Furthermore, the telling of the history of the war is, to this day, an ongoing battle between two competing narratives, the history belonging to the British that won the war, and the history claimed by the Indians who were defeated. The history of the war delves deep into the colonization and conquest of India and the cultural and religious oppression imposed on Indians by British rule. The story of the Sepoy War of 1857, (an attempt at a compromise between two more controversial titles, ‘the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857′ and ‘the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857,’ though “insurgency”might also fit) began long before March of 1857. Did they not, in India, to borrow an expression of that great robber, Lord Clive himself, resort to atrocious extortion, when simple corruption could not keep pace with their rapacity? While they prated in Europe about the inviolable sanctity of the national debt, did they not confiscate in India the dividends of the rajahs, who had invested their private savings in the Company’s own funds? While they combated the French revolution under the pretext of defending “our holy religion,” did they not forbid, at the same time, Christianity to be propagated in India, and did they not, in order to make money out of the pilgrims streaming to the temples of Orissa and Bengal, take up the trade in the murder and prostitution perpetrated in the temple of the Juggernaut? These are the men of “Property, Order, Family, and Religion.” The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked.
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