Azamgarh Proclamation

Topic: The Revolt of 1857 · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 2 "Rebels and the Raj"

Meaning

The Azamgarh Proclamation was a rebel announcement dated 25 August 1857. It called on each social group in turn (zamindars, merchants, public servants, artisans, and Hindu and Muslim holy men), listed each group's complaints against British rule, and promised each its own relief once the British were thrown out.

It matters because rebels left very few writings of their own. This proclamation is the single most useful source for knowing what the rebels of 1857 actually wanted. Today it is preserved as the "Manifesto of the 1857 Rebellion" on the Indian Culture Portal. [3]

Explanation

Background: why a rebel document is so rare and so valuable

• The winners wrote the records.
• Almost all papers on 1857 are British: army reports, trial papers, officials' letters and survivors' memoirs.
• They show how the official mind worked, not what the rebels wanted.

• An example of this one-sided record is G. B. Malleson's The Indian Mutiny of 1857, a British account now digitised by the Library of Congress. [4]

• Most rebels could not read or write, so they left very little in their own words. What survives is small:

• proclamations: public announcements made in the name of a ruler or leader
• ishtahars: notices stuck up or read out in towns

• arzis: petitions written by sepoys asking for redress (a fix for a wrong done to them)

• Against this thin record, the Azamgarh Proclamation stands out. It sets out rebel aims clearly, one group at a time.

Main features: a group-by-group appeal

The proclamation does not speak to "the nation". It speaks to each group separately, naming that group's own hurt.

Group	Complaint against the British	Promise of the rebels
Zamindars (big landholders)	Very high jumas (the total land revenue demand on an estate). An estate was sold by auction if the zamindar could not pay. He was also dragged to British courts, which he saw as a public disgrace.	Light assessments: a much lower revenue demand
Merchants and traders	The British had taken a monopoly (sole control) of trade in indigo, cloth and other valuable goods. Indian traders were left only petty items.	Free trade: Indians could trade in all goods
Public servants (Indians in government jobs)	Low pay, no real power, and all high posts kept for Englishmen	Respectable, higher posts under the new order
Artisans (craft workers)	English-made imports had ruined weavers, carpenters and blacksmiths. British machine-made cloth beggared the handloom weaver.	Work from the royal court and the nobility, the old system in which kings and nobles bought craftsmen's goods
Pundits and fakirs (Hindu and Muslim holy men)	Seen as the guardians of both faiths. Both religions were said to be in danger.	Called to join a religious war (jihad / dharmayuddha)

• The key point: the rebels knew that different groups had different grievances. Unity had to be built group by group. It could not be assumed.

What the proclamation rejected: the whole of firangi raj

Like other rebel proclamations, it rejected British (firangi, foreign) rule as a whole, not just one bad law.

• Political: annexations and broken treaties.
• Dalhousie's annexations took Awadh from its Muslim ruling house. The Marathas lost Nagpur, Satara and Jhansi. [2]

• Many sepoys came from Awadh, so its annexation hit the army directly. [2]

• Revenue: landholders and peasants lost land through high demands and auctions.

• Economic: foreign trade ruined artisans and weavers.
• Religious and social: people feared the British planned to destroy caste and religion.

• In the army, this fear was sharpened by the new Enfield rifle cartridge. It was greased with pig and cow fat and had to be bitten open, which offended both Muslim and Hindu sepoys. [2]

• In short, the rebels were fighting for livelihood, faith, honour and identity all at once.

Results and limits: what it said, and what it left unsaid

• Hindu–Muslim unity.
• Proclamations were addressed to all castes and creeds.
• They said this was a war in which Hindus and Muslims had equally to lose or gain.

• The model they offered was the Mughal past, remembered as a time when the two communities lived and served together.

• Looking back, not forward.

• The rebels pictured a restored pre-British political order, not a modern nation-state.

• The rebel governments at Delhi, Lucknow and Kanpur followed the eighteenth-century Mughal pattern: appointments to offices, revenue collection, payment of troops and a chain of command.

• The missing social revolution.

• On the ground, rebels attacked city elites and burned moneylenders' account books, which destroyed the written record of debt.
• The proclamation never asked for this kind of levelling, because it needed zamindars and merchants on its side.
• So rebel action went further than rebel text.

Time, place and evidence

• Date: 25 August 1857, at the height of the Revolt of 1857. [3]
• Place: named after Azamgarh, in the eastern part of the Gangetic plain (present-day Uttar Pradesh), close to the Awadh heartland of the revolt.
• Wider setting:
• On 10 May 1857, sepoys from Meerut reached Delhi. By the next nightfall the city and fort were in rebel hands, and Bahadur Shah II was proclaimed their leader. He joined only under pressure. [2]
• Nana Sahib led the revolt at Kanpur after the British refused to continue his adoptive father's pension. [2]
• Havelock reached the Lucknow residency on 25 September 1857 and was then himself besieged there. [2]

• The Awadh rebel administration lasted longest. The Lucknow court was still planning counter-attacks into early 1858.

• How we know about it:

• The text survives and is preserved as the "Manifesto of the 1857 Rebellion" in the Ministry of Culture's Indian Culture Portal archive. [3]
• It is the main rebel source used in NCERT Class 12, Ch 2 "Rebels and the Raj".
• It has to be read alongside the much larger British record, such as Malleson's The Indian Mutiny of 1857. [4]

Don't confuse with

• Bahadur Shah's proclamation: this called people to fight under the standards of both Muhammad and Mahavir. The Azamgarh Proclamation is known for its group-by-group list of grievances and promises.
• Queen Victoria's Proclamation (1858): a British announcement issued after the revolt, which ended Company rule. The Azamgarh Proclamation was a rebel document from during the revolt.
• Ishtahar vs arzi: an ishtahar is a public notice. An arzi is a petition from sepoys. The Azamgarh Proclamation is a proclamation, a public announcement in the name of a ruler or leader.
• Malleson's The Indian Mutiny of 1857: a British account of the revolt. [4] It is not a rebel voice.

Prelims Hooks

• Azamgarh Proclamation: 25 August 1857. It is preserved as the "Manifesto of the 1857 Rebellion" on the Indian Culture Portal (Ministry of Culture). [3]
• Promise to zamindars was light assessments. Promise to merchants was free trade in indigo, cloth and other goods.
• Artisans named as ruined by English imports: weavers, carpenters, blacksmiths.
• Public servants complained of low pay, no power, and high posts reserved for Englishmen.
• Trap: the call to fight under "the standards of both Muhammad and Mahavir" comes from Bahadur Shah's proclamation, not the Azamgarh one.
• At Bareilly in December 1857, the British spent Rs 50,000 to turn Hindus against Muslims, and failed.

Mains Points

• The archive shapes the argument. Rebels left only a few proclamations, ishtahars and arzis, while the British left mountains of paper. The Azamgarh Proclamation proves the rebels did have clear aims. This weakens the old colonial reading of 1857 as a purely military mutiny without a programme.
• A coalition, not a single class. The proclamation appealed separately to zamindars, merchants, public servants, artisans and holy men, joining groups with separate grievances against one enemy, firangi raj. This explains both how wide the revolt was and how fragile it was.
• Restorative, not transformative. The proclamation looked back to a Mughal-style, cross-communal order. Hindus and Muslims would "equally lose or gain", and the failed Rs 50,000 Bareilly effort shows how strong that unity was. But it said nothing against zamindars or moneylenders, even though rebels burned account books on the ground. This makes it useful for the debate on whether 1857 aimed to bring back the old order or to change society.

Related concepts

• Arzi
• Ishtahar
• Badshahi government
• Hindu-Muslim unity in 1857
• Firangi raj
• Rebel administration in 1857

Read more

• What the rebels wanted