Introduction

The 1857 revolt in India has so far largely been viewed as an event that was of interest to British and Indian scholars investigating the various consequences of British colonial rule in India. For almost a hundred years after it took place, studies of the revolt were dominated by views that sought to diminish both its magnitude and its anti-colonial character. In the half-a-century following the end of British rule and the establishment of an independent India, such views have been questioned by scholars in India and Britain and considerable evidence has been gathered to give a different account of the revolt. This tells us that the ‘mutinous spirit’ that raised its head in the ranks of the British Indian army in the early months of 1857 did not remain confined to these ranks but in fact found fertile ground in significant sections of the civilian population, that too not just in and around the most active sites of the mutinying sepoys in northern India but also in other more distant parts. The complete story is yet to emerge regarding the extent to which disaffection against colonial rule had spread and the forms it took during the turbulent two years before the British rulers were able to suppress the revolt. Meanwhile, other scholars have also taken a closer look at the consequences of the revolt in Britain and found enduring marks of the wounds inflicted by the revolt on the material and spiritual pillars of British society, wounds that certainly endured till the end of British rule. ¹ Curiously, these wounds have a habit of resurfacing every now and then even long after the prospects of British rule in India have definitively been laid to rest and other prospects concerning the planet Earth as a whole and our collective future on it engage our attention. ²