The complexity of Indian affairs was very remarkable; and in no instance more so than with reference to the first of the above two subjects of speculation. Down to the closing scene, men could not agree in their answers to the question—‘What was the cause of the mutiny?’ Military officers, cabinet ministers, commissioners, magistrates, missionaries, members of parliament, pamphleteers, writers in newspapers, as they had differed at first, so did they differ to the end. This discrepancy offers strong proof that the causes were many in number and varied in kind—that the Revolt was a resultant of several independent forces, all tending towards a common end. It may not be without value to shew in what directions public men sought for these causes. The following summaries present the views of a few among many who wrote on the subject:
Mr Gubbins,[[195]] who was financial commissioner of Oude (or Oudh) when the mutiny began, was requested by Mr Colvin, lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces, to express his opinions concerning the causes of that catastrophe. He wrote out his opinions; and stated that Sir Henry Lawrence, shortly before his death, concurred mainly with them. In the first place, he did not attribute the mutiny to Russian intrigue—an explanation that had occurred to the minds of some persons. In the second place, he disbelieved that the mutiny was due to a Mohammedan conspiracy; the movement began among soldiers, of whom four-fifths or more were Hindoos; and certain Mohammedan sovereigns and leaders only joined it when they saw a probable chance of recovering dominion for their race and their religion. In the third place, Mr Gubbins equally denied that it was a national rebellion, a rising of a nation against its rulers; for, he urged, the villagers were throughout more disposed to remain neutral than to aid either side; we had no right to expect any great loyalty from them; and we received all that could fairly be looked for—the sympathy of some, the hostility of others, but the neutrality of the greater number. In the fourth place, he denied that the annexation of Oude caused the mutiny; there were certain persons—courtiers of the deposed king, shopkeepers at Lucknow, soldiers of the late king’s army, and budmashes—who had suffered by the change; but the mass of the population, he contended, had been benefited by us, and had neither ground nor wish for insurrection. Having thus expressed his dissent from many modes of explanation, Mr Gubbins proceeded to give his own views, which traced the mutiny to three concurrent causes: ‘I conceive that the native mind had been gradually alarmed on the vital subjects of caste and religion, when the spark was applied by the threatened introduction of the greased cartridge; that this spark fell upon a native army most dangerously organised, subject to no sufficient bonds of discipline, and discontented; and, above all, that this occurred at a time when Bengal and the Northwestern Provinces were so denuded of European troops as to leave the real power in the hands of the natives.’
Mr Rees,[[196]] confining his observations to the province with which he was best acquainted, attributed the mutiny to the mode of governing Oude by the English, superadded to the fierce hostility of the Mussulmans to Christians in general. Thousands of natives had been thrown out of employ by the change of government, and with them their retainers and servants; all alike were rendered impoverished and discontented. The shopkeepers of Lucknow, who had made large profits by supplying the palaces and harem of the king before his deposition, lost that advantage when an English commissioner took the king’s place. New taxes and duties were imposed, as a means of substituting a regular for an irregular revenue; and these taxes irritated the payers. The Mohammedan teachers and fanatics, he urged, enraged at the substitution of a Christian for a Moslem government, were ready for any reactionary measures. Lastly, there were innumerable vagabonds, bravos, and beggars in the city, who had found bread in it under native rule, but who nearly starved under the more systematic English government. Hence, Mr Rees contended, the great city of Lucknow had for a year or more been ripe for rebellion, come from what quarter and in what way it might.
Colonel Bourchier,[[197]] like many military officers, sought for no other origin of the mutiny than that which was due to the state of the native army. The enormous increase in that army—by the contingents raised to guard the newly acquired territories in Central India, the Punjaub, and Oude—with no corresponding increase in the European force, encouraged a belief on the part of many of the natives that they had a fair chance of being able to drive the English altogether from the country. The colonel quoted an opinion expressed by the gallant and lamented Brigadier Nicholson, who possessed an intimate knowledge of the native character—‘Neither greased cartridges, the annexation of Oude, nor the paucity of European officers, was the cause of the mutiny. For years I have watched the army, and felt sure they only wanted an opportunity to try their strength with us.’
Mr Ludlow[[198]] ridiculed the idea of the mutiny being sudden and unexpected. He pointed to the fact that Munro, Metcalfe, Napier, and other experienced men, had long ago predicted an eventual outbreak, arising mainly from the defective organisation of the military force. Mr Ludlow himself attributed the mutiny to many concurrent causes. The Brahmins were against us, because we were gradually sapping the foundations of their religion and power; the Mussulman leaders were against us, because we had reduced the Mogul rule to a shadow, and most of the nawabships likewise; the Mahrattas were against us, because we had gradually lessened the power of Scindia, Holkar, the Guicowar, the Peishwa, the Nena, and other leading men of their nation; the Oudians were against us, because, in addition to having deposed their king, we had greatly lessened the privileges and emoluments of the soldiery who had heretofore served him; and lastly, the Hindoo sepoys were turned against us, because they believed the rumour that the British government intended to degrade their caste and religion by the medium of greased cartridges. Mr Ludlow treated the cartridge grievance as the spark that had directly kindled the flame; but he believed there were sufficient inflammable materials for the outbreak even if this particular panic had not arisen.
Mr Mead,[[199]] who, in connection with the press of India, had been one of the fiercest assailants of the Company in general, and of Viscount Canning in particular, insisted that the mutiny was a natural result of a system of government wrong in almost every particular—cruel to the natives, insulting to Europeans not connected with the Company, and blind even in its selfishness. More especially, however, he referred it to ‘the want of discipline in the Bengal army; the general contempt entertained by the sepoys for authority; the absence of all power on the part of commanding officers to reward or punish; the greased cartridges; and the annexation of Oude.’ The ‘marvellous imbecility’ of the Calcutta government—a sort of language very customary with this writer—he referred to, not as a cause of the mutiny, but as a circumstance or condition which permitted the easy spread of disaffection.
Mr Raikes,[[200]] who, as judge of the Sudder Court at Agra, had an intimate knowledge of the Northwest Provinces, contended that, so far as concerned those provinces, there was one cause of the troubles, and one only—the mutiny of the sepoys. It was a revolt growing out of a military mutiny, not a mutiny growing out of a national discontent. Ever since the disasters at Cabool taught the natives that an English army might be annihilated, Mr Raikes had noticed a change in the demeanour of the Bengal sepoys. He believed that they indulged in dreams of ambition; and that they made use of the cartridge grievance merely as a pretext, in the beginning of 1857. The outbreak having once commenced, Mr Raikes traced all the rest as consequences, not as causes.—The villagers in many districts wavered, because they thought the power of England was really declining; the Goojurs, Mewatties, and other predatory tribes rose into activity, because the bonds of regular government were loosened; the Mussulman fanatics rose, because they deemed a revival of Moslem power just possible; but Mr Raikes denied that there was anything like general disaffection or national insurrection in the provinces with which he was best acquainted.
‘Indophilus’[[201]]—the nom de plume of a distinguished civilian, who had first served the Company in India, and then the imperial government in England—discountenanced the idea of any general conspiracy. He believed that the immediate exciting cause of the mutiny was the greased cartridges; but that the predisposing causes were two—the dangerous constitution of the Bengal sepoy army, and the Brahmin dread of reforms. On the latter point he said: ‘In the progress of reform, we are all accomplices. From the abolition of suttee, to the exemption of native Christian converts from the forfeiture of their rights of inheritance; from the formation of the first metalled road, to covering India with a network of railways and electric telegraphs—there is not a single good measure which has not contributed something to impress the military priests with the conviction that, if they were to make a stand, they must do so soon, else the opportunity would pass away for ever.’
The Rev. Dr Duff,[[202]] director of the Free Church Scotch Missions in India, differed, on the one hand, from those who treated the outbreak merely as a military revolt, and, on the other, from those who regarded it as a great national rebellion. It was, he thought, something between the two—a political conspiracy. He traced it much more directly to the Mohammedan leaders than to the Hindoos. He believed in a long-existing conspiracy among those leaders, to renew, if possible, the splendour of the ancient Mogul times by the utter expulsion of the Christian English; the Brahmins and Rajpoots of the Bengal army were gradually drawn into the plot, by wily appeals to their discontent on various subjects connected with caste and religion; while the cartridge grievance was used simply as a pretext when the conspiracy was nearly ripe. The millions of India, he contended, had no strong bias one way or the other; there was no such nationality or patriotic feeling among them as to lead them to make common cause with the conspirators; but on the other hand they displayed very little general sympathy or loyalty towards their English masters. Viewing the subject as a missionary, Dr Duff strongly expressed his belief that we neither did obtain, nor had a right to obtain, the aid of the natives, seeing that we had done so little as a nation to Christianise them.
Without extending the list of authorities referred to, it will be seen that nearly all these writers regarded the ‘cartridge grievance’ as merely the spark which kindled inflammable materials, and the state of the Bengal army as one of the predisposing causes of the mutiny; but they differed greatly on the questions whether the revolt was rather Mohammedan or Hindoo, and whether it was a national rebellion or only a military mutiny. It is probable that the affirmative opinions were sounder than the negative—in other words, that every one of the causes assigned had really something to do with this momentous outbreak.