What was the Social causes of the revolt of 1857?

Answer 1

The British conquest of India was followed by Western influences on the Indian society. Many changes began to appear thereby. The Western culture spread in many ways. In some respects, the impact of the West was useful no doubt, but the conservative society could not appreciate many of the new idea, which came. The time of the Lord William Bentinck saw several society reformers. To the orthodox people, those reforms were unwanted. The abolition of the Sati system led some people to complain that the Government had no right to interfere with the Hindu social customs. The talk of widow remarriage qt the time of Dalhousie shocked the orthodox people greatly.

In the mean time, the Western education began to spread. The English educated young people came under modern influences and began to criticize the superstitions in their own society. They wanted changes and reforms. Their manner and behavior greatly displeased the orthodox people. Thus, there was going only a silent mental hostility between the conservatives and the progressives in the Indian society. The orthodox thought that by the rapid spread of English education, the fabrics of the traditional Indian society should break. Ultimately, there should raise of artificial western society only the Indian soil. That fear made them unhappy. They regarded the British Government as the enemies of the Indian people. A social discontent began to grow.

John William Kaye, the historian of the Sepoy War, regarded Dalhousie's encouragement of female education as one of the causes of the Mutiny.

According to him: "Most alarming of all were the endeavors made, during Dalhousie's administration, to penetrate the Zenana with our new learning and our new customs. The English at the large Presidency towns began to systematic their efforts for the emancipations of the female from the utter ignorance, which had been its birthright, and the wives and the daughters of the white men began to aid in the work, cheered and encouraged by the symphathesis of their sisters at home. For the first time the education of the Hindoo and the Mohammedan females, took during the administration of Dalhousie, a substantial recognized shape."

To John William Kaye, the introduction of the railways and telegraph was also a vital cause of the Mutiny. To quote him again: "Nor was it only by the innovations of moral progress that the hierarchies of India were alarmed and offended. The inroads and encroachments of physical science were equally distasteful and disquieting. It was no more verbal demonstration; the arrogant self-assertion of the white man, which the Hindoo Priesthood could contradict or explaining away the railway cars, which travelled without horses or bullocks, at the rate thirty miles an hour, or the electric wires, which in few minutes carried a message across the breadth of a whole province ".

Only the whole, the Western ways and modes of life to some extent distributed the mind of the orthodox. That in a sense became the social cause of the revolt.

Answer 2

The economic cause of the revolt are as follows:

1. Unpopular Administration

2. Treatment meted out to the Mughal Emperor by the British

3. Treatment meted out to Nana Saheb

4. Policies made by the British Government.

Answer 3

Type your answer here... the social reforms introduced