By many reports, today is the 200^th anniversary of the Vellore Mutiny. This Tamil Nadu uprising was the first sepoy mutiny against the British East India Company, well before the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.

On July 10, 1806, exactly two hundred years ago, as the moon shone over the ramparts of the Vellore fort, at 2 a.m., Indian sepoys rose in a bloody revolt against the East India Company’s garrison. As shrieks and gunfire pierced the quiet, the sepoys shot at English officers, fired into the European barracks and massacred the sick in their hospital, leaving 14 British officers and 100 soldiers dead. In the counterattack unleashed at 9 a.m. by Colonel Robert Rollo Gillespie’s men, who rushed from Arcot 14 miles away, 350 Indians sepoys were put to death…

This little-documented event was the first major rebellion against the emerging British Empire in colonial India. It cost the governor of Madras, Lord William Bentinck, his job. [Link]

The spark then, as later, was over religious defilement. You’d think the Brits would have learned:

… the immediate provocation for the unbridled outburst of aggression was apparently the introduction of a controversial new turban, viewed by Indians as a firangi topi (hat), and the implementation of new regulations over the sporting of caste marks on foreheads, earrings and facial hair. [Link]

… the turban… comprised a leather cockade — thus inviting caste and religious ‘pollution’– and a turnscrew resembling a cross to be worn next to the heart… the fakirs proclaimed that these would lead to the eventual conversion of all sepoys to Christianity. [Link]

The mutiny was inept:

Once the massacre ended and the fort was taken, the sepoys indulged in plunder — ransacking the English quarters and paymaster’s office — losing focus of their larger goal… As the sepoys and civilians pillaged, Col. Gillespie from Arcot led the 19th Dragoons and the 7th cavalry quite easily since three of the four outer gates of the fort were left unattended. With Col. Kennedy arriving with more reinforcements and the Indian sepoys running out of ammunition, the fort was as easily taken back as had been won by the mutineers. In under eight hours, the entire drama was over. [Link]

The Brits executed some mutineers by strapping them to cannon:

… execution by blowing away from the guns “produced the profoundest impression. A spectator describes how numbers of kites accompanied the party to the place of execution, flapping their wings and screeching as if in anticipation of the bloody feast, till the fatal flash which scattered their fragments of bodies in air, when, pouncing on their prey, they caught in their talons many pieces of quivering flesh before they could reach the ground.” [Link]

Today, the seat of the rebellion is a high-security prison which (sometimes) holds Tamil Tigers:

On 15 August 1995, 43 LTTE cadres lodged in Tipu Mahal escaped after digging a 153-foot tunnel through the moat. Shamefaced, the TN police has since barred access to the mahal. [Link]

Update: Ashvin’s posted some beautiful photos of the fort, which is in his hometown.