Essay on War of 1857 Text

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It was in reality a product of the character and policies of colonial rule, of the accumulated grievances of the people against the company's administration and of their dislike for the foreign regime. For over a century, as the british had been conquering the country bit by bit, popular discontent and hatred against foreign rule was gaining strength among the different sections of indian society. Perhaps the most important cause of the popular discontent was the economic exploitation of the country by the british and the complete destruction of its traditional economic fabric this both impoverished the vast mass of peasants, artisans and handicraftsmen as also a large number of traditional zamindars and chiefs. We have traced the disastrous economic impact of early british rule in another chapter.

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Other general causes were the british land and land revenue policies and the systems of law and administration. In particular, a large number of peasant proprietors, subjected to exorbitant land revenue demand, lost their lands to traders and moneylenders and found them hopelessly involved in debt. The new landlords, lacking ties of tradition that had linked the old zamindars to peasants, pushed rents up to ruinous heights and evicted them in case of nonpayment's.

The economic decline of the peasantry found expression in twelve major and numerous minor famines from 1770 to 1857. Similarly, many zamindars were harassed by demands for higher land revenue and threatened with forfeiture of their zamindari lands and rights and loss of their status in the villages. They resented their loss even more when they were replaced by rank outsiders officials, merchants and moneylenders. In addition, common people were hard hit by the prevalence of corruption at the lower levels of administration.

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William edwards, a british official, wrote in 1859 while discussing the causes of the revolt that the police were a scourge to the people and that their oppressions and exactions form one of the chief grounds of dissatisfaction with our government. The petty officials lost no opportunity to enrich themselves at the cost of the riots and the zamindars. Flogging, torture and jailing of the cultivators for arrears of rent or land revenue or interest on debt were quite common. Thus the growing poverty of the people made them desperate and led them to join a general revolt in the hope of improving their lot. The middle and upper classes of indian society, particularly in the north, were hard hit by their exclusion from well paid higher posts in the administration. The gradual disappearance of indian states deprived those indians, who were employed in them in high administrative and judicial posts, of means of livelihood. British supremacy also led to the ruin of persons who made a living by following cultural pursuits.

The indian rulers had been patrons of arts and literature and had supported scholars, religious preachers and divines. The displacement of these rulers by the east india company meant the sudden withdrawal of this patronage and the impoverishment of those who had depended upon it. Religious preachers, pandits and maulavis, who felt that their entire future was threatened, were to play an important role in spreading hatred against the foreign rule. Another basic cause of the unpopularity of british rule was its very foreignness. Unlike foreign conquerors before them, they did not mix socially even with the upper classes of indians instead, they had a feeling of racial superiority and treated indians with contempt and arrogance.

As sayyid ahmad khan wrote later: even natives of the highest rank never came into the presence of officials but with an inward fear and trembling. Most of all, the british did not come to settle in india and to make it their home. Their main aim was to enrich themselves and then go back to britain along with their wealth. The people of india were aware of this basically foreign character of the new rulers.

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