Indian Rebellion of 1857

On 29 March 1857, a young soldier, Mangal Pandey, was hanged to death for attacking his officers in Barrackpore. Some days later, some sepoys of the regiment at Meerut refused to do the army drill using the new cartridges, which were suspected of being coated with the fat of cows and pigs.

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny of sepoys of the East India Company's army on 10 May 1857, in the cantonment of the town of Meerut. From the sepoy lines, the uprising spread swiftly to the ordinary people in the town and the surrounding villages. The sepoys captured the bell of arms (a place where the arms and ammunition were stored) and then proceeded to attack and kill the white people and to ransack and burn their bungalows and property.

A large number of people from different sections of society rose up in rebellion. Some regard it as the biggest armed resistance to colonialism in the nineteenth century anywhere in the world.

In the following two days, May 12 and 13, North India remained quiet. Once word travelled that Delhi had fallen to the rebels and Bahadur Shah had blessed the rebellion, events moved very fast. Cantonment after cantonment in the Gangetic valley and some to the west of Delhi raised the flag of mutiny.

The rebellion posed a considerable threat to East India Company power in that region, and was contained only with the fall of Gwalior on 20 June 1858.

The rebellion is also known variously as the Indian Mutiny, the Sepoy Mutiny, the Sepoy Rebellion, the Sepoy Revolt and the First War of Independence.

The rebellion led to the dissolution of the East India Company in 1858. It also led the British to reorganize the army, the financial system and the administration in India. The country was thereafter directly governed by the crown as the new British Raj.
Indian Rebellion of 1857