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Depending on what you read or on your point of view, this month marks the 150 year anniversary of the “First War of Indian Independence” or the “Indian Mutiny”. Whatever you call it, there is no doubting that it was an important historical event and deserves much more coverage than it has been given. It was this one event which effectively changed the course of history and destiny for two countries and its effects can been seen even today. As British Hindus, the event and its history has double significance for us for obvious reasons.

Before 1857, the British presence and influence in India was gradually built up through the private British East India Company. By the 1850s, it had grown very powerful in India and its shareholders had become very rich as a result. Back in London however, although India was viewed as important (India had always been important in European history since ancient times), the East India company was not necessarily more important than colonial possessions in the New World, or the West Indies. In the Western colonies, Britain ran many plantations which supplied the mother country with plenty of cash crops and had helped to make her the richest nation in the world. The importance of India and the raw materials which the British economy had been using were almost taken for granted. Until 1857 that is.

Back in India, the British occupation had come at an unfortunate time for the mainly Hindu rulers. Having fought a long drawn out war fought over a thousand years with Islamic invaders, Hindus had finally taken back power in most parts of the country. The largest kingdom was the Maratha empire which had broken the back of the Mogul empire. However, the British and other European colonial powers had arrived with superior weapons (developed after their own scientific renaissance following a thousand years of the “dark ages”) and coupled with the tactics they had used to divide and destroy the indigenous populations of the Americas, they were able to take advantage of the political situation in India and establish influence and territories.

As mentioned before, how you view the events of 1857 can depend on you point of view. From the British point of view, the East India Company had established itself in parts of India through land purchase and treaties and had built up its own private army for the protection of its property. From this point of view, the battles that followed were a rebellion or mutiny against (British) law and order. On the other hand, the British had clearly come to India to exploit the resources of the land (even under the guise of trade, the terms of trades were against the Indians). They had also taken Indians to the West Indies as virtual slaves (or indentured labourers as they were called) and had used one group of Indians against other groups in order to enhance their own position. Worse of all in this was that previously independent Indian kingdoms and states were now required to submit to British law. From this point of view, what followed was a war for liberation and independence.

But whatever slant you take on this, it is a matter of history that both sides suffered losses and there were heroic performances as well as atrocities committed. The British forces emerged victorious but the events of 1857 also led to the downfall and disbandment of the British East India Company. On the other side, India was eventually to achieve her independence 90 years later. In between however, 1857 showed Victorian Britain just how important India had become. Calcutta (today Kolkatta) was to become the second city of the British Empire, Queen Victoria was declared “Empress of India” and India the so-called “Jewel in Crown” of the Imperial power. Cheap raw materials from India fuelled the “Industrial Revolution” back in Britain and created what is regarded as the golden age of British history when she was not just the most powerful nation in Europe but the whole world.

Strangely, this also created the conditions for the revival of India too. Many British scholars became fascinated with Indian history and although they largely put a colonial slant on their research they also kept alive and rejuvenated interest in ancient Hinduism as well as more recent Indian history. In a completely different process, the existence of the British Empire also meant that many Indians were moved or moved themselves to many parts of the world and established roots there. Most of the readers of this article and our publication are probably products of this process and the economic and spiritual benefits of these networks are difficult to over-estimate. It also meant that English is an important and widely used language in India today. This makes it far easier for Indians to do business with the largest economies as well as helping in the development of her own service based economy. In the modern world, all of these realities have created the conditions for India to become a financial and spiritual superpower. That the roots of this go back to an event in the history of another superpower is even more amazing and shows the strange link between British and Indian history.