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Unit 7: The First Major Challenge

therefore, disaffection towards the British Government with an intense longing for its speedy Notes
overthrow is sedulously nurtured as a sort of sacred duty which they owe alike to their faiths and
the memory of their ancestors.”
The ‘absentee soverieigntyship’ of the British rule in India was an equally important political
factor which worked on the minds of the Indian people against the British. The Pathans and the
Mughals who had conquered India had, in course of time, settled in India and become Indians.
The revenues collected from the people were spent this very country. In the case of the British, the
Indians felt that they were being ruled from England from a distance of thousands of miles and
the country was being drained of her wealth.
Besides, the policy of Pax-Britanncia pursued by the British during the past four decades had led
to the disbanding of Pindaris, Thugs, and irregular soldiers who formed the bulk of the native
armies. These people had lived mostly on plunder, and when deprived of the means of livelihood
by the British, they formed the nucleus of antisocial elements in different areas. When in 1857,
there occurred some disturbances they swelled the ranks of the rebels.
Administrative and Economic Causes: The annexation of Indian states produced startting economic
and social effects. The Indian aristocracy was deprived of power and position. It found little
chance to gain the same old position in the new administrative set-up, as under the British rule all
high posts, civil and military, were reserved for the Europeans.
In the military services, the highest post attainable by an Indian was that of a Subedar on a salary
of Rs. 60 or Rs. 70 and in the civil services that of Sadr Amin on a salary of Rs. 500 per month. The
chances of promotion were very few. The Indians thought that British were out to reduce them to
‘hewers of wood and drawers of water.”
Sir Thomas Munro, pleading for the employment of Indians, wrote in 1817, “Foreign conquerors
have treated the natives with violence, and often with cruelty, but none has treated them with so
much scorn as we; none has stigmatized the whole people as unworthly of trust, as incapable of
honestly and as fit to be employed only where we cannot do without them. It seems to be not only
ungenerous, but impolite, to debase the character of the people fallen under our dominion...”
Despite the recommendations contained in the Charter Act of 1833, the policy had remained more
or less the same.
The administrative machinery of the East India Company was ‘inefficient and insufficient’. The
land revenue police was most unpopular. Many districts in the newly-annexed states were in
permanent revolt and military had to be sent to collect the land revenue. In the district of Panipat,
for example, 136 horsemen were maintained for the collection of land revenue, while only 22 were
employed for the performance of police duties. At the out-break of the Rebellion, Sir Henry
Lawrence is reported to have remarked: “It was the Jackson, the John Lawrence, the Thomason,
the Edmonstones who brought India to this.” In the land revenue settlement newly acquired
territories, the English administration had eliminated the middleman by establishing direct contact
with the peasants. The land revenue settlement of North-Western Provinces was described as “a
fearful experiment... calculated so as to flatten the whole surface of society.” Many talukdars, the
hereditary landlords (and tax-collectors for the Government) were deprived of their positions and
gains. Many holders of rent-free tenures were dispossessed by the use of a quo-warranto—requiring
the holders of such lands to produce evidence like title-deeds by which they held that land. Large
estates were confiscated and sold by public auction to the highest bidders. Such estates were
usually purchased by speculators who did not understand the tenants and fully exploited them. It
was Coverly Jackson’s policy of disbanding the native soldiers and of strict inquiry into the titles
of the talukdars of Oudh that made Oudh the chief centre of the Rebellion. The Inam Commission
appointed in 1852 in Bombay confiscated as many as 20,000 estates. Thus, the new land revenue
settlements made by the East India Company in the newly-annexed states drove poverty in the
ranks of the aristocracy without benefiting the peasantry which groaned under the weight of
heavy assessments and excessive duties. The peasants whose welfare was the chief motive of the
new revenue policy did not like the passing of the old ways. They fell in the clutches of unprincipled
moneylenders; they often visited their dispossessed landlords and with tears in their eyes expressed

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