
The Bibighar Massacre: The Darkest Days of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 - Avawelles
https://mimimatthews.com/2015/12/06/the-bibighar-massacre-the-darkest-days-of-the-indian-rebellion-of-1857/
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kumarski
Am I suddenly supposed to feel sad for the British?

How's about we get more stories about the Bengal famine of 1943? 3M indians
died b/c Churchill took their rice.

Or the 5k-10k indians that die each day b/c westerners don't let us have
access to viable uranium powered energy?

Where are those stories?

~~~
LostWanderer
Or the 5k-10k indians that die each day b/c westerners don't let us have
access to viable uranium powered energy? \---------

Slightly off topic but there seems to be a historical love for past events and
catastrophes,But the present is hidden from the limelight

[http://www.dianuke.org/whats-killing-the-children-in-
jadugod...](http://www.dianuke.org/whats-killing-the-children-in-jadugoda-
india-uranium-mines/)

This nuclear issue is like a trickling bomb for the past 40 years.

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webbrahmin
Jallianwala Bagh Massacre British troops opened fire on unarmed protestors and
pilgrims. 400 to 1000 men women and children were murdered by British soldiers
who were under the command of Colonel Dyer.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre)

~~~
peteretep
What relevance does an event 60 years later in an entirely different place
have?

~~~
mirimir
It demonstrates consistency of British attitude toward Indians.

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sandGorgon
In India, we never refer to this as the "sepoy mutiny" or any crap like that.

It is always called the First War of Indian Independence. It would take us
another hundred years and Gandhi and the nonviolent freedom struggle to be
finally rid of the British.

But the greatest irony comes from this : that was undivided India (India,
Pakistan and Bangladesh). We went from that to the most dangerous nuclear
flashpoint in the world today.

~~~
playhard
Wrongly called as First War of Indian Independence. There was Vellore Mutiny
in 1806.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vellore_mutiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vellore_mutiny)

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apoorvkumar
"British Indian history". That pretty much sums it up. No country should ever
have the ignominy of appearing second in its own history. Every Indian wishes
the 1857 revolt had snowballed to freedom.

~~~
tacomonstrous
To be fair, there really was no 'India' before the British cobbled one
together. Unlike China, there never was one power that controlled the whole
subcontinent. It's hard to know how things would have ended up politically if
not for British hegemony. Would there be a country like India, or would its
various disparate parts have continued as distinct sovereign entities? Part of
the miracle of the whole Indian project is that it has remained basically
intact since independence. This isn't something one would have taken for
granted a few decades ago.

~~~
shardinator
India was like Greece, China like Rome. China had central control while India
had independent states that didn't control each other politically but were
unified in terms culture, communication, roads, infrastructure and importantly
commerce.

Today it wouldn't make sense to say "there really was no 'Greece'". Same for
India.

~~~
tacomonstrous
The Greeks at least had a common language, from what I understand. That's far
from true for India.

~~~
shardinator
If you said it's not 'strictly true for India', you'd be correct, but when you
say it's 'far from true' then not so much. India has two ancient languages
Tamil and Sanskrit and modern languages are derived from these (but I am def
not an expert). The modern forms are considered different languages, but they
are quite close to each other, easy to learn one from the other e.g.the
grammar is the same and words are usually just different
pronunciations/intonations of a common root. It's easy to see that in the
ancient past they would have had more similarity.

The original point was "there really was no 'India' before the British cobbled
one together". If so, then where was Columbus trying to go? Of course there
was 'an India', it just wasn't structured like a modern nation state, which is
true for every other modern country as well.

~~~
tacomonstrous
Everything you say applies just as well to all of Western Mediterranean
Europe. In fact, even more so, since you're dealing with just one branch of a
larger language group (the Latinate/Romance languages) rather than two
completely disparate ones (Indo-Aryan and Dravidian). No one now thinks of
this area as a nation-state.

Western Europe, through the British conquest of the subcontinent, was woefully
unaware of the internal differences. That Columbus ill-advisedly thought of
India as a monolithic entity is no marker of anything.

~~~
shardinator
>> Everything you say applies just as well to all of Western Mediterranean
Europe.

The language thing sure does. But the only time in ancient history Western
Mediterranean Europe has been part of a single state was during the Roman
period. the rest of the time they evolved separately and uniquely. In contrast
each part of modern India has been politically linked to the other parts
multiple times through history resulting in a common culture but with some
obvious diversity. E.g. Indian festivals are largely common throughout the
country, a marker of commonality stretching back through history.

>> That Columbus ill-advisedly thought of India as a monolithic entity is no
marker of anything.

He said nothing about it being monolithic, just that there was a place called
India, and it was worth a visit.

Your original comment was "there was no 'India' ...".

There has been an India through most of history. But of course the borders of
the modern state were drawn relatively recently. These are two different
things.

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finolex1
For those interested in this topic, I can't recommend "The Last Mughal" by
William Dalrymple enough.

It chronicles the crumbling Mughal Empire in Delhi, the slow shift in the
Indian-British relationship from one of equals to a colonizer-colonized
relationship, how perilously close the British came to losing India in 1857,
and lots of painstakingly well-researched interesting anecdotes about life in
that era.

Here's what he writes about the last of the Mughals: “As the political sky
darkened, the court was lost in a last idyll of pleasure gardens, courtesans
and mushairas, or poetic symposia, Sufi devotions and visits to pirs, as
literary and religious ambition replaced the political variety.”

And about the East India Company in the 1850s: “So removed had the British now
become from their Indian subjects, and so dismissive were they of Indian
opinion, that they had lost all ability to read the omens around them or to
analyse their own position with any degree of accuracy. Arrogance and imperial
self-confidence had diminished the desire to seek accurate information or gain
any real knowledge of the state of the country.”

~~~
throwaway37392
The last sentence is as true today as it was then. India memory and its
strength however have faded to the point where even its vestiges appear
intangible.

~~~
31416
What a strange coincident. Was discussing about EIC this morning. It is sad
that critical exploration of its operation is not encouraged. For most
Indians, it is the company that came to trade and end up ruling them.

Yet how did it operate, monopolized trade, grow and maintain it's sepoy armies
? It took them more than a hundred years to establish control and another
century passed till we had 1857 and almost another to gain independence. It's
been 70 years since that, where are we on the continuum. Can we recognize
another EIC (internal/external) or are we condemned to repeat it.

If one understands this and can draw parallels with the way modern corporates
function, people hopefully will be able to see past their doublethink.

India gained independence from the British, but the structures that held the
populace in thrall weren't torn down. They still exist. The government and the
corporates are it's inheritors.

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peteretep
A fictionalized but highly readable account:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashman_in_the_Great_Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashman_in_the_Great_Game)

~~~
kranner
I love Flashman but the prose is not something I would call everyone's cup of
tea. Great writing, but not "readable" as in "easy to read".

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morekozhambu
Is there any list on the lives that were taken by the colonial swords and
guns?

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mirimir
It's hard to work up much sympathy for invaders.

~~~
throwaway37392
Oh no, not invaders. Nah mate. They brought civilization, education,
technology and everything of value in India. /s

(For the record this is what is taught in most Anglophone nations; also true
shamefully within India itself.)

~~~
mirimir
Not at UNIS :)

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abhinai
I am actually surprised this article made it to the front page on hacker news.
It presents a very narrow view of a much larger war. It almost looks like it
came straight from the British propaganda machine.

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sriku
The tone of the discourse here irks me. A small story about my late
grandmother that continues to inspire me -

My grandmother had gone through the pain of seeing my grandfather all bruised
up from non-violent protests against the British. When my father studied
ethnomusicology in the US, he used to have many of his musician friends, some
of whom were his students, over at home during his visits. Initially, to my
grandmother, they were "white people" and she'd give them the cold treatment.
Over time, she warmed up to them and even made good friends of many of them,
despite hardly knowing any English. She would make yummies for them to express
her affection.

That someone who's seen her husband come back home bruised can rise to
forgiveness and move to love and friendship is something that will stay with
me forever.

That is the only force that can heal the world. Not retaliation. Not counter
hatred. Not "proper historical perspective". Not any analysis of which
violence is worse, or who started it.

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dkural
As the comments in the article point out, it's very convenient that a female
prostitute gets blamed for it without firm evidence.

