There is no link between Lord Mayo’s assassination and the Criminal Tribes Act

Subject :History

Section: Modern History

Context:

Richard Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, a British statesman and prominent member of the British Conservative Party who served as Chief Secretary for Ireland (1852, 1858-9, 1866-8) and Viceroy of India (1869-72) was the only Viceroy to be assassinated in India during his tenure.

About the Viceroy Mayo:

Mayo, after whom Mayo College in Ajmer is named, remains the only British Indian Viceroy to be assassinated.
His assassination had led to the creation of the first intelligence bureau in colonial India.
It also led to the birth of Continental cuisine in the country.
Just a year before the assassination on February 8, 1872, the colonial government had passed a law that was to have implications for thousands of Indians: The Criminal Tribes Act, 1871.
The law declared that certain Indian groups were habituated to a life of crime and should be punished severely. The stigma created by the law lingers to this day.
He was assassinated by Sher Ali Afridi, the Pashtun from the restive Northwest Frontier Province of British India.

As Viceroy of India Lord Mayo was responsible for the following actions:

Lord Mayo stabilized the northwestern frontier of India by cultivating closer relationships with Sher Ali, the emir of Afghanistan. He did this with the hope of negating Russian influence in the region and ensuring a buffer state would exist between the Russian and British Empire.
He ordered the first census of India in 1871 which produced a general picture of various peoples of the subcontinent and their population size.
Setting up of Department of Revenue, Agriculture and Commerce
Introduction of the most improved rifle, the Snider, and of rifled guns for the artillery.
Improvement in the sanitary conditions for the troops.
infrastructure development in the country by which an immense extension of roads, railroads, and canals was carried out.
Lord Mayo took interest in the Prison reforms, especially the convict settlements at the Andaman Islands.
The most important legal reform during his time was the passage of the Indian Evidence Act in 1872.
- The act removed this anomaly and differentiation and introduced a standard set of law applicable to all Indians. Earlier the law system was differentiated and was applied as per the caste, community and social group in question.

The political climate of British India in the year 1872:

Various political murders took place in 1872.
The attack on Justice John Paxton Norman on the steps of Calcutta Town Hall on September 20, 1871.
- Some rules affected the religious freedom of some groups and sects. The Wahhabi movement was seen as a threat to British rule and their plans for expansion of the Empire. Many prominent Wahhabi leaders were sent on sentences of transportation for life to the penal colony of Andamans during the Ambala trials of 1864.
- Justice Norman was known to have passed harsh sentences against Wahhabis and sent them to the Andamans. It is believed that Mohammed Abdullah, who killed Justice Norman, was a Wahhabi sympathiser.

Why did Sher Ali Afridi assassinate Mayo?

There is no proof that Sher Ali fought on behalf of the British during the Great Uprising of 1857.
He was an Afridi tribesmen hailing from Jamrud.
He was described as working as an orderly for Colonel Pollock who was a British officer posted in Peshawar.
He was charged for murder by British law and sentenced to death which was later commuted to transportation for life and sent to Andamans.
He was known to be a mild, soft-spoken person of affable nature because of which he earned a ticket-of-leave and lived at Hope Town working as a barber.
It is possible that he was indoctrinated during this period with Wahhabi ideals and decided to kill Lord Mayo.
During interrogation after the murder of Lord Mayo, Sher Ali is believed to have said he had no personal enmity with Lord Mayo and he killed him because God told him to do so.

There are claims that Sher Ali Afridi was part of a Jihadist plot and that he was influenced by Wahhabism:

Sher Ali was surely influenced by the Wahhabis in Port Blair but he was not a jihadist.
Sher Ali grew up in the Pashtun areas bordering Afghanistan in the years after the First Afghan War.
The Afghans had massacred the British Army during the earlier part of the war. When the ‘Army of Retribution’ was sent to take revenge for that and to consolidate British influence in Afghanistan, terrible atrocities were committed on the Afghan people by the British Indian army.

Is there any link between the Criminal Tribes Act and Assassination of Mayo?

The Criminal Tribes Act was mainly used against some tribes who were accused of pursuing crimes like robbery, dacoity, counterfeiting, etc, as hereditary professions.
There was not any connection between the Criminal Tribes Act and the assassination of Lord Mayo. The transportation of some ‘criminal tribes’ like the Bhattus and Bhantus to the Andamans started much later, around 1920.
Sher Ali was an Afridi, a Pashtun tribesman for whom ‘honour’ was most important. They were never branded as a ‘criminal tribe’ by the British.