Dalit Participation in the 1857 Revolt

In fact the 1857 revolt has been completed more than 160 years but Dalit participation is not recognised till today. In fact then Dalit point of view was not being taken very seriously. It could be very easily labeled as pro-colonial and different from mainstream and ignored as an individualistic point of view. However feeble opposition it might have been but it is true that after 1859 there has been a long standing Shudra point of view which refused to accept 1857 as a national freedom struggle and have rejoiced that it was quelled and resulted in the continuous presence of the British in India. “History will, we conceive, take a very different view of the facts of the great Indian revolt of 1857 what the contemporaries have taken of them” .

In it, the first and important voice was that of Jotirao Phule who had felicitated those Mahar soldiers who had helped the British in quelling the revolt. He had written a letter to the then Viceroy and expressed happiness that the British stayed in India. And did not leave the millions of the Shudras and the Dalits to the mercy of the Brahmins. He said, “God was merciful enough to the Shudras to have crushed the revolt led by Brahmin Nana Phandvis. He was aware that the British were there today and would be gone tomorrow, hence the need for the Shudras to hurry. Dhananjay Keer has commented; “Jotirao was happy to see that British had brought education, science and justice for all…..”

Dalit tradition after Jotirao Phule also expressed similar sentiments about British rule from time to time which very clearly project their bias in favor of the British. If given a choice between British slavery which for the first time opened to them the doors of education, army and civil services, equality before law and freedom from such laws which established a state based on the Shastras and the Samrities, the obvious choice would have been British slavery. This slavery had given them a right to live as human beings for the first time. Arun Shourie has referred to, sometimes rightly and sometimes out of context, such views of Dr. Ambedkar in trying to prove him to be a stooge of the British.

The followers of Dr. Ambedkar did not have the courage to face Shourie on the plane of principles. Sometimes they tried to smear his face black ad some times quoted Ambedkar to prove that he was patriotic in the same sense as the caste Hindu leaders like Tilak, Shardanand and Gandhi were. But now Dalit discourse has matured to search for their space in this declared First War of Independence and now non-Dalit discourse cannot afford to ignore it as it was done in 1907 and 1957.

It is necessary to understand various myths about 1857. Some accepted notions are as follows:

*    It was a national freedom struggle of local rulers and soldiers which was backed by insurmountable desire of freedom from the British slavery.
*    1857 should be viewed as a period of Indian New Awakening especially that of Hindi belt.

These notions need to be judged from Dalit point of view in order to form a rational discourse.

Firstly, let us see to what extent this revolt was national? To understand it, it is essential to know whether in 1857 India was a nation? Here nation does not mean a nation state or a national state. Today the area which is said to be from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and which in 1947 also included the parts today known as Pakistan and Bangladesh, the beginning was really made by the British to make it into a single political unit as a nation, although there might have been expansionist and exploitation interest behind it. The modern view of a nation state and resultant national feelings developed during industrial revolution of 17th and 18th century Europe and the search for new colonies to sell products developed and flourished out of this struggle. No such Industrial Revolution took place in India necessitating sale of surplus products abroad.

At the time of arrival of East India Company and till the outbreak of revolt against them in 1857, the area which today we call India was a conglomeration of numerous small and big independent sovereign states. Their rulers fought among themselves and not only did not help each other against external aggression but also extended help to external aggressors depending upon their own need and self-interest. They had their own currency, flags and tax system. It is not such that there was dearth of such factors in this vast land which could make it a nation state. This land surrounded by sea and mountains facilitated their mixing among themselves more than the rest of the World.

The geographical boundary helped the residents to develop a loose religion which the outsiders called by the name of Hinduism. This religion was free from compulsions of a religious prophet and a revealed religious book. This Hindu nomenclature covered monotheist, pantheist, worshippers of trees and stones, atheists and skeptics. Its devotional centers were spread all over the area which changed into a nation state by 1947. Religious and trade fairs and common caste memories had the capacity to form a nation state even without the British help. But they could not make it as such. Never before the British there was a situation when this vast land could become a nation state under a central power having a central army and a monetary system.

M.S. Golvarkar defining the Indian Nation has said, “Aryans had settled in India at the dawn of the history and a nation took birth which is inherent in Hindus only.” At another place he wrote,” In Hindustan, Hindus are a nation themselves”. Gollvarkar had forgotten that a nation is not a piece of geographical land. A nation is formed by common dreams, common memories and common past and future of millions and millions of people inhabiting it. He also forgot that a nation can be formed based on religion but inherent contradictions of Hinduism can prevent it from performing this necessary role.

It is possible that people with different dresses, eating habits and religious traditions can join together to form a nation and there are such examples in the world. But the people with a life philosophy in which a power controlling minority treats the majority worse than animals and this subhuman majority has no stake, cannot become a nation. Dr. Ambedkar has also remarked during his speech in the Constituent Assembly on November, 1949: “I am of the opinion that in believing that we are a nation, we are cherishing a great delusion. How can people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation? The sooner we realize that we are not as yet a nation in the social and psychological sense of the word, the better for us”

Dalit in Hindu Framework

In India education and military duties were denied to ninety percent of the people. The absence of the stake of the Shudras in the state can be compared only with the position of slaves in a state but their position was different from that of slaves in some ways. Firstly there has been no state where the slaves outnumbered the rulers. Secondly the doors of freedom were not totally closed in slavery. A slave could free himself by paying a certain amount or displaying bravery in a war but a Shudra had no way of liberation. Once born as a Shudra he had to suffer deprivation till his death. This deprivation kept him totally aloof from the state. Whosoever ruled the state did not matter to him.

This aloofness prevented him from joining hands with his exploiters to form a nation. The masters of slaves used them as soldiers also. Many wars were won with the bravery of slaves and many times they rose to very high ranks in army. In India, Shudras were slaves but their masters preferred to lose wars rather than allowing them to fight the enemy. They feared that once the Shudras were allowed to carry weapons, it will be difficult to keep them under control. If we accept India as a nation before the arrival of the British, it will be a sole example of a nation in the world which did not win a single significant victory against foreign invaders.

A few hundreds of Muslim or European invaders used to come and defeat many times larger army of Rajputs. If in place of Rajputs, Chamars, Bahngis, Dusads, Mahars or other Shudra castes were given a right to fight, the history of defeats would have been different and it could have helped us in becoming a nation. In Indian subcontinent only 1971 war was won by us as a nation but it was possible when we had a large number of Dalits and Shudras in our army. Another danger could have arisen if we had allowed the Dalits to fight side by side in the battle field. This danger was of power sharing or participation in power. If a Dalit fought side by side with a Rajput, he would have certainly asked for the price of the blood shed by him.

Nationalistic Feelings in Revolt

Now let us see as to what extent the participants in the so called freedom struggle were motivated by nationalistic feelings. The whole struggle rested on two pillars. One was the native rulers and the other pillar was in the form of Company soldiers. The rulers who revolted were actually fighting against the usurpation of their states by the Company. There was hardly anyone whose state was not annexed by the Company by hook or by crook. Those who were spared did not participate in the revolt and those who were dethroned on some pretext before the revolt, made pleadings through all means for restoring their states. It is a different thing that no state was restored.

In this context, this statement of Rani Laxmibai before the British Resident is very important in which she said,” I will not give my Jhansi.” What if Jhansi had been given to her, where would have been Rani Laxmibai in this struggle? Similar was the case with deposed princes also. Thus Nana Sahib, the adopted son of Peshwa Baji Rao II, assumed the leadership in Kanpur, Begam Hazrat Mahal took control over Lucknow, Khan Bahadur Khan in Rohilkhand and Rani Laxmibai appeared as the leader of the sepoys in Jhansi, although earlier she was prepared to accept British hegemony if her adopted son was recognized as the legitimate heir to the throne. In other areas of central India where there was no such dispossession, like Indore, Gwalior, Sagar or parts of Rajasthan, where the sepoys rebelled, the princes remained loyal to the British.

As regards the civilian revolt Bandyopadhyay has remarked:” it is much difficult to explain the civilian revolt that accompanied the mutiny. As colonial rule had different impact on Indian society, the latter’s responses were also widely variegated. First of all, regions and people who were beneficiaries of colonial rule did not revolt. Bengal and Punjab remained peaceful; the entire south India remained unaffected too. On the other hand, those who revolted had two elements among them- the feudal elements and the big landlords on the one hand and the peasantry on the other. Different classes had different grievances and the nature of grievances also varied from region to region. So far as the feudal elements were concerned, their major grievance was against the annexation under the Lord Dalhousie’s ‘doctrine of Lapse’ which derecognized the adopted sons of the deceased princes as legal heirs and their kingdoms were annexed.

In this way, Satara (1848), Nagpur, Sambalpur and Baghat (1850), Udaipur (1852), and Jhansi were taken over in quick succession. This amounted to British interference in the traditional system of inheritance and created a group of disgruntled feudal lords who had every reason to join the ranks of the rebels. Finally, in February 1856 Awadh was annexed and the king was deported to Calcutta. The annexation did not merely affect the nawab and his family, but the entire aristocracy attached to the royal court. These deposed princes in many cases offered leadership to the revolt” (ibid). It is worth mentioning that under the British the peasantry felt more exploited than before and they accepted the leadership of the deposed rulers and the landlords and joined the mutiny.

Here also one thing is very clear that the aggrieved rulers were also reluctant to participate in the revolt to begin with, rather they were forced to lead by the revolting soldiers.The then Kotwal of Paharganj Delhi, Moenuddin Hassan has written an eyewitness account that how even after two days of the arrival of the mutineers in Delhi from Meerut, Bahadur Shah Zafar was reluctant and when forced by them hesitantly joined the meeting against the British. It is true that Daroga Moenuddin Hasan was a faithful servant of the British and his statement cannot be accepted without supporting evidence. But it should not be forgotten that non from the courtesan writers of Bahadur Shah Zafar has written anywhere that the King himself invoked others for the revolt. He simply continued to give petitions to Queen Victoria.

The same was the case of Jhansi where Rani Laxmibai was forced by the revolting soldiers to lead them. She was actually threatened with death if she did not assist the sepoys or collaborated with the British. The plight of the native rulers, who joined 1857 mutiny was the same everywhere. It is a mere gesture that if these native rulers of petty states who fought with each other had succeeded and after expelling the British to what extent would have come together to form a nation state under Bahadur-Shah-Zafar or some central leadership.

The Company’s Sepoys Participation in Revolt

In this meeting most important role was played by the Sepoys of the Company. These were the soldiers who firstly began the age of professional soldiers in India. They were professional in the sense that they were not selected on the basis of their lineage but their physical fitness. They lived together as platoon members; they were jointly given military training. They got regular pay which not being dependent on the sweet will or kindness of someone was in the form of a fixed pay scale. They fought war for worldly aims, though they could not rise very high in the rank but could attain the rank of Subedar with their seniority and bravery. Their officers had also come through their merit. It is true that due to feudal likings of the British society, certain boys of feudal families entered the army but a large number of them came from other classes known as commoners.

Before the British such sepoys were neither with the Moslem nor with Hindu Kings. It was on the strength of organized, trained and disciplined sepoys of Clive numbering 3000 (2200 natives and 800 Europeans) who had defeated a large army of 30,000 of Siraj-ud-Daulah in the battle of Plassey in 1756. The Sepoys of Siraj-ud-Daulah did not get regular pay and they were segments of the armies of different feudals requisitioned during war. There were some dangers also in keeping such organized and cantonment based army. It was easy to incite them to disaffection and very difficult to crush them. In May, 1857 the British faced a similar situation when the revolt broke out in one after the other cantonment and it took them more than one year to quell it.