Terrified to the point that they unleashed a spate of killings that were so chilling that they unleashed inter-generational trauma. Such was the fear that as Indians we forgot the greatest lesson of 1857 - that only a military revolt would rid us of the British. In that sense,

as admirable as Mahatma Gandhi was, he represented that one thing that no person or peoples should ever do - fail to learn from history. The pacifist freedom struggle was something the Brits could handle. Military revolts, they could not.