Discontent Among Sepoys

The conditions of service in the Company’s Army and cantonments increasingly came into conflict with the religious

beliefs and prejudices of the sepoys. Restrictions on wearing caste and sectarian marks and secret rumours of proselytising activities of the chaplains (often maintained on the Company’s expenses which meant at Indian expense) were interpreted by Indian sepoys, who were generally conservative by nature, as interference in their religious affairs.

To the religious Hindu of the time, crossing the seas meant loss of caste. In 1856, Lord Canning’s government passed the General Service Enlistment Act which decreed that all future recruits to the Bengal Army would have to give an undertaking to serve anywhere their services might be required by the government. This caused resentment.

The Indian sepoy was equally unhappy with his emolu- ments compared to his British counterpart. A more immediate cause of the sepoys’ dissatisfaction was the order that they would not be given the foreign service allowance (bhatta) when serving in Sindh or in Punjab. The annexation of Awadh, home of many of the sepoys, further inflamed their feelings. The Indian sepoy was made to feel a subordinate at every step and was discriminated against racially and in matters of promotion and privileges. The discontent of the sepoys was not limited to military matters; it reflected the general disenchantment with and the opposition to British rule. The sepoy, in fact, was a ‘peasant in uniform’ whose consciousness was not divorced from that of the rural population. “The Army voiced grievances other than its own; and the movement spread beyond the Army”, observes S.

Gopal.

Finally, there had been a long history of revolts in the British Indian Army—in Bengal (1764), Vellore (1806), Barrackpore (1825) and during the Afghan Wars (1838-42) to mention just a few.