According to the Indian magazine ?The Week?(2000), if Mahmud of Ghazni is the most hated man in India, it is simply because when he invaded India in the 1010s, he plundered the wealth of temples like those at Somnath and Mathura and then set them on fire. Even Nadir Shah, it is said, despite the butchery he committed on innocents is not so much despised as Ghazni. This can explain the fact that in the Indian psyche, it is religion and not material wealth that takes priority. The Turkish invader Iltutmish and later the Mughal kings successfully ruled India because of their profound respect for the Hindu religion. Interfering with the religious sensibilities of the Indian people may wreak havoc as the British made the sad experience in 1857 when the most powerful multinational in the world, the East India Company, melted away like snow over the cartridge issue.

India?s glory and supremacy under the Mauryas and Guptas went declining in the 900s. The Indian empire which stretched from the Afghanistan border to Indonesia through Brunei (the capital still carries a Hindu name- Bandar Seri Begawan), was dismembered in bits and pieces. These conquered territories became predominantly Muslim. In India there emerged a multitude of petty kingdoms, each with its own Maharaja but there was not one single ruler at the helm except in the 13th century when Samsuddin Iltutmish succeeded in forging and keeping the whole of India under his control. By uniting India in one single force, he frightened off the Mongol Ghengiz Khan in his attempt at invading India. Iltutmish was liberal minded. He did everything not to arouse Hindu sentiments against his administration. For example, when his minister Junaidi demanded enforcement of Islamic law on all subjects, he overruled this decision allowing the Hindus freedom of choice and giving respect to their religion. His position was not threatened so much so that he was able to place his daughter Raziya as the ruler of India in 1213. Raziya, was the only woman before Mrs Indira Gandhi, in 1966 to control India. If Mrs Gandhi was killed by her own bodyguard in 1984, Raziya suffered almost the same fate; she was put to death by the nobles surrounding her. Both in a way followed the succession line.

What made Iltutmish strong was he observed the principle of religious tolerance. That was exactly what the Mughal emperor, Akbar did when his reign started in 1556. Operating as leader of the Muslim minority group, Akbar was soon accepted as the ruler of all Hindustan. The only Hindu who rose up to fight him was Hemu who proclaimed himself king Vickramadita. At the battle of Panipat where both Akbar and Hemu were engaged, a stray arrow decided the fate of India. Just like in England at the battle of Hastings in 1066 a stray arrow came flying and struck the eye of King Harold and gave the English throne to William, Duke of Normandy, similarly Hemu?s eye was hit by a stray arrow. At that moment, his soldiers fled leaving him at the mercy of Akbar.

Akbar?s supremacy in military might and statesmanship and much more, his tolerance for the Hindu religion, his withdrawal of anti-Hindu taxes, his visits to Hindu temples and shrines, his administration of justice won him the favour of the Hindu majority. But his grandson, Aurangzeb (1658-1707), strode a different path, doing the contrary of what Akbar did. By doing so, he could not but awaken the Hindu consciousness into resistance. That anti-Hindu froth spewed by Aurangzeb led to the gradual decline of the Mughal era and when an Englishman Robert Clive won the battle of Plassey in 1757 after a treachery committed by one Jafar Mir on the Indian side and assumed the control of Bengal, it was the opening of another chapter in the history of India. The British had gained a foothold in India and that was viewed as a very significant event.. So much so that when the centenary of the battle of Plassey was about to be pompously celebrated in a small town of Shrewsbury in England with the unveiling of Clive?s statue, the Indian mutiny broke out as a sign of disenchantment against British rule

Drain of money from India to Britain

That breakthrough of the British in India was done by the establishment of a merchant corporation, the East India Company or the John Company which had began a trading post in Surat in 1608 to compete with the Dutch and Portuguese. That opening was allowed by Akbar?s successor, Jahangir who might have never realized that it was this company that was going to finish off the Mughal empire. The East India Company was run as a multinational corporation on a purely business line, that of increasing shareholders? wealth. It hardly cared for the sensibilities of the natives. The historian Sankar Ghose in his book ?Indian National Congress? quotes William Digby pointing out that ?between Plassey and Waterloo, a sum of £ 1000 millions was transferred from India to English banks.? According to Ghose, the average drain of money from India to Britain was £ 17.2 millions per annum. This made Dadabhai Naoroji, one of the early Congress leaders, say that the great mass of the Indian population was so impoverished that the people had ?hardly 2 pence a day and a few rags or a scanty subsistence.?

The East India Company in spearheading the fortunes of the British Empire was ruthless in expropriating the lands of the Indians. It went about its expansionist strategy by confiscating lands and villages of princes by means of a Proclamation issued by the Governor-General, Lord Canning and ?disposing of these in such a manner as it may seem fitting.? That proclamation seen as too harsh even by British officials was severely criticized in the British parliament by Disraeli. Many princes lost their titles, pensions and other privileges. For example, the Nawab of Oudh, Wajjid Ali, was stripped of all his properties; the last of the Great Mughal, the old Bahadur Shah Zafar was informed that the Mughal dynasty would end with his death. Another example of ruthless expropriation was in the case of the kingdom of Jhansi. When the Maharaja died, the British annexed Jhansi as a ?lapsed? state. ?I will not give up my Jhansi,? the widowed Rani vowed. It was then that the Rani decided to fight the British and was mortally wounded in a skirmish. Such was the ruthlessness and mercilessness of the East India Company that Nick Robbins in his book ?The Corporation that changed the world?? writes that the East India Company firmly believed in the merit of conducting ?commerce with sword in hands?

How could therefore one resist such a powerful organization that was given a free hand to coin money, acquire territories, maintain armies, form alliances and declare war?

?The one historic blunder of the East India Company
was the disrespect for the religion in India. That disrespect brought its downfall. The first sign of discontent showed up missionaries came over in large numbers to preach and propagate Christianity.?

In its mad pursuit of plundering India, the Company forgot to take into account the sensibilities of the Indian people for their religion, cultures and traditions. When it came to playing with their religious sentiments, all hell could break loose. Iltutmish. Akbar and other Mughal Emperors practised religious tolerance and celebrated Hindu festivals with fervour. That was what made them successful rulers.

The one historic blunder the East India Company committed was the disrespect for the religion in India. That disrespect brought its downfall. The first sign of discontent showed up when Canning, and even his predecessor Dalhousie, encouraged missionaries to come over in large numbers to India to preach and propagate Christianity. The talks of forcible conversion instilled fear and did a lot of damage to the reputation of the British. As William Dalrymple has pointed out in his book ?The Last Mughal? ?By the early 1850s, many British officials were nursing plans finally to abolish the Mughal court, and to impose not just British laws and technology on India, but also Christianity. The reaction to this steady crescendo of insensitivity came in 1857 with the Great Mutiny.?

But anger reached its peak when it was discovered that the newly introduced cartridges for the Enfield rifles supplied to the Indian soldiers were coated with grease made from the fat of cows and pigs. Cows are still considered sacred to the Hindus and pigs are anathema to Muslims. The cartridges had to be bitten off with the teeth, then pushed down the barrel of the gun. The Hindu and Muslim sepoys felt that their religion was being attacked and that was the last thing the British could do-interfering with religion of a population with a millennium culture and traditions. One single cartridge was enough to shake the most powerful empire in the world.

Sir William Gomm?s advice ignored

In fact, Sir William Gomm, a former Governor of Mauritius(1842-49), who on leaving Mauritius assumed the function of Commander-in-Chief of India(1850-56), had warned that ?unless it be known that the grease employed in the cartridges is not of a nature to offend or interfere with the prejudice of caste, it will be expedient not to issue them for test to native corps.? But the Military Board chose to ignore Gomm?s counsel and went ahead with its distribution of greased cartridges.

So when Mangal Pandey (Pandy to the British), a sepoy in the Bengal regiment fired shots and wounded two British officers on the parade ground at Barrackpore on 29 March 1857 and then attempted to shoot himself, that could have sparked the rebellious state of mind of the sepoys. Pandey as Saul David writes in his book, the The Indian Muitiny, 1857, said that from biting those cartridges, he was going to lose his Brahmin caste and become infidel. He was hanged on 8 April. Was his action going to inspire the sepoys of the Bengal army to revolt on 10 May? Or was it an individual act?

When on 9 May, a court martial sentenced 85 sepoys in Meerut with ten years? penal servitude for refusing to fire cartridges, Meerut was the next day witnessing open revolt in the army. The mutineers placed placards in the Meerut bazaar ?calling on all true Musulmans to rise up and slaughter the Christians.? That call was responded with the killing of every British man, woman and child coming in sight. The insurgents set fire at army stations and buildings. In one of the fights between the rebels and the British, the British commander, Sir Henry Lawrence was killed. The government machinery came to a grinding halt. The Meerut revolt spread to Cawnpore (Kanpur), Lucknow and Delhi. The Mughal capital, Delhi fell in the rebels? hands and became the insurgents? rallying point. In Delhi, they proclaimed the last of the Mughal, the 82 year old Bahadur Shah Zafar as Emperor of India, declaring ? we have joined hands to protect our religion and our faith.? In a proclamation issued in the name of Zafar, it was spelt out that ?this is a religious war, and is being prosecuted on account of the faith , and it behoves all Hindus and Musulman residents to continue true to their faith and creeds??

According to Dalrymple, although the great majority of sepoys were Hindus, in Delhi ?a flag of jihad was raised and many of the insurgents described themselves as jihadis and mujahedins?. Their target were the ?kafirs?-the British!

The British had strong suspicion that Mughal king had a hand in the revolt and so when the British regained Delhi, Zafar?s fate was sealed. He was picked up at Humayun?s tomb where he had taken refuge and put on trial. The king was spared of his life but was exiled to Rangoon after a court martial found him guilty of ?rebellion, treason and murder?. A demoralized and melancholic Bahadur Shah Zafar who was also a well known poet and a friend of Ghalib, Momin and Zauq lamented his love for India in this evocative line, ?How unfortunate you are Zafar/You couldn?t find a place for a grave in your own homeland.? Zafar, the last great Mughal emperor of India died in 1862 and was buried at the rear of the prison enclosure where he was held in Rangoon. His burial was attended by his two sons and manservant only as authorized by the British. Thus, with the 1857 mutiny ended 350 years of a great ruling dynasty.

Many British writers tend to attribute the cause of the sepoy revolt to religion. Lord Ellenborough himself declared it in the British parliament. Some historians like Judith Brown in her book ?Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy? argues that the revolt was provoked by disgruntled upper-caste sepoys who were not satisfied with their pay and resisted transfers to far off stations. ?It was essentially elitist,? writes Brown. ?? not initiated or supported by the really poor or landless but by some of the dominant castes and notables in the countryside.? This view is shared by Dalrymple when he writes that ?the uprising showed every sign of being initiated by upper caste Hindu sepoys reacting against specifically military grievances perceived as a threat to their faith and dharma?.?

Though the East India Company was the main casualty of the uprising ? it was dissolved in 1858- and the British nearly lost India, it was leadership as Saul David puts it that was wanting on the Indian side as also the revolts were localized in the north and hardly touched the central and southern parts of India. That isolated approach gave enough time to the British to defend themselves. But during that time in 1869 in Porbander a leader was born. Mohandas K Gandhi, another man of God, a revolutionary in his own right, was to take the Indian scene by storm.