I am very curious about what the Indians living abroad think about the 1857 episode. Because it is of great significance to Indian people. This episode left an indelible mark in the minds of the people, and gave further inspiration to fight the British during the freedom struggle. It is an inspiration to a lot of literary work.

It's interesting to learn about and I've read up about it in the past, but it's never actually stirred any feelings in me.

Good atleast your well aware. I am just celebrating 1857 my own way, if I could make a few people aware I would consider my time worth spent. Now times have changed. There was a time when the nation was fresh from freedom, upto 1960s there was idealism in the society. Now most people in India especially the younger generation doesn't care at all. The most important thing is 'don't forget the past' and this matters the most.

Think about it, traditional Indian battle tactics(in the gunpowder era) was hitting the enemy with heavy cannonade and/or rocket barrage followed by calvary charges and hand to hand combat.

Indian infantry tactics never revolved around forming neat lines and shooting each other to death. This played heavily into the favor of the British whose style of infantry combat was superior, and add to that fact that their rifles had better range and accuracy. The Sepoys were mainly infantryman and didn't have access to the amount of artillery and calvary needed to tip things in their favor. And the fact that soldiers like the Gurkhas still sided with the British made things even more lopsided.

commemorate by nuking britain.

First Chapter

'The Last Mughal'

By WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
Published: April 22, 2007

The marriage procession of Prince Jawan Bakht left the Lahore Gate of the Red Fort at 2 a.m. on the hot summer night of 2 April 1852.

With a salute from the cannon stationed on the ramparts, and an arc of fireworks and rockets fired aloft from the illuminated turrets of the Fort, the two gates opposite the great thoroughfare of Chandni Chowk swung open.


From “The Last Mughal”

The first to emerge were the chobdars, or mace bearers. The people of Delhi have never much liked being restrained by barriers and were in the habit of breaking through the bamboo railings hung with lamps that illuminated the processional route. It was the job of the chobdars to clear a way through the excitable crowd, before the imperial elephants-always a little unpredictable in the presence of fireworks-appeared lumbering through the gates.

Two ministers of state on horseback began the procession proper. Shell ornaments were plaited into the horses' manes, and bells strung around their necks and fetlocks, and as they rode out, the ministers were attended by servants with punkahs (fans). Then came a troop of Mughal infantry, with polished black shields and curved swords, long lances and fluttering pennons of green and gold.

The first six of the imperial elephants followed, caparisoned with gold and saffron headcloths embroidered with the Emperor's coat of arms. From the howdahs, officials held aloft the dynastic insignia that had been used by the Mughals since their arrival in India more than three centuries earlier: from one, the face of a rayed sun; from another, two golden fish suspended at each end of a golden bow; from the third, the head of a lion-like beast; from the fourth, a golden Hand of Fatima; from the fifth, a horse's head; and from the last, a chatri, or imperial umbrella. All were made of gold and were raised on gilt staffs from which trailed silken streamers.

There then emerged in turn a party of red-tunicked Palace servants carrying covered trays of food and gifts for the bride's family; a squadron of camels, with drums beating and guns firing in the air; a small regiment of British sepoys led by Captain Douglas, Commandant of the Palace Guards, all in tight-fitting busbees and blue-and-saffron uniforms, and escorting two light cannon; a troop of Skinner's Horse in their yellow tunics and scarlet sashes, topped by armoured breastplates and medieval-looking helmets; a group of bullock-drawn wagons on which sat several bands of Mughal kettle drummers, shanai players, trumpeters and cymbal clashers; and a European brougham carriage, painted kingfisher blue, containing a party of senior princes, their gilt brocade flashing in the light of the exploding fireworks.

After each group came parties of torchbearers, holding their flames aloft, interspersed with men holding candles in glass bell jars. There were also gangs of water carriers emptying their skins onto the road in an attempt to settle the billowing summer dust kicked up by the procession.

After the brougham there came a second, smaller group of younger princes, this time riding on horseback; and among them, in the very centre, rode the groom. Mirza Jawan Bakht was only eleven years old, a young bridegroom even in a society that tended to marry its offspring early in adolesence. Immediately behind the Prince swayed the elephant on which rode the Emperor himself, sitting in his golden howdah and decked out, despite the sweltering night heat, in his state robes and jewels, and attended by his personal bearer holding a peacock fan. The rest of the court followed behind on foot, a great snaking queue stretching back through Chatta Chowk, the Fort bazaar, to the Naqqar Khana Darwaza, or the Gate of the Drum House, in the very centre of the Fort.

Not long before this, the Emperor and Jawan Bakht had both sat for the Austrian artist August Schoefft. The portrait of Zafar depicts a dignified, reserved and rather beautiful old man with a fine aquiline nose and a carefully trimmed beard. Despite his height and surprisingly broad and muscular build, there is a profound gentleness and sensitivity in his large brown watery eyes with their unusually long lashes. As a teenage prince, Zafar had always appeared in his portraits as a slightly awkward and uncertain figure, plump, visibly ill at ease and thinly bearded. But as youth gave way to middle age he had grown into his looks, and in old age-unusually-looked finer than ever. Now in his mid-seventies, his cheeks were sallow, his nose more pronounced and his bearing more regal. Yet as the elderly monarch kneels, wearily fingering his beads, there remains in the expression of his dark eyes something unmistakably melancholic; in the set of his full lips there is still that air of sad, patient resignation visible in the earlier pictures. Schoefft shows Zafar a little swamped under the brocade cloth of gold which adorns him, somewhat weighed down by the huge blood-coloured rubies and the strings of vast pearls, each the size of a partridge egg, which seem to hang so heavily around his neck. It is a portrait of a man imprisoned by the trappings of his office.

By contrast, the young Jawan Bakht, the Emperor's favourite son, seems to relish all the pearls and gems, the jewelled daggers and inlaid swords with which he is bedecked with a lavishness almost equal to that of his father. His expression is different too: knowingly handsome, and oddly cocky and confident for a boy of eleven. He is as strikingly sure of himself as his father appears wearily uncertain.

One person missing from both the portraits and the wedding procession was the woman who had done more than anything else to bring the marriage about. For months, Zafar's favourite wife, Zinat Mahal, had been preparing for this day. In Mughal tradition, women did not accompany the barat taking the groom to his marriage-not even mothers and queens; but every detail of the procession had been planned by her. For Mirza Jawan Bakht was Zinat Mahal's only son, and her one ambition, to which she held consistently throughout her life, was to see Jawan Bakht, Zafar's fifteenth son, placed on the throne at the death of his father.

(Page 2 of 3)

(Page 3 of 3)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/books/chapters/0422-1st-dalr.html?pagewanted=1

Very nice Vaman, very interesting

My pleasure bro. I realized that excluding me, you, @jiggyiggy there is no contribution by anyone else in this thread. I am wondering why majority of the overseas Indians have total disconnect with things Indian. 1857 was a major event in Indian history because of this people got inspiration and were able to fight the Britishers later on and got independence. They fought and they inspired and only because of them we are breathing in a free world and because of them we can held up our heads high and say yes we are Indians and we know how to write our own destiny. I just felt like stating this. It is my personel belief, not any political speech.

It's not that overseas Indians have a disconnection with Indian things, or Indian history, but the majority probably don't ever learn about these things. Most, like me, probably only learn about Indians, Indian culture and a little Indian history at home, but events like 1857, I hadn't really known about until I learnt for myself about British Occupation of India. Same with Gandhi's history, or the partition, or previous Indian history. We don't get to learn about this stuff in school, and usually most rarely ever look this stuff up.

But you know, that doesn't mean it's not valued

King of Delhi

By TOBIN HARSHAW
Published: April 22, 2007

By Central Asian standards, the 19th-century Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II had some pretty impressive bloodlines. Put it this way: If the descendants of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan had held family reunions on the same summer Sunday, Zafar would have been expected to show up at each, lamb biryani in hand. Alas, Zafar -- King of Delhi, Refuge of the Inhabitants of the World, Generous and Affectionate Killer of the Degenerate Infidels (perhaps these sound better in Persian) -- was a case study in how even the finest thoroughbreds can beget an also-ran.

To be fair, the Islamic Mughal empire Zafar inherited in 1837 had been in steep decline since the death of Emperor Aurangzeb -- as pitiless a tyrant as ever had a wazir disembowled -- 130 years earlier. With no real power and a nearly bare treasury, Zafar turned inward: he was a skilled calligrapher, Sufi mystic, speaker of five languages and master of verse in two. Deep into the night, he oversaw drunken poetry competitions called mushairas.

While Zafar is the title character of "The Last Mughal," his life is just the thread along which William Dalrymple continues to explore a theme that has fascinated him for two decades: the utter collapse of relations between the British and the inhabitants of their Indian dominions. In his last book, the excellent "White Mughals," a doomed love affair between a British civil servant and an Indian noblewoman served as an allegory for broader social unraveling. Here he tackles the most obvious example, the Great Mutiny of 1857, in which hundreds of thousands of mostly Hindu soldiers turned murderously on their British officers and inexplicably made their feeble Muslim monarch the figurehead of Asia's first great anticolonial uprising.

Dalrymple excels at bringing grand historical events within contemporary understanding by documenting the way people went about their lives amid the maelstrom. His coup in researching "The Last Mughal" was his uncovering, deep in the National Archives of India, some 20,000 personal Persian and Urdu papers written by Delhi residents who survived the uprising.

Why had historians not used these papers before? As Dalrymple explains, what really happened doesn't fit any fashionable academic dogmas: "The stories that the collection contains allow the uprising to be seen not in terms of nationalism, imperialism, orientalism or other such abstractions, but instead as a human event of extraordinary, tragic and often capricious outcomes."

Dalrymple lets the characters tell their own tales: a 12-year-old Muslim nobleman who watched the defeated Indian mutineers and conquering British "vying with each other as to which should carry the day in pillage or robbery"; a functionary in Zafar's court with the wonderful title of "Keeper of the Dynastic Fish Standard of the Mughals"; and a poet who saw that the mutiny was only empowering the uneducated Indian soldiers to wipe out his humanist class, "as the moon is engulfed by the eclipse."

As for the British, Dalrymple focuses on a few whose emotional transformations are the most idiosyncratic: the gregarious son of a poisoned British official is driven to homicidal rage in the battle to retake Delhi; the editor of the city's English-language daily becomes the leading voice in the movement to raze the capital; the wife of a senior British officer gives birth during her harrowing escape yet, almost alone among the participants, retains her sanity and humanity.

Sanity, alas, is not Zafar's strong suit, at least not by the time he flees the city, only to dither on its outskirts and take refuge in the tomb of an ancestor, Humayun. This is fitting, as Humayun, the second Mughal emperor, was also more suited to poetry than politics and also lost his throne, regaining it just in time to pass it along to his remarkable son Akbar in 1556.

No such fortune awaited Zafar: he was arrested, given a kangaroo trial and exiled to Burma. What blame does he deserve for the bloody fiasco? Dalrymple feels it is "difficult to see what more Zafar could have done,"� but the details he has so painstakingly assembled tend to undermine such sympathies.

Consider two events in the mutiny's first week. On May 14, upset that some Indian soldiers were defiling a beloved garden, he began "refusing audience to all." This was a threat to withdraw his imprimatur from their rebellion, and the mutineers moved on. Two days later, when the rebels discovered 52 Europeans Zafar had hidden in the palace, the emperor "wept and besought the mutineers not to take the lives of helpless women and children," but stepped aside as the executioners went to work.

At the pivotal moment of his doomed reign, Zafar concentrated not on his role as a leader of men or on the sparing of innocent lives, but rather on his flowers. Deep in their tombs, one suspects, Humayun sympathized, Aurangzeb scoffed and Genghis Khan wept silent tears.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/books/re...amp;oref=slogin

History supressed :
Vellore mutiny (1806) - Maruthu Pandiyars - Chidambaram Pillai

Tamilian contribution in the fight against British rule

http://www.geocities.com/tamiltribune/04/0501.html
TAMIL TRIBUNE, May 2004 (ID. 2004-05-01)

THANJAI NALANKILLI'S COMMENTS

…… Indian history books (including many high school history books) revolve around the history of the Hindi heartland and regions close by. History of other regions, such as the south and the northeast are virtually ignored. There is a concerted effort by successive Indian Governments to project the history of the north (especially the Hindi heartland and nearby regions) as the history of India. This is not just my view, even many learned scholars hold that view.
On February 12, 2002, the Twenty Ninth All-India Conference of Dravidian Linguistics held in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), Kerala State,

passed a resolution urging the Government of India to give South India its rightful and legitimate share in history books and to withdraw the new school syllabus prepared and published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT)". [Editor's Note: In the school history book published by NCERT, no mention is made of Tamil kings at all, even of Emperor Raja Raja Cholan-I [Reference 2] or his son Emperor Rajendra Cholan-I whom historians consider amongst the greatest of kings in all South Asian history].

Vellore mutiny (1806) versus Sepoy mutiny (1856):

If you ask students of Indian history, most would say that the north-Indian "Sepoy mutiny" was the first mutiny and first war of independence from British colonial rule.

But is Sepoy mutiny of the north the first such mutiny or war of independence from British colonial rule?

Fifty-one years before the Sepoy mutiny was the Vellore mutiny (Vellore is in Tamil Nadu). Sepoy mutiny took pace in 1857 and Vellore mutiny took place in 1806.

There are many similarities between the two mutinies. Both mutinies started because of new regulations that hurt the religious sentiments of Hindu and Muslim soldiers in the British army. The Vellore mutineers attempted to bring back the defeated sons of Tippu Sultan to power (Tippu Sultan was a southern king whose sons were living in Vellore under British pension). The Sepoy mutineers attempted to bring back the defeated Emperor Bahadur Shah to power (Bahadur Shah was a northern king who was living in Delhi under British pension).

A major difference is that Indian history books prepared under Indian Government sponsorship devote several pages to the Sepoy mutiny of the north while ignoring the Vellore mutiny of the south.

While Indian Government sponsored Indian history books ignore the Vellore mutiny, books on British India by British authors do not fail to spotlight Vellore mutiny. The authoritative "The Colonial Wars Source Book" by Philip Haythornthwaite gives an account of the Vellore mutiny. The importance of the Vellore mutiny is evident from the statement, "In 1806 there occurred one of the most serious outbreaks of mutiny", in the fore-mentioned book. It was also the first mutiny in British India. Yet Indian Government sponsored history books ignore it.

During the Sepoy mutiny, taking advantage of the mutiny and the weakening of the British army, some north Indian kings and chieftains started a war of independence. It was limited to the north and did not spread to the south at all. Indian Government and history books project this as the first war of independence or first proclamation of independence from the British rule. Not true.

Maruthu Pandiyar

You will not find much, if any, about the Tamil Chieftain Maruthu Pandiyar and his brother in Indian history books. Maruthu Pandyar was the first to issue a proclamation of independence from British rule, 56 years before the north Indian rebellion during the Sepy mutiny [Reference 3]. He did so from Thiruchi Thiruvarangam Temple (Tamil Nadu) on June 10, 1801; that was more than half a century before the Sepoy mutiny. British considered it a serious threat to their future in India that they rushed additional troops from Britain to put down Maruthu Pandyar's rebellion.

This southern rebellion and the northern rebellion during Sepoy mutiny had many commonalities. In the same way a number of northern kings and chieftains joined together and fought against the British and lost during the Sepoy mutiny, a number of kings and chieftains of the south joined and fought and lost. The only difference is that Indian history books that glorify Sepoy mutiny make no mention of the southern rebellion.

Indian Government deliberately tries to hide historical facts such as Maruthu Pandiyar's fight against the British. Indian Government celebrated the 100-th anniversary of the Sepoy mutiny with great fanfare. There were numerous programs about the mutiny in the Indian Government controlled All India Radio. But not even a mention was made in All India Radio about Maruthu Pandiyar led rebellion against the British on either its 150-th anniversary or its 200-th anniversary. Even a request by some Tamil leaders that the Government issue a postage stamp honoring Maruthu Pandiyar brothers on the two-hundredth anniversary of their execution by the British in1801 was denied. No stamp was issued. The same Indian Government had issued a stamp in honor of Hindi-belt Jansi Rani who participated in the Sepoy mutiny.

Thillaiyadi Valliammai

Now let us come to more recent history. Do you know who was one of the earliest associates of Mahatma Gandhi? A South African Tamil lady named Thillaiyadi Valliammai. She worked with Gandhi in his early years when he toned his nonviolent methods in South Africa, fighting the apartheid there. It is these techniques that he would later use in India against British colonial rule. Valliammai joined Gandhi's movement at the age of 16 and died during the anti-apartheid agitation. Gandhi said that her sacrifice increased his resolve to fight. In 1998 some Tamil leaders requested the Government of India to issue a postage stamp in her honor on the hundredth anniversary. The Indian Government would not it.

V O Chidambaram Pillai versus Tilak

……There is a compatriot of Tilak named V.O. Chidambaram (1872-1936) from Tamilnadu. He was also called V.O. Chidambaram Pillai, V.O. Chidambaranar and VOC. He was the first person from the Indian Subcontinent to start and operate a Modern Shipping Company against the active opposition of British colonial rulers. He was also an active participant in the independence movement against the British and was imprisoned from 1908 to 1912.
In prison he was forced to drive an oil press. Let me explain what I mean by "drive an oil press". Oil presses (to squeeze oil from coconut or other nuts) are usually driven by bulls (oxen). Mr. VOC was tied to an oil press in place of a bullock and was forced to drive it exactly the way a bull would do. It is a form of corporal punishment the British imposed on some prisoners.

He was very much respected and honored in Tamil Nadu, and is known as "kappalooddiya Tamilan" (a Tamil who operated ships) and "sekkizuththa semmal" (a honorable man who drove oil presses). You will not find even a brief biography of V.O. Chidambaram in Indian history books. Had he been born in the north, things would have been different.

One can write a multi-volume book on those from Tamil Nadu who fought against British rule. I gave here just a few examples..…… the Indian Government and history books it sponsors hide the contribution of the south while spotlighting contributions from the north..…… Even the All-India Conference of Dravidian Linguistics was critical of the Indian Government for ignoring South Indian history in history books and school syllabus it sponsors and/or funds.

Last Updated: Tuesday, 11 July 2006, 12:58 GMT 13:58 UK

Tamils dispute India mutiny date

By LR Jagadheesan
BBC News, Madras

When did the first mutiny against British rule take place in India?


Tamil Nadu says that its place in history should not be ignored

If you accept the version of most historians and the Indian government, it was in 1857, when Indian soldiers of the British army rebelled against their colonial masters in what was known as the "sepoy mutiny" or the "first war of independence".

In fact so convinced is the Indian government of the date that it is now drawing up elaborate plans to commemorate the 150th anniversary in a grand manner next year.

But not everyone agrees that 1857 is the right date.

Overlooked

The Chief Minister of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, M Karunanidhi, argues that the first mutiny in fact began during the early hours of 10 July 1806.

So convinced is he that he has issued a commemorative postal stamp which depicts the first "sepoy mutiny" as happening in the fort in the town of Vellore, 130km (80 miles) from the state capital Madras.


Tipu Sultan was at the forefront of resistance to British rule

That is 51 years before the better-known "sepoy mutiny" of 1857.

Mr Karunanidhi's contention has much sympathy in the south of India, where historians and politicians complain that when it comes to recording Indian history, the north of the country often ignores or overlooks events in the south.

One of their greatest grievances is that south India's participation in the Indian independence struggle is neither recognised nor recorded - hence the debate over when the first "sepoy mutiny" took place.

Dress code

According to them, the Vellore revolt was the first organised uprising faced by the British involving Indian soldiers in the British army.

After the death of Tipu Sultan in 1799, the British detained his family members at the fort in Vellore.


Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi (right) with the stamp
Mr Karunanidhi says recognition of the revolt is better late than never

In 1806, the British introduced a dress code for its mostly Indian soldiers which required them to remove caste-marks, earrings and beards.

Instead the soldiers were ordered to wear newly designed turbans with leather embellishments.

Most of the Indian soldiers resented this, and by May 1806, the British authorities in Madras came to know of their simmering resentment.

They identified some of those troops expressing dissent and punished them by publicly lashing some and sacking others.

But the rebelling soldiers did not relent.

Seized control

Using the marriage of one of Tipu Sultan's daughters - scheduled on 9 July - as a pretext, they gathered at Vellore fort.


Vellore fort
The rebellion began at Vellore fort

According to Madras-based historian S Muthiah, many of the 1,500-strong Indian garrison at the fort took part in the uprising, which began at 0300 the following morning.

More than 100 of the 350 European soldiers on garrison duty were killed, and by mid-morning the rebels had seized control of the fort.

But they made a fatal mistake. The celebrating sepoys failed to close the gates of the fort securely, and later that morning the British and Madras Cavalry - based 20 miles (32km) away in Arcot - charged through them.

A massacre ensued, with more than 350 of the rebels killed and an equal number injured before the British finally recaptured the fort.

The British suspected the Mysore princes of having instigated the rebellion and transferred them to Calcutta.

Chief Minister Karunanidhi says that after 200 years, the move by the Indian postal department to bring out commemorative stamps has at last given "due recognition" to India's "first war of independence".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5168550.stm

Dr. Elst made some correct observations about Ranjit Singh. No matter how revisionists like to see him, the fact is that Ranjit Singh remained servile to the British. The British had taken some solid whipping at the hands of the Nepalis in 1816 CE. The Nepalis proposed a treaty with Ranjit Singh [which they again repeated in 1824 CE] and given the bashings that the British took in Burma in 1824 CE, any such pact would've weakened the British and actually strengthened Ranjit. But he declined and remained loyal to the British. Likewise, he declined to join forces with the Maratha [deposed] and the Bharatapur rulers in 1824 and 1825 CE respectively.

Of course, despite their outward shows of friendships – donating horses and going on a poaching mela – the British had no respect for Ranjit Singh. They actually aided and abetted the Wahhabi uprising against the Sikhs, which certainly weakened Ranjit Singh. Despite the death of Sayyid Ahmad at Bareilly in 1831 CE, the Wahhabis had proved to be formidable and treacherous enemies of the Sikhs. So, if at all the Sikhs had any animosity, it was towards the Muslims, who were also fighting the British in the mutiny. It was not against the practically defunct Mughal.

Contrary to what most revisionists like to believe, the origins of the Mutiny were in Vellore, Tamilnadu in 1806 CE. The British had banned the use of Hindu caste and religious marks, including wearing of the tilak or vibhuti on the forehead. Of course, the exiled family of Tipu Sultan was opportunistic enough to join hands with the mutineers. The substantial Muslim population of the Arcot district joined the mutiny once the Tipu Sultan connection was materialized. The British put the mutineers down.

The next phase of the uprising was in 1824 CE during the Burmese war. The Hindu soldiers at Barrackpur had been agitating against the unjust pay terms imposed by the British. The British reversals in Burma gave them the ideal setting to mutiny.

The 1857 Mutiny was merely a continuation of these two earlier revolts. Once again, the 1857 Mutiny started in the barracks of Dum Dum by the Hindu soldiers. The Muslims would join later. The trigger was again violation of religious code even though the discontent had been brewing for nearly 5 decades. Mangal Pandey made the first open call for the sepoys to unite for protecting their religious codes. In the ensuing dual, he knocked down the 2 British officers that
combated him as thousands of soldiers watched. The sight of a Hindu soldier single-handedly fighting 2 horse-borne British officers and knocking them down set the adrenalin of the Hindu soldiers flowing. Till this point, the Mutiny was a Hindu affair – to be precise, remembering Ambedkar's repeated pleas of Mahar loyalty to the British, it was largely an upper caste Hindu rebellion motivated by religion and exploitative pay terms.

After Pandey was executed, the British disbanded the 34th NI and the 19th, the predominantly Hindu regiments. No Muslim regiments were disbanded. The disbanded soldiers constituted the ideal recruiting base for the Mutiny. So, the Mutiny started entirely as a Bengal regiment Hindu rebellion against the British on 2 considerations: religion and pay. They simply didn't have any vision for the long-term.

Even though the Bengal regiment Hindu soldiers had started the Mutiny in January 1857 CE, it would take them another 4 months to reach Delhi. The mutineers suffered some serious setbacks in Kanpur and Meerut en route. It was at that time that the proposals to declare Bahadur Shah as the emperor of India were heard for the first time. The reasons aren't hard to figure: Once the Mutiny spread to UP, a large number of Muslim soldiers joined.

So, the declaration of the powerless Bahadur Shah as the emperor of India was rather a late development. It was not at all part of the original vision. It is worth noting that the Sikh contingents hadn't supported the Mutiny even in its early stage from January to May. It is a travesty of facts to claim that this was due to the Bahadur Shah factor, as that simply didn't exist then. A better answer is that as evident from the policies and practices of Ranjit Singh, the
Sikhs found it beneficial to be loyal to the British. [] may be right that the Sikh population may not have been disposed against the mutineers. But, we don't have a way of evaluating that unless someone familiar with the primary sources from Punjab can discuss them. It is clear that the powers that be among the Sikhs had been loyal to the British as discussed above.

Thanks.

PS: For an excellent discussion on this topic, please see "British Paramountcy and Indian Renaissance," Parts 1, 2 and 3, Ed. R C Majumdar, A K Majumdar and D K Ghosh.

Is the emperor smoking some shisha?

Vaman,

The other thing we have to remember that is that 1857 was the start of British 'Brown Sahib' social engineering tactics which Indians are still reeling form; previously, the major tactic had been "divide and rule" but only among the rulers/princes/kingdoms.

The following is a good summary of the Mutiny, although the author is too rough on Maharaja Ranjit Singhji and also on the Mahar regiment:

A clash on the idea of progress


As the massively underplayed, almost invisible 150th anniversary celebrations of 1857 wind down, one may well wonder why a movement that gave India’s erstwhile colonial masters their biggest scare ever, defined almost all their following policies, had such a long memory in oral history been so downplayed? Irrespective of the search for nomenclature defining its nature — mutiny/ revolt/ uprising/ petty bourgeois/ jacquerie — similar movements in other nations have had state-driven, passionate searches to unearth the smallest detail. What was its exact extent — geographically and in its scope? What were its socio-economic underpinnings? Who participated, who reaped the benefits by siding with the British? How many people died in the events of 1857? Why have we as a nation so bought into the British opinion that it was a mutiny? Fortunately most recent studies have debunked that it was just a soldiers’ revolt, but the knowledge has largely been confined to rarefied academic echelons. Amaresh Misra, author of Lucknow: Fire of Grace and Mangal Pandey: The True Story of an Indian Revolutionary, has written War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, a massive 3,000+-page, two-volume tome in which he has claims to make that would at least lead to further debate — 10 million dead, pan-Indian spread, longer-lasting reverberations than usually suspected. Suman Tarafdar summarises conversations with the author. Excerpts:


You do call your book a War of Civilisations?


I want to allude to the current clash of civilisations and go beyond it. The conflict is real, and its contours need to be defined. 1857 saw the British idea of progress clashing with the Indian one.


Did the British fail to gauge the nature of Indian capitalism?


We need to look at 1857 from an indigenous perspective. For India, the elements of capitalist progress were inside its rural infrastructure. While in the West, the city led the villages, it was the peasant-led pattadari system — by which 15-20 gotrabhais held land, in which the peasant and the artisan were integral to the system. The British failed to gauge the nature of Indian systems, and by the Permanent Settlement, destroyed them by reversing the direction of Indian capitalism, converting the talukdars into landowners, making the peasant a tenant and rupturing his links withthe artisan.


How did you arrive at a figure of 10 million dead, a massive jump from previous estimates?


Besides accessing sources not previously accessed, and relying on...
the labour and road survey reports of the time. A large reason for UP-Bihar belt remaining backward for long was that there was no labour, and the then intelligentsia was killed off. I provide the sources, it is up to others to agree or dispute them.


And the extent is wider than the Hindi belt?


Absolutely. The Hazara gazetteers mention the 55th BNI revolting in Nowshera and proceeding to meet Bahadurshah Zafar’s troops, while Gilgit ruler Gohar Aman was also coming to unite with them. In Gujarat areas the Mehsana and Borada gazetteers also mention vast sections of the state, especially Dahod, Godhra and central Gujarat revolting. The Okha Vaghelas revolted too, and the rare naval battles against the British are here. Then there is the Bhil-Koli uprising in the Nashik belt. Ratnagiri and Aurangabad areas are affected. Areas in north Karnataka, like Raichur and Bijapur had the Ramoshis, later dubbed ‘criminal’ castes by the British, in revolt. The Gond Rajas were Mughalised, and the tribes also sided with the Mughals. The Godavari delta saw Reddi landlords and Gurjar tribals fight together, while the 8th Madras Cavalry revolted too. The four big states that did not revolt were those of the Nizam, the Cis-Sutlej states, Kashmir and Nepal, and they were rewarded.


You see a conscious divide post 1857?


Instead of policies of modernisation followed by the likes of Bentinck, the British went on a conscious mode of orientalising — bringing back old faultlines, which by mid-18th century had vanished. Henry Lawrence gave a Hindu-Muslim-divide speech on May 12, the logic of which is still followed. The process was complex. They created new landlords, consuming classes and castes. They couldn’t do to India what they had done in the Americas, Africa and Australia, wiping out memory. More than a political war, bitter and racially contested, it was also a war to preserve memory....

10 million dead in aftermath.

1857 mutiny revisited

India's secret history: 'A holocaust, one where millions disappeared...'

Author says British reprisals involved the killing of 10m, spread over 10 years

Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Friday August 24, 2007
The Guardian


The battle of Cawnpore - the entire British garrison died at Cawnpore (now Kanpur), either in the battle or later massacred with women and children. Their deaths became a war cry for the British. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty

A controversial new history of the Indian Mutiny, which broke out 150 years ago and is acknowledged to have been the greatest challenge to any European power in the 19th century, claims that the British pursued a murderous decade-long campaign to wipe out millions of people who dared rise up against them.

In War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, Amaresh Misra, a writer and historian based in Mumbai, argues that there was an "untold holocaust" which caused the deaths of almost 10 million people over 10 years beginning in 1857. Britain was then the world's superpower but, says Misra, came perilously close to losing its most prized possession: India.

Conventional histories have counted only 100,000 Indian soldiers who were slaughtered in savage reprisals, but none have tallied the number of rebels and civilians killed by British forces desperate to impose order, claims Misra.

The author says he was surprised to find that the "balance book of history" could not say how many Indians were killed in the aftermath of 1857. This is remarkable, he says, given that in an age of empires, nothing less than the fate of the world hung in the balance.

"It was a holocaust, one where millions disappeared. It was a necessary holocaust in the British view because they thought the only way to win was to destroy entire populations in towns and villages. It was simple and brutal. Indians who stood in their way were killed. But its scale has been kept a secret," Misra told the Guardian.

His calculations rest on three principal sources. Two are records pertaining to the number of religious resistance fighters killed - either Islamic mujahideen or Hindu warrior ascetics committed to driving out the British.

The third source involves British labour force records, which show a drop in manpower of between a fifth and a third across vast swaths of India, which as one British official records was "on account of the undisputed display of British power, necessary during those terrible and wretched days - millions of wretches seemed to have died."

There is a macabre undercurrent in much of the correspondence. In one incident Misra recounts how 2m letters lay unopened in government warehouses, which, according to civil servants, showed "the kind of vengeance our boys must have wreaked on the abject Hindoos and Mohammadens, who killed our women and children."

Misra's casualty claims have been challenged in India and Britain. "It is very difficult to assess the extent of the reprisals simply because we cannot say for sure if some of these populations did not just leave a conflict zone rather than being killed," said Shabi Ahmad, head of the 1857 project at the Indian Council of Historical Research. "It could have been migration rather than murder that depopulated areas."

Many view exaggeration rather than deceit in Misra's calculations. A British historian, Saul David, author of The Indian Mutiny, said it was valid to count the death toll but reckoned that it ran into "hundreds of thousands".

"It looks like an overestimate. There were definitely famines that cost millions of lives, which were exacerbated by British ruthlessness. You don't need these figures or talk of holocausts to hammer imperialism. It has a pretty bad track record."

Others say Misra has done well to unearth anything in that period, when the British assiduously snuffed out Indian versions of history. "There appears a prolonged silence between 1860 and the end of the century where no native voices are heard. It is only now that these stories are being found and there is another side to the story," said Amar Farooqui, history professor at Delhi University. "In many ways books like Misra's and those of [William] Dalrymple show there is lots of material around. But you have to look for it."

What is not in doubt is that in 1857 Britain ruled much of the subcontinent in the name of the Bahadur Shah Zafar, the powerless poet-king improbably descended from Genghis Khan.

Neither is there much dispute over how events began: on May 10 Indian soldiers, both Muslim and Hindu, who were stationed in the central Indian town of Meerut revolted and killed their British officers before marching south to Delhi. The rebels proclaimed Zafar, then 82, emperor of Hindustan and hoisted a saffron flag above the Red Fort.

What follows in Misra's view was nothing short of the first war of Indian independence, a story of a people rising to throw off the imperial yoke. Critics say the intentions and motives were more muddled: a few sepoys misled into thinking the officers were threatening their religious traditions. In the end British rule prevailed for another 90 years.

Misra's analysis breaks new ground by claiming the fighting stretched across India rather than accepting it was localised around northern India. Misra says there were outbreaks of anti-British violence in southern Tamil Nadu, near the Himalayas, and bordering Burma. "It was a pan-Indian thing. No doubt."

Misra also claims that the uprisings did not die out until years after the original mutiny had fizzled away, countering the widely held view that the recapture of Delhi was the last important battle.

For many the fact that Indian historians debate 1857 from all angles is in itself a sign of a historical maturity. "You have to see this in the context of a new, more confident India," said Jon E Wilson, lecturer in south Asian history at King's College London. "India has a new relationship with 1857. In the 40s and 50s the rebellions were seen as an embarrassment. All that fighting, when Nehru and Gandhi preached nonviolence. But today 1857 is becoming part of the Indian national story. That is a big change."

What they said

Charles d!ckens: "I wish I were commander-in-chief in India ... I should proclaim to them that I considered my holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the race."

Karl Marx: "The question is not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton."

L'Estaffette, French newspaper: "Intervene in favour of the Indians, launch all our squadrons on the seas, join our efforts with those of Russia against British India ...such is the only policy truly worthy of the glorious traditions of France."

The Guardian: "We sincerely hope that the terrible lesson thus taught will never be forgotten ... We may rely on native bayonets, but they must be officered by Europeans."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,2155324,00.html

so this thread is about the sepoy mutiny of 1857?

In the end, it did more harm then good. It was a half-assed effort. All of the princes were stripped of their artillery and we weren't allowed to manufacture more locally; never mind the fact that the last possible unifying figure in India was removed from power and Queen Victoria crowned herself the Empress of India. We only have to blame ourselves for the British Raj, but I don't lose to much sleep over it. I'm pretty sure all of those imperialist bastards are burning in hell right now, and Britain isn't so bad nowadays.