What was the Indian Rebellion of 1857 ?

Eventually all 10 Bengal Light Cavalry Regiments and most of the 74 Bengal Native Infantry Regiments were affected.

Some units were disarmed before they had the chance to mutiny. In other cases, British officers refused to believe their men would rebel until it was too late. Not everyone who mutinied took up arms against the British.

Many simply went home and refused to assist either side.

Confined to Bengal

Confined to Bengal

There were only 35,000 British soldiers in the whole subcontinent and these were widely scattered. Reinforcements took months to arrive. Fortunately for the British, it was almost exclusively soldiers of the Bengal Army who mutinied.

The Company’s Madras and Bombay Armies were relatively unaffected and other Indian units - including Sikhs, Punjabi Muslims and Gurkhas - supported the British. This was partly due to their fear of a return to Mughal rule.

They also had little in common with the high caste Hindu sepoys of the Bengal Army.

Religious and social revolt

Thousands of common people joined the revolt. Some for religious reasons, others out of loyalty to their old rulers or simply to engage in looting.

Many wanted to destroy the system by which the Company collected taxes. Peasants, who had been forced to switch from subsistence farming to export crops in order to meet increasing tax demands, needed little encouragement to rebel.

Rebel divisions

It was not a unified revolt. While all wanted the British gone, notions of ‘Indianness’ were rare.

Most of the sepoys hoped to restore Mughal rule under Bahadur Shah. But the inhabitants of Oudh wanted their Nawab back, and the people of Jhansi wanted their old state restored.

The revolt was also divided on religious lines. Most sepoys were Hindus, but other rebels were Muslims fighting a holy war.

Decisive events

But the main centres of rebellion were Delhi, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Jhansi and Gwalior. The future of India would be decided on these battlefields.

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