Word: sepoy
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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That "white sidewall" haircut episode was the stupidest piece of bureaucratic nonsense I ever heard of. The Sepoy mutiny in India (1857-59) started because some silly ass in the British army ordered the Mohammedan native troops (who could not eat pigs) to bite off the end of a cartridge which had been waterproofed with pig fat. This mutiny cost the lives of thousands of troops on both sides. I'm not suggesting that we are starting a second Sepoy mutiny, but I'd like to point out that a lot of trained technicians are not re-enlisting...
...Cricket. The ordinary Indian soldier was called a sepoy, and there were 257,000 of them to 34,000 British troops in all India. Unhappily for the British, the Crimean War and a brace of local disasters had shown that the sahibs were not invincible. Also the Feringis (Europeans) were bigoted enough to abolish suttee. The rumor spread among Moslems and Hindus that the British were trying to make Christians of them. The greased cartridges hit a bull's-eye of hate, and at Meerut 85 sepoys refused duty. After a suitable court-martial, the older mutineers were shackled...
...Brigade (Universal). The British laid down the white man's burden in India seven years ago, but it is still a weary load on the U.S. moviegoer's mind. Bengal Brigade is the second Hollywood picture this year to be concerned with the period of the great Sepoy Mutiny...
...Welch has the manner of a Louisburg Square patrician, he comes from the plainest Midwestern pioneer stock. Both his parents were English-born. Father William Welch ran away to sea at 14, wandered the world for 15 years (including a three-month hitch with the British army during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857), finally immigrated to his brother's' farm in Illinois and married the hired girl. William Welch was a simple man and good, but in his years at sea, he developed an abiding affection for the bottle. Martha Welch decided to remove him from temptation...
...hero of a blood & thunder historical novel, Rodney could certainly have paid more attention than he did to the uneasy behaviour of his own sepoy infantrymen. They were badly upset by the rumor (true enough, in fact) that their rifle cartridges were greased with a mixture of beef and hog fat: by the sanctions of religion, the use of beef fat was mortal offense to the Hindus among them, hog fat to the Mohammedans. Fanatics and profiteers, princes and foreign agents were also working overtime to stir up the sepoys. By the time Savage had it all deciphered...