In Our Time - The Indian Mutiny

Episode Date: February 18, 2010

Melvyn Bragg and guests Faisal Devji, Shruti Kapila and Chandrika Kaul discuss the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the rebellion which followed.On 10th May 1857 Indian soldiers from the Bengal section of the East India Company's army rose up and shot their British officers. By nightfall the troops had marched on Delhi and the aged Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II had been nominally restored to power. Nearly 15 months later, after great violence on both sides, the revolt was suppressed, but it left British rule in India transformed and, arguably, doomed.The trigger for the Mutiny was a rumour that cartridges for the new British rifles were coated with pig and cow fat, thereby insulting both Hindu and Muslim troops. But the Indian Rebellion was also a more complex story of economic strains, religious insensitivity and well-intentioned but provocative liberal reforms.The events of 1857 have resonated through history and have been appropriated and mythologised by the British press and Indian nationalists alike. However, the shocking violence of the Rebellion on both sides has meant that it has defied attempts to fit it into a coherent narrative structure. It has overshadowed British foreign policy and Indian politics ever since.Chandrika Kaul is Lecturer in Imperial and Indian History at the University of St Andrews; Faisal Devji is University Reader in Indian History at St Antony's College, University of Oxford; Shruti Kapila is University Lecturer in History and Fellow and Director of Studies at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. In 1757, Lord Clive, an army officer for the East India Company, won a battle at Placie. This established the company's dominance over much of the Indian subcontinent.

But there was a rumour that within 100 years there would be a revolt. And so it proved. A century later on the 17th of March, 1857, an Indian soldier in the company's army shot his officers and was hanged. Within two months his comrades had mutinied and from there rebellion spread across northern India. After great violence on both sides, the revolt was suppressed, but it left British rule in India transformed and arguably doomed. But why did so many Indians rise up against British rule? It's a story of economic strains, religious insensitivity and well-intentioned but provocative, reforms. Ever since the once called Indian mutiny, it's been swayed in myths conjured by everyone from British press to Indian nationalists. With me to discuss the Indian Rebellion are Faisal Devjee, University of University of Oxford, Schrutti Kapila, University in History and Fellow and Director of Studies at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, and Chandrika Cole, lecturer in Imperial and Indian history at the University of St. Andrews. Chandrika, until 1857, the events we're going to discuss, India wasn't ruled directly by the British government,

but a lot of it was run by this commercial company, the East India Company, set it by Elizabeth I, Elizabeth I first in 1600. How well was this working, let's come closer to 1850s in the 1850s? I think on the face of it, it was working very well. The company, of course, was no longer the commercial entity. It was very much a political and military state wedded to, the government in London, and it operated, therefore, on different lines. It was a military state. It depended largely on three major armies, the Bengal, the Bombay and the Madras armies. And in the first half of the 19th century, it was marked by a series of wars that it led

right across the country, right across the subcontinent from the south, right up to Punjab, in the north, which was finally conquered by the company in the name of the crown in the 1840s, end of the 1840s. So the fact of it being a commercial trading company was no longer true. It had in fact lost its monopoly as a trading company in 1813. And by 1833, it had pretty much, commerce had pretty much taken a back seat in its operations. Its military campaigns in India reflected its desire to establish what it claimed to be the Pax Britannica. So it was waging war in order to have peace in order to trade and have proper administration. It claimed to be run on sort of modernist lines.

Its claim to modernity rested on such things as the establishment of efficient administration, the establishment of a legal system, the collection of data and the processing of data, the establishment of communication systems. And overall, the establishment of an ethos of a national, as opposed to a regional or sectarian or sectional sort of entity. However, having said that, you know, on the one hand, you can claim that on the face of it, it was paramount. But this was sort of beginning to breed a kind of complacency, a kind of hubris.

And this is best reflected in the way it was mismanaging, the company, that is, the way it was seemingly mismanaging the military, which was, of course, the bagbone of the company. Before we get to the military, we're going to play the key part in this. Their policy, the company had policies. It was still a company. So we're still talking about a company. We're not talking about a country. It's coupled with it.

It's representative of it. But it's still companies, but he had policies on religion and social reform, which were beginning to breed discontent. Maybe he had done for a long time. But let's talk about it in just a few years before the rebellion. Yes, and I think it's important to note that a lot of these reforms and its religious position was being. dictated increasingly by London.

And I'm, for instance, referring particularly to the evangelical movement in London. This pushed the company away from its position of, for instance, not allowing missionaries to operate in its territories in the early part of the 19th century. It was forced by the 1910s and 20s to allow missionaries to operate. And Christian evangelicalism was therefore increasingly associated with the company, Raj. mistakenly in actual fact because in terms of the amount of people who were converted, the numbers are very small,

but it was creating an impression that the company was behind some kind of big push to Christianize India. So the Christian, you know, in a country in Britain at this time, you know, civilization and Christianity was seen to be part of the same picture. The British saw this as part of reforming of Indian customs and society.

But on the other hand, there were also moves made by people, people like Lord Benzink, like Lord McCauley, who was the first law member of the Council, which touched upon trying to alleviate some of what they saw as the social ills of Hinduism, for instance. Faisal Devlin, how did Indians see the British? We're talking still before the rebellion, largely. Were they seen as intrusive foreigners or exotic foreigners in a subcontinent, which had many languages, many influences there, were they just another lot to?

turning up? Well, I think, yes, they were initially, though of course, as Chandrika said, once the company assumed dominance over large parts of this continent, there were much more than simply another group of people. And therefore, what came to be important for many Indians was not their character as foreigners so much as their nature as rulers. And those two things actually distinct. I think it's very important to note that they're distinct. that even when the company started being criticized for the way in which it ruled or its religious policies such as they were,

it was not because the English were seen as being foreign so much, but rather because they were seen as breaking a kind of what we might describe as a moral compact with the Indians over whom they ruled. And so even once you get to the early period of the mutiny, if you look at mutineer pamphlets, for instance, what is important, what is crucial, is the fact that the English are not disliked for being,

as it were, a foreign group of people, a different racial or ethnic group, or indeed, you know, a people who are strange and whose habits we cannot understand. That's of not much issue to the mutiners themselves, let alone to those who remain loyal to the British. Rather, what is at Istanbul, you is the fact that the English are seen to have been virtuous at one point, which is why

they ruled India and that they seem to have betrayed their own virtue. Because before then, as I understand it, by and large, the British turning up with a tiny finger-nogle-hole on India's little trading company, somewhere near Calcutta, as it were. They got to know Indian customs. they learned the languages, there's intermarriage, they made a point of, perhaps they wanted to, but anyway, they made a point of settling in, mixing,

and that must have helped a sort of general acceptability for, we're talking about a couple of centuries or two or three centuries. No, I think that's very true, and indeed there is a whole historiography that is based upon drawing this line of distinction very clearly between the early period of the British

in the early years of the, company where there was a great deal of, as you say, mixing intermarriage, you know, adopting Indian customs, et cetera, and the later period where you see increasing divergence. But I'm actually, I'd like to pour a bit of cold water on that distinction, because when you look at Indian accounts, though in the later period, there does seem to be some regret, you know, about the British no longer being, as it were, in the midst of Indians. In fact, that's very minor. as far as I can tell. And at the time, no one's particularly concerned with it.

You know, as you started out by saying India, in this period, in the period when the East India Company first caught there, is an incredibly diverse place. All kinds of people inhabited, speaking many different languages, professing many different religions. They don't all interact. So in traditional Indian society, if such a thing, can be said to exist, divisions of religion, caste, etc., meant that people might speak to each other,

but they wouldn't dine, they wouldn't intermarry. so it's not a strange thing. Before I move on, we'll be talking a lot about the sepoys, the sepois army, this is the name, the Indian army had, very much admired by Wellington years earlier

when he was in India, and that's where he said he learned all his craft with the seapoi army. How content was this army? There were tended to be British officers at the sepo with the army. How content were they with the company rule in the 1850 just before the mutiny?

because they were a massive army. Yes. Again, there are different opinions on this. We are told a lot of the opinions we have on the contentedness or otherwise of the sepoys comes from during or after the mutiny. Because this wasn't so much a concern before the mutiny. So we are told that the annexation of the kingdom of Avat, for instance, was something that upset the army.

I'm coming to that in the moment, yeah. And yeah, we will return to that. But on the whole, it was quite a good profession, provided they were paid the wages they said they were going to be paid. And Indians were used to going to war and being warriors, and so that was, they slipped into that. Indeed, if you look at Indian accounts of the army, their uniform in describing the sepoys as being proud,

vanglorious, and, you know, extremely loyal to their masters. They don't feel themselves to be somehow enslaved, or slighted by the British. Can I turn to Shruti now, Chutti, just to get to finish off with the background, then we can go to the mutiny, just to give the context. It was thought in the 1850s that the company was becoming intrusive, more bureaucratic, taking more directions,

and the wrong sort of directions from London and so on. Can you give us some, can you, that was said at the beginning of it, can you plump that up a little? Sure, I mean, one thing is clear that there is a crisis of authority, and legitimacy, because what is the company at this point is up for grabs? What does it represent and who does it represent? Certainly, the empire or the imperial rule has become very agrarian-based. It's much more autocratic.

It is much more dependent upon land taxation and revenue to actually keep up for this army that you've been talking about. The Bengal army is in itself more than 100,000 sepoys. So in that sense, the Eastern India, company or the company officials have gotten into, as it were, the everyday local politics of India, which is a critical backdrop

to what happens with 1857. When you say get involved in, can you give us an instance? I mean, first, by these, I would say by the 1820s, 30s, they have a bureaucrat in most princely kingdoms or courts of India, not just the Mughal Empire.

So what was called the resident. And this actually in a way, bureaucratized a relationship increasingly between Indian society and British rule. And this meant that the earlier hybrid structures of legitimacy that existed in the 18th century became, as it were, more removed from the British. So in that sense, there was really very little political legitimacy or a language of legitimacy for the British at this point.

And also the company and also the 1840s is a period of deep international crisis, which is why Marx gets interested. in India. And he writes about it. Absolutely. He's a correspondent. In New York Times, you're right of now. Because post-1848, he turns to Asia

to think of this is where the revolution is actually going to take place. So in that sense, actually, the company is in crisis both as a commercial entity, but also as a political entity, because neither the parliament is clear what it represents, nor is it

very clear to Indians what British authority is. A very good specific example for our listeners was touched on by Faisal. And if you could explore it, and that's the annexation of the princely kingdom of Avaad. Now, why was that so important and why could it be called, would hesitate about this in any, a turning point? Well, it was a trigger point for certain. Can you give us the date and be specific?

This is sort of May 1856 when Avad is annexed. It is outside of the Mughal Empire, the largest Muslim. princely state or princely kingdom. And it lies strategically between Delhi, which is the Mughal capital and Calcutta on the east, which is the British capital. And it is part of the Gengjetic heartland and therefore very, very important for revenue taxation. Secondly, this is also where all the sepoys are recruited from.

So this is strategically important and symbolically it's very important because this is actually where towards the late of the late 18th century you actually get a sense of Muslim revival, if you could say, in terms of quarterly practices after the decline of Delhi. Why did the British, why did the East India company annex it? Why did they go and annex it? It was, they must have known it would have caused a lot of trouble. So why do they want to want to want the local ruler had decided not to pay the revenue.

I see. Tax again. Tax. I mean, it was absolutely revenue and tax. and that sort of sparks off. And also, I think it's also, I think, the point that now it is becoming increasingly clear that the British are becoming a very, you know, a territorial power. But a territorial power, which, as Nehru says, 100 years later, which is no local loyalty. This is a territorial, so the issue, as Fassel was saying earlier,

is not about foreign aliens versus, you know, something in. but the issue is the British are not seen to be loyal to the people they're ruling over. Chandrigal, let's move on, let's start with the Mutin now in 1857. The issue of rifles and cartridges seems to be one of the immediate local trigger points. Can you just describe that and then let's get going with the mutiny? Well, the new Enfield rifles have been introduced several months before the mutiny outbreak of the mutiny, and it involved sepoys having to bite off a cartridge in order to get the powder from the cartridge to load the rifle.

And this covering was said to be, rumoured to be, made with cow and pig fats, so therefore alienating Hindu and Muslim religious sensibilities. When seapoys refused to buy this cartridge, they were imprisoned. And in response to their imprisonment, the rest of the garrison in Mirat rose up, you know, freed them and then decided to mark it.

March to Delhi. That was in May 1857. It wasn't as straightforward as that because they shot some office to British officers. Yes, of course. We had violence there from the start, violence on both parts. They didn't just rise up and say, we'll go for a march. No, no, no. They shot the officers and the person in the most resource was immediately hanged by the British. Well, yes, yes. But I think it's quite ironic that the soldiers, they used the whole issue of the cartridge, the Enfield rifle and, and, and, you know, mutinied, but then had no hesitation in using these very rifles when they marched to Delhi to fight the British.

So there is an irony there. But I do think that this was a catalyst and it sort of symbolized long-held growing resentment, particularly in the Bengal army, which is what the regiment that mutinied. And it's quite important to distinguish the fact that the Bombay and the Madras armies actually remained quite loyal. The Bengal army was peculiar because it was composed of very high-cast Hindus. predominantly Brahmans and Ratchboots. So in a way, any slight on their caste and associations with caste and religious slurs

or intended by the British caused a great deal of disaffection in this army, more than others. But it's very dramatic, isn't it? Let's turn to you. They shoot their officers and then they march. An enormous number of them, they turn towards Delhi, the capital of the old Mughal Empire. When they get there, they find the last Mughal Empire.

Emperor, gentle old man who didn't want anything to do with it really, and insisted that he was now in charge, he was their man. Can you just fill out that a bit? What happened in that march? And is that particular incident which Chandraka has described? Was that enough to set it off or were more things happening? Well, I mean, that incident becomes, of course, absolutely crucial in the retelling of the story of the mutiny, both among Indians and among the English, from the time of the mutiny itself. What interests me, however, is just before the violence breaks out, there are a whole series of complicated negotiations between the sepoys, or rather the leaders,

and various British officers in places like Behrampur, where they say to the British, look, we suspect these cartridges. We ourselves, the sepoys, are not necessarily averse to biting these cartridges, but our friends and families will ostracize us if we do so. So we need to

test these things. And there are these curious set of experiments that are conducted where they dip the cartridges in water to see whether there's oil in them or not. And then they'll say, well, they might or might not be greased with cow or pig fat, but even if they aren't,

we really cannot afford to risk ostracism from our people. And so what we need to do is, grease them ourselves with some vegetable form of grease, or we, and if you don't permit us to do this, then we will just refuse to cooperate with you. So there's a whole set of negotiations which are entirely civil, and the British accounts describe them as being perfectly well-mannered.

So there's no attempt at rebellion or even a display of rebellion. When does it break into shooting and hanging? It's when you have the, the trials of some of the people who refuse to follow orders, people are hanged, and entire troops are disbanded and sent off in chains.

And that really seems to, you know, bring together the rest of the Bengal army and decide them upon violence. So how can this, this is more crucial than that, and I thought, so how did the British decided at that stage, look, we've got this wrong. We can use a different sort of oil and we can get ourselves out of this

after these cartridges have been spent quite soon. Was there any attempt ever to think of doing that? Well, I think it's kind of regardless because I think it's also a rebellion that spreads because of rumour and information. So it's not actually about the veracity about these Greece cartridges, but it's the potency of this information to actually move from, as it were, the east.

to the Western frontier, which causes the mutiny to spread. So that rumor could actually be anything, but it's the spread of that rumor and information, which actually makes it move from, as it were, from the barracks to the countryside. And also the other thing is that these mutiners,

so-called mutiners, actually leave their uniforms and go home, because this is where they're being recruited from. So you actually get, as it were, from an armed rebellion. I mean, you get actually in a sense, what you get is a peasant armed. This is what you're getting. And by dropping off

the uniform. And as they're moving, local notables who are actually pretty hard put out by British taxation are joining them. So this is how actually it spreads. So I mean, actually I think the Greece cartridges issue is actually neither here or not there because this

is, it's actually a symbolic, it's a symbolic sort of transaction of information. So it isn't just the seapoy who become what you call the peasant army, although we were told a few minutes ago that there were Brahmins at there, so I'm a bit worried about the other than I mean, because there were notables who joined in,

there were the priest who joined in. Yes, I mean, yeah, but I don't want to make this into seriously just a caste or issue or one which is just about, as it were, cultural sentiment. I mean, of course, this is also a very tired army. It's an army which is just one Punjab and Burma

for the British, or rather, it's about to be sent off to Burma. And so there are real issues about that. But I think what is interesting about the mutiny is that the way it actually switches from being a rebellion of the

sepoys to something that moves into the countryside very, very quickly. Can I come to your, Shania? Tell us about the siege of look now, which gives us again a point and illustration of where things had got to. Well, I think the siege of luck now,

I mean, we have to talk about it almost over a year because there were several sieges of luck now. just like in Delhi, which took about from June to September for the British Reconquer Delhi, Lucknow also fell for the first time in the summer of 1857, and it wasn't recaptured. The final siege of Lucknow was only in March, 1858. So we are talking about several months when the British made abortive attempts to try and take Lucknow

with armies brought down from the Punjab in the north and also in Pinser movements from Calcutta. Are these Indian armies? Well, Indian armies, Sipo armies, but also really, Enforcement had by that time arrived being diverted from China, as well as from the Crimea, of course, where they had been fighting just before the mutiny broke out. So they were reinforced armies, but predominantly there were seapoy armies because the British officer content and the number of British officers was very, very few. And that's the irony. You were Indians fighting against other Indians.

This became noted for the atrocities. So can you give us some idea of the, just briefly, of the level of atrocity in Look now? Let's stay there. What are we talking about? Well, in terms of, as far as the British were concerned, I think even before Lucknow, it was Karnpur, which was the site of the biggest sort of response to Indian massacring. And here we've got the Marata, Nana Sahib,

who's supposed to have taken a group of defenseless, hundreds of defenseless women and children, who had been promised safe passage. And then they were massacred at the last minute. And this was before Lucknow. So you've got to... What you said supposed to? Were there, weren't they?

I beg it, pardon? You said supposed to. He's supposed to have taken it, you said. Well, Lackner was... Well, not Lugna. Sorry, Kahnpur. That's right. But did he or didn't he take these hundreds of women?

Because that's very important to how it plays back in... Yes, it is. But again, here we have to distinguish between those leaders at the top, whether the orders came from them or whether this was a knee-jerk reaction of the lower, you know, the smaller officers, the sort of, if you like...

Yeah, we have to distinguish that. But in terms of the argument, discussion that we're going to have, because the British reprisals were extremely brutal but I want to start here this was the murdering the massacring of British women and children which lit the... It did take place. It did take place. It did take place. It lit the blue touch paper.

And the thing about it was that it was actually witnessed on the river Ghats and that's what made it actually quite potent for tens of thousands of Indians to watch Europeans being killed. And the news of this got back to Britain in very emphatic terms because William Howard Russell, a great Times reporter who reported on Crimea and, as it were, exposed what was really happening in Crimea,

went to India, asked to go to India and exposed what the British were up to in India. So can you address him for a moment, one of you and his influence? Yes, of course. I mean, Russell was, of course, the famed war correspondent, the hero of Crimea, and he was sent by the Times, which was the most important British newspaper. He arrived at a later stage in the meeting. He only arrived at the beginning of 1858. But the interesting thing about Russell is that he moved with the troops, and he conversed with the common subalson and sepoi, as well as with the commander. So he got information from both ends.

He was appalled. He essentially brought it down to two issues. He talked about race. It was about race and it was about religion. So, for example, his response to Kahnpur was that what offended British sensibilities in London was not so much that a massacre took place, but that the massacre was by black men against defenseless women, white women and children. So he certainly saw the race.

angle to this and the whole idea that this was a war of religion, the idea that this was about Christianity and barbarism. But also what he was concerned about, the reason he was sent was to report on the veracity of the atrocity stories

not just in Karnpour but in general. And so he basically found no evidence for this. In general. I've read nothing but atrocity stories for the last week and you keep dodging it and saying not much really They were. They were indivation. Now, I'm really, we've got to get this straight because there was full of atrocities, extreme,

or it wasn't. And you three should know better than anybody else, and I just want it cleared up. But I think, I mean, the massacre that has witnessed on the safe passage that Chantrika was alluding to, that was in Kanpur. And then, of course, there is this issue of actually holding up European women and children in what came to be called the BBGhar. and no one knows what happens because this is actually not a public massacre

and this actually historians say is a shift from something that actually you get rebels winning to rebels losing out There was also a great deal the British reprisals were very vicious, strong firing people from cannons I'd just like to get some idea of both sides

Faisal can you come in there Well, to begin with, let me just focus for a while on another massacre, a much lower-level massacre, if you will, in Delhi. So there were certain English women and children who had been sheltered in the palace of the last Mughal emperor, who was the nominal head of the mutiny. There was a struggle because the mutineers wanted to take them out and kill them. Eventually they were. Despite the king's remonstrances, they were in fact taken. out and killed publicly. This created a huge stir in Delhi.

So the inhabitants of Delhi said that we can no longer hold faith with the mutineers. They have betrayed our trust. This is not the way in which rulers are supposed to manage their affairs. And this is a sign from heaven

that the British will win. So it worked completely against the mutist. But what is interesting about that story is the fact that it's exactly the same kind of sentiment that had spurred the mutineers themselves and their the other Indians who helped them to rise against the British. It's not any different. And so the Mughal Emperor himself then, for instance, says,

look, we have our, as it were, rules of war, and these have been broken by the mutineers, not even Jenghis Khan or Tamerlane did such, you know, perform such barbarous acts as the mutineers did. Hold on, right? We're trying to get this right. So we've had a lot about the Indian massacres, the Indian atrocities, but there were massive atrocities on the part of the British.

Now, I haven't got to terms with that yet. So are you going to tell me about that? Well, absolutely. I mean, Delhi, for example, let's start with Delhi. I mean, when Delhi was taken over, I mean, the poet Garlip said that all he could see was an ocean of blood. I mean, this kind of atrocities metered out by British troops in Delhi against it was an indiscriminate slaughter of any male who was not white.

And this is what Russell reported on and criticised. Well, Russell wasn't there at the time because Russell only arrived. in India towards the end of 1857, 1858. But he went there because of these stories that made their way back to the British press and then were taken up as these sort of the unfolding crisis of British legitimacy, this cry for vengeance that came upon when these stories made their way back. But it's interesting because when the British was seen to be taking vengeance, it was rightful and just and a Christian act against a barbarous, unjust, disloyal, mutinous arms.

It was seen that by some people, by some people. I don't think it was seen like now by everybody. When you're back in London, Israel doesn't think that. Russell doesn't think that. And Israel is Prime Minister. And he doesn't say that. Israel is not Prime Minister. Israel is not Prime Minister.

Israel is the deputy leader in the House of Commons of Conservatives. Sorry, I made a mistake there, but he gets to be Prime Minister. He's an important voice. I agree entirely. I think Israel is really important. But what he is doing is using the mutiny as a way of attacking Whigs and liberal and their government. He basically wants to be. Barnstampton to admit that the mutiny is more than just the mutiny, that it is a national revolt.

And his argument essentially is that it's been caused because the British have decided that liberal principles need to be applied to govern India and have disregarded all the traditional sentiments that exist in India. Liberal principles like trying to ban sate, that for instance. Exactly, like Lord Benting Social Reforms and banning Santee, widow re-marriage. I mean, in actual fact, these didn't have that much impact where they did have an impact within perceptions. I think there's also the issue about war and what war means to Britain at this point. I think outside of the Crimea, the British have seen nothing, like the scale of destruction that is seen in northern India.

And in fact, it's quite interesting that Russell and the other photographer, Beato, who both kind of actually chronicled Crimea, are the ones who also chronicle the mutiny. Under actually the company's permission, they're actually sent by their given passes by the company to document it. But also there's an, I think, an internal tusses. in terms of actually whether war is a professional business, or is it something which is down to heroes and aristocrats?

And I think the mutiny exposes that problem, I think in British politics, about middle classes and indeed the aristocracy. I think, just to add to what Shruti has just said, it's important to see the mutiny along with the Crimean War that has already been mentioned that just preceded, and the American Civil War that comes after it as, you know, one of the three most important early modern wars, or I should say not early modern, but modern wars,

that is to say wars that are, despite all the statements of, you know, laws of war, that target civilians, that deal with massacres, that sack cities in ways that were previously unknown, where terms are not offered, even Tamerlane offered terms and Jenghis Khan offered terms, where

and so what gets back to Britain I think it's a cumulative anxiety it's not only the mutiny and it's you know it's aura of you know why Indians are more savage than white people just one second

because we've got a little way to go now it's getting back to Britain and I was wrong about him being Prime Minister although he was to be and have an influence through Victoria or not but let's see it was the leading conservative politician and his response which you

I implying was domestic response in a manoeuvring. It might have been an outrage that he had. I would suggest you. Israel had that in him to be outraged. And a lot of British people, when they found out what the British troops had done, they too were outraged. So it wasn't just that it wasn't that sort of easy.

I mean, as you described on the Indian thing. The Indians, as it were, in Delhi, were against the mutineers and so on and so forth. But let's just try to bring it back to London for a moment. what effect did Disraeli and those like-minded have on changing British public opinion, which at one stage was all for vengeance, all for blood vengeance, never been seen since the days of Napoleon? How did that attitude that they had changed it? Well, Disraeli is anything but simple.

He's a most complex man, and for him India is part of this great Asiatic mystery. I think he firmly believes that the only way to rule India is through the imagination, and therefore, you know, to appeal to the imagination of Indians, true allying with the conservative holders of power, the Rajas, the traditional aristocrats and leaders of civil society. But Disraeli gets a chance to actually have a direct impact on the framing of the Act which follows, the 1858 Act, because of course Darby comes into power in March 1858, and Disraeli then becomes the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he has a big role to play in how British post-mutiny response to governing India take shape. And I'd like to summarize this,

in sort of saying that the lesson that Israeli and others took from the mutiny was not a victory of the British, but it was a moral tale. It was a tale of morality, what not to do. So the British government was henceforth not about interfering with Indian indigenous traditions and trying to modernize India, but it was about allying with those very indigenous traditional, you know, power rulers like the princes, in having a kind of symbiotic relationship with them

to shore up a much more conservative, Raj. And I think actually I would argue slightly differently that actually what the mutiny does is it hands the empire to the liberal imperialists, which means that, of course, you can't have a rule by sword and that you will have a government which is based on bureaucratic rationality, distance and so on, which the liberals have been calling for since the 1830s. So in that sense it's a victory for them. The kind of violence, in that sense violence is very,

transformative of the political structures between India and Britain from there on. So in that sense, actually, this question about distance that we make or about non-interference that we make post-mutiny is overactually stated because you do have legislations throughout the 19th century on religion, on in fact representation by the early 20th century on the basis of religion. So I think that's overstated, but the point is that empire now would be ruled, it will be something that would be done on liberal principles. And curiously enough, Faisal, the liberal principle was embodied in Queen Victoria, to a certain extent, wasn't it?

Yes, and that's one of the great stories of the mutiny, which is that... She became the Empress, or she was called the Empress. The First Empress of India, and though there had been previous empresses, that is, say, Indian monarchs who were women. Indeed, I'd like to mention here as an aside that the mutiny itself, one of the reasons why it's so interesting, is it gave rise to some quite powerful women leaders who took the field, the most important among the mother,

the Rani of a Jhani, but also... Who were killed in battle. Yes, dressed as a baton, dressed as a man, as a Pashtun man. And Hazrat Mahal, the queen mother of Awad, with her young son, Birges Kadr. So there's a tradition there, but we come to Queen Victoria, and she's put there.

And what is her influence even any over the next decades, and how is India settled after this rebellion? What is the new, let's call it the new settlement, for the sake of convenience? Well, I mean, the great document here is the Queen's Proclamation of 1858, which Chandrika has referred to. And in this document, Queen Victoria is made to announce, the

that British rule will be henceforth a rule of non-interference and tolerance where religious groups will be treated equally, etc. In a way you can see it

as a charter of Indian secularism at a period when England itself is not secular where there's an established church and the queen is the head of it. So that itself is very, very interesting. More interesting yet is the fact that Indian notables

take to this proclamation in a massive way so that it takes by surprise even the British statesmen who had issued it, that they hold on to them. They adopt it, they like it. But they use it over the decades after the mutiny, against

the British bureaucracy in India itself. So it gets to be their Magna Carta, their Charter of Freedom, they appeal to the monarch against what they see as a tyrannical bureaucracy in India. Over mighty barrage. But it's a curious thing.

It takes me right back to the point I was making about a certain segment of British political elite talking about a sort of of a kind of re-orientalism using the figure of monarchy to try and create an Indian nation which was, you know, had loyalties

that transcended the local and the secular. So Victoria was a Mughal Empress, right? Exactly. That's how Disraeli saw it, certainly. And that's how the punch depicted Dishreli, you know, handing over her royal crown to that, to get an Indian one in turn.

And certainly I think this is part of that whole picture, the kind of conservatism that underlay a great deal of what you would you know, what Shruti talked about as a liberal imperialism. I mean, I don't think in actual fact, it was not liberal at all. It was in the guise of, you know, certain attitudes to reform.

But in actual fact, the kind of conservatism that underlay the entire second half of the 19th century, I don't think can be denied. But I think on Victoria, I think it's an under sort of remembered fact that she also declared a day of atonement for the violence

that happened in, India. And in that sense, actually from then on, you could say that India becomes very much part of the British national script. Because since, I mean, up until then, it had an awkward relationship with Britain. But by, you know, becoming the Empress of India, I mean, India is very much part of what British nationality will now they're on mean. This is it, you see, it was an invented tradition of associating the monarchy with imperialism. And this is very much part of the conservative attitude to empire. Because you're all so full of facts and vim and energy,

this tiny bit tiny. But was it, was it a sea change in the way the British were seen and saw themselves after this? We've talked earlier on in the century, very largely and loosely in a way, but not entirely inaccurately about the British marrying in, learning customs, learning languages, there's plenty of evidence for that. But now they are perceived differently. Would you agree with that, farce? Yes, but in a way, this different perception is not,

it's not a bad a thing, I think, as it has made out to be. Because if you look at the mutineer demands, the thing that they're really worried about is not that the British excluding them from their society. They're worried about the British including Indians in their society

because the great claim against the British, against the East Indian companies, that they want to convert Indians to Christianity and therefore make them undifferentiated. And the whole thing about India as an empire, as an Indian empire, is that it's made up of a series of differences that cohabit, that live

according to different kinds of rules that are very, very important and interesting. Therefore, it's not the resentment that the British are keeping aloof that inspires the mutineers. It's the contrary. They don't want to be part of British society. So they're quite happy

for the British to adopt Indian wives and habits and all the rest. So the question of distance is mutual. Yeah, it's not... I think the question of polity is where the issue is at, because I think it is the British nation, which is fighting. a war against a much more fragmented or competing sets of empires in India. I think in one respect you could see this as replacing the kind of oriental despotism

that the British thought represented large segments of Indian policy before the mutiny with a kind of benevolent despotism where the British would then decide what was good for the Indians in terms of their social, legal and other in other terms right across the board. And it was a very liberal perception in that respect. but in actual fact it didn't work out that way. Well, thank you very much. That's been a terrific gallop across the plains. Thank you, Shruti Kapila, Chandrika Kahl, Faisal Devji.

Next week, yes. The Theology of Calvinism. Thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast, why not try others, such as Thinking Aloud, where Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research. To find out more, visit bbc.co.com.uk forward slash Radio 4.