PaRCha - JNU - AISA material - 2007 ID-20585
.
the Bengal Army thought that they had a common identity. Hence, when one set of sepoys revolted, the others could not hold back. When we deprecate the term Mutiny given to the Revolt of 1857, we should not at the same time underestimate the vital role of the rebelling soldiers in the uprising. They remained throughout its course the backbone of the Revolt. The proper estimation of the Sepoys role in the rebellion is found in even the conventional narrative of Vincent Smith in his Oxford History of India (1916). One finds him speaking of how these hundred and twenty thousand men, went to their deaths, on the battlefield, or on the gallows, or in the tarai defiles; any one hardly escaping, with few ever surrendering. The Bengal Army Sepoys certainly deserve every tribute we can offer them, and the memory of their staunchness in resistance and suffering would hopefully live forever in the heart of the Indian people. .
It is also true that the rebel soldiers immediately found response in the civil population. The areas, where the Sepoys were recruited from, were immediately convulsed by a widespread sense of sympathy for the rebels; and other classes also revolted. .
A very well documented article, by Talmiz Khaldun in a volume on 1857 edited by P.C. Joshi argues that the Revolt turned into a peasant war against indigenous landlordism and foreign imperialism, and was thus primarily an anti-feudal movement, and only secondarily an anti-colonial uprising. One would agree with P.C. Joshi that this is an unjustified dilution of the anti-colonial character of 1857 and very unrealistic in its excluding landlord classes from the ranks of the Rebels. It is naturally also not in accordance with Marxs assessment of the rebellion of 1857, as we have seen. To him, it was a revolution, a national revolt, in which the peasants, as well as section of the zamindars and the talukdars were also involved. All the classes in India were adversely affected by imperialism at that time, and the contradiction between Imperialism and the Indian people was at that particular juncture concentrated in those areas, where the Bengal Army Sepoys mostly came from. The land tax was intensely heavy there; and the land rights of the zamindars were being rendered increasingly vulnerable to forfeiture. The annexation of Oudh had taken place in 1856; and the talukdars, who were the great landed magnates of Oudh were threatened with the imposition of the same Mahalwari system that had ruined landed classes in the rest of the province. So there was a situation, in which both the peasants and the landed classes had to bear oppression from the same source. .
.
PaRCha - JNU - AISA material - 2007 ID-20585
.
the Bengal Army thought that they had a common identity. Hence, when one set of sepoys revolted, the others could not hold back. When we deprecate the term Mutiny given to the Revolt of 1857, we should not at the same time underestimate the vital role of the rebelling soldiers in the uprising. They remained throughout its course the backbone of the Revolt. The proper estimation of the Sepoys role in the rebellion is found in even the conventional narrative of Vincent Smith in his Oxford History of India (1916). One finds him speaking of how these hundred and twenty thousand men, went to their deaths, on the battlefield, or on the gallows, or in the tarai defiles; any one hardly escaping, with few ever surrendering. The Bengal Army Sepoys certainly deserve every tribute we can offer them, and the memory of their staunchness in resistance and suffering would hopefully live forever in the heart of the Indian people. .
It is also true that the rebel soldiers immediately found response in the civil population. The areas, where the Sepoys were recruited from, were immediately convulsed by a widespread sense of sympathy for the rebels; and other classes also revolted. .
A very well documented article, by Talmiz Khaldun in a volume on 1857 edited by P.C. Joshi argues that the Revolt turned into a peasant war against indigenous landlordism and foreign imperialism, and was thus primarily an anti-feudal movement, and only secondarily an anti-colonial uprising. One would agree with P.C. Joshi that this is an unjustified dilution of the anti-colonial character of 1857 and very unrealistic in its excluding landlord classes from the ranks of the Rebels. It is naturally also not in accordance with Marxs assessment of the rebellion of 1857, as we have seen. To him, it was a revolution, a national revolt, in which the peasants, as well as section of the zamindars and the talukdars were also involved. All the classes in India were adversely affected by imperialism at that time, and the contradiction between Imperialism and the Indian people was at that particular juncture concentrated in those areas, where the Bengal Army Sepoys mostly came from. The land tax was intensely heavy there; and the land rights of the zamindars were being rendered increasingly vulnerable to forfeiture. The annexation of Oudh had taken place in 1856; and the talukdars, who were the great landed magnates of Oudh were threatened with the imposition of the same Mahalwari system that had ruined landed classes in the rest of the province. So there was a situation, in which both the peasants and the landed classes had to bear oppression from the same source. .
.