Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The First War of Independence: The Indian Uprising
In 1857, half a century after having established firm control of India, the British suffered a
serious setback. To this day, the causes of the Uprising (known at the time as the Indian
Mutiny and subsequently labelled by nationalist historians as a War of Independence) are
the subject of debate. The key factors included the influx of cheap goods, such as textiles,
from Britain that destroyed many livelihoods; the dispossession of territories from many
rulers; and taxes imposed on landowners.
The incident that's popularly held to have sparked the Uprising, however, took place at
an army barracks in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh on 10 May 1857. A rumour leaked out that a
new type of bullet was greased with what Hindus claimed was cow fat, while Muslims
maintained that it came from pigs; pigs are considered unclean to Muslims, and cows are
sacred to Hindus. Since loading a rifle involved biting the end off the waxed cartridge,
these rumours provoked considerable unrest.
In Meerut, the situation was handled with a singular lack of judgment. The commanding
officer lined up his soldiers and ordered them to bite off the ends of their issued bullets.
Those who refused were immediately marched off to prison. The following morning, the
soldiers of the garrison rebelled, shot their officers and marched to Delhi. Of the 74 Indian
battalions of the Bengal army, seven (one of them Gurkhas) remained loyal, 20 were dis-
armed and the other 47 mutinied. The soldiers and peasants rallied around the ageing
Mughal emperor in Delhi. They held Delhi for some months and besieged the British Res-
idency in Lucknow for five months before they were finally suppressed. The incident left
festering sores on both sides.
Almost immediately the East India Company was wound up, and direct control of the
country was assumed by the British government, which announced its support for the exist-
ing rulers of the princely states, claiming they would not interfere in local matters as long
as the states remained loyal to the British.
A golden oldie,
Gandhi,
directed by Richard Attenborough, is one of the few films to engagingly capture the
grand canvas that is India in tracing the country's rocky road to Independence.
