Religious+tolerance


 * Religious Tolerance**

**The rebellion was, literally, started over a gun. Sepoys throughout India were issued with a new rifle, Enfield rifled musket - a more powerful and accurate weapon than the old smoothbore Brown Bess they had been using for the previous years. The rifling inside the musket barrel had better accuracy and had much greater distances than was possible with old muskets. One thing did not change in this new weapon. **

**To load both the old musket and the new rifle, soldiers had to bite the cartridge open and pour the gunpowder it contained into the rifle's muzzle, then stuff the cartridge case, which was typically paper coated with some kind of grease to make it waterproof, into the musket as wadding, before loading it with a ball. **

**It was believed that the cartridges that were standard issue with this rifle were greased with lard (pork fat) which was regarded as unclean by Muslims, or beef fat, regarded as sacred to Hindus. A Hindu who ate cows' flesh would lose, with dreadful consequences both in the present life and the next. The sepoys' British officers dismissed these claims as rumours, and suggested that the sepoys make a batch of fresh cartridges, and grease these with beeswax or mutton fat. This reinforced the belief that the original issue cartridges were indeed greased with lard and tallow. **


 * The main religion in the British empire has been Christian for many years and it still is.**