Jawaharlal Nehru, in his book “Discovery of India” has described it as the “Great revolt of 1857”

and added that “it was much more than a military mutiny and it rapidly spread and assumed the
character of a popular rebellion and a war of Indian Independence” 1.this view is also supported
by which has been supported by people like Dr. S.N.Sen, Tarachand and Ashok Mehta.
Consequently, the early nationalists described 1857 as a rebellion through which the ‘Indians’
opposed the sufferings and exploitation imposed on ‘them’ by British colonialism.
So Was it a mutiny of the sepoy mutiny Or was it a national revolt?
With the development of the working class movement in India, efforts were made to analyze the
1857 rebellion from a Marxist position by pioneers like M.N. Roy and Rajni Palme Dutt .More
recently, historians have focused on the revolt in its local and especially agrarian settings. They
suggest that the participation of peasants provides the link between the military mutiny and the
rural uprisings. Peasants participated in it for many different reasons in many different regions.
Sometimes, as in Awadh, they made common cause with the talukdars against the common
enemy. Hence they followed the lead given by the talukdars. But there are many instances where
the peasants in revolt chose their leaders from the ranks of ordinary people. Thus the civil
rebellions in the countryside were ‘more than simply a feudal reaction’. In areas where
grievances of disgruntled aristocracy coincided with the outbursts of peasants and artisans, there
were broad based insurgencies. Nationalism in its developed form might not have motivated the
rebels. The time was not appropriate for that. But patriotism in the sense of a shared antipathy
against the British was not altogether absent in 1857.

1
Nehru Jawaharlal, Discovery of India (1946). O.U.P. (1985), Pg.323