The Enfield rifle was being
introduced; it required new cartridges, which in England were greased
with the fat of beef or pork. The military authorities in India, with
strange indifference to the prejudices of sepoys, ordered the cartridges
to be prepared at Calcutta in like manner; forgetting that the fat of
pigs was hateful to the Mahometans, while the fat of cows was still more
horrible in the eyes of the Hindus.
The excitement began at Barrackpur, sixteen miles from Calcutta. At this
station there were four regiments of sepoys, and no Europeans except the
regimental officers. One day a low-caste native, known as a lascar,
asked a Brahmin sepoy for a drink of water from his brass pot. The
Brahmin refused, as it would defile his pot. The lascar retorted that
the Brahmin was already defiled by biting cartridges which had been
greased with cow's fat. This vindictive taunt was based on truth.
Lascars had been employed at Calcutta in preparing the new cartridges,
and the man was possibly one of them.
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