The sepoys (the native Indian soldiers) have…

The sepoys (the native Indian soldiers) have their own list of grievances against the Company rule, mainly caused by the ethnic gulf between the British officers and their Indian troops.

The British in the early years of the Company rule had tolerated and even encouraged the caste privileges and customs within the Bengal Army, which recruited its regular soldiers almost exclusively among the landowning Bhumihar Brahmins and Rajputs of the Ganges Valley.

By the time these customs and privileges came to be threatened by modernizing regimes in Calcutta from the 1840s onward, the sepoys had become accustomed to very high ritual status, and were extremely sensitive to suggestions that their caste might be polluted.

The sepoys also had gradually become dissatisfied with various other aspects of army life.

Their pay was relatively low and after Awadh and the Punjab were annexed, the soldiers no longer received extra pay (batta or bhatta) for service there, because they were no longer considered "foreign missions".

Finally, officers of an evangelical persuasion in the Company's Army had taken to preaching to their Sepoys in the hope of converting them to Christianity.

The controversy over the new Pattern 1853 Enfield Rifle, in the eyes of many Sepoys, adds substance to the alarming rumors circulating about their imminent forced conversion to Christianity.

To load the new rifle, the sepoys have to bite the cartridge open.

It is believed that the cartridges that are standard issue with the rifle are greased with lard (pork fat) which is regarded as unclean by Muslims, or tallow (beef fat), regarded as sacred to Hindus.

Fires, possibly the result of arson, break out on January 24, 1857, near Calcutta.