Just for what it’s worth, there were numerous accounts at the time of the Mutiny of mysterious events in the weeks before the Mutiny broke out.
The most famous being chapatis (sp?),which are Indian flatbreads something like tortillas being sent from village to village. This was an ancient practice and was considered to forebode great events soon to come.
But even the stories of the time do not have these events being coordinated. There was enormous pent-up anger, suspicion and frustration among the soldiers of the Raj and among large groups of the common people in north-central India. Much of it justified. The British ignored it, calm in the belief that these simple, childlike people could never effectively resist their domination. More fools they.
Today we suffer severely, IMO, from a serious lack of civilizational self-confidence. The pre-Mutiny Brits suffered from whatever its opposite would be called. They drastically under-estimated their potential opponents and paid the price for doing so.
There is very little evidence that the Mutiny was pre-planned, as can be easily seen by the various regiments that killed their officers and then stood around wondering what to do next. Then somebody has the bright idea of going to Delhi and asking the Emperor.
Hardly an example of careful forethought.
Exactly -- that act shows how the Mutiny was utterly without any lack of planning or indeed much of a goal.
The Moghal Emperor had been a figure-head for 150 years, ever since Aurangzeb's death.
First he was controlled by the Marathas and then by the British.
Even in the Indian Mutiny he was retained as a figurehead with no power.
The Indian Mutiny was not a war of independence for "India" -- the very concept of "India" was still vague to everyone. The various petty rulers like the Rani of Jhansi, just wanted their own kingdoms back.
"India" was not even a sense like "Germania" or even "Europe" to most people. There was a sense of Bharat, but the Moslem attacks since the 10th century had torn that