Only in retrospect did the British understand that this was a way of alerting the populace that something momentous was about to occur. The recipient of the chapatti would then rush it to the next village and give it to someone there, and so on in a perpetual relay. When an Indian runner entered a neighboring village, he would pass on to someone - anyone - a chapatti, the flat, pancakelike unleavened bread used throughout India.
The British, realizing the problem, abandoned the use of meat fat for greasing, but the Hindu and Muslim soldiers still believed that their Christian commanders were trying to subject them to forbidden substances as a means of subverting their religion.Ībout that time, the British began to notice that Indian runners were crisscrossing much of northern India. Eating pig flesh was an abomination to Muslims, and the Hindu religion regarded the cow as sacred and therefore banned the consumption of its flesh. In February 1857, the 19th Native Infantry at Bahrampore in Bengal refused to accept the newly issued cartridges because, rumor had it, they were greased with either pig or cow fat. When the British introduced a new Enfield rifle and a new greased-paper cartridge into the Indian Army, the distress within the ranks of the sepoys became acute. More fundamentally, British reforms such as the ban on sutee, the self-immolation of widows, did not sit well with the Hindu sepoys, who felt that their customs and religion were being threatened. They had become dependent on strong leadership.
Greater leniency by the British, such as abandoning flogging as punishment and decreasing the authority given regimental officers, seemed to have eroded the discipline of the sepoys.
Mutiny of 1857 full#
They generally failed to realize the full significance of the unrest, however. In the mid-19th century, British officers in northern India began to notice signs of disaffection, even intimations of rebellion, among the sepoys of the East India Company’s Bengal Army. Indian Mutiny of 1857: Siege of Delhi Close
0 kommentar(er)
