Question

Why did the Hindu sepoys recent travelling overseas

Answer 1

According to an old belief, it was a taboo for a Brahmin to cross the seas. The British Parliament under the General Service Enlistment Act, 1856 could send Indian Soldiers overseas. The Act did not take into account the sentiments of Brahmins and Brahmins saw this as a danger to their caste...thus, this led to a feeling of resentment among them

Answer 2

“In India one is always sitting on a volcano.”

—Lord Dalhousie, Governor-General of India, 1848 (Peers 66)

Historians still do not agree on the name: The Sepoy Rebellion, The Sepoy Mutiny, The Great Mutiny, The Indian Uprising, or The First War of Indian Independence. Historians do agree, however, that it came extremely close to suddenly and permanently ending British imperialism in India. It started when a small group of sepoys refused an order by their British officers. So it was definitely a mutiny. Some peasants and landlords also joined the uprising, so it was more wide spread than a mutiny. Yet, the majority of the Indian population did not join the uprising. More still, the majority of soldiers who put down the rebellion were Indians themselves. Historians do agree that the fighting was brutal. Both sides committed atrocities, often with thinly veiled racial and sectarian overtones. Of the 40,000 Europeans living in India, approximately one in seven perished. On the Indian side, at least 800,000 died in the uprising and the ensuing famine (Peers 64). The war also marked the end of the East India Company altogether. After the uprising, the British government ruled India directly and formally as a colony.

In the 19th century, the British increasingly unveiled ethnocentric attitudes and laws that belittled Indian culture. For example, one administrator famously unpacked his cultural arrogance declaring, “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia” (Dalrymple 69). Indians resented such disparaging attitudes. In 1837 the British made English the official language of the Indian government and offered it along with Christian Bible classes in colleges (Dalrymple 69). The 1813 Regulatory Act legalized Christian missionaries in India. Though the missions were largely unsuccessful in converting Indians, Muslims and Hindus felt threatened by this new religious challenge. Many people also resented laws that intervened in Indian culture, such as the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 (Peers 67). Hindu women were traditionally expected to honor their families and show loyalty to their deceased husbands by refusing to remarry and choosing a life of poverty and self-denial. The new law allowed and encouraged Indian widows to remarry, a direct affront to Hindu traditions. Many Indians, including the sepoys, felt there culture was under siege.