Mangal Pandey
Description
"Come out! Get ready! It's for our religion! By biting these cartridges, we shall become infidels!"
On a sleepy Sunday afternoon in March 1857, an agitated sepoy of the East India Company's 34th Native Infantry marched onto the parade ground at Barrackpore, urging his comrades to rise in defense of their faith. When British officers moved to arrest him, he drew his sword and then turned his musket on himself. A few days later, Mangal Pandey was executed--entering history and legend as the man who sparked the 1857 Rising.
But who was the real Mangal Pandey? A fearless patriot fighting for his country's honor? A tragic, impulsive soldier driven by outrage? Or merely an intoxicated sepoy whose rash act ignited a revolution by accident?
In this lively, thought-provoking, and deeply researched study, historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee unravels the myths surrounding Mangal Pandey and the rebellion he came to symbolize. Drawing on historical records and eyewitness accounts, he paints a vivid portrait of life in the East India Company's cantonments, explores the tensions simmering within the ranks, and reveals how one man's act became the catalyst for one of the most defining uprisings in India's history.
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Person
Rudrangshu Mukherjee is a renowned historian and author. He has taught history at the University of Calcutta and has held visiting appointments at Princeton University, the University of Manchester, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. He previously served as Editor of the Editorial Pages at The Telegraph, Kolkata.
Educated at Calcutta Boys' School, Presidency College (Kolkata), Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi), and St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, he received his D.Phil. in Modern History from the University of Oxford in 1981.
Mukherjee is internationally acclaimed as a leading historian of the Indian Revolt of 1857. His first book, Awadh in Revolt, 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance (1984), has become a standard reference on the subject. He has since examined the rebellion in four other works: Spectre of Violence: The 1857 Kanpur Massacres (1998), Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or Accidental Hero? (2005), Dateline 1857: Revolt Against the Raj (2008), and The Year of Blood: Essays on 1857 (2014).
In addition to his work on 1857, Mukherjee has authored and edited numerous books on a wide range of themes, including The Penguin Gandhi Reader (1993), Politics and Trade in the Indian Ocean World: Essays in Honour of Ashin Das Gupta (1999), Remembered Childhood: Essays in Honour of André Béteille (2010), New Delhi: The Making of a Capital (2009), Great Speeches of Modern India (2011), Nehru & Bose: Parallel Lives (2014), Twilight Falls on Liberalism (2018), Oxford India Short Introduction: Jawaharlal Nehru (2018), Changing India, Vol. V, Part I & II: The Prime Minister Speaks (2019), Tagore and Gandhi: Walking Alone, Walking Together (2021), A Begum and a Rani: Hazrat Mahal and Lakshmibai in 1857 (2021), The Best of Tagore (2023), and A New History of India: From Its Origins to the Twenty-First Century (2023).