Most scholars dealing with British India believe that the events of 1857 came as a bolt from the blue that shook the very foundations of the British Empire in the Indian Subcontinent, and left a deep wound in the psyche of the British officials, both in London and Calcutta. News of terrifying atrocities being perpetrated by the Indian insurgents was reported by British newspapers (James 1997: 279). For instance, the Manchester Guardian wrote in February 1858: "Belief in horrible stories of torture, mutilation and dishonour worse than death, inflicted on our own countrymen and countrywomen in India, has been universal" (Judd 1996: 74). As a result, the pre-Revolt image of India, as being a "fairy-tale land where sultans sat on ivory thrones, 'fanned by peacocks' wings in palaces", was turned into a slaughterhouse where every white man could be murdered (James 1997: 279). Moreover, Indians, who had hitherto been looked upon as "a simple race, little inclined to war and unconcerned as to who ruled them", became murderous fiends and bloodthirsty in the minds of the British (1997: 280).
