The Events of 1857 in Contemporary Urdu Writings

Abstract

This paper describes two discourses in Urdu on the events of 1857. The first is that of the rebels and the second those of loyalists [of the British government]. Almost all the rebels who survived 1857 joined the latter group at least in the attitude they displayed in their public writings. The second discourse, which calls these events a mutiny (ghadar), dominated Urdu writing as well as the private domain so much that the earlier one can only be partially reconstructed by historical research. Later, this discourse was replaced by the nationalistic discourse which, among other things, changed the ghadar to jang-i-azadi (first war of independence) in Urdu writings. However, this new discourse is not the focus of this article which confines itself to the argument that, the discourse of resistance being lost or less in evidence, most of the available contemporary or near-contemporary writings in Urdu construct 1857 as a mutiny and not a war of liberation.