Introduction: In Pursuit of a Revolt

This volume brings together my occasional essays on 1857 and a small book that was, in terms of its length no more than a longish essay. The essays are chronologically arranged. My fascination with the revolt of 1857 dates back to my undergraduate days in Presidency College in Calcutta and my dissatisfaction with that hoary old chestnut that appeared all too frequently in school-leaving and undergraduate question papers about what to call the rebellion—mutiny, war of independence, feudal uprising, what have you. The dissatisfaction and the quest for alternative ways to look at the revolt were whetted when our professor, Hiren Chakrabarti, somewhat out of the blue, asked me to write a comment on the Azamgarh Proclamation that had been issued by a rebel prince in the summer of 1857. I remember that he dictated the entire document to me from Ainslee Embree’s collection of writings and documents on 1857. ¹ That document drew me and my tutorial essay outgrew itself by many words and pages.