In 1857, an uprising known in many textbooks as the Sepoy Mutiny occurred in Barrackpore, near Calcutta, India. Mangal Pandey: The Rising, directed by Ketan Mehta, is a dramatization of that event, which the film informs us was the first war of Indian independence. Up to 1857, the East India Company operated in India outside the authority of the British government, though aided by the British military. Some 300,000 Indians served in the army in light of lucrative salaries. When the film begins, Mangal Pandey (played by Aamir Khan) marches toward a platform, where he is to be hung until dead. The executioner, however, has run away; Brahman Indians are forbidden to carry out an execution order, so the hanging must be delayed until a new executioner can be summoned from another British fortress. During the ceremony, the eyes of Captain William Gordon (played by Toby Stephens) look troubled, and his face has what appears to be scars from swordplay. The scene then shifts in time a few years back, when we become acquainted with Gordon and Pandey, who both serve in the British Army and are good friends. A Scot, Gordon has spent most of his life in India and is familiar with the customs and language of the country, though one time he intervenes to stop the practice of suttee, that is, the burning to death of Jwala (played by Ameesha Patel), a live wife on top of the remains of a deceased husband. Afterward, he provides shelter and perhaps love to her. Pandey, a Brahman, is wounded during a skirmish within Afghanistan in 1853, and Gordon rescues him, thus explaining the bond between the two men. Meanwhile, a cost-cutting advance in armaments is on its way to the East India Company, a new rifle that can be quickly loaded with gunpowder. The procedure is to "bite the bullet," that is, to tear off one end of a paper cartridge with one's teeth, spit out the paper, and then dump the gunpowder directly into the rifle. However, a rumor has spread that the casing contains cow fat and pig fat as preservatives. After a demonstration of the procedure, General Anson (played by Christopher Adamson) orders his Indian infantrymen, known as sepoys, to try out the new method. However, the ranks are still. Gordon informs Anson that Hindu lips cannot touch cows, and Moslem lips are unable to touch pigs in any form. Anson then asks Gordon to inform the sepoys that the rumors about fat from cows and pigs is false. Pandey then steps forward to show his allegiance and loads his new rifle in the prescribed manner. The rest of the battalion demurs, however, so one of Anson's colonels offers to show that his battalion at another fort will be more obedient; he fails, however. Next, Pandey discovers at the munitions factory that the forbidden ingredients are indeed in the cartridge, so he has become an untouchable. Despite receiving support from his fellow sepoys, he plans a mutiny. After all, they have other grievances with the British, notably how they treat Indian women, one of whom challenges Pandey, "We only sell our bodies; you sell your souls." The sepoys, nevertheless, plot clumsily, even though they greatly outnumber the British troops. They decide upon a simultaneous uprising on a date that astrologists believe to be favorable, but an Indian nanny leaks the plot to the British woman whom she serves. Anson then cables the regiment in Rangoon to arrive in time, and the mutiny is foiled. Titles assure filmviewers that Mangal Pandey, who is executed in the final scene of the film, is a hero of the struggle for independence. Titles at the end also reveal that the mutiny provoked Queen Victoria to dissolve the East India Company, so thereafter India became a colony of Britain. Mangal Pandey: The Rising, a Bollywood retake of Mangal Pandey (1982), has excellent costuming, dancing, and singing as well as plenty of reminders of the arrogance of the British, who finally granted independence to India about a century later than the events portrayed in the film. One of the subplots is an exposé of the East India Company's illegal practice of requiring farmers to grow opium, and then selling the opium to China. Another subplot involves an Indian wet-nurse (played by Mona Ambegaonkar), who feeds the child of her English mistress in the daytime, such that she has little for her own baby when she returns home for the night, a paradigm of how the British sucked India dry over the years. MH
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