सिपाही

Sepoy descends from Persian sipāhī (سپاهی), meaning soldier or army man, from sipāh (army). The word entered Hindi and Urdu during the Mughal period, when Persian was the administrative language of the Indian subcontinent. Mughal emperors recruited sipāhīs for their armies, and the word became standard across northern India for a professional foot soldier.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to borrow the word, rendering it sipai in the 1500s. The British East India Company adopted it as sepoy in the 18th century to designate Indian soldiers serving under British officers. By 1857, the Company employed roughly 300,000 sepoys — Indian men trained in European military tactics, paid with Company silver, and commanded by a few thousand British officers.

On May 10, 1857, sepoys at the garrison in Meerut refused to use new rifle cartridges rumoured to be greased with cow and pig fat. The refusal became a mutiny. The mutiny became a war. The conflict — called the Sepoy Mutiny by the British and the First War of Independence by Indians — lasted over a year, killed hundreds of thousands, and ended the East India Company's rule. The British Crown took direct control of India in 1858.

After 1857, the British never again trusted the word sepoy with the same casual confidence. The term remained in use through both world wars — Indian sepoys fought at Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia, in North Africa, in Burma — but it carried a permanent asterisk. The most famous thing a sepoy ever did was rebel.