out as soon as the war with Persia had almost denuded the Presidency[350] of Bengal of its European soldiers. Before this there had been mutinies in the Indian army, but the present revolt[351] is distinguished by characteristic and fatal features. It is the first time that sepoy regiments have murdered their European officers; that Mussulmans and Hindoos, renounc-ing their mutual antipathies, have combined against their common masters; that
"disturbances beginning with the Hindoos, have actually ended in placing on the throne of Delhi a Mohammedan Emperor;" (1)
• that the mutiny has not been confined to a few localities; and lastly, that the revolt in the Anglo-Indian army has coincided with a general disaffection exhibited against English supremacy on the part of the great Asiatic nations, the revolt of the Bengal army being, beyond doubt, intimately connected with the Persian and Chinese wars.[352]
The alleged cause of the dissatisfaction which began to spread four months ago in the Bengal army was the apprehension on the part of tht natives lest the Government should interfere with their religion. The serving out of cartridges, the paper of which was said to have been greased with the fat of bullocks and pigs, and the compulsory biting[353] of which was, therefore, considered by the natives as an infringement of their religious prescriptions, gave the signal for local disturbances. On the 22nd of January. an incendiary fire broke out in cantonments a short distance from Calcutta. On the 25th of February the 19th native regiment mutinied at Berhampore the men objecting to the cartridges served out to them. On the 31st of March that regiment was disbanded; at the end of March the 34th sepoy regiment, stationed at Barrackpore, allowed one of its men (2) to advance with a loaded musket upon the parade-ground in front of the line, and, after having called his comrades to mutiny, he was permitted to attack and wound the Adjutant(3) and Sergeant-Màjor of his regiment. During the hand-to-hand conflict, that ensued, hundreds of sepoys looked passively on, while others participated in the struggle, and attacked the officers with the butt ends of their muskets.
Subsequently that regiment was also disbanded. The month of April was signalized by incendiary fires in several cantonments of the Bengal army at Allahabad, Agra, Umballah, by a mutiny of the 3d regiment of light cavalry at Meerut, and by similar appearances of disaffection in the Madras and Bombay armies. At the beginning of May an émeute was preparing at Lucknow, the capital of Oude, which was, however, prevented by the promp-titude of Sir H. Lawrence. On the 9th of May the mutineers of the 3d light cavalry of Meerut were marched off to jail, to undergo the various terms of imprisonment to which they were sentenced. On the evening of the following day the troopers of the 3d cavalry, together with the two native regiments, the 11th and 20th, assembled upon the parade-ground, killed the officers endeavoring to pacify them, set fire to the cantonments, and slew all the Englishmen they were able to lay hands on. Although the British part of the brigade mustered a regiment of infantry, another of cavalry, and an overwhelming force of horse and foot artillery, they were not able to move until nightfall. Having inflicted but little harm on the mutineers, they allowed them to betake themselves to the open field and to throw themselves into Delhi, some forty miles distant from Meerut. There they were joined by the native garrison, consisting of the 38th, 54th and 74th regiments of infantry, and a company of native artillery. The British officers were attacked, all Englishmen within reach of the rebels were murdered, and the heir of the late Mogul(4) of Delhi proclaimed King of India. Of the troops sent to the rescue of Meerut, where order had been re-established, six companies of native sappers and miners, who arrived on the 15th of May, murdered their commanding officer, Major Frazer, and made at once for the open country, pursued by troops of horse artillery and several of the 6th dragoon guards. Fifty or sixty of the mutineers were shot, but the rest contrived to escape to Delhi. At Ferozepore, in the Punjaub, the 57th and 45th native infantry regiments mutinied, but were put down by force. Private letters from Lahore state the whole of the native troops to be in an undisguised state of mutiny. On the 19th of May, unsuccessful efforts were made by the sepoys stationed at Calcutta to get possession of Fort St. William.[355] Three regiments arrived from Bushire at Bombay were at once dispatched to Calcutta.
In reviewing these events, one is startled by the conduct of the British commander at Meeruta his late appearance on the field of battle being still less incomprehensible than the weak manner in which he pursued the mutineers. As Delhi is situated on the right and Meerut on the left bank of the Jumna — the two banks being joined at Delhi by one bridge only — nothing could have been easier than to cut off the retreat of the fugitives.
Meanwhile, martial law has been proclaimed in all the disaffected districts; forces, consisting of natives mainly, are concentrating against Delhi from the north, the east and the south; the neighboring princes are said to have pronounced for the English; letters have been sent to Ceylon to stop Lord Elgin and Gen. Ashburnham's forces, on their way to China; and finally, 14,000 British troops were to be dispatched from England to India in about a fortnight. Whatever obstacles the climate of India at the present season, and the total want of means of transportation, may oppose to the movements of the British forces, the rebels at Delhi are very likely to succumb without any prolonged resistance. Yet, even then, it is only the prologue of a most terrible tragedy that will have to be enacted.
Semi-Weekly Tribune, No. 1267, July 17 and the New-York Weekly Tribune, No. 827, July 18, 1857
Endnotes
[348] Scinde, a province of India bordering on Afghanistan, was finally colonised by the British in 1843. On the subjugation of the Punjab see Note 215.
[349] In 1856 the British authorities in India proclaimed the ruler of Oudh (a principality in the north of India) deposed and his possessions incorporated in the territories controlled by the East India Company (see also this volume, pp. 533-38).
[350] The presidency—anv 0f the three original provinces of British India (Bengal, Madras and Bombay). The term was derived from the word "president", a title of the chief of the Council of the principal factory under the East India Company. The title of President was used until 1784, when a parliamentary act was adopted by which governors were appointed instead of presidents.
[351] This refers to the major national liberation uprising of the Indian people against the British rule in 1857-59. It was caused by the indignation of broad sections of the Indian population at colonial exploitation — the exorbitantly high tax burden which led to the complete ruin of the Indian peasants and the expropriation of certain strata of feudal lords; the policy of annexing the remaining independent Indian territories; the system of torture to extort taxes and the colonial reign of terror; gross violation of time-honoured national traditions and customs. The revolt broke out in the spring of 1857 (preparations for it began in mid-1856) among the sepoy units (see Note 256) of the Bengal army quartered in Northern India. They became the military core of the revolt, which assumed wide scope and spread to large areas of Northern and Central India, chiefly Delhi, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Rohilkhand and Bundelkhand. The chief driving force were peasants and urban artisans, but the leadership was in the hands of the feudal lords, the overwhelming majority of whom betrayed the revolt after the colonial authorities promised in 1858 to leave their possessions intact. The main reasons for the defeat of the revolt were: British military and technical superiority, the lack of a single leadership and a general plan of action among the insurgents, as well as contradictory aims largely resulting from the feudal disunity of India; the ethnic heterogeneity of the population and the latter's religious and caste division. Though the revolt did not involve directly certain parts of India (the English managed to prevent its spreading to the Punjab, Bengal and the south of India), it shook the whole country and compelled the British authorities to reform the system of government there. Marx and Engels regularly described the course of the revolt in the columns of the New-York Daily Tribune.
[352] A reference to the Anglo-Persian war of 1856-57 (see Note 252) and the Second Opium War of 1856-60 (see this volume, pp. 158-63, 207-12, 232-35, 243-46, 278-83).
[353] The Indian army was equipped with Enfield rifled guns. When loading a rifle the paper wrapping of a cartridge had to be bitten off. In January 1857 a rumour spread among the Sepoys that the cartridges were greased with the fat of bullocks and pigs. The Sepoys refused to use these cartridges because to touch them meant insult to the religious convictions of the Hindus and Moslems.
[355] Central Asia in the early sixteenth century and in 1526 founded the Empire of the Great Moguls in Northern India. The Great Mogul was the title the Europeans gave to the rulers of the Mogul Empire who called themselves Padishahs and resided in Delhi. The Mogul Empire reached considerable power, having subjugated most of India and part of Afghanistan by the mid-seventeenth century. However, due to peasant rebellions and the growing feudal separatist tendencies, the Empire of the Great Moguls began to decline and practically disintegrated in the first half of the eighteenth century, though formally it lasted until 1858. Here the reference is to Bahadur Shah II, son of Akbar II. 355 fort William—an English fortress built in Calcutta in 1696 and named in honour of William III of Orange, King of England at the time. After the English conquered Bengal in 1757, government institutions were quartered in that fortress and its name began to denote "the English government of India".