The fact that the mutinies began in May and peaked in June, the height of the hot season, was almost certainly deliberate. European troops were at a disadvantage in hot weather and many were stationed in the hills. In the majority of cases – as if in confirmation of Ahsanullah Khan’s claim that it was agreed by the conspirators beforehand – the mutinous regiments headed for Delhi. By mid August – according to one British spy – the rebel army at Delhi was composed of twenty and a half regiments of infantry and three and a half regiments of cavalry, giving a grand total of 17,975 mutineers and 33 guns. But not all the rebel troops made it to Delhi. Some, notably in the Punjab, were intercepted and destroyed en route. Others coalesced around alternative rebel authorities, such as: Nana Sahib who was proclaimed the new Peshwa at Bithur on 1 July; Birjis Qadr, the younger son of Wajid Ali, who was crowned King of Oudh at Lucknow on 5 July; Raja Kunwar Singh of Jagdispur in Bihar; and the Nawabs of Banda and Farrukhabad. In each case, however, the mutinous troops were anxious to set up some form of alternative government to the British.
This determination to transfer their allegiance to an Indian employer was motivated by considerations that were both political and professional in nature: political in the sense that they were seeking to replace their colonial overlords with traditional Indian rulers; professional in that many of them, particularly the conspirators, hoped that service under these new employers would be more rewarding than it had become under the British. They were, as Dirk Kolff has put it, simply exercising their rights under the terms of the traditional military labour market. ‘To take leave of a master, whose “salt one had eaten”,’ writes Kolff, ‘did neither amount to a breach of faith nor to the end of a relationship.’ He gives the example of a battalion of Bombay sepoys that, having arrived in Poona in July 1805 one thousand strong, had less than four hundred men six months later. By 1857, however, the East India Company had so successfully dominated the military labour market that it was no longer possible for sepoys to pick and choose their employer with impunity. The only way to create an alternative was to destroy British power. In this sense it was all or nothing, which may explain why, according to Ahsanullah, the mutineers decided in advance ‘to kill all Europeans including women and children, in every cantonment’. Such atrocities would tar whole regiments with the same mutinous brush and help to ensure that the less enthusiastic sepoys joined the rebellion because they no longer had anything to lose. ‘There were some who remained faithful,’ wrote Sitaram Pandy, ‘and there were still more whose fate it was to be in a regiment that mutinied. These had no desire to rebel against the Sirkar, but feared that no allowance would be made for them when so many others had gone wrong. This was well understood by those who instigated the mutiny. Their first object was to implicate an entire regiment so that everyone had to throw in their lot with them.’
The argument that the ringleaders were seeking to replace one employer with another is supported by the way in which many mutinous corps retained their command structure and cohesiveness. Stokes observed that the ‘problem of re-establishing discipline and internal order within a unit’ could be ‘formidable’, partly because the mutinous faction was usually ‘composed of men from the ranks’. This was true in a number of cases. But in many more instances, Indian officers took an active part in the plotting and perpetration of mutiny.
Many of these Indian officers were working hand-in-glove with other non-commissioned and sepoy conspirators. But no sooner had a regiment mutinied than its remaining Indian officers tended to take, or to be given, control. Lal Khan, a Muslim subedar of the 3rd Light Cavalry, is said to have been elected generalissimo of the Meerut Brigade with Bulcho Singh, a Hindu subedar from the 20th Native Infantry, as his second-in-command. They might have been the same two subedars who, according to the courtier Munshi Jiwan Lal, ‘formally tendered the services of the [mutinous] troops to the King’ on 11 May. A day later the ‘whole body of native officers’ of the Meerut regiments presented nazirs to the King and ‘described themselves as faithful soldiers awaiting his orders’. But they were the real power in Delhi, as was proven by the King’s acquiescence in their demand that he should proceed through the streets on an elephant to ‘allay the fears of the citizens and order the people to resume their ordinary occupations’. The political influence of Indian officers was also evident in Lucknow, where they agreed to the coronation of Birjis Qadr as King of Oudh only on the following conditions: orders from Delhi were to override any other authority; the King’s wazir (chief minister) was to be selected by the army; officers were not to be appointed to the mutinous regiments without the consent of the army; double pay was to be issued from the date of their leaving the English service; and no one was to interfere with the ‘treatment and disposal of those who were friends to the English’. The Indian officers were demanding not just financial reward but professional autonomy and a say in the political process as well.
Some Indian officers even set themselves up as de facto rulers. Shortly after the mutiny of two companies of the 56th Native Infantry at Hamirpur on 14 June, their senior subedar, Ali Bux, proclaimed the rule of the Mogul dynasty with himself as the King of Delhi’s agent. Three days later, Bux ordered the execution of the magistrate, Lloyd, and another European official. In the Fatehgarh district, Subedar Thakur Pandy of the 41st Native Infantry assumed administrative control of the eastern division, while two other subedars ‘formed a kind of Appellate Court and appear to have been invested with the same powers as the Lieutenant-Governor of the N.W.P. had under the British rule’. All three were under the nominal authority of the reluctant Nawab of Farrukhabad.
But most Indian officers were content to monopolize the command structure of mutinous regiments, brigades and even armies. Following the mutiny at Nimach, for example, Subedar Shaikh Riadut Ali of the 1st Light Cavalry was appointed brigadier. He ‘issued orders in the name of the King of Delhi’, wrote Colonel G. H. D. Gimlette, ‘and promoted subedars and jemadars to be colonels and majors’. Subedar Gurres Ram of the 72nd Native Infantry was given command of his regiment, and a jemadar in the 1st Light Cavalry was made the brigade major. Even after the defeat of the Nimach Brigade at Najafgarh in late August, a portion of the 72nd Native Infantry kept together under the command of another subedar, Hira Singh, who was promoted to the rank of colonel. At Cawnpore, Subedar Teeka Singh of the 2nd Light Cavalry, the senior conspirator, was given the rank of general and command of the rebel cavalry, while the subedar-major of the 1st Native Infantry controlled the infantry. The 56th Native Infantry was initially led by its havildar-major; but he was replaced by a subedar after the 1st Native Infantry had ‘established it as a rule that men who joined from Furlough should get their places and promotion’. A jemadar commanded the 53rd Native Infantry, probably because no subedar was available. Colonel Lennox of the 22nd Native Infantry named Subedar Dulip Singh of his own regiment and the ressaldar of the troop of 15th Irregular Cavalry as the chief instigators of the mutiny at Faizabad. Gimlette added: ‘The Subedar Major of the 22nd… assumed command of the station… and ordinary routine was carried on. Subedars became Majors and Captains. Jemadars became Lieutenants, and all with these ranks annexed the horse, carriages and property of their predecessors.’ Even at Jhansi, where the chief conspirators were identified as four sepoys, the rebel leaders were Indian officers: Ressaldar Faiz Ali of the 14th Irregular Cavalry and Subedar Lal Bahadur of the 12th Native Infantry. Ali was allegedly responsible for the infamous massacre of fifty-six Christian men, women and children on 8 June.
The Indian officer to achieve the greatest prominence during the mutiny was Subedar Bakht Khan of the 6/8th Foot Artillery, which mutinied at Bareilly on 31 May. One of the chief conspirators, Bakht Khan was in command when the Bareilly mutineers – augmented by the 28th and 29th Native Infantry from Shahjahanpur and Moradabad respectively – arrived in Delhi on 2 July. At his request the King of Delhi made him Commander-in-Chief of the rebel army. After the fall of Delhi, Bakht Khan fled with part of his force to Fatehgarh, where he joined up with the Nawab of Farrukhabad. He was commanding a wing of the nawab’s army when it was defeated by Campbell at Khudaganj in January 1858. He later joined the Begum Hazrat Mahal in Oudh and probably accompanied her into Nepal the following January.
Indian officers did not always dominate in rebel regiments. According to Major Macpherson, Subedar-Major Amanut Ali of the 1st Infantry, Gwalior Contingent, was promoted to ‘general’ by the rebels at Gwalior, ‘but the most violent sepoys in fact commanded’. This power-sharing arrangement was similar to the panchayat system that had held sway in the Khalsa (Sikh Army) prior to the First Sikh War (not to mention the military committees that had dominated the parliamentary army after the English Civil War), and probably explains why Scindia found it so easy to play one faction of the Gwalior Contingent off against another. Occasionally other ranks assumed positions of authority. When Jemadar Sitaram Pandy, on leave from the 63rd Native Infantry, was taken prisoner in Oudh by a band of mutineers, he noted that the ‘leader of this party was a sepoy, although there were two subedars with it’.
In general, however, former Indian officers dominated the military hierarchy of rebel regiments: partly because so many of them had taken an active part in the pre-mutiny plotting; but mainly because most mutineers realized that adherence to military rank was the best and fairest way to maintain regimental cohesion and discipline. The willingness with which many sepoy conspirators were prepared to submit to the post-mutiny authority of their military superiors is surely proof that professional considerations were paramount. The sensitivity of the rank and file towards service issues like seniority, for example, was much in evidence. In late August the Indian officers of the 3rd Native Infantry petitioned the King of Delhi on behalf of the regiment’s other ranks who objected to the fact that latecomers to the royal service had recently been placed on the same general list of seniority that applied to those who had been fighting all summer. Formerly, said the petition, these late arrivals had been ‘kept on as supernumeraries, in the grades in which they had formerly served’.
A rough estimate of the number of Bengal sepoys who mutinied, were disarmed and disbanded, or remained loyal indicates that Indian officers were over-represented in the last category.* This is not surprising, given their age and proximity to a Company pension. More remarkable is the significant proportion of Indian officers involved in the planning and execution of mutiny, and the conduct of military operations thereafter. Prior to the mutiny, Napier and Lawrence highlighted the inadequacy of career prospects for Indian officers and the danger of thwarting legitimate ambition. Both were ignored, but the accuracy of their predictions seems to have been confirmed by the significant role played by Indian officers during the mutiny. According to Major O’Brien of the 6th Oudh Irregular Infantry, a ‘large body’ of the Indian officers of his regiment, the 22nd Native Infantry and the 15th Irregular Cavalry were ‘active instigators of the mutiny’ at Faizabad on 8 June. He added: ‘The prizes they hope to gain by being put in the position the European officers formerly held, & having perhaps from one to four hundred rupees pay per mensum, being in my opinion one of their chief inducements to side with the rebels.’
Long-term financial reward and regimental cohesion went hand in hand. The mutineers could hardly expect to be employed as a body by the restored Indian rulers unless they retained their discipline. Their political influence was also dependent upon an outward display of unity – as were their lives in that only disciplined troops had a hope of defeating European regiments in the field. A host of accounts confirm this retention of regimental organization. When the 11th and 20th Native Infantry arrived at Delhi on the morning of 11 May, one European officer described them as ‘coming up in military formation… in subdivisions of companies with fixed bayonets and sloped arms’. As the Nimach mutineers marched towards Delhi, via Agra, the infantry were in front, followed by the artillery and cavalry, with advance and rear guards ‘told off, and Cavalry flanking parties thrown out’. At Faizabad the ‘band played at mess every night’, guards ‘were posted, and parades ordered as usual’. Even the internal disciplinary system of mutinous regiments was similar to that which had operated under the British. When a sepoy of the 11th Native Infantry was found asleep on sentry duty at Delhi in July, he was tried and found guilty by a court martial of all the regiment’s officers. The only deviation from the British system was that the Commander-in-Chief, Bakht Khan, was asked to award a punishment instead of confirming the court’s.
Tapti Roy commented on a similar degree of organization among the rebel troops in Bundelkhand (the majority of whom were from the splendidly disciplined Gwalior Contingent):
A series of orders issued practically every day from Kalpi in the name of Tantia Topey strikingly illustrates the meticulous planning and organization that went into the soldiers’ actions. A strict hierarchy of ranks was specified for each regiment with a brigadier-major in command, followed by a subahdar-major, havildar-major, jamadar, naik and the soldiers… Regular inspection, muster rolls and daily drill were compulsory… For hearing representations or dispensing justice, periodic courts represented by one soldier, one sardar and jamadars of infantry and artillery together with moulavies [Muslim scholars] and pandits [learned Brahmans] were summoned… Every offence would call for an appropriate punishment… Provisions were made for the families of those injured or killed. Strict orders were given for enlistment, recruitment and discipline.
Even during the defeat of the rebels at Kunch in May 1858, Sir Hugh Rose, the British commander, was moved to praise the professionalism and courage of the skirmishers of the 52nd Native Infantry who ‘covered the retreat very well… facing about kneeling and firing with great coolness’.
The importance of military discipline and financial incentives was recognized by all rebel governments. On 6 July Nana Sahib issued a series of proclamations detailing the internal organization of regiments and their officers’ monthly rates of pay. But as pay was being distributed in early July, after the destruction of the Europeans at Cawnpore, the rebel troops began ‘quarrelling about the rewards’ and ‘General Teeka Singh’ and his men went to see the Nana at Bithur to insist on their share of the treasure. Their demands must have been met because the Nana returned to Cawnpore and – according to a sowar in the 2nd Light Cavalry – distributed two months’ pay.
The Delhi Proclamation, issued in the name of the King in mid May, promised to pay Company sepoys 10 rupees a month and sowars 30 if they switched their allegiance to him. Ishtihars (administrative notes) specifying the organization and pay of troops were regularly issued at Delhi. One such, published on 6 July, stated that there would be one colonel as commanding officer, one major as second-in-command and one adjutant for every regiment of infantry and cavalry. ‘Duties and emoluments commensurate with each rank were also spelled out.’ According to Mainodin, perwanahs (warrants) were extorted daily from the King and addressed to Bengal regiments, promising monthly salaries of 30 rupees to sepoys and 50 to sowars if they joined the King’s army. ‘In every instance,’ recalled Mainodin, ‘the King’s perwanah had the effect of causing the soldiers to mutiny and make their way to Delhi. At the sight of the King’s perwanah the men who had fought for the English forgot the past, in the desire to be re-established under a native sovereign.’
Such generous rates of pay, however, were not realistic. The King had no treasury in May 1857, and the new government’s fund-raising efforts could not keep pace with its expenses. In an undated letter the King instructed his son, Mirza Moghul, not to accept any more applications for enlistment in the royal army by non-Company troops because there was no money to pay them. The regular forces in Delhi had not even brought enough treasure for their own expenses, he explained, and it was impossible to collect the land revenue until the country had been pacified. Therefore only those irregulars who were financially self-sufficient for at least two months were to be given permission to come to Delhi. They would be compensated when order had been re-established, but only after the pay arrears of regular troops had been dealt with. These latter had become so acute by early September that the army was threatening to plunder the city unless its pay demands – said to be 573,000 rupees a month – were met. A partial payment was made on 2 September, but only enough to give each sepoy 1 rupee and each sowar 2.
At Lucknow too the rebel government was unable to redeem its promises of pay. The official salaries ranged from 1,000 rupees for colonels and 165 for subedars to 30 for troopers and 12 for sepoys. But according to the Bengal Hurkaru, these figures were ‘purely nominal’ as no man had ‘yet received full salary for any month’. Firoz Shah, the cousin of the King of Delhi, who took charge of the insurrection at Mandesur in the state of Gwalior in August, promised to pay his sepoys 15 rupees a month. By late September, however, money was scarce and pay had been reduced to the pre-mutiny level of 7 rupees.
But the inability of rebel governments to make good their pledges over pay does not undermine the importance of financial incentives as a motive to mutiny. ‘I consider that the native troops mutinied in the hope of worldly gain,’ stated Ahsanullah Khan, who was in a good position to judge. ‘The admixture of religion was only intended to disguise their real object. If they were really fighting for religion, they would not have plundered the houses and property of the people, nor would they have oppressed and injured them…’ Some regiments (as we have seen) handed the Company treasure they had been guarding over to the rebel authorities, others kept it to pay their men, and a few – like the 17th Native Infantry – simply divided it among themselves. But most sepoys were able to benefit by plunder or extortion during the anarchy that ensued. At Gwalior the mutineers offered their services to Scindia in return for the 4½ lakhs of treasure the British had made over to him; but if he refused to ‘lead them against Agra, which they would make over to him, with such provinces as he desired’, he would have to pay ‘12 or 15 lacs more’, and provide supplies and carriage for them ‘to move whither they pleased’. They were eventually placated by a ‘donation of three months’ pay, and the promise of service’. According to Sir Hugh Rose, every sepoy killed by his Central India Field Force had ‘generally from 90 to 100 rupees about him’.
Some mutinous sepoys used promises of higher pay to induce those still loyal to rise. At Jhansi, for example, the fifty-two NCOs and sepoys of the 12th Native Infantry who mutinied on 5 June ‘invited all men of the deen [faith] to flock to their standard, offering to remunerate each man for his services at the rate of twelve rupees per month’. They were joined by the remaining troops in the station the following day. In January 1858 the Indian officers of the mutinous Gwalior Contingent offered the sepoys in the service of the pro-British Raja of Chirkari 10 rupees a month to come over to them. Many did, while others refused to fight, giving the raja no option but to surrender. He was forced to pay an indemnity of 3 lakhs of rupees, part of which was sent to the Nana while the rest was used to settle the soldiers’ wage arrears. The Nana had promised his troops a gratuity of one month’s pay, pensions for those who fell in action and licence to plunder goods up to the value of 1,001 rupees if the attack was successful.
There is no statistical proof that mutineers from one branch of the Bengal Army were any more motivated by the lure of financial gain than those from another. But given that most irregular cavalrymen were Muslims – and therefore had neither caste nor religion in common with the majority of military conspirators – it is probably fair to conclude that they reacted to, rather than initiated, the disorder, regarding it as an opportunity both to restore the Moguls and to enrich themselves. No irregular cavalrymen appear to have been involved in the plotting prior to the Meerut outbreak, and only two regiments had mutinied by the end of May. They were, moreover, the most debt-ridden Indian troops in the Bengal Army, and debt was an obvious incentive to mutiny. Captain Dennys of the Kotah Contingent blamed penury for the mutiny of his Muslim horse on 4 July. ‘I always felt that our cavalry could not be relied upon,’ he wrote later. ‘They were well dressed and fairly well mounted but their general state of hopeless indebtedness was sufficient to prevent their remaining loyal, if anything like absolute anarchy should ever come.’ The Bengal irregular cavalrymen were in a similar position. So when, for example, the sowars of the 12th Irregular Cavalry mutinied at Sigauli on 23 July, killing their commandant and his wife in the process, their first act was to raid the regimental bank of 50,000 rupees and to plunder the local banias. Having divided the proceeds, they headed for the Opium Agency at Gobind Ganj, which they also pillaged.
The mutinies – planned as well as actual – that succeeded the Delhi and Meerut outbreak were not all the result of a knock-on effect. If they had been, they would have spread outwards in roughly concentric circles. Instead, some of the earliest mutinies took place in stations as far apart as Nasirabad in Rajputana and Nowshera in northern Punjab. They were undoubtedly prompted by the initial outbreak; but their timing tended to depend upon the level of disaffection in particular regiments. The 15th Native Infantry at Nasirabad, for example, had only recently moved from Meerut, where it probably became tainted by association. In general, the ringleaders would have considered a regiment ripe for mutiny when they had succeeded in convincing a sizeable proportion of their fellow sepoys that the British really did intend to take away their caste and religion. Then they either planned a mutiny in advance with conspirators in other regiments – as at Lahore, Peshawar, Hansi, Lucknow, Bareilly and Cawnpore – or they simply took advantage of a suitable opportunity to encourage their comrades to rise, such as the execution of the Brahman zemindar at Aligarh, the movement of treasure at Mathura and Azimgarh, or the disarmament of Indian corps at Benares and Dinapore.
Most of the joint mutinies were planned in conjunction with civilian conspirators. This is entirely consistent with the prime aim of most active mutineers: to be re-employed by a restored Indian ruler. ‘All regiments took their Colours with them,’ observed Sitaram Pandy of the 63rd Native Infantry. ‘They did not break their oath by deserting them. They left the service of the English and were supposed to have entered the service of another government.’ Tapti Roy has interpreted the soldiers’ actions in a purely political light. ‘The decision of every rebel unit to move towards the centre [Delhi and Cawnpore] was… part of an implicit strategy, to build, uphold and strengthen an alternative supra-local political order.’ In fact this strategy had been predetermined by the sepoy plotters whose original incentive was probably more professional than political in that they hoped their new employers would provide more pay and greater career opportunites than the British had. Their political involvement, therefore, was simply a means to a professional end, though it became for some an end in itself.
Roy herself noted that the mutinous sepoys ‘maintained not only the military organizations of their regiments but also the hierarchy of rank and order within each regiment’. Yet she failed to draw the obvious conclusion: that the mutinies were more about professional than religious, or even political, grievances. Some activists were undoubtedly ‘politicized’ in that they sought the overthrow of British rule. But they would not have been able to hoodwink enough of their fellow soldiers unless the Bengal Army generally had been unhappy with the terms of its employment. Set in the historical context of the Indian military labour market, where there was a long tradition of mercenary soldiers from eastern Hindustan who were liable to switch employers if the occasion demanded, the Indian mutiny makes perfect sense.
A key factor in the gradual alienation of the sepoys from their employer was their deteriorating relationship with their European officers. The link between a commanding officer’s length of service and the relative disaffection of his regiment in 1857 indicates that a familiar and popular commanding officer could slow down the process of alienation. In some cases the presence of such an officer was enough to deter a regiment from mutinying; in others it helped to save European lives. But even a popular officer was not always able to prevent his men from succumbing to peer pressure and the material lure of higher wages and plunder.