Western civilization had made the people suspicious of the designs of the British Government. The introduction of railways* and telegraph, the activities of the missionaries,* the expansion of western education, the suppression of sati,* the legalisation of the remarriage of Hindu widows, the right to inherit ancestral property even when a Hindu changed his religion, were measures which led people to believe that the British government was bent upon converting them to Christianity. And the cry was raised, ‘Religion and traditions in danger!’
One of the main causes of the mutiny was the discontent in the Indian soldiery. Salaries were small and they were not treated as in former times. An Act called the General Service Enlistment Act was then recently passed* which empowered the Government to send Indian soldiers wherever the need arose, but the Brahman sepoys thought it a sacrilege to cross the sea. The Bengal army consisted mostly of Oudh people who were deeply offended on account of the annexation of Oudh. The large percentage of Indians in the army had also encouraged them. The number of Indian sepoys was five times that of the British soldiers.
* See India’s First Railway. After an unpromising start, the Company was doing better at improving life in India: see Samuel Smiles on Britain’s Best Gift to India, and Bishop Heber on Colonel Tod’s work in The Quiet Kingdom. Nevertheless, as John Bright noted, in reality most of these early railways were built with the army in mind.
* See Zenana Mission.
* Sati or suttee is the Hindu practice of asking or forcing a widow to commit suicide by throwing herself upon the funeral pyre of her late husband. In 1829, the new Governor of Fort William (and thus of Bengal) William Bentinck had banned the practice, though enforcing the ban proved more difficult. The British were not the first in India to try to discourage sati. Emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605) refused to enforce it, and Emperor Aurangzeb issued a ban in 1663 which was widely but not universally respected. Afonso de Albuquerque, 1st Duke of Goa, the Portuguese governor there, had banned it as long ago as 1515, but some of the gloss comes off when we remember that thanks to the Goa Inquisition (1561-1812), held by many to be the most brutal Inquisition of them all, the authorities burnt some fifty-seven people at the stake for heresy.
* The Act was passed in 1856, shortly before the Anglo-Persian War. In November 1856, the British rode to the rescue of the city of Herat, which had declared independence from the ruling Qajar dynasty in Persia; the war ended in April 1857, just weeks before the Mutiny broke out, in victory for the British. The law allowed the Company to send Indian recruits, recruited for local militias amidst squabbles which had some immediate relevance to them, for service abroad in the economic and political interests of the British government and the Company.
Précis
The annexation of territory was not the only source of complaint. As more and more was demanded of sepoys, who outnumbered Europeans five to one, dissatisfaction grew with pay and conditions. Meanwhile, Dalhousie’s reforms to Indian inheritance laws and religious customs, combined with the advent of the telegraph and the railways, made conservatives anxious for India’s traditional social fabric. (59 / 60 words)
The annexation of territory was not the only source of complaint. As more and more was demanded of sepoys, who outnumbered Europeans five to one, dissatisfaction grew with pay and conditions. Meanwhile, Dalhousie’s reforms to Indian inheritance laws and religious customs, combined with the advent of the telegraph and the railways, made conservatives anxious for India’s traditional social fabric.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, because, besides, if, just, must, since, until.
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