For instance, once the rebellion was underway, Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar met the sepoys on 11 May 1857, he was told: "We have joined hands to protect our religion and our faith." However, nearly every sepoy was either Muslima religion that forbids eating the fat or any other part of a pig, or Hinduwhere the same rule applies to cows. Thornhill examined the chapatis in his office. It was generally believed, in retrospect, that the circulation of the breads had been a warning of trouble ahead, and that the wave of chapatis must have been set in motion by a cunning group of determined conspirators who had begun plotting the rising months, if not years, in advance. [9], Until the 1840s there had been a widespread belief amongst the Bengal sepoys in the Iqbal or continued good fortune of the East India Company. In most accounts of the revolt, the greased cartridge has been referred to as the spark and tinder that lit the flames of rebellion. McNamara, Robert. #Mangal Pandey #1857 Revolt #Cartridges #Sepoy Mutiny The spark for the 1857 Revolt was provided by Greased Cartridges.Why Greased Cartridges triggered the R. He was informed that they had been brought in by one of his Indian police officers, who had received them from a puzzled village chowkidar (watchman). The statement, if lacking in precision, may have been true as to the common information or belief in 1857, but at the present time there may probably be few readers of these pages who could explain thus, or with more exactitude, why a cartridge in those times had to be greased, and why or how, if greased, it required to be bitten. This took the form of Muslim millenarianism, with preachers in Lucknow foretelling the end of the raj. The grease used was tallow, probably containing both cow and pig fat. The company had an unbroken series of victories in India, against the Marathas, Mysore, north Indian states, and the Gurkhas, later against the Sikhs, and further afield in China and Burma. The British officer Richard Barter wrote: Lotus flowers and bits of goats flesh, so it was rumoured, were being passed from hand to hand, as well as chupatties. In the event, the chapattis were not harbingers of a coming storm. They were what people made them into, and the significance attributed to them was a symptom of the pervasive distrust and general consternation amongst the Indian population during the early months of 1857. Or it might have been an aristocratic plot, set off too soon by the Meerut outbreak. Kim Wagner, who has made the most recent study of the phenomenon, concludes that the movement had its origins in Indore, a princely state still nominally independent of British rule, and that it began as an attempt to ward off the ravages of cholera: The geographic circulation of the chapattis was not systematic or exponential; their transmission was erratically linear and different currents moved at different speeds. There is no doubt that conflict over the new rifle cartridges sparked the uprising in 1857, but the reality is that social, political, and even technological reforms had set the stage for what happened. It was no secret that the Companys armies had been making preparations for the introduction of a new sort of ammunition for a new model of Enfield rifle. Total loading time: 0 Did an Ancient Magnetic Field Reversal Cause Chaos for Life on Earth 42,000 Years Ago? Indian soldiers in the East India Company's armies believed they risked defilement because the new rounds were being issued greased with the fat of pigs and cowsuntrue, but sufficient to spark the most dangerous uprising against British imperial rule since the American Revolution. 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"useRatesEcommerce": false The British had accentuated caste consciousness by careful regulations, had allowed discipline to grow lax, and had failed to maintain understanding between British officers and their men. Though the revolt failed in its objective, even in failure it served a grand purpose. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, sepoys tended to take great pride in their military prowess, and they exhibited enormous loyalty to their British officers. Click to view in higher resolution. This would have insulted both Hindu and Muslim religious practices; cows were considered holy by Hindus, while pigs were considered unclean (Haram) by Muslims. A small British army was improvised, which held the ridge before Delhi against greatly superior forces until Sir John Lawrence was able to send a siege train under John Nicholson. This war of Independence marked the end of rule by the British East India company. Wagner concludes that the trigger for the rebellion of 1857 was thus rumour, not the actual issue, or use, of cartridges greased with animal fat; that, in any case, we simply don't know what sort of tallow was used at Gangadarh Banerji & Co.; and that - remarkable as it now seems - the truth of the matter never was established, even by the The company had developed a military organization where, in theory, the fealty of the sepoys to the company was considered the height of "izzat" or honour, where the European officer replaced the village headman with benevolent figures of authority, and where regiments were mostly recruited from sepoys belonging to the same caste, and community. the Sepoy Mutiny (by British Historians) This event and Pandey's subsequent punishment led to more resentment among the sepoys of the Bengal Army ultimately aiding in the Revolt of 1857.. This seems to have been a very important reason for the spread of the rebellion, keeping in view the speed at which they ignited in many villages in northern India where farmers rushed to get back their unfairly grabbed title deeds. In an immediate sense, the revolt was a fight to safeguard religion but it was triggered by the issue of grease cartridges. Any British plans to reform Indian society, which had been one of the underlying causes of the revolt, were essentially set aside, and religious conversion of the Indian population was no longer viewed as a practical goal. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/sepoy-mutiny-of-1857-1774014. A man had come out of the jungle with them, and given them to the watchman with instructions to make four like them and to take these to the watchman in the next village, who was to be told to do the same.. Cookie Settings. In Britain and in the West, it was almost always portrayed as a series of unreasonable and bloodthirsty uprisings spurred by falsehoods about religious insensitivity. Mangal Pandey, (born July 19, 1827, Akbarpur, Indiadied April 8, 1857, Barrackpore), Indian soldier whose attack on British officers on March 29, 1857, was the first major incident of what came to be known as the Indian, or Sepoy, Mutiny (in India the uprising is often called the First War of Independence or other similar names). Then enter the name part This made them more accurate and gave them a longer range. However, in those two years, they were not ordered to use them. Advertising Notice Economically and socially, there had been much dislocation in the landholding class all over northern and western India as a result of British land-revenue settlements, setting group against group. Few of these participated in the rebellion, and one contingent in particular (the recently raised Punjab Irregular Force) actively participated on the British side. Mike Dash is a contributing writer in history for Smithsonian.com. The sepoys' British officers dismissed these claims as rumors and suggested that the sepoys make a batch of fresh cartridges, using a religiously acceptable greasing agent such as ghee or vegetable oil. Certain actions of the government, such as increased recruitment of Sikhs and Gurkhas, peoples considered by the Bengal sepoys to be inferior in caste to them, increased the distrust of the sepoys who thought that this was a sign of their services not being needed any more. The Politics of a Popular Uprising: Bundelkhand in 1857 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994);Mark Thornhill. [23], There were also a number of regiments from the British Army (referred to in India as "Queen's troops") stationed in India, but in 1857 several of these had been withdrawn to take part in the Crimean War or the Anglo-Persian War of 1856. Fighting in some places continued well into 1858, but the British were ultimately able to establish control. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. India at the time of the 1857 rebellion. Loading the Enfield often required tearing open the greased cartridge with one's teeth, and many sepoys believed that the cartridges were greased with cow and pig fat. In the altercation, Pandey was surrounded by British troops and shot himself in the chest. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857-58 against the rule of the British East India Company, . More disturbing to traditional sensibilities were the interventions, in the name of humanity, in the realm of Hindu custome.g., the prohibition of suttee, the campaign against infanticide, the law legalizing remarriage of Hindu widows. Another suggestion they put forward was to introduce a new drill, in which the cartridge was not bitten with the teeth but torn open with the hand. Is the sending of such articles about the country a custom among the Hindoos or Mussulmans; and would the meaning be at once understood without any accompanying explanation? An uprising in several sepoy companies of the Bengal army was sparked by the issue of new gunpowder cartridges for the Enfield rifle in February 1857. A chowkidaran Indian village watchman. It came as a greater shock than the loss of the American colonies, and prompted reprisals far more hysterical and vicious than those visited on rebellious subjects elsewhere in the Empire. the Indian Mutiny, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, or the Indian Revolt of 1857. This allowed different meanings an interpretations to be attributed to them, and the chapattis became an index of peoples thoughts and worries. A rumor spread that the cartridges of the new Enfield rifles were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. To be loaded, this cartridge had to be torn open so that the powder it contained could be poured down the barrel of the muzzle-loading gun; because the soldiers hands were full, this was done with the teeth. The army so far had been quipped with the smooth-barrelled musket, which had a protracted loading procedure and was not accurate over long ranges. The signal spread in all directions with wonderful celerity. Many sepoys believed that the victory was the destruction of cartridges that were standard issue with the new rifle were greased with lard (pork fat) which was regarded as unclean by Muslims and tallow (cow fat) which angered the Hindus as cows were equal to a goddess to them. By the time the British came to examine the causes of the rebellion, therefore, the chupatty movement had assumed a fresh significance. The chupatty movement first came to British attention early in February 1857. Kanpur Jaiwant Paul "The Greased Cartridge: The Heroes and Villains of 1857-58" In most accounts of the revolt, the greased cartridge has been referred to as the spark and tinder that lit the flames o. 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