Origins of the Indian Mutiny [15min]

The British still call the rebellion the Indian Mutiny but that is misleading. It was not an all-India mutiny. It was confined to Bengal and started with discontent among sepoys -- Indian soldiers in the British army. "This Sceptred Isle: Empire" is a narrative history of the British Empire from Ireland in the 12th century to the independence of India in the 20th, told in 90 programmes written by historian Christopher Lee and narrated by actor Juliet Stevenson. (You may listen again online to the five most recent episodes of "Empire".)

This was not the first rebellion. In 1806 sepoys mutinied because they had been ordered to wear a new style of head dress, to trim their beards and stop wearing caste marks. They believed these orders were another pressure on them to become Christians. This led to a massacre of Europeans at Vellore.

The story of the greased cartridges started in the 1850s. The army was changing over to a new weapon. The cartridge was partly greased to make it easier to ram down the barrel. The army needed to know how a greased cartridge would react to the temperature and humidity in India. During the two years of the tests there were no complaints from the sepoys. The greasing came in three parts, the most sensitive being tallow. Towards the end of January 1857 came the first signs that the Indian soldiers, including officers, had asked that the greased composition should be changed. The answer: sepoys should be issued with clean cartridges and they should be allowed to grease them with whatever they wished. Moreover, any tallow would be that from goats or sheep. However, the rumour persisted that the tallow was from pigs and cows. It was clear by February that the cartridge-and-grease question was a vehicle to raise the wider grievance. By then, rebellion was inevitable.

It is wrong to accept the popular reason that sepoys refusing to use cartridges coated in animal fat caused the 1857 rebellion. There were relevant causes other than greased cartridges:

1. The British restructured India on European lines thus usurping centuries of right and privilege.

2. Governor-General Dalhousie (see below) seized states, claiming that the Hindu custom of accession was illegal. This was known as the Doctrine of Lapse.

3. Many sepoy regiments were recruited from the wrong areas and castes and didn't want to serve outside their own regions.

4. Discipline in many regiments was poor.

5. Promotion was by time serving rather than ability, and this added to discontent as well as inefficiency.

6. For decades there had been friction between the British and Indians because the latter, with some considerable justification, believed it was government policy to aid British missionaries who tried to convert Indians to Christianity with the force of the 1813 Charter Act encouraging them so to do.

Marquess of Dalhousie 1812-1860: James Andrew Broun-Ramsay was born at Dalhousie Castle, Midlothian, and educated at Harrow and Christ Church Oxford. In 1843 he was Vice President of the Board of Trade under Peel. Gladstone was the board President and in 1845 Dalhousie succeeded the future Prime Minister. In 1847 became the youngest Governor-General of India. He started the Indian railway and the expansion of the telegraph, and introduced plans for a nationwide irrigation system. Dalhousie revised the Indian Civil Service and opened it to all races. His health was broken by India and he retired the year before the mutiny.