sepoys

Soon after dawn on May 11 1857, 150 years ago this week, the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was saying his morning prayers in his oratory overlooking the river Jumna when he saw a cloud of dust rising on the far side of the river. Minutes later, he was able to see its cause: 300 East India Company cavalrymen charging wildly towards his palace.

The troops had ridden overnight from Meerut, where they had turned their guns on their British officers, and had come to Delhi to ask the emperor to give his blessing to their mutiny. As a letter sent out by the rebels' leaders subsequently put it: "The English are people who overthrow all religions ... As the English are the common enemy of both [Hindus and Muslims, we] should unite in their slaughter ... By this alone will the lives and faiths of both be saved." But this did not happen , the Indian mutiny remained a smallish affair as most indians stayed out of it.

The sepoys entered Delhi, massacred every Christian man, woman and child they could find and declared the 82-year-old emperor to be their leader. Before long the insurgency had not snowballed into the largest and bloodiest anticolonial revolt against any European empire in the 19th century but had kept itself more or less as a mutiny, it was never a revolution..It is said that the 139,000 sepoys of the Bengal army, all but 7,796 turned against the British but if this is true why didn't they win.. In many places the sepoys were supported by a  civilian rebellion.

There is much about British imperial adventures in the east at this time, and the massive insurgency it provoked, which is uneasily familiar to us today. The British had been trading in India since the early 17th century. But the commercial relationship changed towards the end of the 18th, as a new group of conservatives came to power in London, determined to make Britain the sole global power. Lord Wellesley, the brother of the Duke of Wellington and governor general in India from 1798 to 1805, called his new approach the Forward Policy. But it was in effect a project for a new British century. Wellesley made it clear he would not tolerate any European rivals, especially the French, and planned to remove any hostile Muslim regimes that might presume to resist the west's growing might.

The Forward Policy soon developed an evangelical flavour. The new conservatives wished to impose not only British laws but also western values on India. The country would be not only ruled but redeemed. Local laws which offended Christian sensibilities were abrogated - the burning of widows, for instance, was banned. One of the East India Company directors, Charles Grant, spoke for many when he wrote of how he believed providence had brought the British to India for a higher purpose: "Is it not necessary to conclude that our Asiatic territories were given to us, not merely that we draw a profit from them, but that we might diffuse among their inhabitants, long sunk in darkness, the light of Truth?"

The British progressed from removing threatening Muslim rulers to annexing even the most pliant Islamic states. In February 1856 they marched into Avadh, also known by the British as Oudh. To support the annexation, a "dodgy dossier" was produced before parliament, so full of distortions and exaggerations that one British official who had been involved in the operation described the parliamentary blue book (or paper) on Oudh as "a fiction of official penmanship, [an] Oriental romance" that was refuted "by one simple and obstinate fact", that the conquered people of Avadh clearly "preferred the slandered regime" of the Nawab "to the grasping but rose-coloured government of the company".

The reaction to this came with the great mutiny, or as it is called in India, the first war of independence. Though it reflected many deeply held political and economic grievances, particularly the feeling that the heathen foreigners were interfering with a part of the world to which they were alien, the uprising was consistently articulated as a defensive action against the inroads missionaries and their ideas were making in India, combined with a generalised fight for freedom from western occupation.

Although the great majority of the sepoys were Hindus, there are many echoes of the Islamic insurgencies the US fights today in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Delhi a flag of jihad was raised in the principal mosque, and many of the resistance fighters described themselves as mujahideen or jihadis. There was even a regiment of "suicide ghazis" who vowed to fight until they met death.

Events reached a climax on September 14 1857, when British forces attacked the besieged city. They proceeded to massacre not only the rebel sepoys and jihadis, but also the ordinary citizens of the Mughal capital. In one neighbourhood alone, Kucha Chelan, 1,400 unarmed citizens were cut down. Delhi, a sophisticated city of half a million souls, was left an empty ruin.

The emperor was put on trial and charged, quite inaccurately, with being behind a Muslim conspiracy to subvert the empire stretching from Mecca and Iran to Delhi's Red Fort. Contrary to evidence that the uprising broke out first among the overwhelmingly Hindu sepoys, the prosecutor argued that "to Musalman intrigues and Mahommedan conspiracy we may mainly attribute the dreadful calamities of 1857". Like some of the ideas propelling recent adventures in the east, this was a ridiculous and bigoted oversimplification of a more complex reality. For, as today, western politicians found it easier to blame "Muslim fanaticism" for the bloodshed they had unleashed than to examine the effects of their own foreign policies. Western politicians were apt to cast their opponents in the role of "incarnate fiends", conflating armed resistance to invasion and occupation with "pure evil".

Yet the lessons of 1857 are very clear. No one likes people of a different faith conquering them, or force-feeding them improving ideas at the point of a bayonet. This is true of the influx of musslims in London who have alienated the Christian .

The British in 1857 discovered what the US and Israel are learning now, that nothing so easily radicalises a people against them, or so undermines the moderate aspect of Islam, as aggressive western intrusion in the east. The histories of Islamic fundamentalism and western imperialism have, after all, long been closely and dangerously intertwined. In a curious but very concrete way, the fundamentalists of all three Abrahamic faiths have always needed each other to reinforce each other's prejudices and hatreds. The venom of one provides the lifeblood of the other

The Sirmoor Battalion (later 2nd GR),Delhi, 1857

The new Enfield rifle displeased nobody, but the greased cartridge was a different matter. Rumour had it that the cartridges were greased with a mixture of animals fats abhorrent to both Hindu and Muslim. By using it the Hindu would lose caste, and have to endure and pay for costly purification rites, while the Muslim would be seriously defiled. A perfect spark, whether true or not, to ignite the explosive situation which had been accumulating for years past, but this is not the place to try to unravel the twisted threads of this débâcle, when the great Bengal Army with its fine traditions dissolved in chaos.

First blood was drawn at Barrackpore on 29 March 1857 when Sepoy Mangal Pandy, whose name became the synonym for a mutinous sepoy as Tommy Atkins was to become that of a British soldier, wounded an officer and a sergeant who attempted to arrest him while he was exhorting other men to mutiny. The other sepoys refused to help. Pandy was sentenced and hanged, but the growing signs of unrest were unmistakable and the 19th Native Infantry were actually disbanded. But incendiary incidents and riots multiplied apace. On 3 May the 7th Native Infantry refused point-blank to use the new cartridges, and were disarmed. On 10 May the Meerut garrison broke into open revolt and were joined by the rabble from the native bazaar in burning, looting, and pillaging. By the following evening Delhi was in the hands of the mutineers and the aged puppet Mogul Emperor became the symbol to whom the mutineers gave their allegiance. Too late now for the British to regret the shortsighted policy of not replacing the British troops dispatched to the Crimea.

The Gurkha regiments appeared unaffected, although some doubts were entertained. District Commissioner Greathead is quoted as having stated: 'We feel quite safe about the Gurkhas; their grog-drinking propensities are a great bond with the British soldier!' But despite this curious testimonial strong doubts were indeed entertained. A report that the Nasiri Battalion at Jutogh were in open mutiny started a panic at Simla, and even when the reports were proved unfounded the Gurkha guards were removed from the Treasury and the entire battalion marched down to the plains, an action which infuriated the men. They demanded that as a gesture of confidence they should be put on guard at the bank, and some caustic remarks were made anent the safety precautions that the British residents were taking. But trouble did in fact break out at Kussowlie, where a party of Gurkhas robbed the Treasury and ran riot. A party of the 75th Foot were awaiting orders to proceed against them under a Captain Blackall when Mr Taylor, the Assistant Commissioner, succeeded in preventing precipitate action on the grounds that the safety of the community at Simla depended entirely upon preventing an escalation of the incident. Blackall contented himself with adopting purely defensive measures and ignoring the provocation. When the news reached General Anson, the Commander-in- Chief, the failure of the policy of disbanding disaffected regiments was painfully obvious. He selected an officer well versed in the habits and customs of the Gurkhas, and dispatched him to reason with them and to recall them to their allegiance. This officer, a Captain Briggs, was Superintendent of Roads. He was given plenary powers to secure his object at no matter what price. The price was a complete pardon, and this accorded, the result was complete success. There were no more signs of disaffection.

The hundredth anniversary of the famous Battle of Plassey was on 23 June 1857, an anniversary which, according to the strange rumours circulating throughout India was to mark the end of British rule. On that very anniversary the Gurkhas were in action on the famous Hindoo Rao ridge. The mutineers attacked from the Subzee Mundee suburb in an engagement lasting the better part of eleven hours. It was here, on the ridge before Delhi, that the lasting friendship between the 2nd Goorkhas and the 60th (the King's Royal Rifle Corps) was formed, and which led to the uniform of the 2nd Goorkhas being as similar as possible to that of the British regiment.

The regimental history of the 2nd gives many curious and interesting anecdotes, including one by General Lyte of the Royal Artillery who served at Delhi. The General relates that he was in conversation with Ensigns Wheatley and Foster near to where the colours of the Sirmoor Battalion stood against the wall with a sentry in. front of them, when a round shot came through the veranda and cut the sentry in two. The next moment, before they had recovered from their astonishment and horror, the corporal of the guard stepped out and quietly posted another Gurkha sentry over the body of the dead one, which was then removed. Incidentally, a short time afterwards another round shot came through the wall, killing Wheatley and cutting the staff of the Sirmoor regimental colour in two.

On the final capture of Delhi, the Sirmoor Battalion, the only regiment of the entire force which was under fire and unrelieved for three months and eight days, was given the honour, together with the 60th, of garrisoning the Red Fort. As a further honour, a third colour was authorized and permission granted for three to be carried, contrary to the normal rule that Rifles carry no colours. The Kumaon Battalion also served with distinction at Delhi, notably at the storming of the Kashmir Gate under Sir Colin Campbell, when John Nicholson received his mortal wound. The Relief of Lucknow was notable for the presence in the force of no less than six battalions of Gurkhas; they distinguished themselves in that action, as well as serving in numerous minor engagemen