Book excerpt: On March 29, 1857 a Brahmin sepoy shot at a British officer in Barrackpore, Bengal. The incident was not the first of its kind _ or the last. Two months later the British East India Company faced a major civil rebellion and political insurrection/ restoration, accompanied by military mutinies in North India. The event ended British cultural hegemony, revived Indianness and kept alive an alternative Asiatic perspective -western authors still call it ' The Mutiny' but for Indians it was the ' First War of Independence'.This is first book, which deals with Mangal Pandey, the Barrackpore Brahmin sepoy's true story. It reveals unseen aspects of colonial India: the colours of the landscape, the drama of the cantonments, conflicts of love, loyalty and valour, heroism, the modernity of the peasant, law of rebellion and political intrigue, amidst the looming spectre of an Asiatic upheaval. Written from an Indian perspective, marshalling indigenous archival material, the book ruptures all previous, exotic-oriental-Anglicist notions of Asiatic-Indian men and events.