'The First War of Independence'

On May 10, 1857 AD, a major uprising occurred in India against the British. Although there was growing resentment over the years against the high-handed policies of the British, including replacement of Persian with English in order to severe the cultural bonds with Iran and Afghanistan, the incident that acted as the spark was the report that rifle cartridges were greased with pig and cow fat – the former unlawful for the Muslims and the latter sacred to the Hindus. This made the native soldiers, called Sepoys in English (corruption of the Persian word 'Sepahi'), revolt against their British officers at Meerut. The incident soon escalated into open rebellions largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, with the major hostilities confined to present-day Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, northern Madhya Pradesh, and the Delhi region.
Other parts of British-controlled India, such as Bengal, the Bombay Presidency, and the Madras Presidency, remained largely calm. In Punjab, the Sikhs backed the British by providing soldiers against fellow Indians. The large semi-independent states of Hyderabad-Deccan, Mysore, Travancore, and Kashmir, as well as the smaller ones of Rajputana, did not join the uprising. In some areas, such as Oudh, with Lucknow as its capital the uprising took on the attributes of a patriotic revolt against British presence, since a year earlier the Nishapouri Iranian-origin dynasty of Wajid Ali Shah had been removed from power.
The uprising, which the British called 'Mutiny' and which modern India calls 'The First War of Independence', ended a year later in June 1858, as the British resorted with untold atrocities. The prime casualty were the Muslims of northern India, including the last titular Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, the figurehead of the uprising, who was exiled to Burma, but not before the British shot three of his sons in front of him, and later sadistically presented their decapitated heads, placed in trays as Nowrouz gift, for the aging father. With this, the more than three hundred-year-rule of the Timurid Dynasty ended, and India was directly placed under the British crown with Queen Victoria declared as Empress.
On 13th of the Islamic month of Shabaan in 1274 AH, the British formally deposed Bahador Shah Zafar from the Mughal throne of Delhi and exiled him to Rangoon, Burma, thus ending over three and a quarter centuries of the shrinking rule of the Timurid dynasty, founded by Zaheer od-Din Babur. The aging Bahador Shah was accused of helping the uprising against British rule the previous year, and his sons and grandsons were shot in cold-blood by the British, who sadistically send their heads to the Mughal king as gifts on the day of Nowrouz, or the Spring Equinox, when traditional celebrations were in progress at the court for the New solar hijri year. Bahador Shah Zafar was an accomplished poet in both Persian and Urdu.