Mewati Rebellion of 1857

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This book, "Mewati Rebellion of 1857" is a work written especially to introduce the Meo community to the readers and highlight about their passion of independence and their fight against the British during the Rebellion of 1857. Due to multi-dimensional aspects and nature of the events, the Rebellion of 1857 remains the most written-about topic in history of India. For the first time, it brought together the people having different ethnicity, religion and class in a unified movement against the British rule. In this book, the author has discussed all the prominent issues related to the Mewati Rebellion in Mewat region and other parts of north and central India. Through different chapters, the author has tried to prove that how the British East India Company during its rule of about half-century in north India, had threatened the religion, changed the political system and ruined the socio- economic setup of nearly all classes of Indian society, including the Mewatis.

As the region of Mewat was mostly rural, the Rebellion of 1857 was mainly confined to the peasants and Sepoys at the village level. The Mewati revolutionaries were among the common people, and actively participated in the Rebellion, thus martyring for their motherland. By discussing the courageous deeds of the Meo and other Mewati heroes during the Rebellion of 1857, it has been tried to posit them alongside mainstream nationalist figures. Moreover, the peasantry as a whole has been focused on in this work, especially the Meos or Mewati peasantry of Mewat and different parts of north and central India. Their role in the Rebellion has been highlighted by giving the examples of their various grievances and fights against the British. The Mewati participation in the Rebellion of different states beyond Mewat has also been described. Even the drawbacks of the Mewati revolutionaries have been analysed with intense care.

Dr. Aijaz Ahmad was born on 16th August, 1969, at Motipur village in Sant Kabir Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh. After completing his early education in Basti, he went to Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh in 1985 for higher studies and completed B.A. (Hons.), M.A. and M.Phil. in History. He also qualified NET and JRF test conducted by UGC from the same University. In 1994, he was appointed as a Lecturer in History in YMD College, Nuh in Mewat District of Haryana. In 2000, he obtained his Ph.D as a teacher candidate from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Now, he has been promoted as Associate Professor of History at the same college.

His six research papers have been published in national and international journals and proceedings of the Indian History Congress, alongwith four books: 1. "Aligarh Muslim University: An Educational and Political History, 1920-47," Ghaziabad, 2005; 2. "Mewat: A Retrospective," Ghaziabad, 2013; 3. "Muslims Against the British Rule," New Delhi, 2014; and 4. "Rebellion of 1857: A New Analysis of Historical Facts," New Delhi, 2014. His current work is "Mewati Rebellion of 1857."

This work "Mewati Rebellion of 1857" is an attempt to understand the role of the people of Mewat region, including the districts Mewat, Gurgaon, Palwal, Faridabad, Rewari and Mahendragarh, in the Rebellion of 1857 Rebellion of 1857 is, although, considered to be the most written event of the world history, but still many of its dimensions seem to be enveloped in confusion and elusiveness, and the role of the Mewatis is one of them. The main focus of this research is to analyze the role of Mewati people during the Rebellion of 1857 in qualitative and quantitative terms through content analysis. Being close to Delhi, their role in the Mewat region and other parts of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, in crucial phase of 1857-58, was much important. In the lack of appropriate attention towards this forgotten community, their role in the Rebellion still left for proper research and writing.

The Rebellion of 1857 was such an event, which had various aspects and outlook that it is very difficult to come to a decisive conclusion, particularly in identifying its character even today. In order to put the ideology on an open platform, the scholars are divided into different schools of thought. The British historiography or imperialist school of thought continuously stressed on its mutinous character right from its beginning. They claim that the revolt was a mutiny of the Sepoys while ignoring the grievances of the local people and their mass level participation in the Rebellion. It followed a long-standing debate over its nature and character. During the Rebellion, the political thinkers Benjamin Disraeli claimed the Rebellion as national revolt and on the same time the world fame philosopher Karl Marx characterized it a popular insurrection. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan also blamed the policies of the British Government for this general insurrection. After a long gap, the theory of Disraeli was revived by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1909, by calling the Rebellion as war of independence.

During the uprising centenary celebrations in 1957, there started a re-examination of the same question of nature of the Rebellion. Surendranath Sen wrote an official history that concluded, carefully and with admirable restraint, that it was a war of independence, which assumed a national scope. Subsequently, the Marxist historians began to write the history of the Rebellion keeping in view the problems and participation of the common people. S.B. Chaudhuri, Eric Stokes, Rudgrangshu Mukherjee, Gautam Bhadra and Tapti Roy gave much stress to the peasants and common people's participation in the Rebellion by raising the subaltern theory.

In the most recent study, during the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Rebellion in 2007, the religious factor was given much importance by the social scientists. William Dalrymple was the main propagator of this theory. By searching hundreds of letters of the revolutionaries and other discourses, he concluded that most of these documents bear the religion-based problems, which compelled the Sepoys and other people to rise against the British. He pronounced that the Rebellion of 1857 was a sort of fundamentalist religious war, a Jihad.