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Bangladesh
THE UPRISING OF 1857
Bangladesh
THE UPRISING OF 1857
A Great Divide in South Asian History
On May 10, 1857, Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army,
drawn mostly from Muslim units from Bengal, mutinied at the Meerut
cantonment near Delhi, starting a year-long insurrection against
the British. The mutineers then marched to Delhi and offered their
services to the Mughal emperor, whose predecessors had suffered an
ignoble defeat 100 years earlier at Plassey. The uprising, which
seriously threatened British rule in India, has been called many
names by historians, including the Sepoy Rebellion, the Great
Mutiny, and the Revolt of 1857; many people of the subcontinent,
however, prefer to call it India's "first war of independence." The
insurrection was sparked by the introduction of cartridges rumored
to have been greased with pig or cow fat, which was offensive to
the religious beliefs of Muslim and Hindu sepoys (soldiers). In a
wider sense, the insurrection was a reaction by the indigenous
population to rapid changes in the social order engineered by the
British over the preceding century and an abortive attempt by the
Muslims to resurrect a dying political order. When mutinous units
finally surrendered on June 20, 1858, the British exiled Emperor
Bahadur Shah to Burma, thereby formally ending the Mughal Empire.
As a direct consequence of the revolt, the British also dissolved
the British East India Company and assumed direct rule over India,
beginning the period of the British Raj. British India was
thereafter headed by a governor general (called viceroy when acting
as the direct representative of the British crown). The governor
general, who embodied the supreme legislative and executive
authority in India, was responsible to the secretary of state for
India, a member of the British cabinet in London.
Data as of September 1988
