"The old cliche of the cartridges really was terribly important. "If you go back to the original Urdu and Persian documents of the mutineers, which I have been translating, the religious nature of the uprising is blatantly obvious," says London and Delhi-based historian William Dalrymple, whose next book, The Last Mughal, about Bahadur Shah Zafar, looks closely at the events of 1857. Historians have tried to explain the 1857 rising in social, economic and political terms, but it is clear that the kartoos played a key part in provoking the violence that subsequently swept through India. The drama, though, hinges on whether those cartridges really are smeared with animal fat. Director Ketan Mehta provides a rogue's gallery of British officers: Flashman types in red tunics who beat and humiliate the natives and elderly officers with fat, grey moustaches who think nothing of double-crossing the sepoys. There is strong support from Toby Stephens as Scottish officer William Gordon, saved by Mangal Pandey on the battlefields of Afghanistan, who becomes his closest friend. (The music was composed by AR Rahman, of Bombay Dreams fame.) As the heroic sepoy, Aamir Khan leaps around with an energy reminiscent of Errol Flynn in his heyday. There are spectacular battle scenes and even more spectacular song and dance sequences.
The Rising is a historical epic complete with all the Bollywood trimmings. Neither Hindu nor Muslim soldiers are prepared to use the new cartridge, which they term the kartoos. This, the sepoys correctly suspect, contains traces of beef and pig fat. The paper cartridges encasing the gunpowder are heavily greased with tallow. To use them, soldiers are required (quite literally) to bite the bullet. New Enfield rifles have just been introduced. Mangal is a sepoy, a private in the British army. All it takes is a bit of grease to remind us who we are." So declares Mangal Pandey in The Rising, an epic new film about the so-called Indian Mutiny of 1857. "For too long, we have rusted in the service of foreign masters.
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