Jugni : a study of the Brahmin Bengal sepoys' perception of war, 1803-1805

Abstract

The battles of Delhi and Laswari during the Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803 – 1805) culminated in the Brahmin Bengal sepoys of the British East India Company (EIC) emerging victorious against the Marathas, even though the latter had considerable advantage in terms of familiarity of the local terrain, manpower, martial experience and superior military technology. Reasons proffered by historians to account for this phenomenal outcome are largely technologically or else culturally determinant, with an almost complete disregard for the mentality of the Brahmin Bengal sepoys who fought the battles and earned the decisive victories for the EIC. Thus, this study seeks to examine the Brahmin Bengal sepoys’ perception of war during the Second Anglo-Maratha War.<br><br>Using British and translated indigenous primary sources, this study principally advocates that the Brahmin Bengal sepoys saw war as a medium for economic survival and to discharge their religious obligation as Brahmins at the same time, both elements fundamentally encapsulating their jugni or essence of life which describes the core principles and pursuits one is expected to centre his/her life upon. The sepoys neither saw the soldiering profession to be a contradiction to their Brahmin caste which ascribed them to be hereditary priests; nor was economics necessarily secular in their worldview.