Revolt of 1857
¤ The Uprising In 1857
 However
Delhi did appear centrestage at least once in the road to the British
rise to power: in the controversial Indian Uprising of 1857. Debate
has continued and will always go on about whether 1857 was actually
the first Indian War of Independence or simply a mutiny.
There is enough evidence to support the fact that the Uprising had
been planned for months before the actual outbreak. What did the
revolutionaries in, apart from the fact that they failed to spread the
word beyond Central India and Delhi, was that the Uprising did not go
according to plan. It broke out before the appointed date! If D-day
had gone as per schedule, the uprising would have broken out in many
areas simultaneously and would have been very difficult for the
British to control. However as things turned out, trouble broke out
sporadically in various places in May 1857 and there was little, if
any, coordination happening. So, the British were able to curb it with
relative ease.
¤ The Tales of 1857 Revolt
There are stories and stories about the British and Indian
confrontation in Delhi in 1857. There are tales of valour and bravery
from both sides; and also accounts of unimaginable horror and
barbarity.
While books are full of vivid reports of the horror and humiliation
that the British had to face and the courage they displayed, very
little has been written about what innocent Indians were put through
by vindictive British on the teach-the-natives-a-lesson path. What
made the Indians rebel in the first place hasn’t been written
about much either.
It is true that the old poet-king in Delhi, Bahadur Shah Zafar and
his cohorts, Tatia Tope of Gwalior (Gwalior itself did not rebel, Tope
was merely a general), the Rani of Jhansi and so on had very narrow
and selfish aims to achieve – their petty kingdoms, money and
power.
None of them would have rebelled if the British had not snapped their
purse-strings, the ‘compensation’ they were paid by the
British in return for a share in government. The common people - of
Delhi, Lucknow, Gwalior and so on - however had nothing to gain.
Except independence. A place to call their own. Their war was not for
a small kingdom, they were fighting for freedom. Which is why, while
admitting that 1857 was limited in its scope, one cannot just dismiss
it as a mutiny. Far too many emotions and resentments were involved
which the British had long ignored.
1857 convinced the British that they could no longer just sponge off
India, getting rich at its expense without giving anything back. That
was what led the Crown to formally relieve the East India Company of
its charge and take over itself.
¤ Pre-Independence
It was not until 1931 however that New Delhi was inaugurated as the
capital of India. A spanking new city, its new look, promised in 1911
by King George V and Queen Mary, was created and realized by the
temperamental Sir Edward Lutyens, along a team of eminent architects
including Sir Herbert Baker and Robert Tor Russell. However, the
British did not live long in the beautiful New Delhi they had created,
thus fulfilling the age-old prophecy that anyone who built a new city
in Delhi would lose it.
¤ Arrival of Lord Mountbatten
In 1946, Lord Mountbatten arrived in Delhi amid a buzz of political
activity. The British, following their World War II concerns, wanted
to wash their hands of India. The Indians meanwhile, were hankering
for what was rightfully theirs. But there were too many emotional
ties, the British and the Indians went too far back together for the
British to just pack up and leave. They had a responsibility.
Unfortunately Mountbatten, although a favorite with the Indians
because of his youthful good looks, was the wrong man for the job. He
was in such a hurry to get back to England that he just went along
with the first proposal that found favor with both the Congress and
the Muslim League without taking into account what the people wanted.
The rest is history. Partition, the worst mass movement of people in
the 20th century, with the exception of the Jews who fled
Germany in World War II, took its toll on both India and Pakistan. Two
republics were born on August 15, 1947. The capital of India was, and
remains, the much-destroyed and much-built Delhi.
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