The Enfield Rifle played a decisive role in defeating the rebellion of 1857. Much more than the British officers of that time or most British historians since 1947 want anyone to know. This tendency is understandable because it deflates the deliberately cultivated myth of "White Man's Superiority" in the post 1857 sociopolitical scenario. There is no doubt that the British soldier was brave, that their younger officer lot was resolute and that their higher commanders were by and large an assorted bunch of incompetent old men. S.S. Thorbum was one of those very few Britons who admitted the superiority of the Enfield Rifle and the decisive part it played in the Sepoy defeat in 1857. In the Appendix of Thorburn's book which few people read, Thorburn made a very profound observation, he said, "Had the sepoys accepted the Enfield and mutinied afterwards, our difficulties in suppressing their revolt would have been enormously increased453. A very simple gauge of this fact is the high proportion of EEIC's Bengal Army casualties in the First and Second Sikh Wars. This happened because the EEIC forces till 1849 were still equipped with the old Brown Bess Musket and the Sikhs were armed with a similar weapon. Thus the British suffered a very high proportion of casualties, in the Sikh wars as compared to the battles of 1857

2. Major Agha H Amin (retired)
About the Author
About the Author Agha H. Amin , Retired Tank
corps major who served in five tank regiments
and commanded an independent tank squadron
and served in various staff , instructional and
research assignments. In his Pakistan Army
tenure he wrote three original tactical papers on
Reconnaissance Troops Tactical handling,
Reconnaissance support group , and RFS
Concept. His writings were published in Pakistan
Armys prime journals , Pakistan Army Journal
and Citadel Journal of Command and Staff
College Quetta. His recommendations regarding
bifurcation of officer corps into command and
staff cadre advanced in 1998 were later
accepted. In addition his recommendation of
grouping various corps into army commands
advanced in an article published in Citadel
Journal in 1998 were accepted in 2005 or so.
Wrote The Essential Clausewitz in 1993, Sepoy
Rebellion of 1857-59 in 1998 , Pakistan Army till

3. 1965 in 1999 ,Development of Taliban Factions in
Afghanistan and Pakistan (2010) ,Taliban War in
Afghanistan (2009). Served as Assistant Editor of
Defence Journal ,Executive Editor of globe and
Founder Editor of Journal of Afghanistan Studies .
An associate of the think tanks ORBAT and
Alexandrian Defense group. Carried out various
oil and gas and power transmission line surveys
in West Asia. Editor in Chief of monthly
Intelligence Review and monthly Military and
Security Review. Heads the think tank Centre for
study of Intelligence Operations established in
early 2010.

7. The Lee Enfield Rifle versus the Brown Bess
Excert from Sepoy Rebellion Reinterpreted by
Agha.H.Amin
17 Augsut 1998
The Enfield Rifle played a decisive role in defeating the
rebellion of 1857. Much more than the British officers of
that time or most British historians since 1947 want
anyone to know. This tendency is understandable because
it deflates the deliberately cultivated myth of "White
Man's Superiority" in the post 1857 sociopolitical scenario.
There is no doubt that the British soldier was brave, that
their younger officer lot was resolute and that their higher
commanders were by and large an assorted bunch of
incompetent old men.
S.S. Thorbum was one of those very few Britons who
admitted the superiority of the Enfield Rifle and the
decisive part it played in the Sepoy defeat in 1857. In the
Appendix of Thorburn's book which few people read,
Thorburn made a very profound observation, he said,
"Had the sepoys accepted the Enfield and mutinied
afterwards, our difficulties in suppressing their revolt

8. would have been enormously increased453.
A very simple gauge of this fact is the high proportion of
EEIC's Bengal Army casualties in the First and Second
Sikh Wars. This happened because the EEIC forces till
1849 were still equipped with the old Brown Bess Musket
and the Sikhs were armed with a similar weapon. Thus
the British suffered a very high proportion of casualties, in
the Sikh wars as compared to the battles of 1857. Thus
the following comparison is thought provoking:-
1. Mudki:- British Casualties - (First Sikh
War) - 454
a. Total Strength - 12,350
b. Casualties - 872 men
or 7.06%
c. Details -
(1) Killed - 215 or
1.74% of total
(2) Wounded - 657 or
5.32% of total
2. Feroz Shah - British Casualties - (First
Sikh War)455
a. Total strength - 16,700
b. Casualties - 2415 or
14.46%
c. (Details:- -

9. (1) Killed - 694 or
4.154% of total
(2) Wounded - 1721 or
10.31% of total
3. Lucknow - March 1858 - British
Casualties - 456:-
a. Total strength - 19,771
b. Casualties - 735 or
3.72%
c. Details:-
(1) Killed - 127
or 0.64% of total
(2) Wounded - 608
or 3.08% of total
The British casualties at siege of Delhi were higher
because in Delhi most of the fighting was done at very
close ranges and thus the advantage of longer range of
Enfield Rifle was nullified. Secondly a large number of
British casualties were caused by artillery fire. Technically
and tactically speaking the Brown Bess musket was
hopelessly outmatched by the Enfield rifle. The Brown
Bess did not have an effective range of more than 100
yards and a maximum range of 200 yards. The Enfield
with a. .577 calibre had an effective range of 900 yards.
It could be rapidly reloaded and thus could fire upto four

10. rounds per minute. The Brown Bess could not fire more
than one round per minute in actual battle conditions457.
The sepoys were hopelessly outgunned in comparison
with European troops they were facing in terms of actual
infantry tactical combat. The European troops could play
havoc with the sepoys even before they could get as close
as 200 or 300 yeads. The same thus happened at Trimmu
Ghat where Nicholsons largely European force armed with
Enfields effectively annihilated the 46 NI even before they
were within 200 yards of Nicholson’s force. The sepoys
knew the tactical potential of the Enfield Rifle but
mistakenly advanced against Nicholson's force thinking

11. that they are loyal native troops because Nicholson’s
Europeans were dressed in Khaki coloured uniforms. Lack
of sepoy resolution to advance against Europeans in
deliberate attack has a considerable connection with the
immense technical and tactical superiority of the Enfield
Rifle. This explains why the sepoys mostly used defensive
lines at Lucknow and Delhi as their most favoured form of
warfare. But we are still at a loss while explaining our
failure at Valtoha despite the fact that we possessed both
numerical and technical superiority in the shape of the
Patton Tanks! Two British authors were much more
intellectually honest in thus explaining the devastating
tactical potential of the Enfield in 1857. They thus
described the battle of Trimmu Ghat fought between
Nicholson's moveable column and the 46 NI and 9 light
cavalry on 12 July 1857 in the following words; "It was
here for the first time that the "Enfield" demonstrated its
enormous superiority as a weapon. At 300 yards the
smooth bores of the 46th were firing at twice their
optimum combat range and most of the fire was totally
ineffective, the balls were half spent and wildly
inaccurate. The Enfield's in contrast sighted as they were
up to nine hundred yards and throwing a point five seven
bullet of substantially higher muzzle velocity were firing
at near point blank range, and with devastating effect.

12. The heavy soft lead, high velocity bullets mushroomed as
they struck home and the impact frequently stopped the
advancing Sepoys dead in their tracks. At that range
there were very few wounded, a solid hit would tear a
jagged entry hole and leave an exit wound the size of a
dinner plate. In the face of this withering fire the
mutineers pressed home their attacks desperately, some
of them coming to within 50 yards of the 52nd's ranks,
but no troops could sustain that kind of battering and
ran,...458.

13. It appears that more than the resolution of the British
officer or the native subsidiary collaborator, or north of
Jhelum River's martial races or the fiery Sikhs, it was
above all the "Enfield" Rifle which was the real victor of
1857. But the British were clever. They stressed the
superiority of white man more than the superiority of
Enfield. Hardly any British account of that time admitted
the role that Enfield Rifle played in the defeat of the
Sepoys! The capabilities of the Enfield were never
discussed and it was never compared with the Brown
Bess! There is no doubt that the British officer in 1857
was a better leader. But can we blame the Indian of 1857
for not being a leader. His rights were usurped the day
the northern invader started invading the Indo Pak
region. Whatever the Sepoys of 1857 did was very
extraordinary keeping in view their circumstances.
The introduction of accurate rifles as a matter of fact
revolutionised warfare in the mid nineteenth century.
What was happening in India in 1857 was not merely an
“India only” phenomena but was taking place in other
parts of the world also.

14. The Brown Bess Musket balls had thus hopped and rolled
in flight leading to unpredictable results. The invention
and innovation of Minie rifle developed in the 1840s
revolutionised and dramatically changed infantry tactics.
Before the 1840s the effective range of infantry weapons
was 100 to 300 metres. The Minie Rifle increased this
effective range to 1000 metres. In 1849 a Prussian Army
suppressed a popular rising in Baden in Germany with
devastating effect using the new Dreyse Rifle. Thus a

15. German newspaper commented as following; Against a
column of old musketeers, the impact of these new rifles
is dreadful”.459 In the Crimean War again in 1854 - 56
the superiority of the superior long range rifles was
proved in a scenario where two European conventional
armies fought on generally more equal terms taken the
Sepoys versus the British in India in 1857.
Here at the Battle of Inkerman British infantry armed with
French “Minie Rifles” annihilated some 15,000 men out of
a total Russian force of 27,000. In this battle the Russians
were attacking the British in close order formation in
vogue before the advent of Minie Rifle on the
battlefield460. In Prussia the German General Moltke the
Elder could not help commenting that “The English bullets
simply could not miss”461. This was not all, the new rifles
to be effectively used required a soldier who had a good
basic education and reasonable IQ because range
between 100 to 500 metres was not easy to estimate by
naked eye method which we call “JD” or “Judging
Distance” in the army. Thus it was observed that in the
US Civil War an average Union Army Soldier on the
average consumed 900 pounds of lead and 240 pounds of
powder to kill his enemy i.e. the Confederate Army
soldier! This average figure it must be noted was for
killing just “one Confederate soldier”462. During the

16. Prusso - Danish war of 1864 it was observed that the
Prussian Dreyse Rifle which was superior to Minie Rifle.
During this war in a small unit action 124 Prussian
soldiers convincingly defeated 180 Danish soldiers by
virtue of superior weaponry i.e. the Dreyse Rifle. Thus the
Prussians started firing from 250 metres range and by the
time the Danish were at the 150 metres line the Prussians
troops had fired thrice ensuring that the Danish attack
broke up and the Danish withdrew463. In another action
in the Prusso - Danish war the Prussians opened fire on a
Danish attacking unit at the range of 250 paces. After
advancing for 100 more paces the Danish broke up and
withdrew after having suffered 50% casualties464.
All these very convincing examples quoted from European
military history dismiss the myth of “white man's
superiority” which the post 1857 British writers attempted
to impose on the people of Indo Pak. These myths
certainly had a negative influence on the Indo Pak man's
mind in the period 1857 - 1947 and succeeded in a
considerable manner in creating a docile Indian who
silently accepted the British supremacy. Even today many
Indo Pak writers are baffled at the overwhelming sepoy -
British - Loyal Indian numerical differences in the battles
of 1857. They are at a loss to explain why so few
Britishers and Loyal Indians could defeat so many rebel

17. sepoys in 1857. This aspect has two dimensions which we
will discuss in greater detail in the later part of our
analysis. However, in a nutshell, firstly the Enfield Rifle"
seriously offset the “Sepoy Numerical superiority” and
secondly the “Sepoy numerical superiority” was highly
exaggerated by British soldiers who fought the battles of
1857 and by the post 1857 British Historians. These
Britishers with few exceptions like Malleson were mostly
praising and projecting each other!
Another very convincing proof about British conviction
regarding the vast superiority of Enfield Rifle over the
Brown Bess lies in the post 1857 native infantry standard
personal weapon policy adopted by the British military
authorities in India. The Enfield P-53 rifle was not issued
at all to the native soldiers in India after 1857. Not even
to the trusted so called martial races north of River
Jhelum or Chenab! A very clever policy was adopted by
issuing to the native troops a rifle which was identical to
the Enfield rifle, but only externally. These were
nomenclatured as the P.58 and P.59 muskets for “Native
Infantry”. These were of .656 smooth bore calibre and
had an effective range of 200 yards as compared to the
P.53 Enfield Rifle issued to the European troops which had
an effective range of 900 to 1000 yards and was of .577
calibre. The Sikhs were trusted a little more and were

18. issued Brunswick rifles which were a little better than the
P.58 and P.59 Enfield muskets issued to the native
infantry 465.
Thus when in 1866 the vastly superior Snider breach
loading rifles were issued to the British units in India, the
now inferior P.53 Enfield muzzle loaded rifle of the British
soldiers was handed over to the native soldier. A breach
loading rifle was hundred times superior to a muzzle
loading rifle! Thus in 1874 when the British soldiers were
issued the Martini Henri Rifle some phased out Sniders
were issued to the Indian infantry. In 1892 once a newer
and far superior Lee Metford Rifle was supplied to the
British Army, the now outdated Martini Henry was given
to the Indian Army. Even in 1911 the Indian soldier was
issued a single shot non magazine weapon while the
British soldier held a longer range magazine Lee-Enfield
and Lee Metford Rifle466! The white man's supremacy
was maintained by technically superior weapons!!.
The ironic aspect of the whole affair is that so effective
was the British propaganda that many Indian and
Pakistanis writing as late as 1971 were still convinced
that the British of 1857 were more supermen and were
really out numbered overwhelmingly by the rebel sepoys.
Nowhere did these Indo Pak historians appreciate or point
out the tremendous technical/tactical superiority of the

19. Enfield Rifle. The over exaggerated figures of sepoy
strength advanced by the British were also nowhere
challenged. This is the irony of pre 1947 colonial history
and historians of the post 1947 era have a very serious
responsibility on their shoulders. The beauty and the
irony lies in the fact that loyal Muslims and Hindus were a
party in perpetuating such myths.
What really happened - A brief analysis of
the claims about 1857 as one hears them in
today’s Pakistan
It is important that we in today's Pakistan once and for all
clearly examine the events of 1857; arrive at a consensus
and proceed further with more pressing tasks of today's
life! Having close links with Punjab where my great grand
father’s father came in 1849 and, having both close
relations with both Punjabis and Hindustanis, and a deep
interest in history, I feel that things in 1857 were far
more complex than what many people try to assert today.
Many years ago I heard a saying in Lahore, from a
thorough bred Punjabi Tarkhan (carpenter); "Lahore de
Darawze Khulle; te Dilli De Darwaze Khoonee" or "Lahore
despite being a fortified city, had always its gates open
for the conqueror, while Delhi's possession was always
contested by the invaders". Outwardly this saying,
ironically coined by Punjabis, who suffer from a habit of

20. self criticism, at least as far as the lower classes are
concerned, as I personally witnessed, gives the
impression that the Punjabis were docile and that the
people of Delhi were brave! Before discussing this
particular Punjabi saying, I will briefly explain the frame
of discussion. A man's mind is continuously on the move,
like a caravan, and our conclusions and opinion about
many subjects, which we at one time accepted or took as
the Gospel truth change, with the passage of time. It is
generally a slow process and as time passes we discover
that many of the beliefs, to which we struck like religious
faith or private property, were as a matter of fact
absolutely ridiculous! To come back to the point, I
thought about two decades back that Delhi was really a
tough city, and all resistance was encountered by a
northern invader in between the Sutlej river and Delhi!
India the foreigner must note before the British united it
in the real sense by roads, railways, telegraph, radio and
postage was never one single country in the real sense.
We will confine our discussion to the Muslim time since
we are discussing Hindustani Muslim claims! Delhi was
the main seat of the Mughal government and was an
important city even before any Muslims came to India. It
was natural that any invader who came to India was
resisted by this Muslim government in power at Delhi as

21. per its policy in vogue. The slave kings like Balban
followed a strategy of resisting the invaders along the
Indus or within the modern provinces of Punjab and
Frontier. Later on from 1526 when Babar the first Mughal
king defeated the Muslim Lodhi Pathan kings at Panipat
about 40 miles north of Delhi, a new trend emerged i.e.
the future invasions of India were contested in between
the river Sutlej and Delhi. Thus once Humayun came back
to India he defeated the Suri Army near Sirhind. Nadir
Shah was opposed by the main Mughal army at Panipat
and similarly the Marathas were forced to fight by Abdali
at Panipat. It may be noted that there was no major siege
at Delhi before 1857; i.e. the city gates were open for the
invader. The reason why the major battles took place in
between Sutlej and Delhi was primarily logistic. The
government at Delhi or that controlling Delhi (as the
Marathas in 1761) found it difficult to logistically sustain
its main army (which by the sixteenth century was very
bulky because of camp followers and luxuries) north of
Sutlej. It was a policy decision and that was it. In any
case what did the Punjabis or the Pathans have in
common with the Mughal king? This man was not the
ruler of Muslims but that of India. In terms of patronage
he was more interested in wooing the Hindu Rajputs who
were politically important than the Punjabi or Pathan

22. Muslims or the Hindu Marathas who gave Aurangzeb hell
from 1660 onwards! This Mughal preferred the Central
Asian or Persian over the local Indian whether Punjabi,
Pathan or Hindustani (a small percentage of Hindustani
Muslims is of northern descent, despite whatever they
claim, while about three fourth are locals just like the
Punjabis etc. who converted to Islam). The question of
resistance or no resistance had little to do with docility or
martial fervour!
Now lets examine 1857. Were the Hindustanis more
brave or more martial or more special that they defied
the British? At least this is what the Hindustani Muslims
claim This claim is as ridiculous as that of Punjabi Muslims
of today that they were and are the most martial race of
the Indo Pak subcontinent! I believed this for many years
but as my interest in the rebellion increased and I carried
out more research I discovered a million loopholes in this
belief which at least from 1977 to 1983 was held like a
conviction by me! The philosophical basis of this
transformation was my successive drift towards the
concept that all human beings regardless of race or
religion are essentially the same, and that all that they
do, and all their attributes, good or bad, like bravery,
compassion cruelty etc. are basically situational and have
nothing to do with race or religion! My belief underwent a

23. radical transformation once I discovered many facts which
changed the whole complexion of the facts of 1857! I
discovered in 1978 while reading the collection of
Despatches and state papers of Fortes cue and the
Aligarh district Gazetteer that the Sherwani Yusuf Zai and
Shinwari Hindustani Muslim Pathans of Sikandra Rao the
ancestral village of my maternal grandfather had stayed
loyal while all area between Delhi and Allahabad was out
of British control! Later as I read more I discovered that
only one out of seven or eight rebel sepoys was a
Hindustani Muslim while the rest were Hindustani Hindu
Rajputs! By the time I finalised this work in September
1998 which I had first written as a short Term Essay as a
cadet in PMA Kakul in July 1982 reached the following
conclusions:-
a. The rebellion was not as simple as it appears at
first sight. The first important factor about it was peculiar
situation of the Bengal Army— that it was a largely
homogenous force of Hindustanis who had been recruited
for more than one to three generations in it and were
from the same general region i.e. between Hissar and
Patna, and had certain common perceptions and affinities
which enabled them to react in unison, even without a
deliberate plan. That culturally, linguistically and
historically they had nothing in common with the Punjabi

24. or Pathan Muslims although many of them were from
families with Pathan Baloch (as in case of the Baloch of
Rohtak and Gurgaon districts), Iranian and Central Asian
ancestry.
b. The greased cartridges, the immediate and most
important factor which acted as a lethal primer in igniting
the fuse of revolt played an important part in propelling
the Bengal Army into rebellion. Since they hurt his
religious feelings, it became a far more grave matter than
allowances or petty administrative matters. The Punjabi
troops being an irregular second line as semi military
force were never made to face this test since the first
priority as far as modernisation was concerned was
accorded to the Bengal Army, the most important army of
the East India Company. Thus as a matter of fact, the
East India Company took the risk of trusting the native
soldiers without any discrimination with the Lee Enfield
Rifle which at that time was the most sophisticated
infantry weapon in the history of warfare since Napoleonic
wars. Since the Punjabi and Pathan troops were not made
to use the Enfield, they had no grievance against the
company.
c. Rebellion started from the army and it was only
then that the feudal and at many places the people who
joined it. A novel situation emerged. Only those areas

25. where the sepoy regiments rebelled or which they moved
to after the rebellion were most seriously affected by
rebellion. A vacuum like situation existed in most other
areas. Here two things happened; either the local
populace mostly low caste Muslims like the Joolahas or
butchers raised the standard of rebellion and fought till
death or a local feudal or a dispossessed Raja or Talukdar
or Nawab assumed control. All other areas remained
largely neutral.. In many districts which were not held by
the rebel sepoys in the heart of modern UP, which led the
rebellion as a province, resolute British civil servants
aided by remanent of sepoy units, local levies, police and
local notables like Sayyid Ahmad Khan (the future leader
of Hindustani Muslims in particular and Indian Muslims in
general and the father of the Two Nation Theory)
successfully held control and these included many
districts like Bijnor, Etawah, parts of Aligarh,
Rohailkhand, etc. Thus the rebellion had a great deal to
do with the sepoys and a far less with the local
population.
d. Most of the Rajas and nobles who asserted
authority in absence of the British later on claimed that
they were acting on the Britishers behalf! Thus many
escaped Scotfree and many escaped the noose like the
Nawab of Banda who had played an important part in the

26. rebellion escaped with only confiscation of property. The
vast majority of Oudh Talukdars took advantage of the
clemency offer of Queen Victoria and emerged as strong
as they were before 1857, with an additional guarantee
that the feudal will not be touched! The only losers were
the vast bulk of the rebel sepoys or the people of Delhi
and some feudal and rajas of Delhi territory or the Mughal
princes who payed with their life, at a time when tempers
were exceedingly high because of excesses against British
non combatants and the heavy British casualties in the
siege of Delhi. Or there were certain men like Khan
Bahadur Khan, Nawab of Farkhabad, Tantia Topi or Rao
Sahib who were executed because they were genuinely
opposed to the British and were not opportunists like bulk
of the feudals including landlords of Oudh and the north
western provinces.
It is ironic that none of the major Talukdars who went
with Hazrat Mahal into self imposed exile to Nepal, and
who later refused British offers to return to Oudh, and
resume their estates were Muslims. The reader may note
that 99% of the landlords who did not leave India later
took advantage of the British offer of clemency for all,
who had nothing to do with murder of European civilians
and non combatants took the plea that they had never
rebelled, but had merely taken control of the civil

27. administration, since there was anarchy, and that they
were acting in this capacity on behalf of the East India
Company. Thus most of them got all of their land back,
and these included most of the large landholders of Oudh,
both Muslim and Hindu, including men like the later
famous Raja of Mahmudabad! As a matter of fact the
feudals greatly benefited from 1857, in terms of reversal
of Dalhousie's policy of destroying feudalism. Later
studies by many scholars including P. Hardy and Metcalfe
prove that the feudals both Hindustani Muslim as well as
Hindu greatly benefited from post 1858 British policies in
UP and the myth that the Hindustani Muslims were the
main losers of 1857, as far as the landlords is concerned,
is absolutely baseless. The British policy was situational
and rewarded and punished landlords, in each region and
district, in accordance with the subjective conditions and
there were many districts where Muslim landlords
emerged scotfree, while many Hindu landlords accused of
complicity in the rebellion suffered and vice versa. Those
who want to explore this may read P. Hardy or Metcalfe's
book. The only loser and the one whose motives were
superior and genuine, and one who had no connection
with large part of the Muslims who founded the MAO
College Aligarh or were active in the Muslim League, was
the sepoy who was mostly from the lower classes or some

28. feudals who were punished with confiscation or executed
in the initial days immediately after siege of Delhi was
over. As a city it was Delhi and its people that suffered
the most; but again not because they were more heroic
but because the 3rd Light Cavalry's seizure of Meerut and
the subsequent concentration of sepoy regiments at Delhi
left them no choice; and the British treated whole of the
city as a rebel city!
In justice to Punjabis and specially the Punjabi Muslims, it
must be admitted that just 8 years after liberation by the
British; and at a time when the Sikhs were in close
competition with them for British recognition;
psychologically the Punjabi Muslims were in no position to
rebel! The British had no doubt liberated them and the
Punjabi Muslim-Punjabi Sikh divide in Punjab was far
more severe than the Muslim-Hindu divide in UP or
Central India.
The Hindustani Muslims even today contemptuously refer
to Punjabi Muslims as mercenaries. They forget that they
were also performing the same role from 1757 till 1857;
fighting against many Muslim powers including Hyder Ali
and Tipu Sultan, against Oudh, against Rohailkhand,
Afghanistan and Sindh! And how can they condemn the
Punjabi Muslims for not rebelling in 8 years service in the
East India Company's army, once the Hindustani Muslims

29. rebelled against the company after 100 years service
from 1757 to 1857! And even after this the Hindustanis
were as keen to join the army as the Punjabis and as a
matter of fact were in lead as mercenaries in the British
Indian Army as compared to all other races in India. If
after 1883 their recruitment was reduced; it was because
of policy reasons and not because they were less willing
to join the British Indian Army!!
The hard fact of life of human mind and all intellectual
activity is that there are no chosen people! At various
stages various nations or groups based on ethnicity
ideology or class have believed most fervently that they
were the chosen people! The Punjabi Muslims and the
Hindustani Muslims are victims of this intellectual
hangover of being more martial or more intellectual ! The
important fact for the writer or historian is to at least
endeavour to be more rational and understanding. As a
great French writer once said “neither to laugh nor to cry,
but to understand”. I have made an attempt to be
rational with the records and happening of a highly
complex event. It took twenty years to analyse and yet I
must have made many mistakes. It is for the readers to
judge this. Although in the final analysis all judgements
are subjective judgements. There is no final judgement as
far as history writing is concerned!

30. Motives of the participants
The British authors even today describe the rebellion as
mutiny. By and large the Britishers think that British rule
in India was very beneficial for Indians. Strictly,
technically speaking the Bengal Army did mutiny. It is
true that they had been serving the English East India
Company loyally for some 100 years before they
mutinied. But when we look at it from the other angle we
are surprised as to, how could so many men from so
many regiments decide to no longer obey their previous
masters. They defied death and continued to do so
despite being fully aware about their fate from March
1857 till May 1858. A mutiny in the history of an army
normally breaks out due to war weariness and defeat in
war like in the Russian Army in 1904-5, the French Army
in WW one or in the Russian Army in 1917. Sometimes it
breaks out due to oppressive conduct of an individual
commander or an officer. Here in 1857 there was no war
weariness and yet more than a hundred regiments
rebelled and fought till annihilation, a long protracted war
knowing fully well the consequences of their actions. We
see regiments starting rebelling from March 1857 and
doing so without fail till May 1858 at a time when no one
in India had any doubt that the British had won. We see a
group of soldiers belonging to a number of Asian races

31. rebelling against a company consisting of individuals from
one single European race. Even in ethnic terms the
differences are too glaring. But the British even today
want us to believe and have actually convinced many
Indo Pak intellectuals into believing that it was a mutiny.
Mutiny was not certainly the motive of the sepoys. The
same could not be said for earlier mutineers of the Bengal
Army, who mutinied as a protest against not getting
certain financial benefits. But in 1857 the sepoy was
speaking for all the Indian and was trying to unilaterally
get what Indians got in 1947 after a long series of
constitutional and political negotiations. The sepoy was a
patriot and when 3rd Light Cavalry seized Delhi on 11
May 1857 they were freedom fighters.
The feudals of Oudh or the King of Delhi or the
dispossessed Rajas or Ranis were opportunists. They
were only interested in their personal privileges and as
long as the EEIC accepted their demands they were
happy. There is reason to believe that Bahadur Shah
Zafar was happier with the EEIC pension of some 10,000
pounds a month which the EEIC gave him. He was 82
years old and had just a few more years to live. On 11
May 1857 a role of freedom fighter was thrust upon him
and he accepted it under severe pressure of the Meerut
Sepoys and many of his relatives. Actually, he never had

32. any choice since the sepoys had occupied Delhi and no
EEIC relieving force was in sight till 8th of June 1857. The
EEIC response, specially the masterly inaction of the
Meerut Division British officers convinced him that the
EEIC was not invincible. Anyway the sepoys gave him
little respect and used to address him as "Old Man" etc.
Narrative of Syed Mubarak Shah and Jivanlal confirms
this. There is absolutely reliable evidence which proves
that Bahadur Shah Zafar tried to secretly negotiate with
the British after Delhi had been seized by the sepoys but
the British turned down his request and refused to
negotiate with him 467. The only thing the king wanted
were continuation of his personal allowances and
privileges. The Nawab of Oudh and his family were also a
bunch of opportunists. As long as the state was not
annexed the EEIC was good. The Nawab as a matter of
fact enjoyed a British pension till many decades after
1857 at Calcutta. Some feudals like Rao Tula Ram of
Hariana468, the Raja of Ballabghar and some Talukdars
of Oudh were patriots. These were the ones who went
into exile to Nepal and never returned. On the top of this
list was Hazrat Mahal of Oudh who withdrew with the
sepoys to Nepal after the capture of Lucknow in March
1858 and refused an offer of a British pension. This
dancing girl who later on became a wife of Wajid Ali Shah

33. was more of man than all the feudal Khans, Tiwanas,
Rajas, Syeds and Nawabs of post 1857 India whose
descendants subsequently became our Prime Ministers
and leader after 1947.
In any case, it required a bigger and stouter heart even
to be on opportunist on the “Rebel” side and a more
calculating and dishonest mind to join the British. In the
final analysis on the “Rebel” side there were fewer
opportunists than on the British side. Feudals like the
Nawabs of Rampur, Pataudi, Loharu and Bhopal did not
join the rebels although all around their territory the area
was held by the sepoys.
There was a third category which did the maximum harm
to the "Rebel" cause. These were the city and the rural
riff raff who joined with rebellion for cheap thrills. These
were the one who were most directly involved in
atrocities committed on the European women and
children.
There was yet another group who joined the rebels. There
were internally motivated civilians who were neither
feudal nor a Bengal Army sepoy. These included leaders
like Maulvi of Faizabad regarded by the British as one of
the finest tacticians of 1857. He was a chivalrous man
who even the Britishers acknowledged was never involved
in any atrocity committed against any civilian or non

34. combatant. We have Tantia Topi another civilian who was
again a brilliant tactician and strategist. We have the
common civilians of Delhi, Lucknow, Gugera, Murree,
Bareilly etc. who the British called Ghazis. These men had
little to gain and everything to lose, yet they joined the
rebellion. the rebellion of 1857 was an inspiring event but
the period from 1857 till 1947 and even today was the
triumph of opportunism!
END NOTES
453Appendix-Page-355-S. Thorburn-Op Cit
454Page-77 Sikhs and Sikh Wars-Op Cit. Page-350 &
354 -J.W Fortescue-Vol-XII-Op Cit./ Page-609-Henry
Beveridge-Vol-II-Op Cit. It may be noted that
Fortescue put the British-Sepoy strength at around
12,000 while Beveridge, as always more specific in his
statistics gave the exact figure of 12,350.
455 and Page-106-Sikhs and Sikh Wars-Op Cit and
Page-611-Henry Beveridge-Vol-III-Op Cit.
456Abstract of Effective-Page-553-Selections from
Letters Despatches and State Papers-Vol-III-Op Cit.
Page-344-J. W Fortescue-Vol-XII-Op Cit. Page-136-
Battles of the Indian Mutiny-Op Cit.. Casualties from
Numerical Return of the Killed, Wounded and Missing
at Lucknow from 2nd to 21st March 1858-Page-549-
Selections from Letters Despatches and State Papers-

35. Volume Three-Op Cit.
457Page-84-Punjab Military History in the 19th
Century-Op Cit.
458Pages-127 & 128-lbid.
459Page-33-Nord Armee und Fuhrer in Jahre 1866-
Karl Foilot-Willhelm Braumuller-Vienna-1906
460Pages-202 to 206-Handbuch fur Heer und Flottee-
Volume-Four-George Von Alten-Vienna-1909-1914.
461Article by General Helmuth Von Moltke-Militar
wochenblatt-Dated-8 July 1865.
462Pages-59 to 63-Article-Civil War Infantry Assault
tactics-Military Legacy-November 1972- USA.
463De I Influence Des armes perfection Es sur les
Combat-Militar Wochenblat-Issue-8th July 1865-
General Helmuth Von Moltke.
464Austrian Military Archives-(MKSM)-SR-1866, 24/5-
18 May-1866-Vienna.
465Austrian Military Archives-(MKSM)-SR-1866,24/5-
18 May-1866-Vienna.
465Pages-55 & 56-T. A Heathcote-Op Cit.
466Ibid.
467Page-96-1857-S.N Sen-Op Cit.