topics: |  history | india | british-raj | 1857 | |

A group of Indian historians are brought together in this volume from the
Indian Council of Historical Research; 
compiles historical writings on 1857 from several points of view.

1857: shift in the centre of historiography

For nearly a century after the event, a loud body of writing on 1857
enshrined the imperial point of view.  Some aspects emphasised in
this body of writing:
	- that it was a mutiny by the sepoy troops on religious grounds,
	- that one is unsure if the cartridges were actually greased with
		pork and beef tallow,
	- that many aspects were carefully planned (e.g. the cawnpore ghat
	  	killings was [a villainous] conspiracy by nana rao).
other aspects that are de-emphasised include the brutal reprisals, which
reduced the population of uttar pradesh by several million over the decade.

This view was challenged by several authors.  Some such as Karl Marx and VD
Savarkar, presenting doctinaire views (from the left and right, surprisingly)
called it India's First War of Independence.  Savarkar particularly, 
treated facts with a light hand.

A more balanced view of the events was presented by S.N. Sen in his history
written in 1957.  This is the work that quotes several full pages from the
earliest and most reliable published work by a survivor of Kanpur and
underlines how Mowbray Thompson writes that the shooting at the "massacre
ghat" was started by the highly tensed up britishers from their grounded
boats.

The modern (postcolonial) histories of 1857 marked a shift in the centre of
gravity for the historiography of this event, most clearly seen in
historian Barbara English's anguished comment on Rudrangshu Mukherjee's
Awadh in Revolt 1857-1858::

	The best-known incident of the "Indian Mutiny" or "First Freedom
	Struggle" of 1857 was the massacre of Europeans at Kanpur - or, as
	the Victorians invariably called it, Cawnpore.  ...  In 1984
	Rudrangshu Mukherjee published a history of the 1857 revolt in the
	kingdom of Oudh, of which Cawnpore had formerly been a part. His book
	contained no mention of the massacre...

The question raised by the new histories is: what makes an event
"best-known"?  Why should the killing of a two hundred englishmen be
"better known" than the death of several million natives?

The first part of this book focuses on the histories and historiography of
the mutiny.

The subaltern view, and repercussions within India

More recently a number of modern historians have strongly argued that
the revolt was initiated by the sepoys, but fed into a long history of
grievances across the countryside, fuelled by the rapaciousness of the british
merchant-rulers.   This view underlines the role of the subalterns, which is
given space in the second part of this work. 

While the effect of 1857 on imperial view of the indian empire has been
well-documented, its repercussions in the growth of Indian nationalism has
been less studied, and is the focus of the third part of this work. 

The last section looks at the histories from the rebel point of view, as
reconstructed from the fragments of diaries, and testimonies recorded by
british magistrates, etc. 

on the whole, a timely re-look at 1857.  but i am sure it will not be the
last.  

Contents

--Histories--		
1 K.C. Yadav : Interpreting 1857: A Case Study  			3
2 William Dalrymple : Religious Rhetoric in the Delhi
	Uprising of 1857	  	  				22
3 R.P. Singh : Re-Assessing Writings on the Rebellion: Savarkar to
	Surendra Nath Sen  						44
4 Irfan Habib : Understanding 1857  					58

Marginal communities in 1857

5 L. N. Rana : The 1857 Uprising and Civil Rebellion in Jharkhand  	69
6 Sanjukta Das Gupta : Rebellion in a Little Known District of the
	Empire: 1857 and the Hos of Singhbbum 				96
7 Shashank Sinha : On The Margins of a National Uprising: Dynamics
	of 1857 in Chotanagpur  					120
8 Badri Narayan : Dalits and Memories of 1857				143

--Beyond the North Indian Gangetic heartland--  
9 Basudeb Chottopadhyaya : Panic Sunday in Calcutta: 14 June 1857 	165
10 N. Rajendran : The Revolt of 1857: Rebellious Prelude and
	Nationalist Response in Tamil Nadu 				180
11 David R. Syiemlieh : Historiography of Literature and Sources on 
	the Uprising of 1857 in North East India 			210

--Alternative polity--  
12 Tapti Roy :  Rereading the Texts : Rebel Writings in 1857-58 	221
13  Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri : Indigenous Discourse and Modern
	Historiography of 1857: The Case Study of Maulvi
	Ahmadullah Shah 						237
14 Deep Kanta Lahiri Choudhury : 1857 and the Communication Crisis  	261
15 Kaushik Roy : Structural Anatomy of the Rebel Forces during 
	the Great Mutiny of 1857-58: Equipment, Logistics and 
	Recruitment Reconsidered					283