Indian independence warrior MATADIN VALMIKI was instrumental in the events that took place just before the Indian insurrection of 1857 began. He was a Valmiki employee of the British East India Company's cartridge manufacturing facility. He was the first to plant the seeds for the 1857 uprising, not the Mangal Pandey.
History
According to historical accounts, Matadin worked in an East India Company facility that produced cartridges. He was engaged there since at the time, working with dead animal skin and leather was seen as a low caste employments
They were regarded as
"impure" by the traditional upper caste Hindus. When Matadin asked
Mangal Pandey, a soldier in the company, for water one day, he refused because
he had the ingrained conviction that touching someone from a lower caste was
"polluting." Thus, Matadin helped him see how absurd it is for him to
be proud of his birth into a high Caste Brahmin family while still biting cartridges
made of cow and pig fat. This inspired both the Hindu and the Muslim members of
the company to raise the flag of insurrection because, while pigs were taboo
for Muslims, cows were sacrosanct to Hindus.
Both Dalit activists and Subaltern historians claim that he should be acknowledged as the true leader of the 1857 uprising. This is so that Mangal Pandey would know that the British were either intentionally or unintentionally hurting their religious sensibilities. He thus planted the initial seeds of the 1857 uprising.
Legacy
As
an homage to him, the Meerut Municipal Corporation renamed the Hapur Adda
crossing in Meerut Shaheed Matadin Chowk in 2015.
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