Examine the relationship of the Indian sepoys with their superior white officers in the years preceding the uprising of 1857.
(a) In the years preceding the 1857 uprising the sepoys relationship with their superior white officers underwent a major change. In the 1820’s white officers made it a point to maintain friendly relations with the sepoys.
(b) They would participate their leisure activities wrestle, fence with them and even go out hawking with them. The officers were both disciplinarians and father figures to them.
(c) In the 1840’s, however, the officers began to feel that the sepoys were racially inferior to them and began to feel superior to them.
(d) They treated them with contempt and abused and hit them without any reason.
(e) A distance began to grow between the sepoys and officers. Trust was replaced by suspicion. The episode of the greased cartridges was a classic example of this.
