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INTRODUCTION
sions of Hindus and Mohammedans into Christians. In the case of disputes of converted persons with their unconverted kinsmen in matters of estates, wives, children, etc., the government usually sided with the former and managed to frame necessary fresh laws to suit its convenience in this respect. Clergy men were employed to attract street people in civil areas and to keep engaged during idle hours the illiterate sepoys in military lines with their sermons and lectures praising Christ and his religion and abusing Hinduism and Islam and their deities, prophets, etc. Numerous missionaries were also recruited to the high posts of military colonels and commanders and they freely carried on their conversion propaganda among Indian soldiers almost undetected. Parties were occasionally arranged in military barracks at the close of which the missionary commanders or clergymen used to step in to disclose the prohibited nature of the dinner items and on that account to declare all the Indian partakers to have been Christianised. Deliberate use of cow and pig fat in the notorious new cartridges, along with order to bite off their greasy portion with teeth instead of tearing it away with hands as previously, ultimately leading to the Sepoys' Mutiny of 1857, was one of the last secret steps taken by the rulers in this direction. Most of the government share in the execution of
this plan was supposed to be secret Evidence for
and when vehement criticism anRulers' Motives
peared, the rulers used to rush forth to disown government participation or at least to deny the alleged evil motives behind the action criticised. For
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
