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Context

Savarkar's 1909 work reinterpreted the 1857 uprising as a unified struggle for Indian independence

About The Indian War of Independence 1857                                                                                               

Major Causes

       The Economic Causes

• High rate of taxation
• Peasants were ruined through exorbitant charges made from their lands by the new class of landlords established under the Zamindari system introduced by the British.
• Middle & upper classes, particularly in the Northern India, were hard hit by their exclusion from the well-paid higher posts in the administration.
• Discriminatory tariff policy against Indian products & destruction of traditional handicrafts resulted into deindustrialization which resulted in unemployment.
• The craftsmen were destroyed by the influx of the British manufactured goods
• Systems of law & administration: corruption & oppression

      The Political Causes

• Company’s greedy policy of aggrandizement accompanied by broken pledges and promises resulted in loss of
  • political prestige.
• Policy of Trade & Commerce,- greatly hampered the interests of the rulers of the native states.
  • British Policy
• Effective Control
• Subsidiary Alliance
• Doctrine of Lapse
• Direct annexation as in the case of Mysore & Sindh.

      The Military Causes

• Overseas deployment (General Service Enlistment Act, 1856)
• Salary discrimination among same ranks
• Refusal to pay bhatta (Foreign service allowance)
• Soldiers were considered inferior & higher posts were exclusively reserved for Britishers.
• Post office Act of 1854
• Religious identities seemed to be in crisis.
• Regular humiliation
• Peasant in Uniform

Administrative Causes

• Rampant corruption in Company’s administration.
• Complex Judicial system
• The character of British rule imparted a foreign and alien look: absentee sovereignty.
• Exclusion of the natives from high appointments
• Misgovernment
• Prejudice

      The Socio religious Causes

• Threat of conversion:
• The Religious Disabilities Act of 1850/ Lex Loci Act of 1850
• Modified Hindu customs; a change of religion did not debar a son from inheriting the property of his father.
• The rumor was that the English were conspiring to convert the Indians to Christianity.
• Reforms like Abolition of Sati (Regulation XVII, A.D 1829 of Bengal code).
• The policy to tax religious schools further anguished both Hindus & Muslims.
• Racial discrimination by British against Indians, forceful conversion to Christianity.
• The English described the Hindus as barbarian with hardly any trace of culture or civilization, while Muslims were
• dubbed as bigots, cruel & faithless.

       The Immediate Cause

• When the atmosphere was surcharged with an anti-British feeling the episode of the greased cartridges provided
• the spark which turned it into a conflagration.
• The new 'Enfield Rifle' introduced by the British in the army needed a special type of cartridge which had a greased
• paper cover.
• This paper had to be bitten off before the cartridge was loaded into the rifle rumour was that the grease used in the
• paper was made of beef & pig fat.
• Reports about the mixing of bone dust in atta (flour).
• This angered both the Hindu & the Muslim sepoys- both the communities felt that their religions were at stake.

Reasons for failure

• Certain classes & groups did not join &, in fact, worked against the revolt.
• Big zamindars acted as "breakwaters to storm”.
• Moneylenders & merchants suffered the wrath of the mutineers badly & anyway saw their class interests better protected under British patronage.
• Limited territorial spread.
• Lack of complete nationalism.
• British forces were better equipped with technology & arms.

                  Lack of coordination 

     Impact of the Revolt

• 100 years of the rule of the EIC marked the zenith of exploitation in India. And this exploitation was in all directions, i.e. social, economical, & political life of Indians
• The intensity of the revolt of 1857, although confined in certain pockets, was so high that it shook the

backbone of British rule in India, & it also proved the fact that the EIC which was basically a trading

organization was not efficient enough in tackling Indian administration.

INDIAN EXPRESS