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This chapter discusses the nature and profound implications of the discursive rupture caused by the political upheaval of the Revolt of 1857. It argues that the transfer of the government of India from the Company to the imperial monarch in the wake of the Revolt resulted in major discursive and institutional realignments to put the empire on a new foundation and remove any possibility of similar upheavals in the future. It shows how the old conflict of the colonial and the imperial became internal to the figure of the monarch in the post-1857 period giving rise to two new discourses of justice as equity and justice as liberty.

The first section of this chapter describes the administration of India under the East India Company. The second section discusses the economic ruination of India. The third section considers changes in various policies. The fourth section examines the Great Revolt of 1857. The British were much to blame for the condition of the country. The wrecking of the prosperity of Bengal and most of the wars were initiated or provoked by them. But the weakness of the Indian people was also a factor in the deterioration of their homeland. The English had used Indian soldiers to conquer India. By 1857, these sepoys (infantry) and sowars (cavalry) not only shared in the general discontent of the people, but also had specific grievances of their own. The Great Revolt of 1857 was the first large-scale uprising against British rule in India. It failed because the rebel leaders could not work together.

The first section of this chapter discusses the general factors in the growth of nationalism. The second section describes the administration of India after 1858. The third section considers early attempts at nationalist organization. The fourth section examines Lord Ripon and the Ilbert Bill controversy. The last section discusses the Indian National Congress. The brutal suppression of the Revolt of 1857 was the cause of much enmity against the British. Between 1858 and 1905 British rule in India was at its strongest. England had become the centre of an empire that included one-quarter of the world’s area and population. India was its most valuable possession, and its hold on the country seemed permanent. But during this same period, a current of national feeling began to flow through India. Soon this swelled into a stream that in half a century swept the mighty British Raj away.

The dynamic relation between enunciations of sovereignty and the rise of a popular politics that emerged over the course of the Mughal empire’s history was disrupted in the years after Nadir Shah’s invasion of 1739. Yet, even as the empire was reduced to a purely nominal entity, both the visions of sovereignty it engendered and the popular politics it enabled would persist for much longer. These concluding pages sketch the longer life of both conceptions of sovereignty and the workings of a popular politics, tracing their final manifestation in the great revolt of 1857.

The events of 1857 were a dramatic break in the life of Delhi and of its most celebrated poet, Ghalib. Although Delhi had seen many vicissitudes of fortune through its chequered history, each new incarnation was simply an added layer connecting seamlessly with the past. By 1857, the Mughal empire was on its last legs, the writ of the emperor limited merely to the fort area. However, paradoxically, political, economic, and social decline notwithstanding, Delhi continued to bloom culturally. This chapter captures that Delhi of learning and letters, poetry and piety, cultural synthesis and communal amity. It also captures the heartbreak of the city post 1857, so poignantly expressed through Ghalib’s poetry. The aftermath of the revolt left the city and its residents rudderless and lost.