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Introduction
The Revolt of 1857, commonly called as the Sepoy Revolt, was the first
organised revolt against British rule in India. It was the culmination of the
manifold grievances that Indians had against the East India Companys
rule. It was to a great extent a popular revolt led by exiled princes and
displaced landlords. The revolt was largely confined to North and Central
India. The transfer of the Indian administration from the English East
India Company to British Crown was the important result of the Revolt.
The revolt has been hailed as the watershed or the great divide in the
colonial history of British India.
Nature
The nature and character of this revolt remained a controversial subject
both among the contemporary British writers and the present ones.
Historians have written treatises full of complex arguments on this
subject.
The historiography of the revolt is as old as the event itself. Almost all the
earlier books and accounts of the events of 1857 were written by
Englishmen. They have dubbed Indians as traitors and mutineers while
they have praised the role of the Englishmen. The Indians did not dare to
write anything because during the period immediately following the
revolt, great atrocities were committed by the British and the Indians
were crushed brutally.
Ever since the publication of the book First War of Independence by
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1909, the nature and character of the
revolt has been debated among the nationalists and historians.
The main strands of debates on the nature of the revolt of 1857 can be
understood by four main questions.
The first question is Was it merely a Sepoy mutiny or a civil
rebellion?
The more dominant contemporary official interpretation of the revolt of
1857 was that it was primarily a Sepoy mutiny, the civil unrest being a
secondary phenomenon, which happened as the unruly elements took
advantage of the breakdown of law and order.
Charles Ball and J.W. Kaye were among the pioneers who wrote about
1857 from the Sepoy mutiny perspective. Both attached tremendous