Indian Independence CH 2 - Reclaim Bharat
The British Empire had been shaken, certainly, in 1857, but it had not ultimately been broken. The vast rebellion, often Romanticized as the "First War of Independence," ended not in liberty, but in punishment and reprisal and ultimately in a direct colonial regime. The British Crown took itself of the obligation to govern through the East India Company and assumed direct authority over India. With the Proclamation of Queen Victoria in 1858, the Crown declared itself the caretaker of "the public interest" or "welfare" of India—often associated with a cruel irony when reflecting on the blood-soaked fields of Kanpur, Delhi, and Jhansi. In actual terms, the defeat of 1857 was a gateway to deeper, more calculative slavery. Bahadur Shah Zafar, the terminus symbol of Mughal authority, was vanquished in exile to Burma—not a fallen emperor, but in light of his status as a prisoner. The Maratha legacy launched by Rani Lakshmibai, and activist sword in Jhans...
