The Wahabis in the 1857 Revolt : A Brief Reappraisal of Their Role

The Wahabis or, as they preferred to identify themselves, Ahle Hadis, followers of Saiyid Ahmad Bareilvi, are portrayed by K.M. Ashraf as playing a decisive role in organising the 1857 uprising of sepoys. They are given credit for being armed with a consistent anti-British ideology and also for contributing to sustaining the rebels in power at Delhi and other centres of the Revolt. Ashraf also suggests that the emergence of ‘elected committees of soldiers which virtually took over the government in Delhi and Lucknow’ was an outcome of sepoys’ contacts with the Wahabis ‘who had already developed their technique of conspiratorial work through a chain of hospices and secret agents’. He refers to Bakht Khan as ‘a confirmed and fanatical Wahabi’, and suggests that the ‘administration of Delhi’ established by him was again in the hands of the Wahabis.