The Revolt of 1857

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The Revolt of 1857 was much more than a mere product of sepoy discontent. It was in reality a product of the character and policies of colonial rule, of the accumulated grievances of the people against the Company's administration and of their dislike for the foreign regime. For over a century, as the British had been conquering the country bit by bit, popular discontent and hatred against foreign rule was gaining strength among the different sections of Indian society. It was this discontent that burst forth into a mighty popular revolt. Perhaps the most important cause of the popular discontent was the economic exploitation of the country by the British and the complete destruction of its traditional economic fabric; this both impoverished the vast mass of peasants, artisans and handicraftsmen as also a large number of traditional zamindars and chiefs. We have traced the disastrous economic impact of early British rule in another chapter. Other general causes were the British land and land revenue policies and the systems of law and administration. In particular, a large number of peasant proprietors, subjected to exorbitant land revenue demand, lost their lands to traders and moneylenders and found them hopelessly involved in debt. The new landlords, lacking ties of tradition that had linked the old zamindars to peasants, pushed rents up to ruinous heights and evicted them in case of nonpayment's. The economic decline of the peasantry found expression in twelve major and numerous minor famines from 1770 to 1857. Similarly, many zamindars were harassed by demands for higher land revenue and threatened with forfeiture of their zamindari lands and rights and loss of their status in the villages. They resented their loss even more when they were replaced by rank outsiders officials, merchants and moneylenders. In addition, common people were hard hit by the
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