Men
Without Hats: Dialogues, Discipline
and Discontent in the Madras Army, 1806-1807
By-
James W. Hoover
The
sepoy mutiny at Vellore in 1806 was the last major threat to British rule in
south India, but it ended scarcely eight hours after it began. The consequences
of the revolt, however, lasted much longer, Determined to find the cause of
this ‘unexpected’ mutiny, officials of the East India Company launched a
sweeping enquiry, the first of its kind to be made regarding the Indian Army.
As this new bureaucratic process of information-gathering and procedure
intruded upon the sepoys’ traditional world of unrecorded negotiation and
personal bonds, panic spread, causing near-mutinies, riots, and political witch-hunts
at garrison towns across the Madras Presidency.
The
British asked ‘their’ sepoys many questions during the ensuing investigations
of these incidents: why did they object to their new uniforms—especially to the
new turban, which sepoys likened to a European topi, or hat? In what
sorts of political activities were sepoys
engaged? British officials asked these questions, making assumptions regarding the identity, culture, and loyalty of Indian soldiers that were based primarily on colonial myth-making—assuming, for instance, that the sepoys could not have planned an uprising on their own, without the aid of external provocateurs attached to the exiled sons of Tipu Sultan. Indeed, the task of British investigators was made extremely difficult by the fact that the mutinous troops had been guarding the Mysorean princes and their families, held as state prisoners at Vellore, at the time of the rising. The real interior life and interests of the sepoy battalions, revealed by the Vellore Mutiny enquiries, opened up the origins, socio-political thoughts, and daily lives of the indigenous soldiers of the Raj for the first time, revealing an army very different from that normally imagined by its own British officers.
engaged? British officials asked these questions, making assumptions regarding the identity, culture, and loyalty of Indian soldiers that were based primarily on colonial myth-making—assuming, for instance, that the sepoys could not have planned an uprising on their own, without the aid of external provocateurs attached to the exiled sons of Tipu Sultan. Indeed, the task of British investigators was made extremely difficult by the fact that the mutinous troops had been guarding the Mysorean princes and their families, held as state prisoners at Vellore, at the time of the rising. The real interior life and interests of the sepoy battalions, revealed by the Vellore Mutiny enquiries, opened up the origins, socio-political thoughts, and daily lives of the indigenous soldiers of the Raj for the first time, revealing an army very different from that normally imagined by its own British officers.
In
Men Without Hats, all available primary documents concerning the Vellore
Mutiny have been analysed for the first time, producing a comprehensive view of
this significant event and a conclusion that challenges previous scholarly
conceptions of the significance of the uprising.
James
W. Hoover
is Assistant Professor of South Asian and World History at Salem State
College in Salem, Massachusetts. He holds a B.A. in South Asian History from the University of California – Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in South Asian History from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
College in Salem, Massachusetts. He holds a B.A. in South Asian History from the University of California – Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in South Asian History from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
ISBN
81-7304-725-1
2007 314p. Rs.750/ pounds 50
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MANOHAR PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS
4753/23 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002
Phones: 23284848, 23289100
Fax: 23265162
E-mail: manbooks@vsnl.com
sales@manoharbooks.com
To order your copy at www.manoharbooks.com
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