Muslim sepoys staged a mutinous insurrection in July 1806 at the British-held fortress of Vellore, in the western region inland from Madras that had seen the resistance of Tipu Sultan in the 1790s. Ever since Tipu’s death in 1799, the two sons of the old Mysore ruler had been kept under house arrest in Vellore, and the fortress had become a centre of incipient resistance.
Mutinies had been common in the slave states of the Caribbean, but in India, where British power and influence depended on huge native armies, mutiny among the sepoys had been largely prevented by the use of terror. The tradition of ‘cannonading’ - blowing away mutineers from the barrel of a large gun - ensured that sepoy rebellions were few and far between. Yet both sepoys and their white officers could be driven to extreme action when threatened by inconsiderate attacks on their culture or their pay. The troubled years after the Maratha armies had failed to stem the British advance into northern India saw unparalleled outbreaks of unrest among both groups.
The sepoy rebels at Vellore assembled on parade at 3 a. m., and flred on the European troops in their barracks. More than a hundred were killed, and a dozen British officers were shot as they came from their houses to see what was going on. The triumphant sepoys brought out one of the imprisoned sons of Tipu and proclaimed him the new Sultan. The flag of Mysore was hoisted from the ramparts.
The tinder that sparked off the insurrection was a new set of regulations for the sepoys, issued early in 1806 by General Sir John Cradock, the commander in Madras, an officer previously involved in the repression of the Irish rebellion of 1798. Cradock had ordered the sepoys to ‘smarten up’: they were told to stop wearing earrings, to shave their beards, and to sport a new pattern of turban ‘very much ressembling a hat’.
The sepoys perceived the new turban as the thin end of the wedge. If they adopted the European custom of wearing a hat, worse might follow. Might they not soon be forcibly converted from Islam to Christianity? ‘Next we shall be condemned to eat and drink with the outcast and infldel English, to give them our daughters in marriage, to become one people, and follow one faith.’1 In May, the sepoys at Vellore announced flrmly that they would not wear the new turban, and nineteen were arrested and sent for trial to Madras. Found guilty of disorderly conduct, two of them received 900 lashes. The remaining seventeen were to receive 500 lashes, but their sentences were commuted after they had expressed sentiments of contrition. Some 1,500 sepoys were stationed at Vellore, watched over by only 370 European soldiers. They nursed their anger and planned to avenge their humiliation.
Their mutiny in July was crushed almost by chance. Speedy intervention by a newcomer saved the day for the British. Colonel Robert Rollo Gillespie, a veteran of the imperial campaigns in the West Indies in the 1790s, had recently arrived as the new governor of Arcot, a town some fourteen miles away from Vellore.2 Out riding before breakfast, Gillespie was told of the mutiny and galloped at once to the fortress, accompanied by soldiers from the 69th Light Dragoons.
The sepoys had surrounded the surviving Europeans in the fortress, but they were now faced by the reinforcements brought by Gillespie. He had himself quickly roped up into the fort, and he was soon in a position to rally the survivors from the ramparts. Large guns were dragged up from Arcot, and the gates of the fort were blown open. Several hundred sepoys were killed on the spot; others were taken prisoner; and some, who had escaped by jumping down from the walls, were rounded up later. A few survivors were tried and executed by ‘cannonading’. The Indian princes, the sons of Tipu, were removed to Madras, and Gillespie made a tour of other British military outposts where mutinous symptoms had been detected.
The British had received warnings of an impending rebellion at Vellore, but had taken no notice. The attack took them completely by surprise. Both General Cradock and the governor at Madras, Lord William Bentinck, were recalled to London in disgrace, though they survived this setback to their careers.3
A yet more serious mutiny occurred in the Madras army in 1809, at three strategic forts spread over a wide area - at Seringapatam, Hyderabad and Masulipatam. The mutiny involved European officers, two dozen of whom seized the fort at Masulipatam and arrested the commanding officer. A similar mutiny took place at Seringapatam, and the officers at Hyderabad threatened to march south to Madras. Their complaints concerned the loss of financial perks and privileges imposed in a recent economy campaign, and were echoed throughout the army. One officer at Masulipatam wrote that ‘there was not a [East India] Company corps from Cape Comorin to Ganjam that was not implicated in the general guilt, that is not pledged to rise up against government unless what they call their grievances are redressed’4
A European mutiny threatened the entire British position in India, and this one lasted for four months, from May until September. Yet the government stood firm, and when the European mutineers failed to receive support from the Indian sepoys, their mutiny collapsed. After it was over, Gilbert Elliot, Earl of Minto, the governor-general, registered his official disgust, recorded in the Calcutta Gazette: ‘The conduct of these officers in urging the innocent men under their command, who had the most powerful claims on their humanity and care, into the guilt and danger of rebellion, constitutes an aggravation of their offence, that cannot be contemplated without feelings of the deepest indignation and sorrow.’ Minto further recorded his hope that ‘the example of their crimes and their fate will. . . efface the deep stain which has been cast on the honour of the Madras army’5
The punishment given to the mutineers was less of a lesson to others than Minto would have liked. The ringleader was drowned on his way back to Britain, but those brought before a court martial were simply dismissed from the service. Yet the lessons of the mutiny were not lost on the sepoys, who began to voice hopes of a British withdrawal: ‘Before long, all white face gone. This Governor very fine Governor; he tell black men that they better than white men, and that sepoy never mind again what they say.’
The message of those who hoped for a British withdrawal may well have reached Travancore, a state in Kerala under British ‘protection’, whose Diwan, or ruler, Velu Tampi, disliked the financial obligations that British rule involved. Velu Tampi had previously owed allegiance to Tipu Sultan, but now, as a vassal of the British, he was required to pay for the upkeep of four sepoy battalions. Finding these demands excessively onerous, he had fallen behind in his payments. Eventually, with the assistance of the Rajah of Cochin, he organised a rebellion against his British overlords at the end of 1809. His plan was to assassinate Colonel Collin Macaulay, the British Resident, and to recover his state’s independence. He persuaded his supporters that the British were seeking to impose Christianity upon them.
Velu Tampi had considerable popular support, and the war that followed was not small, with 140 casualties on a single day. The British were reduced to appealing to the government in Ceylon for additional military assistance, a reversal of the situation in 1803. Four British regiments and twelve sepoy battalions were needed to crush the rebellion. One nineteenth-century historian described British actions as ‘among the least justifiable of the many questionable transactions by which British power in India had been acquired or preserved’.6
Macaulay managed to escape without injury, but the reprisals against Velu Tampi’s supporters were harsh. His brother was hanged without a trial, while the Diwan himself committed suicide. Macaulay ordered that his body should be exposed on a gibbet - an action subsequently criticised by Minto, the governor-general, who considered the action to be ‘repugnant to the feelings of common humanity and the principles of a civilised government’ chapter 21
World History
