THE EAST INDIA COMPANY's worst fears came to gruesome fruition in 1857 when many of the sepoys of its Bengal army mutinied and killed not only their officers but also their wives and children. After two and a half centuries, the Company was about to be ejected from India in ignominy. It was clear that whatever the precise motives were behind the actions of those who rebelled, the Indian Uprising of 1857/8 was for many, at least in part, a war of religion. The British similarly regarded their own brutal retaliation as revenge for the slights to Christianity as well as for the murders of their people. Religious language predominated in the rhetoric of both Britons and Indians.

When the merchant venturers of the English East India Company began to set up factories on the Indian subcontinent from 1600, India was not the united country we have today. The subcontinent was politically fragmented, formed of a myriad of princely states, many of which owed allegiance to the Mughal emperor.