5th company, 34th Native Infantry Regiment, North Dakota

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Quizman sends us the following message over our tipline:

[Here is an] Article on Aamir Khan and The Rising. How can The Sepoy(ia) mutiny refuse to carry it? 🙂

How indeed?

Circa 1857. A wounded soldier arrives at a doctor’s clinic after a skirmish with his British superior. The sepoy has challenged his senior’s order to shoot opium farmers who were agitating against the English East India Company’s monopoly. As he is being treated, the sepoy meets a courtesan, Heera, played by Rani Mukherjee. While the woman admires this young sepoy for his bravery, he snubs her. Heera shoots back: “Sepoy saheb, we prostitutes sell our bodies, but you sell your souls.”

The courtesan’s words stir the sepoy’s conscience. And Mangal Pandey turns a rebel. It eventually leads to a chain reaction which triggers off the first war of Independence in 1857, described by the British as the Sepoy Mutiny.

Director Ketan Mehta is bringing alive on an epic scale the story of Mangal Pandey, the sepoy of the 5th company, 34th Native Infantry Regiment, Barrackpore. And who better to play the rebel who roused society to challenge imperialism than a rebel himself.

“He is one of the few actors who stand by their convictions,” said Ketan, who hails Aamir Khan’s portrayal of Mangal Pandey as his finest ever. “A revolutionary and a rebel in his own way, Aamir is a contemporary Mangal Pandey in many ways. Only he would have given everything to a venture of this magnitude.”

Mangal P. even has a profile up on MySpace MSN Spaces complete with a blog.  If Kal Penn can do it why not Aamir Khan?

Now look closely at the transformation above.  On the left Mangal’s mustache is curled up, his eyebrows are raised up, and his hair is kept tucked up under his cap.  In the picture on the right his mustache droops down, his eyebrows sag, and his hair flows down over his shoulders.  That is a transformation people!  He went from a saluting Western soldier to a good proper Indian boy.  Coincidentally the same thing happened to us when we rebeled against the oppressive Blogosphere to start our Sepia Mutiny.  You should see pictures of me from before.  It’s like I had a rod up my $%# or something.  Manish was far worse.  Don’t even get me started about Vinod.  Am I being presumptuous enough as to compare us to those real Sepoy soldiers?  All I am saying people, is that the Blogosphere and the former British Empire have a lot in common.  For starters they both start with a “B.”

18 thoughts on “5th company, 34th Native Infantry Regiment, North Dakota”

  3. Chapati Mystery’s “Bulleyah” (not the original “Sepoy”) also has a post on this movie, where he corrects a glaring historical error in the film (i.e., Mangal Pandey didn’t do most of what the film’s plot has him doing).

    But more generally, I was wondering why the 1 year anniversary of Sepia Mutiny passed without a peep?! What gives?

    It looks like Anna started things off with a little mini-poem on July 30, 2004 but the first really big Mutiny day was August 9, when you guys threw down like 14 posts in a single day.

  5. Most of us dont know much about the First War except what we learned in school, which was mostly 3 or 4 paragraphs at best. Personally, the only book I have read on this was a wonderfully perverse one – ‘Flashman in the Great Game’, which is one part of the Flashman series. Its an amazing series, which I would heartily recommend to any history buff with a sense of humour. Flashman is a mythical aristocrat playboy who managed to get himself “embedded” in EVERY great military campaign of 19th-century Britain, from Russia to Afghanistan to America to Africa. The India episode has him as witness/unwilling participant to most of the action , from Meerut to Jhansi to Delhi. Of course , he also gets some action on the side with the Rani Laxmibai. Irreverent, outrageous stuff, but it really gave a feel of what those times must have been like, albeit from a British officer’s point of view. See this link for a bit more info on the series. http://www.stmoroky.com/reviews/books/flashman.htm

  6. It is interesting to note that the British term the revolt of 1857 a mutiny while the Indian version probably calls it the first war of Independence – I suppose thats to be expected. But as far as I can remember, history textbooks back in India too called the revolt of 1857 a mutiny of the sepoys, which is kind of surprising.

  7. For all the scholars, historians and intellectuals – a long review of a new book about the Mutiny called The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination by Gautam Chakravarty taken from the London Review of Books

    Worth reading for sure!

  8. Punjabi Boy — hey, nice review, thanks for the link.

    Ms, I don’t think it’s quite right to call it a “war of independence.” Uprising or rebellion is probably more accurate, since “war” is usually between sovereign (or almost sovereign) nation states. Here the rebels/mutineers didn’t really have a political base or a plan of action.

    Even “mutiny” is technically correct, since the soldiers who led the charge were sworn to British service.

    Interesting tidbit: the mutiny was largely put down by other Indian soldiers.

  10. The product hosting the movie blog is called “MSN Spaces” not “MySpace”. MySpace is a social networking site that has nothing to do with MSN. Please correct this misreference.

  11. Amardeep,

    It’s first war of independence in the sense that it was the first major assault on the british rule. This later inspired many freedom fighters in the late 19th and 20th centuries. You can’t look at historical things at isolation. If you look at magna carta in isolation it’s insignificant but historians don’t look at it that way.

  12. Amardeep,

    Interesting that Bulleyah “corrects” an error when the film has not been released. Not even to reviewers. He does it based on “rumours”.

  15. “Even “mutiny” is technically correct, since the soldiers who led the charge were sworn to British service.”

    The 1857 uprising cant be called “mutiny” because while the soldiers who started the events in motion, those who actually carried out and ran (in chaotic manner) the operation were sovereign kings/queens such as Tatya Tope and Bahadur Shah Zafar who was nominated to be the leader of the uprising. Also we cant forget Rani Laxmibai.

    So, for the British it was a “mutiny”. For Indians it should be the “Uprising” or “Rebellion” or “War” (Just war not war of Independance as average folks may not have a strong feeling that they are being ruled by the British)

    You know history is written by the winner. History has a context and a POINT of VIEW …always!!! Unfortunately in India even after the Brits left the History written by the Brits (as winners) still remains.

  16. Instead of ” while the soldiers who started the events in motion,”

    My earlier comment should read: ” while the soldiers who started the events in motion were sworn to British,”

  17. India too called the revolt of 1857 a mutiny of the sepoys, which is kind of surprising.

    Surprising? Not at all – 4th graders are also tought that Bristishers came to India in search of spices! The textbooks are obviously backed by Indian communists! (Will post a reference when it becomes available).