Indian Antiquary Vol 52

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 214

198
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ AUGUST, 1923
A FEW REFLECTIONS ON BUCKLER'S POLITICAL THEORY OF THE INDIAN MUTINY.1
BY S. M. EDWARDES, C.S.I., C.V.O.
MR. BUCKLER possesses a genius for academic discussion, and apparently a certain bias against the men who laid the foundations of British Rule in India. If we are to accept the spirit and teaching of his pamphlet on the "Political Theory of the Indian Mutiny", we must perforce assume, not only that contemporary writers were deceived as to the real causes of the outbreak of 1857, as some of them may well have been, but also that every student of Indian history since that date has likewise been misled as to the fons et origo of the Sepoy Revolt. We must further acquiesce in the view that this fundamental error is the direct product of the consciously dishonest propaganda of the East India Company, which in pursuance of a desire to justify itself in the eyes of the British public of past centuries, deliberately concocted a fictitious history for home consumption, and in so doing, if I apprehend his meaning correctly, deliberately deceived also the potentates and people of India. Whatever grounds there may be for the view that opinion in England was bemused from 1750 to 1857 by the specious tales woven by this Macchiavellian body of East India merchants, no writer who has lived in India and studied at first hand the acute perceptive power of its peoples, could solemnly suggest that up to 1857 the Indian territorial leaders and the general body of the people suffered themselves to be misled by the alleged duplicity of the Company and actually to believe that for some years prior to 1857 the Company still regarded itself in fact, and wished to be regarded, as the vassal of the Mughal Emperor.
Yet this assertion is one of the main props of Mr. Buckler's novel theory regarding the cause of the Indian Mutiny; and it seems to me to display a fundamental and profound ignorance of the mentality of the people of India, both Hindu and Muhammadan. Mr. Buckler has presumably studied the period of Indian history immediately preceding the Mutiny with great care: he has read and digested all documents relating to the trial of Bahadur Shah II, to which the English student can obtain access in the tranquil surroundings of his own country. But I feel bound to remark that his arguments disclose an inadequate acquaintanceship with the psychology of the people of India, and that his apparent bias against the East India Company in no small degree vitiates an otherwise clever academic disquisition. Indeed, had this pamphlet been published at the time when Vinayak Savarkar was compiling his War of Indian Independence, 1857, one can imagine that the Brahman rebel would have welcomed Mr. Buckler's theory, as affording some support to the views underlying his seditious publication.
Mr. Buckler's main contention, which rests upon a close study of the record of the proceedings of the trial of the King of Delhi, is that the Mutiny was primarily, if not wholly, the result of the treasonable behaviour of the East India Company towards the Mughal Emperor. The Company, in his view, was simply a vassal of the Emperor, and had become so overbearing and mutinous that the Native Army was obliged to come to its sovereign's assistance and punish its rebel officer. "Hence," in Mr. Buckler's words, "if in 1857 there was any mutineer, it was the East India Company," which by policy and act had deliberately flouted its legal suzerain-the miserable and powerless representative of the house
1 By F. W. Buckler, M.A., F.R. HISTS., reprinted from the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Series, vol. V, pp. 71-100.