India mutiny epic open in cinemas

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4145032.stm

I just finished re-re-re-reading Flashman and the Great Game which is also about the first Indian Mutiny, the film might be worth a look apart from all the song and dance.

 

The Sunday Torygraph did an article on The Ballad of Pandey - The Rising. Unsurprisingly, it was somewhat scathing, due to the factual inaccuracies portraying British officers buying slaves for a Ruperts only knocking shop, and ordering massacres of villages for the good of the Company's profits. The producer glossed over the inaccuracies (ie: lies), by saying it was to ilustrate the period in the light of the dangers of modern day globalisation or some such cack. Anyway, it wasn't a rising, it was a mutiny, and it was put down very effectively, by a mixture of Indian and British troops.

 

Mangal Pandy, the hero of the film, is a bit anonymous in histrorical terms. However according to British sources the incident which lead to his courts-martial and execution apparently went like this. He was a Hindu Sepoy of a company regiment, the 34th Native Infantry stationed at Barrackpore. He apparently loaded his musket (so no animal fat on the cartridge issues there then?) and went to berate thequarterguard. He demanded all the sepoys present to join in a rebellion to overthrow the HEIC. The Sepoys on duty at the quarterguard made no attempt to restrain him. The (European) Sergeant Major appeared and Mangal Pandy fired at him and missed! The 34th's Adjutant, a Lieutenant Baugh, was informed about this incident and wentto the quarterguard on horse-back. Mangal Pandy fired at him , missed again but killed his horse. Baugh was wounded in hand-to-hand combat with Pandy, who was over powered by Shaikh Paltoo, a Muslim Sepoy!

The British Sergeant Major and Adjutant escaped at this point. A crowd of Sepoys gathered at the quarterguard and threatened to kill Shaikh Paltoo. The situation was finally controlled by Major General Hearsay who personally arrived at the scene. Mangal Pandy tried to commit suicide with his musket but was only wounded. He seems not to have been quite the gun-toting, rootingest, shootingest hero of the Mutiny after all!!

 

Was this the incident when in response to a warning about the loaded musket, the General replied "Musket be damned!!!" and rode his horse over the chap?

 

Addition to previous post after a bit of research. Yes it was. John Harris describes the incident at Meerut on Pages 25-27 of his book 'The Indian Mutiny' (London, 1973)

 

Those were the days indeed. Wonder what the bleeding heart gang would think if we were still laying blokes over cannon mouths and then firing them off.

 

Would we be expected to respect "cultural differences" and the human rights of rioting foreigners if a bunch of British women and kids were kidnapped, kept in a tiny shack and then mutilated and slaughtered, as at Cawnpore?

 

Came across an article by Maya Goodfellow in the "new left project" where she asserts that there was a hidden holocaust after the Mutiny in which the British offed 10 Million Indians. Now I know that lefties get a bit carried away when Imperialism is mentioned, but WTF 10 Million!!. I always thought around 100,000 Indians died in the mutiny and its aftermath.

 

A zero here, a zero there - Who can tell?

By the way, EPIC thread revival...

 

Yes, very well hidden, only she knows about it !

 

So was the movie any good? I can't wrap my head around a musical about the Indian Mutiny; the mind boggles. (It probably went straight to DVD!)

 

Did you know that Gandhi was an outrageous racist ?

(And he wasn't even in ukip )

 

Cheers

 

Aug 2005, impressive, there seems to be a revivalist movement in ARRSE.

 

He had quite a lot in common with Pol Pot as well, he advocated "unlearning" things like railways, telegraphs, medicine and science and returning to a sort of Year zero of subsistence farming.
His ideas would have killed a lot more Indians then the British ever managed.