India paid homage with full pomp and honour on Friday to the ”martyrs” who battled British rule 150 years ago in the country’s ”first war of independence”.
Thousands of flag-waving marchers shouting ”Jai Hind”, or ”Long live India”, converged on the Mughal-built Red Fort in Old Delhi after retracing the route of rebellious soldiers for ceremonies kicking off a year-long celebration of the bloody uprising against the mighty British empire.
The revolt has long been known as the ”Indian Mutiny”, but many Indian historians now say the term ”mutiny” belittles what actually happened.
”The fight for freedom united people from different religions and speaking different languages,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a speech from the ramparts of the imposing 17th-century sandstone fort.
Actors restaged the events that led to the revolt, which helped pave the way for independence 90 years later of the ”jewel” in Britain’s imperial crown, and dancers performed in a swirl of colour.
Security was stepped up across the capital, particularly at the Red Fort, which has been attacked in the past by Islamic militants fighting New Delhi’s rule in Indian Kashmir, police said.
Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress party, dismissed attempts by some historians to project the uprising as only a mutiny of foot soldiers, known as sepoys, and called it ”the first war of independence”.
”Those who thought the sun would never set on their empire were brought to their knees and forced to leave the country, and that too within a century after the whole of India stood united to take charge of their destiny,” she said.
”This proved that unity in diversity is ‘our biggest asset’ and secularism formed the basis of this great unifying force,” she added.
The government has been using the anniversary as a springboard to promote unity in the country of 1,1-billion people, where religious tensions flare regularly and there are serious regional, linguistic and caste divides.
”In the fight for freedom, Hindus and Muslims stood together shoulder-to-shoulder” holding out an ”an example for subsequent generations”, Singh said.
The insurrection, in which Indian soldiers rose up against the British East India Company, the merchants who ruled India, was spurred by reports the British were introducing bullets greased with cow and pig fat — considered unacceptable for religious reasons to Hindus and Muslims respectively.
Hundreds of mutinous foot soldiers rode into the great Mughal capital of Delhi, massacring British men, women and children indiscriminately.
Tens of thousands on both sides were slaughtered in the uprising that was savagely suppressed in Delhi by the British.
”The uprising was a period of enormous bloodshed — the rebels and British behaved in an incredibly bloodthirsty way,” British author and historian William Dalrymple said.
Celebrations have been somewhat muted. Some see this as reflecting unease over the savagery of the conflict and an acknowledgement that India’s ultimate achievement of independence in 1947 was through non-violent tactics.
”As a nation inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s message of non-violence, India has consciously abjured violence as an instrument of social and political change,” Singh noted in a parliamentary speech on Thursday.
”Yet we cannot forget those inspired revolutionaries … who sacrificed their lives in 1857 to free the country from foreign yoke.”
The revolt brought a final end to the vast Mughal empire as well as to the East India Company’s rule in India, making way for the British Raj — direct rule by the British government. — AFP