The Indian Mutiny of 1857 (Military History from Primary Sources)

by George Bruce Malleson

Sovereigns and nobles, merchants and traders, landlords and tenants prefer the tried, even-handed justice of their European overlord to a justice which would be the outcome of popular elections. India is inhabited not by one race alone, but by many races. Those races are subdivided into many castes, completely separated from each other in the inner social life. If the higher castes are the more influential, the lower are the more numerous. The attempt to give representation to mere numbers would then, before long, provoke religious jealousies and antipathies which would inevitably find a solution in blood. A rising caused by such an innovation on prevailing customs would be infinitely more dangerous than the Mutiny of 1857. Concession to noisy agitation on the part of the ruling power would place the lives, the fortunes, the interests of the loyal classes of India at the mercy of the noisiest, most corrupt, and most despised race in India.