Vellore Mutiny!!
Am writing after about 4 months. No, I wasn't busy. Have, in fact had nothing to do all this while. Landed a job and got done with my research internship. And now that the session starts again, am back blogging. Best wishes to everyone on the 60th Independence Day. Marking the ocassion, I'll write about this fairly unkown mutiny. This post also appears at http://mutiny.in, where I have started writing lately.
Not many of us know about the Vellore Mutiny of 1806 which preceeded the Sepoy Mutiny by more than half a century. I too was unaware of it until I came across this article in The Hindu a few Sundays back. The reason here was again the resentment in the ranks over the rules imposed by the British officers. Hindus were prohibited from wearing religious marks on their foreheads and Muslims were required to shave their beard and trim their moustache. Interestingly, Tipu Sultan's family was imprisoned in the Vellore fort since his defeat and death in 1799. This gave the soldiers confidence to go ahead with the rebellion. Notice here the parallels with the mutiny of 1857, where the reason for the rising were the greased cartridges and the soldiers fought to bring Bahadur Shah back to power.
Two hours after midnight, on July 10, the sepoys surrounded the fort and killed most of the British. The rebels seized control by dawn, and raised the flag of the Mysore Sultanate over the fort. Tipu's princes, though were reluctant to take charge. Here the plan went astray as some of the soldiers started looting the Britisher's houses. By 9.30 on the morning of July 10, the East India Company regained control of the fort.
I am sure by now, there would have been a handful of movies made in the Hollywood has such an incident taken place in America, here it doesn't even get a mention in the school history books. A bi-centennial commemoration stamp was issued in July at a low key affair, the only mention of which I find on the net, ironically, is on the BBC Website.
I dread to think of the day when August 15th would be covered only by the foreign press.
Not many of us know about the Vellore Mutiny of 1806 which preceeded the Sepoy Mutiny by more than half a century. I too was unaware of it until I came across this article in The Hindu a few Sundays back. The reason here was again the resentment in the ranks over the rules imposed by the British officers. Hindus were prohibited from wearing religious marks on their foreheads and Muslims were required to shave their beard and trim their moustache. Interestingly, Tipu Sultan's family was imprisoned in the Vellore fort since his defeat and death in 1799. This gave the soldiers confidence to go ahead with the rebellion. Notice here the parallels with the mutiny of 1857, where the reason for the rising were the greased cartridges and the soldiers fought to bring Bahadur Shah back to power.
Two hours after midnight, on July 10, the sepoys surrounded the fort and killed most of the British. The rebels seized control by dawn, and raised the flag of the Mysore Sultanate over the fort. Tipu's princes, though were reluctant to take charge. Here the plan went astray as some of the soldiers started looting the Britisher's houses. By 9.30 on the morning of July 10, the East India Company regained control of the fort.
I am sure by now, there would have been a handful of movies made in the Hollywood has such an incident taken place in America, here it doesn't even get a mention in the school history books. A bi-centennial commemoration stamp was issued in July at a low key affair, the only mention of which I find on the net, ironically, is on the BBC Website.
I dread to think of the day when August 15th would be covered only by the foreign press.
posted by Rahul Bhaskar at
9:28 AM
2 Comments:
Very Correct that the coverage of topics of national importance is decreasing sharply. Recently on Vijay Diwas(Kargil War) there was absolutely NO reference to it in TOI(on that day). You seriously cannot expect this from a newspaper which has largest circulation in the country.
By
Gaurav (Calvin), at September 18, 2006 6:55 PM
by the way what does Oranjee signifies....
(new to your blog; just curious)
By
Gaurav (Calvin), at September 18, 2006 7:06 PM
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