There was also a Mahratta rajah, known as Nana Sahib, who had many grievances against the English. The Mahrattas were a powerful Hindu confederacy that had overawed even the Grand Moguls until Wellesley and Lake had broken their power.
Trouble had arisen in many corps over the question of pay. For services outside India the sepoys were paid more than in Hindustan itself. After the annexation of the Punjab in 1849 this extra pay was dropped for regiments serving in the province, and the sepoys could not understand how, if the Punjab was not in Hindustan when they entered, it could become part of Hindustan because the government chose to term it so. They argued that even if the Punjab had become merged in the Indian Empire, it was still a foreign country in their eyes; that they were still serving away from their native land, and were therefore entitled to extra pay. Some regiments had accordingly refused to obey orders.
The Brahman priests thereupon warned the Indian Government that if they (the priests) chose to forbid Hindus to enlist, the British would have to make shift without a sepoy army. This threat rather frightened “John Company”, but not Sir Charles Napier, the commander-in-chief at the period. He promptly took matters into his own hands, and disbanding the 66th Native Infantry, which had refused to obey orders, he gave their title and colours to the Nasiri Gurkha Battalion, who thereupon became the 66th Infantry of the Line.
This step scared the Brahmans, for they saw that if the government was minded to fill their places with Gurkhas, those intrepid little mountaineers would be only too delighted to enlist in the regular army instead of in irregular battalions with less pay, as at present. The occupation of the Brahman sepoys would then be gone, at least to a larger extent than they desired.
Now, in India the status of a soldier is a most honourable one, and the army is not mainly recruited from the lower classes, as in England, but from the most respectable natives of the middle and higher ranks of life; and families consider it a great privilege to have a son in the army, even as a private. Judged by Indian standards the pay is very good, and the pension will keep a family in ease and comfort. The British soldier often enlists because he has no taste for settled employment, or because he has been tempted by coloured placards setting forth “the advantages of the army”, or has been attracted by the ribbons of the recruiting-sergeant. Perchance he has been jilted by his sweetheart, or done something of which he is ashamed, and so has run away from home. Often he has taken another name, and has lost sight and touch of the parents at home.
But the sepoy, as soon as his name is on the regimental roll, becomes the pride and prop of his house. He visits home regularly and is regarded as a great man in his village, and his family comes under the special protection of the state. Many families boasted that they had eaten the salt of “The Great Lord Company” from generation to generation. The sepoys usually had a real pride in their colours; they rejoiced in the honourable and well-paid service that was sought by the very flower of the people, by the highest castes in Bengal.
Napier’s prompt action checked the spread of revolt, but dissatisfaction still rankled in the sepoys’ breasts. In 1857 each injustice was recalled to mind, and thousands of the mutineers honestly believed that they had been very badly treated.
A further incitement to revolt was this. The Moslems cherished a prophecy that India would be ruled by the Feringhis for exactly one hundred years, after which the Mogul Empire would resume its sway. The year 1857 was just a century after Plassey.