Thread by @Anupam_Guha

There are those in the Indian progressive constellation who characterise the first war of Independence reductively as a feudal/Brahminical project.

They are wrong. As Marx correctly observed, the Mutiny was not reactionary though parts of it was. It was revolutionary.

1/n

Mangal Pandey's propaganda of the deed today, on 29 March 1857 and the actual start of the rebellion in Meerut in May has a gap of a month and more. Volumes can be written about what happened in that gap.

2/n

Was the first mutiny itself based on anxieties which had religeous/caste basis? In parts. But in parts it was based on the widespread material oppression by the colonial machinery. It wasn't a merely plot of disgruntled soldiers but a spontaneous uprising

3/n

Till that point in history of hindostan, no grouping of communities had conceived of themselves as a People. Nor had caste and religeous boundaries been this effectively ignored (a quarter of the rebels in the north were Muslim sepoys despite admonitions from the ulema)

4/n

There are documents about the utter surprise of the colonial authorities as to how popular the rebellion was. Ordinary civilians (not just the mutineers) across communities were pledging fealty to the Emperor, an unheard of phenomena in those times.

5/n

What is also not remembered is that there were conceptions of constitutionalism, nation, and democracy in the mind of the "Sipahi Government" when they imagined their future Indian state

"Khalq Khuda Ki, Mulk Badshah Ka, Hukm Subahdar Sipahi Bahadur Ka"

6/n

In the four months of Sipahi Bahadur in Delhi, there was a six page "constitution". There were 10 representatives (2 each from infantry, cavalry, artillery, 4 civilians). The 4 civilians were elected, though the franchise was not universal. This court voted on its decisions

7/n

In the final analysis, the rebellion was not just a feudal ploy to prop up the older rulers, nor was it a reactionary caste project. It had popular support, it had elements of reforms, of universalism, of representation. And despite its brutality it stemmed from injustice

8/n

The rebellion saw the sipahi (god I hate the word "sepoy") as heralding a new era. The sipahi wanted a new order for the land, a new social contract beyond feudalism. To us that order would look like a stratocracy, but in those times it was a revolutionary project

9/n

The first western mind which recognised the revolutionary nature of what was till then disparaged a mutiny was Karl Marx.

Marx wrote about why the British regime was oppressive, the relationship between colonial loot in India and capitalism etc

marxists.org/archive/marx/w…

10/n

The rebellion evolved Marx, who till that point had an ignorant idea about Indian socio economic history. Till 1853 Marx thought that the colony was a good thing, India will be advanced as a captalist state from feudalism and caste thanks to the Brits. 1857 changed his mind

11/n

He finally saw that colonialism was not just a capitalist civilising project, it was the bedrock of capitalist oppression. That the rebellion was an oppressed people lashing out. Marx saw firsthand the lies in the Brit press, the erasure of systemic atrocities, the racism

12/n

“Modern Industry, resulting from railway system, will dissolve the hereditary division of labour, upon which rest the Indian caste” in 1853

changed to

“… is not a military mutiny, but a national revolt of which the Sepoy are the acting instruments only” in 1857

13/n

And he ended up supporting the rebellion, understanding the connection of all struggles against oppression, and began Marxism's relation to anti-imperialism

"whether a people are not justified to expel the foreign conquerors who have so abused their subjects"

14/n

It makes me sad when I see some Indian "progressives" ignoring the complex history of the rebellion. It is good to question narratives of national birth of course, but it is not good to erase a popular struggle against the most exploitative means of loot

Fin