After the suppression of the mutiny, James Cracroft Wilson, the former Judge of Moradabad, was appointed a Special Commissioner to punish guilty and reward deserving Indians. The evidence he collected, he said, was proof that ‘Sunday, 31st of May, 1857, was the day fixed for mutiny to commence throughout the Bengal Army; that there were committees of about three members in each regiment, which conducted the duties of the mutiny; that the sepoys, as a body, knew nothing of the plans arranged; and that the only compact entered into by regiments, as a body, was, that their particular regiments would do as the other regiments did’.
However, Major G. W. Williams, Cracroft Wilson’s fellow Special Commissioner, did not agree. It was only after the outbreak at Meerut, he wrote, that ‘corps after corps caught the infection, excited and encouraged by the uncontradicted boast of the extermination of all Europeans, and the overthrow of the British rule’ by the Indian troops at Meerut and Delhi. Even when the boast proved hollow, they were ‘still lured on by the glowing accounts of unbounded wealth obtained from the plunder of Europeans and Government treasuries, and the honors and promotions expected from a rebel King’. Many also believed the rumours, ‘kept alive by evil and designing men’, that their religion was in danger. If any such plot for a general mutiny had existed, Williams concluded, the Meerut troops ‘were indeed rash and insane to mar the whole’.
The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Cracroft Wilson omitted to specify the evidence from which he drew his conclusion. But his point about secret committees coordinating the uprising is supported by a wealth of documentation in this book. For security reasons alone, those made party to such a plot would necessarily have been few in number. Williams, on the other hand, is surely right in his assessment of the motives that drove many sepoys to mutiny. If the two theories are combined, we are left with a loose network of conspirators who were prepared to incite mutiny as and when the occasion presented itself. Their success would depend upon a number of variables: the closeness of the relationship between Indian troops and their European officers (particularly the commanding officer); the presence of other European troops; the proximity to unguarded treasure and other regiments that had already mutinied; and, of course, the number of sepoys prepared to believe (or appear to believe) that their religion and caste were in danger. Given that most soldiers were in the dark, however, the conspirators would not have been foolish enough to imagine that they could coordinate a general mutiny on a single day.
But to understand why the cartridge question was manipulated to provide a pretext for mutiny, it is necessary to identify the aspirations of the army ringleaders themselves. They were, by definition, ambitious men. They were drawn from a complete cross-section of army ranks – including Indian officers who were close to receiving their pensions and therefore had the most to lose – and were probably united by a shared exasperation with the limitations of Company service. Their pre-mutiny links to the courts of disaffected princes like the ex-King of Oudh and the King of Delhi are surely indicative of an aim that was both political and professional: the replacement of their British employers with an indigenous government that would provide greater career opportunities and increased pay.