It was indeed the first major pan-Indian uprising in which Hindus and Muslims, landlords and peasants, united in a war under one banner with Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar as their symbolic leader. This was the secularism of common aspirations, which mainstream Congress leaders in independent India chose to ignore. Perhaps they ought to have remembered Disraeli’s lament that the situation was brought about because Britain deviated from its time-honoured policy. To quote: ‘Our Empire in India was, indeed, founded upon the old principal of divide et impera (divide and rule).’
