Mangal Pandey for Gen Z: What the Aamir Khan movie doesn't tell you about the hero of 1857

Today marks the 195th birth anniversary of Mangal Pandey, one of the freedom fighters credited with starting the Revolt of 1857. In pop culture, he is remembered from Aamir Khan’s portrayal in the biopic Mangal Pandey: The Rising. 

Beyond the biopic: Born in 1827 in Nagwa village in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Mangal Pandey served as a sepoy in the 34th Bengal Native Infantry (BNI) regiment under the British East India Company. One March afternoon in 1857, Pandey sent shockwaves within the regiment when he violently attacked two British officers in Barrackpore, North Kolkata. As shown in the Aamir Khan-starrer, this resulted in his hanging, which fuelled the fire of rebellion among other Indian sepoys. The rest, as they say, is history. For Indian Independence, the beginning. 

While it is true that Pandey was a part of this violence, the motivations behind his actions continue to fascinate historians. 

An obvious theory is that Pandey’s attacks were motivated by patriotic thoughts of toppling down the British Empire. But it is dubious to think that he would have attacked solo instead of orchestrating a more united rebellion. 

Bhang behind it all? In a paper from 2005, historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee forwarded the claim that Pandey might have been intoxicated when he went against his British superiors. Similarly, in the 2014 book The Great Fear of 1857, Kim A Wagner added that Pandey’s actions resulted from a mix of the existing unrest among his fellow sepoys and slight intoxication from “bhang”. 

Less than a week after the incident, a wounded Pandey was brought to trial. Christopher Hibert writes in his 1980 study The Great Mutiny: India that Pandey took sole responsibility for his actions and claimed that no other fellow soldier motivated him to mutiny. He was hanged on April 8 but his sacrifice, of course, didn’t go in vain for the events that were triggered afterwards. 

Even though Pandey might have not endangered the lives of other sepoys, it cannot be denied that they were already raging for a few months. Chaos brewed when the soldiers from the 19th BNI (followed by Pandey’s 34th) became the lab-rats for the new bullet cartridges. 

The infamous bullet cartridges: The existing Enfield P-93 rifles were supplied with new bullet cartridges that required to be bitten at one end. Believed to be greased with cow and pig fat, the cartridge was an immediate “red flag” for Hindu and Muslim soldiers alike. 

So, it is dubious to think that Pandey is the sole mastermind of a national “conspiracy” against the British. As local studies of the Revolt of 1857 would show in the coming decades, the rebellion started from multiple efforts by multiple freedom fighters. 

But what cannot be denied is that Pandey’s sacrifice proved to be a trigger point in the Revolt. There was a lot of collective anger before his attack but Pandey became the vessel of this anger, lighting the spark of revolution. 

Pandey = Mutinous Sepoys: Whether he was intoxicated or not, the British did grow afraid of one man’s rebellious violence. In fact, William Dalrymple writes in The Last Mughal on how “Pandey” and “Pandee” turned into a derogatory term used by Britishers to refer to “mutinous sepoys”. 

Pandey’s legacy lives on not just through textbook history and the Aamir Khan movie, but also through other appearances in the arts. In the mid-2000s, the theatre group Sparsh wrote and performed the play The Roti Rebellion re-imagining Pandey’s life before the rebellion. 

Even best-selling British author Zadie Smith has been fascinated with Mangal Pandey as is evident from her landmark debut novel White Teeth. Revolving around the lives of immigrants from the British Commonwealth nations, a central character is Samad Iqbal, who is depicted as a fictional descendant of Pandey. In fact, Iqbal’s fascination and obsession with knowing more about his great-grandfather’s history forms a crucial plot point in the novel. 

Just like Iqbal, India too holds the martyr in deep respect while struggling to piece together his ominous history.