SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY
Pages from the History of the Freedom Struggle in India
Why the gains of 1857 could not be consolidated
Although the 1857 Revolt marks an inspiring chapter in the history of the Indian Freedom Movement, it is important to probe a little deeper and examine more carefully the factors that allowed the British forces to regroup and regain their lost colonial territories.
As already noted in our previous essay on 1857, the rebellion did not spread to the entire Indian subcontinent. In particular, the Sikh and Rajputana territories remained largely unaffected (as did the more powerful of the Maratha territories), and the Nizam's Armies were successful in crushing the resistance in Hyderabad. This undoubtedly gave the British considerable breathing room and provided them the time and opportunity to fight again.
However, it would be incorrect to conclude that these favorable circumstances alone could have guaranteed a favorable reversal in fortunes for the British. The British had lost control over a considerable portion of the Gangetic Plain (and significant pockets in Central India), and had the rebellious forces been able to hold on to their gains for a few more years, it is quite possible, that the rebellion could have spread, making a British reversal all the more difficult and unlikely.
While it is true that the plains were hard to defend since they offered few geographic features that could have facilitated a long-drawn out gorilla war, the rebellious forces had the advantage of numbers and considerable grass-roots support. And even though the British enjoyed certain key technological advantages, their numbers were insufficient to win without the ability to recruit Indian mercenaries. Realizing this, the resistance forces sent out fervent appeals - calling upon all other Indians to refrain from joining the colonial regiments, and even appealing to many of the soldiers in the Princely Estates to rebel. Nevertheless, it appears that the British were successful in augmenting their limited armies - and although some of the extra forces were contributed by the Indian Princes, these contributions alone were in all likelihood insufficient to tilt the balance in their favor. It was the ability of the British to secure fresh Indian recruits that may have ultimately turned the tide against the 1857 resistance.
Even though there was a broad unity amongst Hindus and Muslims during 1857, this unity did not extend to the "unclean" or "impure" castes. In the plains, prejudices against the "untouchable" castes were especially strong, and there was deep disaffection with both the Islamic nobility and the Hindu upper castes amongst those condemned to live outside of the Muslim and Hindu mainstream. It was principally amongst these most downtrodden castes that the British were able to draw new conscripts for their counter-offensive in 1858.
Although the British victory did virtually nothing to liberate the down-trodden castes, and in fact, impoverished them (and hence marginalized them) to a much greater degree than anyone could have imagined in 1858, the entire nation paid a very heavy price for its inability to rise above such medieval phobias and prejudices. No one on the side of the 1857 resistance was able to comprehend the consequences of this grave sociological weakness in Indian society. The vice of social conservatism not only held the Mughal nobility in its grip, it also extended to the Hindu and Muslim masses.
Although the Sikhs and the Marathas had forged broad ecumenical coalitions in their struggle against Mughal imperial rule, allowing for the rise of intermediate castes to positions of power, discrimination against the lowest castes generally persisted. In any case, by 1857, the vast majority of Sikh and Maratha rulers had become fairly isolated from the masses, and had either developed conservative tendencies themselves, or had entered into alliances with increasingly assertive clerical forces that were inimical to further progress.
But apart from the problems of casteism and clerical conservatism, there was the indifference or aloofness of the influential money-lending classes who had the ability to fund the resistance and could have paid for counter-recruitment had they so wished. Worse still was how some of those who profited from the ignominious practice of usury actively aided and abetted the colonial efforts.
The British were thus able to exploit a number of cleavages in Indian society to reverse the liberation of the Northern plains that had been achieved by the 1857 rebellion.
In contrast, it may be especially useful to compare the Indian defeat of 1858 with the Meiji restoration in Japan that followed Japan's own humiliating losses at the hands of the European navies in the mid-19th century. Unlike in India, where no leaders emerged with any strategic vision that could effectively counter the colonial menace - in Japan, there arose from amongst the Samurai Nobles, factions that realized that not only had Japan suffered a serious military defeat, but that it faced a new kind of power that could challenge Japanese society at many levels.
Amongst the Samurai clans who were determined to avenge the military and diplomatic humiliations that Japan had to suffer, besides feelings of fierce national resolve, there was also the intellectual far-sightedness to comprehend that the Japanese elite could no longer rule in the same way, or conservatively cling to past cultural and political achievements. They were prescient enough to recognize that the Europeans were unlike any traditional political opponent - but were representative of an entirely new type of power with productive capacities that could neither be duplicated nor matched by the old techniques. They realized that without the ability to match Europe in the economic and related domains (of science, technology and social culture), they could never hope to maintain their sovereignty, or live in peace with dignity.
Hence, with Japan's Meiji "restoration" came sweeping social and political reforms that put an end to the back-breaking economic burdens of the landless peasantry, as also the caste-like socially discriminatory practices that had become the norm in medieval Japan. Although it was inevitable that land-reforms alone would not prevent the dispersion of the Japanese peasantry in a nation as land poor as Japan, the collapse of small farms did not lead to the social disaster it could have because the forward-looking rulers of Meiji Japanese had simultaneously launched a sweeping program of planned scientific, technological, industrial and cultural modernization. Even as small-farming became unviable, rapid and steady industrial expansion absorbed the dying peasantry into a new urban working class.
But India's very successes in pre-industrial manufacturing and the resultant wealth stood in the way of its modernization. India's rulers were simply too rich and too complacent to worry about the future. Whereas the most advanced of Japan's Samurai clans realized that in order for Japan to defend itself successfully it needed more than the will to fight - that it also needed to catch up with the scientific, technological and cultural progress that had been made in Europe in the previous century, major Indian rulers either didn't fight at all, or fought without developing a strategic vision for the future.
Although some of the Indian rulers were prepared to make political concessions, and initiate some political reforms, they were unprepared to go far enough. Most were unwilling to spend even a fraction of their enormous savings on the kind of sweeping educational reforms that were put in place in Japan. Nor did they have the vision to try and industrialize India on a modern basis as did the rulers of Meiji Japan. By the time some of the more progressive of the Indian princes realized the need for educational and industrial modernization (perhaps as a result of pressure from popular reform currents that began to emerge in the latter decades of the 19th C), much of the damage had already been done; the British political stranglehold on India considerably limited the possibilities for the Princes to take any major initiatives.
But in the meanwhile, Japan had established universities along European lines, invited European scientists, educators and technocrats to set up programs in Physics, Chemistry and Modern Industrial Techniques, as well as assist in the establishment of model industries. Symphony orchestras were established and the intelligentsia was encouraged to attend performances of the great European classics. Modern political and legal institutions were founded.
Moreover, unlike the Indian elite who aped the British in a mechanical and superficial (or dilettante) fashion, Japan (at least initially) sought to learn from the best in Europe - which often meant learning from Germany rather than England. Although this top-down modernization had its limitations - it did allow Japan to escape the debilitating effects of colonization that almost every other Asian nation had to suffer, and allowed it to catch up with (or even exceed) the European powers in many respects.
But the hapless Indian masses (who were virtually abandoned by the Indian elite) had no choice but to launch their own (and often heroic) struggles. Yet, even as they put up repeated resistance to colonial rule, insufficient mass solidarity (owing to the ill-effects of caste and religious cleavages) and the paucity of enlightened leadership limited the efficacy of these many valiant struggles.
There have been times in history when the brave have been amply rewarded. But by 1857, Europe had ente