Although more than 500,000 people have applied for the exam, the “Bull Science” exam originally scheduled by the Indian government on February 25 was postponed due to “technical reasons.” Because the official guidance materials designated by India contain controversial content such as “killing cattle will bring earthquakes”, “Indian cattle have more beautiful qualities than foreign cattle”, many media criticized the Indian government for politicizing cattle to promote the Indian people. The party’s ideology weakens secularism. In fact, in India, the cow has never been just an animal. Because of religious reasons, cattle have always been politically attributed, causing many disputes and even wars, including the uprising called the First National War of Independence by India.
The first shot of India’s independence was due to cattle
From 1857 to 1859, India broke out a large-scale uprising against British colonial rule. This two-year war directly led to the collapse of the imposing East India Company, and at the same time opened the prelude to the Indian people’s search for national independence. Such an event of extraordinary significance, in the historical memory of the Indians, its predestined living is for cattle!
At that time, the East India Company’s rule over India mainly relied on local Indian soldiers called “Sepoy”. At that time, the ratio of Anglo-Indian soldiers in the entire army was 1:7, and there were 310,000 “Sipayi” in India. At the beginning of 1857, the East India Company issued the latest Enfield rifle to the troops. This is a manual rifle that has to be reloaded with every shot. In order to prevent moisture, the bullets are packed in thick paper coated with grease. The standard shooting procedure is to open the paper bag with your teeth and then fill the bullet. The problem lies in this step. At that time, the Indian soldiers believed that the grease on the bullet packs was refined from butter and lard, and the vast majority of “Sipayi” were either Hindus or Muslims. For Hindus, cattle are sacred; for Muslims, pigs are taboo.
Therefore, the trivial things that are not a problem for the British have offended both the Hindu soldiers and the Muslim soldiers. The Indian soldiers rebelled and refused to test new guns. This conflict later led to the Brahmin caste soldier Munger Bandy firing the first shot at the British officers; after Bandy was executed by the British, a mutiny took place in the northern Indian city of Meirut, and the sparks of the uprising there eventually became a prairie fire. The momentum ignited throughout most of the northern and central parts of India. Some Indian scholars referred to Bandy’s first shot as India’s “Lexington gunshots.”
Contingency and inevitability of history
History always has its contingency side. Indians generally believe that the cause of the entire dispute was a quarrel: An Indian soldier in the small town of Barakpur in West Bengal had an argument with a sweeping “untouchable” (the lowest level of the Indian caste system) on the street. The untouchables naturally did not I dared to provoke a soldier, but said: “What’s so great about you? If you turn around and bite the butter, you have to become a pariah like me!” The secret of the butter on the bullet package was revealed. According to Hindu regulations, biting butter is equivalent to eating beef, and eating beef is a serious crime for Hindus, enough to make a Brahmin (the highest caste) directly downgraded to a pariah, not in reincarnation, indignation between humans and gods, and children and grandchildren will never turn back. Therefore, Bandy and his comrades would rather die gloriously as a Brahman than bite the bullet package.
There is also an inevitability behind all accidents. Politically, the British forced the feudal lords (tuples) of India to pay high “protection fees”, and tried every means to weaken or even deprive them of their ruling power, which aroused the dissatisfaction of the Indian ruling class. For example, after the death of the king of Jhanxi Tubang, he had no heir, and the East India Company sent a commissioner to take over his territory. Later in the uprising, the widow of the Tubang king of Janxi led his army to fight bravely and became the famous Indian national hero “Queen Jansi.”
Economically, the dumping of a large number of British industrial products has disintegrated the natural economic model of many rural areas in India, intensified land mergers, and increased land-lost farmers, causing famine and frequent peasant uprisings. Culturally, the British colonists extremely despised the indigenous culture and religious beliefs of all parts of India. An executive of the East India Company proudly claimed: “A bookcase of European literary works is worth all the historical works of the entire Indian and Arab world.” These factors caused a single spark to ignite an uprising all over India. Gunpowder barrel”. In this war, one in seven of the 40,000 British people in India died, while more than 800,000 people in India lost their lives due to the war and subsequent famine.
The same incident is different in British and Indian records
Some people say that history can be “dressed up.” For this period of history in the mid-nineteenth century, British and Indian records are completely different, as can be seen from the title. The British called it the “Indian Mutiny” and “Indian Soldiers’ Rebellion”; the Indians called it the “1857 Uprising” and the “First National War of Independence”.
The Indian people regard Bandi as a national hero. According to Indian records, Bandy shot British officers out of righteous indignation and patriotism, and then attempted suicide by shooting himself. In the ensuing conflict, the British military officer ordered Bandy’s superior Prasad to arrest Bandy, but this request was rejected. Later Prasad and Bandy were tried together and both hanged.
However, in the British records, Bandy was an addict who shot and killed people when he was unconscious under the stimulus of marijuana. In British history, there was no Prasad who disobeyed. Instead, a soldier named Havalda took the initiative to assist the British officer in subduing Bandy. In the history of India, there is no such traitor, and the Indian executioner in charge of the execution refused to hang Bandy and ran away before the execution. This forced the British to temporarily recruit an executioner from Calcutta.
To this day, controversies related to this matter can still be seen on the Internet in the United Kingdom and India. “Global Times” reporters once saw an angry message from Indian netizens behind an English post that slandered Bandy: This is the result of letting the invaders distort history, just like letting the Nazis write the history of World War II!
The people of India do not forget Munger Bandy
As the national hero who fired the first shot of the National War of Independence, the Indian people gave Munger Bandy a lofty honor. In 1984, India issued a set of commemorative stamps for Bandy. In Barakpur, where he was justified, people built a Bandy Park and built a bronze bust for him in the park. Bollywood superstar Amir Khan’s 2005 movie “Heroes of Resistance” tells the story of this history. The English name of the movie is “Munge Bandy-Uprising”.
India also commemorates national heroes such as Bandy in various forms on Independence Day and National Day. When the child of a “Global Times” reporter was in elementary school in India, he participated in a stage show to commemorate Bandy. Because he was taller than other classmates, he was also assigned to play the role of the British aggressor.