The year was 1857.
A storm was brewing in British-occupied India.
The taxes angered them, the loss of lands incensed them.
There was also concern that the Company was trying to impose Christianity on the population.
The Campaign in India 1857-58 by William Simpson, E Walker.
Nobody knew where the breads came from, or what message they carried.
No one seems to know the meaning of it.
The Indian papers are full of surmises as to what it means.
It is called the chapati movement.
Chapati, the Indian flatbread.
Manychowkidarsdutifully followed the instructions, travelling for miles through the jungles to distribute chapatis to nearby villages.
Few asked where the chapatis came from, or questioned the motive of this bizarre errand.
What he did discover was that the phenomenon had a massive presence.
Some of these chapatis were advancing across the land at a rate of 200 miles a night.
Two sepoy officers and a private sepoy, circa 1820s.
Whenever a bundle of chapatis arrived at a police station, it drove the officers into panic.
There was one popular rumor that the British themselves were behind this.
It was such a rumor, that eventually brought down the East India Company a year later.
Enfield Pattern 1853 Percussion Rifle Musket cartridges.
The British had introduced a new Enfield rifle that came with greased paper cartridges.
Indian sepoys attack the boats of fleeing British officers and their families during the Siege of Cawnpore in 1857.
In the event, the chapattis were not harbingers of a coming storm.
