A painting, currently on display at the National Army Museum, shows General William Hodson riding into battle

London, May 10: Britain’s National Army Museum, which is holding an exhibition — Changing the World: India Rising — to mark the 150th anniversary of the 1857 uprising, today said it had tried to interest schools with a significant number of Indian children in its education packs but its approaches had been rebuffed.

Pip Dodd, one of the curators of the exhibition, admitted: “We would like to do something but our education department has found there are no takers. History teachers don’t want to touch it.”

There are obvious sensitivities about a revolt which has been portrayed by the British in the past as a “mutiny” by disgruntled sepoys and by Indians as “the first war of independence” which reflected a fundamental rejection of the very notion of British rule.

However, the reluctance of many teachers to tackle what they consider a divisive subject comes against the guideline from the government that schools should teach the history of the empire and that, too, in an unapologetic way.

At the museum, India Rising occupies only a small corner but memorabilia on display provides some understanding of why the bloody events of 1857 poisoned relations between Britain and India for a century to come.

On display is a Patten 53 Enfield Rifled Musket whose cartridge was greased with either pork or beef fat — or so Indian rank and file soldiers believed.

Standing orders given to British officers in the Bengal Native Infantry as far back as 1828 are shown: “It should be impressed on the young Officer, that grievances, which to him may appear frivolous, are of serious import, when connected with the religious prejudices of Men.”

Also exhibited is a sword belonging to Major William Hodson, who accepted the surrender of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, in 1857. Hodson also arrested three of the royal princes whom he then shot in cold blood.

There are billboards explaining the 1857 massacre by Indians of 120 British children and 73 women at “Cawnpore” — there are a pair of children’s shoes and a lady’s manicure set among the exhibits — and the siege of Lucknow.

There is no attempt by the museum to gloss over the brutality of the British. “Rebel soldiers were force-fed beef or pork before being executed — some were tied to canons and blown apart,” said Dodd.

Among those present today at the museum was the sports journalist Mihir Bose, who has written a biography of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and who said he was in favour of 1857 being taught in schools.

But he commented: “Often what they mean is that you teach one version of history. If there had been what Jawaharlal Nehru called an England versus India match — most of the time England won — you have got to give a balanced view of that match.

“The other problem is that there have been more English versions than Indian versions (of 1857) because the English have been the most proficient in writing about the history,” he went on.

“The victor writes the history, as Churchill said. Where do you get the right balance? The only way to do that is to encourage people of Indian origin in Britain to look back on their history with dispassion, with inquiry.”

All the books on 1857 have been written by British historians. Where are the Indians writing about their history?”

Saul David, author of The Indian Mutiny, told The Telegraph: “Decades after the end of the empire, we can look back on stories of the empire like this with something like an objective and a less apologetic view. When I was growing up at school and university in the 1970s and 1980s, you could not talk about empire. People were ashamed even to mention it.

“To look at it from all its aspects, obviously from the Indian perspective as well as the British, is wholly healthy and absolutely necessary.”

“The good news is that more imperial history is being taught in schools — that was announced earlier this year. Whether they are going to get on to the mutiny as part of that curriculum, I don’t know yet.”

He disclosed: “I am teaching at the University of Hull later this year and my specific course is the Indian mutiny — I am the visiting professor for a year. I am going to have undergraduates taking a specific module (on 1857) and the interesting thing about Hull is it has got quite a mixed intake. The sort of class I will be teaching will be looking at it from all angles.”

He acknowledged: “From the Indian perspective the British are the baddies. From my perspective in terms of actually researching the story I think this is much more to do with soldiers being disgruntled with their conditions of service. You look at any military uprising prior to the French or the Russian revolution and you have disgruntled oldiers who aren’t happy with their professional terms of employment. We have a lot of other factors affecting the soldiers from the outside.

“As a historian you have to decide which really is driving forward the cause of the revolt — and when you get the cartridge question and the threat to Indian religion and culture, I think this is taken advantage of by soldiers who are frustrated at the opportunities in their professional lives. They use these wider issues to get a majority of their fellow soldiers onside.”

As to whether the suicide bombings in London would affect the relationship between the English and the Muslims for generations to come, David took a gloomy view: “Possibly. Clearly the relationship between Muslims and traditional British living side by side in those areas and in the wider sense in the country at large is becoming strained. There is mutual suspicion just as there was after the mutiny. The British were pretty much living in fear of it happening again — and Britain today has the sense that they (the Muslims) are the enemy.”

Another historian, Lawrence James, author of Raj: The making and Unmaking of British India, also wanted 1857 taught in schools.

“History is a record of human folly, errors of judgement and people behaving badly as well as honourably — and the Mutiny has all these elements on both sides,” he argued.

“The British were frightened in 1857, the Indians were frightened — frightened of each other. For those reasons it ought to be taught. It’s an object lesson in human nature of what fear can do as a historical force.”