The Causes Of India And The Revolt Of 1857

British had nearly been defeated in India in 1857 because of the riots in central and northern India but in spring of 1858 they came back into the game. This was called the Revolt of 1857 and because the British came back a lot of violence occurred from both sides leading equal amounts of counter-violence. Since the British executed the rebels, the rebels also killed white civilians like women and children without mercy. This led to the Kanpur massacre in June 27, 1857. The revolt ended the rule of the East India Company in 1858 and the Indian empire was taken over by the British Crown. So far the British almost collapsed and then they come back to life and took over the Indian Empire not caring about the women and children that were killed …show more content…
Which led to finding a process of fundamental, social and economic changes that upset the poor people’s communities during the first century of the Company’s rule. The Company 's government respected the traditions and customs of the native communities and a person who is from a higher caste was encouraged more to join the army so that their traditions were seen and followed by others in the army. Bengal army was the one that was the most wanted, which had a lot more of the high castes, mainly consisting of Brahmans, Rajput and Bhumihars. Their rules, nutritional and travel restrictions were thoroughly respected by the army administration, under instructions from Warren Hastings. The reforms in the 1820s and 1830s began to decrease the caste privileges and financial benefits but in late January rumors started traveling amongst the sepoys in Dum Dum near Calcutta that the cartridges of the new Enfield rifle had been greased with cow and pig fat. It was thought to be a conspiracy that was trying to destroy their religion and caste and converting them to Christianity. The production of those cartridges stopped but the trust was never restored after basically lying about what was in the cartridge. From Delhi the uprising soon spread to other army centers in the North-Western provinces and …show more content…
The Punjabi and Gurkha soldiers actually helped to defeat the rebellion. Knowing that majority of Indian sepoys were Bengal regiment almost half of the Indian sepoys of the East India Company had rebelled. Having less British military presence was a capital error and because of which the British got blamed for. The sepoys in Bengal army were all mostly uniformed, were recruited from Awadh and had the same problems because they were from a higher caste. Which meant that they had a lot of trouble like their religious beliefs having a conflict with new service conditions, their salary levels dropped, and they suffered discrimination. That wasn’t worst enough, that in 1856 a new service rule was brought up, which stopped the sepoys from getting allowance for service outside their own regions. Bengal and Punjab remained peaceful during the revolt, and the annexation of Awadh took place under Lord Dalhousie’s ‘Doctrine of Lapse’. Satara (1848), Nagpur, Sambal and Baghat (1850), Udaipur (1852) and Jhansi (1853) were taken over