Ideology and Paradox in British Civil Service Accounts of Muslim ‘Conspiracy’ in 1857–1859

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This analysis of British Civil Service accounts of Indian Muslim participation in the Indian uprising of 1857-59 assesses the widespread British conception of Muslim 'conspiracy' as the guiding hand behind the genesis and evolution of what is now commonly understood by historians as a series of competing and at times collaborative, cross-communal civil and military rebellions. Using contemporary correspondence, official accounts, and later published memoirs, this chapter argues that among a relative circumscribed and elite British official class (known as 'Civilians'), not only had these exaggerated perceptions of Muslim 'conspiracy' quickly become central to strategies of British self-presentation in India in 1857, but that these forms of narrative constituted an ideological subjectivity strongly marked by the workings of paradox and centred ultimately on the complex and troubled evolution of secular neutrality as a guiding doctrine of the colonial state.