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INTRODUCTION
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several years even the use of cow and pig fat in the 1857 cartridges, nothing less than the suspected motives behind it, was flatly denied by the rulers, but late research of old records has now actually produced the contractors' agreements, tenders and bills in respect of supplies of both sorts of fat to the Dum-Dum factory. The government's intentions in these respects have sometimes abruptly leaked out through the tongues and pens of some topmost authorities Thus Macaulay, who had a great hand in the framing of a major portion of the government scheme in this respect and was therefore well aware of the rulers' motives behind it, wrote in 1836: "It is my firm belief that, if our plan of education is followed up, there wouid not be a single ido lator in Bengal thirty years hence."1 Mangles, the Chairman of the Directors of the East India Company, said in the House of Commons in 1857: "Providence has entrusted the extensive empire of Hindusthan to England in order that the banner of Christ should wave triumphant from one end of India to the other. Everyone must exert all his strength that there may be no dilatoriness on any account in continuing in the country the grand work of making all India Christian." Some colonels and commanders declared even through newspapers that they bad entered the army with the express purpose and object of destroying the Sepoy's religion. The Commander of Bengal Infantry wrote in a Government Report that he had been continuing
1. Macaulay's letter to his mother dated October 12, 1836. These quotations along with several additional pertinent details would be found culled together in V. D. Savarkar's The Indian War of Independence (Bombay, 1947). Pp. 53-66, and in sereral other recent works dealing with the causes of the Mutiny of 1857.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
