First War of Independence 1857 and its impact on India

May 24, 2021 at 12:38 pm by Editorial

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Anupama Nair, www.mediaeyenews.com

May is an important month in our history. I don’t know how many of us remember our freedom struggle and the millions of people who sacrificed their lives for Bharat Maa starting from Prithviraj Chauhan to Netaji Subash Bose. It is noteworthy to remember, that we were slaves for nearly 900 years and now we are a free nation. But the question is are we free as the great Rabindranath Tagore mentioned in Gitanjali:

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action –
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake”.

When you read this poem and ask your conscience and think of the question and you will get the answer. Did the sacrifice of the millions go in vain and we have forgotten them and only give credit to two or three people for our independence and the rest are forgotten in the annals of history never to be remembered. Was it for this day, they selflessly sacrificed their life for you and me, children of Independent India? But is it fair to forget them and their sacrifice?

In the month of May i.e., 10^th, the Revolt of 1857 or First War of Independence started and succeeded in ending the rule of the East India Company within a year. This revolution has the record for most number of lives lost. The great people who revolted against the Company Raj was Mangal Pandey, Tatya Tope, Nana Saheb, Rani Laksmibai and many others. To understand the revolt, I need to take you back many centuries before.

It is a credit to the British, how the merchants who came to do trade with India, within 300 years became the masters of the entire land from Khyber to Chittagong and from Kashmir to Comorin (now Kanya Kumari), i.e., entire sub-continent. The English East India Company was formed by merchants of England to trade with Asia and India the “golden bird” in particular and America. It was formed by Royal Charter on New Year’s Eve on 1600. They landed in the Indian subcontinent on August 24, 1608, at the port of Surat (Gujarat). The Mughal Emperor Jehangir gave them permission to trade in India.

While India has a rich and recorded history going back 7000 years to the great Indus Valley Civilization in Harappa and Mohenjodaro, but England had no indigenous written language until the beginning of 9th century almost 3000 years after India. Then, how was it possible for the British East India Company to start capturing a huge country like India and control it from 1757 to 1857. Other than India, they ruled over one-sixth of the world, including America (US), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malayan Federation and the list goes on… In fact, the empire was called as the “empire where the sun never sets”. It is a credit to India, that with our Independence in 1947, the empire crashed and all countries became free one-by-one.

When the East India Company entered India, the Portuguese, Dutch and the French were already in India, with their dream of making India a colony. The British first eclipsed the Portuguese “Estado da India”, which had established bases in Goa, Chittagong and Bombay. Portugal later gave Bombay as Dowry to England when Portuguese Princess Catherine married Prince Charles II . The British East India Company was fiercely competitive with the Dutch and French throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and managed to reduce their influence.

The Battle of Plassey (1757) and Battle of Buxar (1764) , smoothened their path to conquer the sub-continent. Robert Clive became the first Governor General of British India. By spinning a web of deceit, and many laws like Subsidiary Alliance (Lord Wellesley) and Doctrine of Lapse (Lord Dalhousie), they succeeded in ruling the entire sub-continent by 19^th century. Jawaharlal Nehru in his book Discovery of India quoted “British rule in India had an unsavory beginning and something of that bitter taste has clung to it ever since”.

However, the last Governor General Lord Canning, never imagined a rifle will bring the end of East India Company. Let us see how that happened. Soldiers throughout India were issued a new rifle, the Enfield Rifle— a more powerful and accurate weapon than the previous one used for decades. To load both the old musket and the new rifle, soldiers had to bite the cartridge open and pour the gunpowder. Then, the rumor spread the cartridge was greased with the fat of pigs and cows. The news spread like wild fire and the soldiers refused to use the rifle, however, British officers dismissed these claims as rumors and ordered them to use the rifle. Moreover, there was a prophesy that Company Raj would end in a hundred years, which was proved true.

(to be continued…..)