Second, Mughal India didn’t exhibit rigidities of caste and religion. A composite and secular social structure had emerged. It was the British who created communalism.
Third, 1857 wasn’t a simple sepoy mutiny or a civil rebellion. It was much more broad-based than that and lasted well beyond 1857, all the way into the 20th century. It was a war of civilisations. “The conventional view that Indians lost militarily or politically has to be overhauled… Despite everything, Indians could still have won a conventional victory — it was only internal betrayal that probably skewed this possibility.”
Fourth, the number of Indians killed has been under-estimated. Computed afresh, figures represent almost a mass genocide. The Misra estimates are 10 million killed (7 per cent of the population) in UP, Haryana and Bihar alone. Fifth, several post-1947 developments in India and Pakistan can be traced to 1857. Sixth, outside the subcontinent, the 1857 struggle resonates in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America too.

Misra’s political ideology comes across in these propositions. There is nothing wrong with that, unless it leads to subjective biases. “It was the 1857 fear that forced British and Indian liberals, like Dadbhai (sic) Naoroji, to establish the Congress as a safety valve, capable of deflecting Indian revolutionary energies... It is clear that the British left India for they feared another 1857; the reformist leadership of both the Muslim League and the Congress also feared such a prospect — around 1947, a new 1857, would have meant a new, Hindu-Muslim unity — there would have been no Partition.”

... contd.