What the rebels wanted

What did the rebels want? It is hard to say, because few rebels recorded their views; most of our sources are British, written by the victors.

Rebel proclamations appealed to Hindus and Muslims together, and to the shared memory of the Mughal past. When the British tried to divide them in Bareilly (December 1857), spending ₹50,000 to stir up Hindus against Muslims, the attempt failed.

The Azamgarh Proclamation (1857) shows the range of their grievances. It addressed zamindars (crushed by high revenue), merchants (cut out of profitable trade), public servants (denied high posts and good pay), artisans (ruined by British goods), and pundits and fakirs (whose religion seemed threatened).

An arzi (petition) from the sepoys says they rose to protect their faith from pollution, after the greased cartridges.

In Delhi, Lucknow and Kanpur, the rebels set up their own administrations, modelled on the eighteenth-century Mughal system, with a hierarchy of officials and revenue collection. They wanted to restore the world they had lost.