which incident triggered the sepoy revolt?
Answers
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 had diverse political, economic, military, religious and social causes.
An uprising in several sepoy companies of the Bengal army was sparked by the issue of new gunpowder cartridges for the Enfield rifle February, 1857. The cartridges were rumoured to have been made from cow and sow fat. Loading the Enfield required tearing open the greased cartridge with one's teeth. This would have insulted both Hindu and Muslim religious practices; cows were considered holy by Hindus, while pigs were considered unclean by Muslims. Underlying grievances over British taxation and recent land annexations by the British East Indian Company (BEIC) were ignited by the sepoy mutineers, and within weeks, dozens of units of the Indian army joined peasant armies in widespread rebellion. The old aristocracy, both Muslim and Hindu, who were seeing their power steadily eroded by the BEIC, also rebelled against British rule. Another important source of discontent among the Indian rulers was that the British policies of conquest had created unrest among many Indian rulers. In the decade prior to the rebellion, the BEIC imposed a 'doctrine of lapse' (of Indian leadership succession), and the policy 'subsidiary alliance' both of which deprived Indian rulers of some of their sovereignty. One of the main reasons for the revolt was that the British East India Company also started meddling with India's political and financial system. Sepoy units combined with local populations in a major rebellion in 1857 that temporarily unified many Indians across sect, caste, and religious differences.
Some Indians were upset with the draconian rule of the Company who had embarked on a project of territorial expansion and westernisation that was imposed without any regard for historical subtleties in Indian society. Furthermore, legal changes introduced by the British were accompanied by prohibitions on Indian religious customs and were seen as steps towards forced conversion to Christianity.[1] As early as the Charter Act of 1813 Christian missionaries were encouraged to come to Bombay and Calcutta under BEIC control. The British Governor-General of India from 1848 to 1856 was Lord Dalhousie who passed the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 which allowed widows to remarry, like Christian women. He also passed decrees allowing Hindus who had converted to Christianity to be able to inherit property, which had previously been denied by local practice.[2] Author Pramod Nayar points out that by 1851 there were nineteen Protestant religious societies operating in India whose goal was the conversion of Indians to Christianity. Christian organisations from Britain had additionally created 222 "unattached" mission stations across India in the decade preceding the rebellion.[3]