The latest Lee-Enfield rifles required sepoys to bite the cartridge in order to load the weapon, but they refused, disobeying direct orders. On May 9, 1857, sepoys (derived from sepāhī Indian soldiers) serving in the third regiment of light cavalry in the Meerut, India cantonment awaited imprisonment for failing to use their new weapons properly. Three days in May 1857 set off the long, terrifying year of bloodshed, rebellion, suppression, and suspicion at the center of my inquiry. The shift here is from seeing some Muslims in stereotypical lenses to understanding all Muslims to be rebels.
But before there was anything we could divide into a "before" or an "after," there was the Rebellion itself.Īfter the Rebellion, Muslims were almost unequivocally understood as inherently violent, obligated to revolt. As I showed in the book, this is clearest in the unmistakable rise and then exclusive use of the terms "jihad" and "jihadi" for and about Islam and Muslims after the Rebellion.īefore the Rebellion, few relied on the notion of jihad to discuss Muslims and yet after the Rebellion, this term proliferates-and many authors cited the Rebellion as evidence that "Muslim" and "jihadi" were interchangeable. After the Rebellion, Muslims were almost unequivocally understood as inherently violent, obligated to revolt. Before the Rebellion, Britons often read Muslims as fanatical, perhaps violent.
#SEPOY MUTINY DEFINITION SERIES#
Historians are keen not to divide time into "befores" and "afters," and yet the Rebellion is one of those historical moments where antecedents and aftermath coalesce around a cataclysmic series of events. As I argued in my first book, Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion, the Great Rebellion had a massive, lingering effect on how religion came to be defined in India-and especially upon Islam and Muslims. It pitted Britons as colonizers of South Asia against South Asians of multiple backgrounds, positions, and statuses. One such well-remembered event is the Great Rebellion of 1857 in India, a long and terrifying year (or so) of bloodshed, rebellion, suppression, and suspicion.
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This essay starts from the assumption that remembered events not only become history but also become the ways people are defined. We know that most events become what they are based upon how folks at the time, in an event’s aftermath, and many years later remember that event. Little if anything happens out of the blue examined carefully, even seemingly shocking events follow from a traceable context. Historians are keen not to put too much stock into hard-and-fast "befores" and "afters." We know that most events-even the ones that become pivotal moments-have myriad antecedents that allow for that event’s occurrence.
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