On the 150th anniversary of the First War of Independence of Indian people against colonial rule it is both relevant and necessary to discuss some aspects connected with the struggle. Despite their differences with each other, the common opinion of the parties of ruling classes is that the First War of Independence of 1857 reached its logical conclusion with the transfer of power in 1947 (which they hold to be “independence”.) Here they conveniently ignore that in 1947 the British colonial rulers transferred power to those very classes who had sided with the colonial aggressors in the War of independence of 1857-59 or those the colonial rulers had nurtured after crushing the peoples revolt. In a sense the transfer of power of 1947 was not the completion of the War of Independence of 1857 but the continuing in modified form of the colonial rule victorious in the war of 1857-59. The independence struggle of the people continues even now in today’s concrete conditions.

150th years since First War of Independence Intensify Struggle Against Compradors of Imperialism Indian Ruling Classes

This year falls the 150th anniversary of India’s First War of Independence. It also marks the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Plassey (23 June 1757).

The armed struggle of the people waged in the major part of India against British colonial rule has already got recognition as the First War of Independence against colonial rule of the people of the country. It has come to be recognized as a revolt of the people in place of a mutiny (i.e. revolt by sepoys). The British themselves were forced in 1857 to acknowledge a ‘national revolt’ by Indians, but eventually the history written by the victors trapped it into the narrow confines of a ‘sepoy mutiny’. It was necessary for the colonial rulers to wipe out even the memory of this War of Independence from the hearts and minds of the enslaved people. Subsequently, the intellectuals who studied at Oxford and Cambridge and afterwards intellectuals of the same Oxbridge tradition continued to see and show the events of 1857 through the eyes of British colonialists.