Book Title: Indian Antiquary Vol 52
Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications
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AUGUST, 1923)
BUCKLER'S POLITICAL THEORY OF THE INDIAN MUTINY
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not been definitely annexed: the authority of the Delhi Emperor and his native vice-regent was still formally recognized, and the attributes of sovereignty had been divided between them and the Company in such proportions that, while the substance had passed to the latter, a shadow only remained with the former." Wellesley, then, at the worst seems to have done no more than perpetuate an arrangement accepted by the authorities in England who framed the Regulating Act twenty years before.
There are other points in Mr. Buckler's paper which deserve comment, as, for example, his statement that the Company continued offering nazr8 till 1843. The late Dr. Vincent Smith, a careful historian, states that Lord Hastings (1813–22) discontinued them, holding that "such a public testimony of dependence and subservience” was irreconcilable with any rational system of policy, when the paramount authority of the British government had been openly established. Again, Mr. Buckler formulates an elaborate argument in favour of the religious character of Mughal sovereignty over India. It is very doubtful whether, even in the heyday of its prosperity, Mughal sovereignty could be justly described as based on religious supremacy, i.e., on the claim of the Emperor to be in the Khilafat or succession of divine authority. But whether this be so or not, what earthly connexion can there have been between the religious claims of an Islamic potentate and the Hindu majority of the mutineers? If every single person implicated in the outbreak had been a Musalman, this theory might carry some weight. But a very large proportion both of the army and other rebels were Hindus, to whom the religious aspect of Mughal supremacy was meaningless exoept perhaps as an incitement to religious and racial hatred. Those who have lived in India and witnessed the intense religious antipathy which exists between Hindus and Muhammadans, and from time to time explodes in open and sanguinary repriBals, will find it very hard to adopt the view that the religious claims of the Mughal Emperor can have weighed in the smallest degree with Brahman leaders like Nana Sahib and the Rani Lakshmibai, and with the Brahman and other Hindu sepoys of the army.
Speaking generally, Mr. Buckler's paper strikes me as an ingenious effort of spocial pleading in defence of Bahadur Shah. But it is vitiated by a tendency to find specious ex. planations for facts which admit of a simpler and more straightforward construction, and also by an unfortunate bias (doubtless as counsel for the defence) against the English in India, which inevitably suggests doubts as to his strict impartiality. It is quite true, as he states, that no mere palace intrigue could have produced such a rising as that of 1857: but, had he studied all the conditions and circumstances and the political and social events preceding the Mutiny, he would perhaps have realized that there were several other important causes of the outbreak besides the mere "conflict of fact and fiction" in regard to the effective political sovereignty of the phantom descendant of the Great Mughal.
