First war of independence: 1857

[acharya]

Rudolf Muhs [Royal Holloway London]: 'German views on the Indian mutiny'
Awaiting Abstract

Veena Naregal [IEG, New Delhi]: 'Merchant Networks and the Mutiny '
It has been argued that the political turmoil of 1857 did not remain confined to discontent in the British Indian Army, in fact, the uprising against the British enjoyed larger support,and even amounted to civil rebellion. The major events of 1857 in North India found an echo in various parts of Central,Western India and the Southern Maratha country.However, it is equally clear that the pattern of events outside of the Ganagetic plain differed significantly both in terms of scale and the response of ruling native princes. Evidence shows that two major regiments in the Bombay Army mutinied. Further information also suggests that merchant networks in the Bombay region as well as in Central India came under significant political pressure during this period for being suspected of transferring funds to Nanasaheb's camp. In this context, this paper will explore the available archival evidence to examine the role of important native groups such as merchant networks in Western and Central India, particularly as financial agents and purveyors of information about the Mutiny .

Alex Padamsee [University of Kent]: 'Muslim conspiracy and the state in the British colonial imagination in 1857'
This paper presents a revisionist account of the genesis and evolution of the British perception of Muslim ‘conspiracy‘ in 1857. Based on the detailed study of Anglo-Indian memoirs, fiction, journalism, correspondence, and official accounts, I locate this perception among, initially, Indian Civil Service officers. I argue that it was not simply the result of a generalised and predictable ‘Islamophobia', but rather a profound and specific crisis over the British ruling ideology of secular neutrality. Using recent psychoanalytic and sociological theories on the formation and maintenance of ideologies, I suggest that conflicts within the predominantly Anglican Indian Civil Service over the proper relations of church and government in the colonial state engendered during the rebellion of 1857 a corporate social fantasy centred on Muslim ‘conspiracy'. The particular contours of this fantasy resulted in Anglo-Indian writings over the next fifty years in a complex and disturbing process of representational stigmatisation and segregation - a process that would play an important role in the development of the British predisposition towards accepting the principle of separate electorates.

Vijay Pinch [Wesleyan College]: 'Prostituting the Mutiny '
Prostitutes are believed to have taken an active role in prompting the mutinies of the 3rd Light Cavalry and the 20th Native Infantry at Meerut . They also were reported to have offered their services to the rebellions at Lucknow and Delhi . Depositions taken later in 1857-58 paint a different picture however: that prostitutes knew of the imminent uprising in Meerut and even took steps to warn those in authority -- though their warnings were not heeded. In order to shed light on the conflicting political trajectories of prostitutes during the Mutiny/Rebellion, and to probe the conflicted meanings ascribed to sex-work in Company north India , I examine criminal court records in the years leading up to 1857. The picture of prostitution and policing that emerges from these records, I argue, is one in which officials, police, and prostitutes were bound to one another through what may be termed a benevolent paternalism, but a benevolent paternalism that only makes sense in the context of changing attitudes toward the moral economy of enslavement and the rise of a modern discourse of freedom. These conclusions afford, as well, a glimpse of the social, economic, and cultural mechanisms by which late-Mughal 'courtesanship' evolved into Company 'common prostitution' by the mid nineteenth century.

Avril Powell [SOAS. London]: 'Marginal Muslims: maulawis , munsifs , munshis and others '
The paper will examine patterns of response to the events of 1857-58 among some Muslim civil servants employed in the subordinate services in the North-Western Provinces in positions such as munsif , sadr amin and deputy collector, and also as professors and teachers in the Anglo-Oriental colleges of the region, notably in Delhi, Agra and Bareilly. Many were of maulawi background and education, but unlike those ‘ulama more directly associated with mosque and madrassa functions, whose involvements in 1857 have been examined previously, the responses of the ‘service' category, with the exception of some well known figures such as Saiyid Ahmad Khan, have had little critical attention so far. The object will be to disaggregate this service class to chart and evaluate some specific perceptions of events and decisions on stances and involvement, before, during and in the aftermath of rebellion.

Satadru Sen [Queens College , City University of New York]: 'Mutiny's Children: Race, Childhood and Authority after Eighteen Fifty-Seven'
This paper examines the impact of the 1857 rebellion on ‘orphans' in British India . The war seriously altered the relationship between the British-Indian state and colonial children, triggering an interest (and an ideological investment) by the governing elites in institutions such as orphanages and reformatories. The children who entered these institutions were marginal twice over: once because they came from the margins of colonial society (as the children of subaltern whites, Eurasians, criminalized Indians, and aboriginal populations), and again because the spaces to which they were consigned were themselves located on a productive margin. The focus of the paper is on white and Eurasian children. The 'white narrative' of 1857 is remarkable for its obsession with the threatened Anglo-Indian family, including children in danger. It is not coincidental that the war was followed by a new visibility for white orphans, and eventually by Kim: the unparented white child gone native in the colony. This paper seeks to tie together the real, metaphorical and literary orphans that surfaced after 1857, and to ground them in the anxieties and mechanisms that were generated by the Mutiny.

Badri Tiwari Narayan [GB Pant Social Science Institute, Allahbad]: 'Identity and Narratives: Dalits and Memories of 1857'
A major project of inventing their own histories is going on among the various dalit communities of north India . These histories are helping the dalits demarginalize themselves and become a part of mainstream contemporary Indian life, strengthening their own identities, inculcating self-confidence, improving their present and carving out a future. They are circulated through popular booklets that are read and disseminated by the neo-literate dalit population. Political parties, especially the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is using them for mobilizing grass root dalits, helping them to demand social, economic and political privileged based on the history of injustice done to them cast as an alternative history. It subverts dominant political discourses by providing a strong basis for an alternative.

This alternative history is an existential necessity for the dalits to combat the everyday humiliation encountered through dominant Brahminical cultural narratives. It is created by weaving together stories found in religious Brahminical popular texts about dissenting lower caste characters, who are glorified as dalit heroes who fought against upper caste oppression and injustice. The stories of unsung dalit freedom fighters who have been transformed into local myths, are also included. The language used is also different from Standard Hindi since folk proverbs, idioms, and symbols, and also the grammar and vocabulary of local dialects, are used. These new histories may prove to be histories of the future of subaltern communities of South Asia .

Kim Wagner [University of Edinburgh]: 'The Protocols of Nena Sahib: the 1857-fantasy of Hermann Goedsche'
The Prussian author of historical romantic fiction, Hermann Goedsche (1815-1878), is today best known for having written the source for the anti-Semitic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , which allegedly proved the existence of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy. Goedsche's mammoth novel Nena Sahib, oder: Die Empörung in Indien (‘ Nana Sahib, or: The Uprising in India ') written in 1858-59 under the pseudonym Sir John Retcliffe, is, however, entirely unknown outside the German-speaking world. This paper seeks to introduce this unique and fascinating work to a broader audience and to examine the context of Western fears of indigenous conspiracies as expressed in connection with the events of 1857. Written during the events, Nena Sahib offers a rare example of a Continental European perspective on 1857, which completely inverts the British literary representations while at the same borrowing heavily from the conventional repertoire of Orientalist stereotypes. In Goedsche's re-imagining of 1857, it is the British, described as the ‘Tyrants of the Earth', who are the villains and the righteous uprising is instigated by the noble German, Greek and Irish protagonists of the novel who have all suffered at the hands of the British. The narrative framework and political worldview presented in the Protocols is also to be found in Nena Sahib with only minor alterations: The 1857 Uprising is a conspiracy partly instigated by the European agents of Louis Napoleon III of France , and partly by the thugs and despotic Indian rulers. Yet Nena Sahib is just the most extreme example of the manner in which the events of 1857 have been associated with an entire host of outlandish themes, such as religious conspiracies, thugs, secret oaths, human sacrifice, rape and torture. Taking Goedsche's novel as a point of departure it is thus possible to examine the colonial nightmares of the Western imagination in relation to 1857 more generally.

Benjamin Zachariah [University of Sheffield]: '1857 in the Nationalist Imagination'
This is a paper not on event-history, but of readings of a set of events that loomed large in the imagination of empire and colony alike. It is about that awkward space in the intersection of history and collective memory that is the setting up of national lieux de memoire, in Pierre Nora's phrase. The problem of how to read the Revolt of 1857 has been a long-standing one in the historiography of India . We recognise that 1857 in various forms of collective imagination has come to overshadow 1857 in 1857. The sparseness of event-centred literature could be because it is difficult to interpret 1857 with any degree of comfort if one is committed to the values of a modernising or a secular state. Events are embarrassing: was the British atrocity literature based even on the semblance of a hint of actual event-history? (British brutality, of course, is well documented and even celebrated as the appropriately and truly manly response to the cowardly natives.) And then there is the problem of placing 1857 in a narrative of national progress. The trouble with 1857 is that it inhabits inappropriable ground: a coalition of ‘backward' elements drawn from the lower ranks of an army, elitist leaders, landowners and world-historically obsolete kings and princes were difficult to celebrate among ‘progressives'. And Indian nationalists of various types all wished to see themselves as progressives, even those nationalists we now see as somewhat backward. Further problems surround the rebels' use of religious rhetoric to cement solidarity with their cause. The paper seeks to explore some of these questions with a view to highlighting some of the problems of the development of a historiography whose habitual alliances and allegiances must relate to some form of ‘national' belonging.


Workshop:

‘Reporting 1857': the Indian Uprising and the British Media

Monday 23rd July, 2007, William Robertson Building,
George Square, University of Edinburgh

Esther Breitenbach [University of Edinburgh] Scottish Presbyterian missionaries in India : perspectives on the Indian Mutiny of 1857
Scottish Presbyterian missionary activity in India was initiated in the late 1820s with the establishment of Scottish Missionary Society and Church of Scotland missions in Bombay and Calcutta . The field of Scottish Presbyterian missionary endeavour in India continued to expand throughout the 19 th and into the 20 th century, with, after the Disruption of 1843, all three main Presbyterian denominations developing missionary work in a range of locations across the Indian sub-continent. In terms of numbers of Scottish missionaries India consistently attracted the biggest share, even though in the later 19 th century missionary activities in Central Africa had a higher public profile in Scotland . While overall numbers of missionaries were not large, the impact that they had in shaping perceptions of the experience of empire at home was considerable.

This paper will briefly outline the development of Scottish Presbyterian missionary activities in India from their inception in the late 1820s up to the period immediatedly following the events of the Mutiny of 1857. The paper will provide an account of the involvement in the events of the Mutiny of Scots missionaries and examine accounts of the Mutiny provided by missionaries, such as the reports by Alexander Duff published in the Edinburgh Witness. The paper will also examine contemporary debates about the role of missionaries in India and of religion in giving rise to the Mutiny. For example, a notable feature of the reaction of missionaries and missionary supporters to the Mutiny was the representation of the uprising as a sign of divine displeasure at the weakness of Christian evangelising in India , and at the exploitation of Indian wealth by the British administration in India . While at the time of the Mutiny itself there was a questioning of the role of missionaries and a recognition of the danger of offending the religious beliefs of Indian peoples, such doubts soon faded, and with the ending of the power of the East India Company following the Mutiny, resistance to the expansion of missionary activity was overcome. The paper will therefore also assess the impact of the Mutiny on subsequent Scottish Presbyterian missionary work, for example, attitudes towards the expansion of missionary work, modes of working, and the growing emphasis on work with women.

Andrea Major [University of Edinburgh] 'The Crescent Versus the Cross'? Missionary Experiences and Religious Interpretations of the Indian Uprising of 1857'
From the moment that insurrection swept across north India in the summer of 1857 until the present day, popular British accounts have sought to explain the uprising as a clash of religions. Proselytising activity, religious insensitivity, the curtailing of some religious practices and apprehensions of forced conversion have all been blamed for the revolt in British historiography. The reality of religious feeling in 1857 has, however, become entangled with justificatory colonial discourses that seek to transfer culpability for the uprising away from the central structures of British imperialism and represent it as irrational, fanatical and unfounded, in order to legitimise its brutal suppression and the eventual re-imposition of British rule. The assumption that fears about conversion underpinned the uprising, for example, led some to blame missionary activity for provoking unrest. Always marginal to the main infrastructure of the colonial state, the ambivalent relationship between missionaries and colonial authority meant that they represented a convenient scapegoat in 1857. This kind of hostility, combined with the challenges invoked by the widespread vilification of the Indian character that accompanied the atrocities of 1857-8, necessitated the reassertion and reconfiguration of the rationale for proselytising activity, as the missionary societies sought to both defend their presence in India and reconstruct an image of the ‘heathen' that made him culpable but ultimately redeemable.

This paper will use published and unpublished material from the London Missionary Society archive to explore the lived experiences of missionaries during 1857, the impact that this had on their conception of mission in India and the way in which their experience was reconstructed into a justificatory discourse for missionary activity by the LMS in Britain . In particular it will look at the extensive unpublished correspondence of missionaries on the field and compare this with the tightly edited extracts published for public consumption in the Missionary Magazine. A close reading of what was included and what was excluded from the public discourse will then be used to elucidate the processes and strategies by which the London Missionary Society sought to mediate public understanding of 1857 and its relation to mission activity and the impact that this had for future proselytising activity in the subcontinent.



Workshop:

The Military Aspects of 1857

Monday 23rd July, 2007, William Robertson Building,
George Square, University of Edinburgh

Gavin Rand [University of Greenwich] "Learning the Lessons of '57: reconstructing the imperial military after the rebellion"
The proposed paper examines the impacts of 1857 by exploring the various ways in which the imperial military responded to the rebellion. While 1857 is (quite properly) identified as a seminal moment for the imperial state, the impacts of the uprising on the Indian Army and its officers and men remain relatively obscure. Much of the extant historiography assumes that the pragmatic and reactive nature of post-1857 imperial policy was reflected in the apparently piecemeal reconstruction of the military - a process which is seen to have been determined largely by financial and strategic expediency. Only after the 1870s, in the face of the 'Russian threat', is the imperial military seen to adopt a more proactive administrative strategy. However, though the process of reconstruction was undoubtedly constrained - by, amongst other factors, pressures on the colonial exchequer, local strategic concerns, as well as contradictory readings of the rebellion itself - it is clear that the events of 1857 dominated imperial military practice in the two decades which follow the uprising. The imperative to understand the rebellion and thereby insulate the imperial state from another such uprising underscores a proliferation of official and non-official discourse on 1857. Charting colonial responses to the rebellion through official documents, military journals and private papers, I argue that the historiographical tendency to interpret this period as one of consolidation disguises the numerous transmissions between 1857 and the latter, more familiar policies of Roberts et al. While responses to the rebellion were often anodyne and contradictory, the increasingly technocratic terms in which military strategy was formulated in the final quarter of the century can be traced through the varied responses proffered in the aftermath of 1857. If the rebellion demonstrated the strategic utility of the railways and telegraph, it also served, in this sense, to bolster a 'techno-political' rendering of military administration. Although it was not until Roberts' administration that this shift was manifested in military policy, it is clear that 1857 was a key moment in the genesis of such practice. Locating the impacts of the uprising in this way not only revises our understandings of the rebellion (and its influence on the imperial military) but also helps to throw light upon the wider shifts which transformed colonial rule in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Dr. Kaushik Roy [Presidency College , Kolkata] Combat, Combat Motivation and the Construction of Identity
Combat, rightly says Carl Von Clausewitz, constitute the central component of warfare. However, the New Military History under the impact of social history and cultural studies ignore combat and construct warfare as a continuation of social discourse by other means. This paper tries to mesh the New Military History with the traditional approach of studying combat by making a case study of the Great Mutiny of 1857-58 in India . Modern scholarship on 1857 revolves round the debate whether the uprising was a nationalist or a popular movement or merely a military mutiny. One thing is clear. The British had to deploy a large military force which engaged the rebels both in conventional and low intensity conflicts for two and half years before Pax Britannica was established in north and central India . Modern scholarship seems oblivious of this issue. Colonial officers poured a lot of ink over the theme of British victory over the rebels but came up with racial-biological explanations. Several accounts of the participants also highlight the stereotypes about themselves and the negative images they had about the ‘natives'. And these in the long run shaped construction of identities about both the colonizers and different communities among the colonized.

This paper is divided into three sections. The first section shows the brutalizing effect of warfare on both the British and different groups among the ‘rebels'. The next section deals with combat psychology. The million dollar question is why they fought? The essay deals with the ‘will to combat' of the British, Sikhs and the Gurkhas allied with the East India Company. An attempt will be made to analyze the pre-combat and in-combat motivations of the ‘Pandies', the ghazis , and the construction of negative stereotypes about them by their opponents. The role played by the inter-linked issues of religion and caste, the incentive of plunder and ideas of masculinity in motivating different groups to join the combat shall also be probed. This will also throw light on the nature of uprising. And the last section takes up the issue of self perception and identity creation of both the sahibs and the sepoys. The rise of gentlemen officers imbued with muscular Christianity and the ‘martial races' from the periphery who replaced the high caste Hindu warriors of the plain are the principal themes that will be addressed. The British mobilization of the low castes in Awadh and Rajasthan will be looked into. Despite construction of a positive image about the marginal groups, why the Martial Race theorists refused to induct them into the post-Mutiny army is an issue that will be delved into. Since the sepoys and the sowars were mostly illiterate, they have left us with no memoirs or private papers. We have to depend on autobiographies of the British officers, their private papers at National Army Museum , London , military department files at Oriental and India Office Collection, unpublished regimental records and Foreign Secret Consultations at National Archives of India.

Gajendra Singh, [University of Edinburgh] Conceptualizing martialness: the ascription and re-ascription of martial identities in India from the mutinies of 1857 to the last days of the Raj
My PhD research is concerned with investigating the soldiering identities that were constructed by military and civil institutions in India , and how roles given definition to by pukka sahibs were actuated by ‘native' Indian sipahis (soldiers) in unforeseen and often unwanted ways. Yet, although my research is focused largely on unravelling the means by which these identities were renegotiated by Indian soldiers and the dissent that accrued as a result, the paper I propose for this conference is concerned with charting the substance of what martialized identities were in colonial India from the perspective of the military establishment. For in much history written to date, the situation in colonial India is portrayed as one in which Indians were totally objectified by many Britishers in accordance with a static binarism of favoured martial races and condemned non-martial peoples, with there being no interchange between the two. I will argue, however, that this view can only be sustained if one relies solely on a reading of the high colonial literature of the period written for a lay British public, such as George MacMunn's The Martial Races of India , and Frederick Roberts' Forty-One Years in India , and that if one moves beyond these writings one is confronted with a far greater dynamism and fluctuation of the terms of who was and who wasn't of a soldierly class in India.

Thus, I will show that Sikh Jats once lauded for their stolidity in the face of the enemy, came to be condemned for their susceptibility to sedition; Pathans, once seen as a noble frontiersman, was looked upon in disgust for their sexual ambiguity; and how Dalit and Adivasi soldiers, previously viewed as an ‘untouchable rabble', came in 1946 to be viewed as stalwarts of the British Raj. Moreover, I will show that these re-ascriptions of martialized identities in India were situated in the material realities of recruiters finding it difficult to obtain certain types of recruits and with instances of soldierly dissent and resistance.

Pritam Singh [Oxford Brooks University] Contesting Interpretation of the Sikh role in 1857
The argument of this paper is that the Indian nationalist historiography has wrongly portrayed Sikhs as collaborators of the British during the 1857 uprising. This paper attempts to show that the Sikh role during the uprising was determined by their perception of the role of the north Indians (Purbias) in the British annexation of Punjab in 1849. The paper will also discuss how 1849 and 1857 played an important role in the Sikh relationship with the colonial rule and with the Indian nationalist movement

Workshop:

Muslims and the State

Monday 23rd July, 2007, Conference Room,
David Hume Tower, George Square, University of Edinburgh


Ruby Lal [Emory University] In the Wake of Colonial Ascendancy: Rethinking Muslim Respectability
This paper considers questions of social reform and family in nineteenth century India . In the writing on these themes, so far, the category of reform, like that of woman (as in women's education), seems to float in a historically and sociologically empty space. It is the placement of these concepts within particular ideological and cultural discourses that I want to foreground in this presentation.

In the wake of colonial ascendancy, I shall argue, the reform we so insistently invoke was not for the transformation, but rather for the preservation of the family. This was a reform in which inherited notions of the family now get constituted, institutionalized, and remembered in new ways. I shall suggest that such ideas were being articulated not to conform to some ‘modern' standard, but to refashion and to finesse what were thought of as being long established ways of life for continued sustenance and vibrancy in a new economic and political context. With all the earnest re-thinking and re-articulation, however, the self-conscious object of the ‘reformers' was to reproduce the family, the values and respectability that were supposedly handed down through the ages.

By taking illustrations from a couple of well known books of Muslim publicist Nazir Ahmad, among other ‘reformers', I shall argue that although the sharif woman appears to be the axis of the ‘reformist' debates, the object of the reformers was not to transform her, but to preserve the sharif family through her. To achieve this, the reformers bring the ‘literate' woman at the center of the respectable patriarchal family. Thus the figure of the woman (the educator) and that of a girl child (being educated) become preparatory figures to ensure that the honor and respectability of the family was preserved.

Workshop:

Historiography, pedagogy and future histories of 1857

Royal Asiatic Society, London, July 27th 2007

Bhagwan Josh V.D.Savarkar's “ The Indian War Of Independence”: The First Nationalist Re-Construction of 1857
In India , History invariably evokes political passions in the public domain. One of the reasons for this is that the popular conception of history in the mass imagination continues to be an act of recognition and celebration of the spirit of selfless service, bravery and sacrifice on the part of individuals, families, castes, communities and political parties. History writing is considered as an important mode of appropriating, accumulating and constantly renewing “the cultural capital”, the durable stuff that goes into the making of contemporary political discourses in India . Savarkar's “The Indian War of Independence” was an important book written in this tradition.

In March, 2003, when a portrait of the Hindutva Hero, Veer Savarkar, was unveiled in Parliament's Central Hall, the public opinion was sharply polarized between those who sang his praises and others who denounced him for his role in the Indian national movement. For his followers, Veer Savarkar(1883-1966) continues to be a figure of great reverence despite the fact that he was included as a co-conspirator in the assassination of Gandhi. For them he is a patriot, prolific writer, historian, motivator, and above all an individual with a commitment to the idea of a “Motherland”. The book was written originally in Marathi, in 1908, when Savarkar was about twenty-five years of age and was living in London . The English translation of the book was printed in Holland and a large number of copies were smuggled into India . It has been claimed that so far six editions of the book have been published and it was widely read in the revolutionary circles of the nationalist movement. According to the Publisher's preface (London, May 10, 1909) Savarkar's objective in writing this book was to let the Indians know “how their nation fought for its Independence and how their ancestors died.”

This genre of ‘inspirational history' writing should not be confused with academic history and perhaps, should be judged on its own terms. A deep fault line continues to divide this sort of history from the multiple genres of academic history writing in India.

John Pincince V.D. Savarkar and the Indian War of Independence: contrasting perspectives on an emerging composite state
In the Indian War of Independence (1909), Savarkar described the important link between the nation and its historical narrative this way:

The Nation that has no consciousness of its past has no future. Equally true it is that a nation must develop its capacity not only claiming a past, but also of knowing how to use it for the furtherance of its future. (1)


Savarkar's inscription of the 1857 “mutiny” as a “war of independence” was not simply a nationalist reading of the past. Savarkar's Indian War of Independence served as an historical allegory for the present: it was to serve as an instrument through which to raise the national consciousness of Indians. Furthermore, the text was an attempt to reclaim the recent history of the Indian “nation” from the British. But, rather then serving as a means to increase Indian self-nationhood, Savarkar's book was a precursor to later writings that interpreted India's past in more excusive terms: as a Hindu nation re-awakening. This is evident in Savarkar's Hindutva (1923) and Hindu Pad Padshahi (1925). In this paper, I intend to examine Savarkar's seminal work on the “Mutiny of 1857” in terms of a historical narrative that reveals Hindu and Maratha exclusivity rather than as a text that celebrates a unified and composite past, present, and future Indian nation.

Gautam Bhadra 'How to write a patriotic history of the Rebellion of 1857? Rajanikanta Gupta's ‘Sipahi Juddher Itihas' and multiple faces of loyalty, anxiety and dissatisfaction
Rajanikanta Gupta (1849 – 1900) had hardly any formal college education. Coming from a poor Vaidya or traditional family of indigenous medicine practitioners, he suffered from a congenital deafness, barring him from pursuing any lucrative profession. He started his career as an assistant to Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, the great educationist. He gradually wrote a number of textbooks on Indian History and learnt English on his own. He wrote a biography of Panini, following and revising the work of Theodor Goldstucker (Panini: his place in Sanskrit Literature). His lifetime project was, however, to write a history of the Sepoy Mutiny in vernacular. It is one of the earliest comprehensive, formal history of the Mutiny in any vernacular language, covering all the regions of India . Hr started collecting materials from 1870s. The first volume had been published in 1879; the fifth or the last volume was completed just before his death. The five volumes consisted of more than one thousand printed pages. He spent all his meagre savings in purchasing books, reports as well as in traveling all over northern India to collect oral evidence.

If edition is any index of reader's acceptance, no work, published either in Bengali or English, can match the popularity of this book written by any Bengali historian. His work has run up to twelve editions, the last being issued in 1990s. But much more than its popularity, even cursory perusal of the book would show its importance in evolving vernacular historiography as well as literary consciousness in this subcontinent during the 19 th century. My discussion would focus on this theme along three axes.

The narrative depends heavily upon the history of Kaye, supported by Holmes, official despatches and published trial papers. He has also gathered oral interviews for writing up the account of Nana Saheb, Amar Singh and Rani Lakshmi. It is interesting to note that through numerous narrative practices and deft use of sources he has written up an ‘affective' history. One may compare a passage taken from Kaye and its vernacular representation by Gupta; one may wonder how Liaqat Ali Khan's trial paper has been used in a dramatic and mysterious way; one may also wonder at his placement of suitable passages from Sanskrit classical literature and anecdotes to underline hidden grand schemes unfolded in ordinary events. All these literary techniques with exact reference to the sources, would unfold the narrative practices pursued in a great text of vernacular history. It would also raise a moot question, is there anything special in the ‘vernacularity' of history?

Ramendrasundar Trivedi, a great literary critic and a friend of Rajanikanta Gupta, would search this speciality in the language itself. He pointed out the literary credence of Bengali language used by Rajanikanta - its ‘ojo gun' or inspirational virtue, the use of metaphors, arrangement of paragraphs, placement of pauses has added a quality of orality to his literary exercise. This makes the narrative unique. Rajanikanta has written many chapters in his textbooks as a draft exercise before his book on the Mutiny. Comparing these chapters with the final versions of the book, may probe into the problem of ‘style' in vernacular history.

The book is full of distinct moves, a desire to transcend and an effort to restrain and limit. The over-arching imperial rule is beneficial, modernity under queen Victoria, is ultimate end of civilization to the subjects like Rajanikanta. But, the sepoys were tragic heroes, misguided and violent, yet honest to their beliefs. Everything cannot be judged in the scale of enlightenment and benefits of civilization. These two scales, split and employed at tandem in his narrative, makes it an interesting historiographical exercise.

The sources are Rajanikanta Gupta's multiple volumes as well as various textbooks and contemporary critical reviews.


Rudrangshu Mukherjee ' Sen and Chaudhuri as Historians of 1857'
This paper looks at two of the most significant books to have been written on the uprising of 1857 in the years following India's independence. Sen's book was sponsored and promoted by the Government of India to mark the centenary of the revolt. The assumption was that all previous accounts since they had been written by Britons had contained biases. Sen's brief was to write an objective history. This paper will look at the problems that this created for Sen, and the tensions that can be detected in his narrative and his analysis. Sen, in fact, was heavily influenced in his approach by the one that had been adopted by British writers of the 19th century, especially Kaye. Chaudhuri, writing also in 1957 but after the publication of Sen's book, decided to take a different and a new approach. He had written a previous monograph on Civil Disturbances During British Rule in India , and he chose to follow the theme in the studying the uprising. He believed that enough had been written about the mutinies and the military aspects of the revolt. He wanted to look at the actions of the civil population, and to trace how a mutiny had become an uprising. This paper will contrast the two approaches.

Rajat Ray & Nupur Chaudhuri '1857: A Historiography'
After Independence and Partition, historians in the sub-continent and beyond re-addressed the question : What was the place of the Mutiny in the evolution of the struggle against colonial rule? Two points were of specific concern :
i) The social basis of the uprising and
ii) The mentality of 1857.
For some time, the Mutiny debate proceeded along the old channel : was it a Mutiny or was it a Civil Uprising, until Eric Stokes authoritatively demonstrated that it was a popular uprising with the mutiny of the sepoys at its very core. After this, the debate moved on to the participation of the lower orders in the uprising. Most recently the Mutiny debate has focused on the aspirations, mentality and organization in 1857. cannot be. They also construct their present positions depending on existing structures and needs. While differing in their readings, they together represent alternative accounts of 1857, converging histories, myths, realities and retelling of the pasts.

Vinayak Chaturvedi "Long Live the Book, The Book is Dead!": The Life of V.D. Savarkar's The
Indian War of Independence , 1857.
This paper will examine the international impact and reception of V.D. Savarkar's The Indian War of Independence , 1857. Savarkar originally wrote the book in Marathi to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1857 rebellions in India . Members of his political organization in London and Paris translated parts of the book into English and several vernacular languages. The original Marathi manuscript was lost in transit and only the translations remained. The book was first published in English in 1909 in Britain and was immediately banned by the government. Most copies of the first edition of the book were destroyed. Yet the book circulated widely in India and Europe as new editions and translations were published throughout the twentieth century. This paper will examine the impact of Savarkar's writings on 1857 on intellectuals across the political spectrum and the ways it inspired nationalists in the struggle for India 's independence. It will also discuss the transnational reception of Savarkar's writings, especially considering the German translation of the book in the 1940s. Finally, the paper will address the influence of Savarkar's history in present day India .



Public Lecture

National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh,
Tuesday 24th July, 7pm

Professor Rajat Ray (Vice Chancellor, Vishva Bharati University) and Nupur Chaudhuri (Presidency College Calcutta): 'We and They in 1857: The Mutiny from the Mutineers Mouths'<b>
What would the Mutiny look like of we look at it from the point of view of the mutineers? What did they call it – ‘the Mutiny'? ‘The First War of Independence '? Neither. Nor did they conceive it as an inversion as the latter day Subalternists have done. They usually called it a war ( jung ), and conceived it as a restoration of the sovereignty of the Mughal Empire. Their ideas and institutions reflected this old world mentality. But more than mentality, it is the emotions that provided the dynamism behind the uprising. These emotions may be summed up in two words – race and religion, in that order.</b> This essay will seek to explore the mentality, the aspirations and emotions of 1857, and do so in the words of the indigenous participants themselves. To this end, both speech and the written word will be utilized, especially unguarded utterances and the reflective proclamations. The first reflects the sentiment of race the second reflects the sentiment of religion. There is a sense of the entire country and its legitimate Mughal sovereignty, but no sense of nationalism.