INDIA celebrated the 150th anniversary of its First War of Independence - the “Indian Mutiny” - against British rule yesterday, poking fun at its former colonial rulers at a historic fort in the capital which saw much bloodshed on both sides.

The festivities centred around the Red Fort, a magnificent 17th-century red sandstone structure in Delhi where mutinous Indian soldiers proclaimed the ageing and frail Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar as ruler of India in May 1857.

What started as an act of defiance by some Indian soldiers who refused to use rifle bullets said to be greased with beef and pork fat quickly became a popular rebellion against the British East India Company that ruled most of India. Muslims consider pork unclean while Hindus view the cow as holy.

Thousands of people were killed on both sides, including many women and children. Vengeful British troops crushed the revolt, referred to in Britain as the Indian Mutiny.

In recent decades, India’s leaders and intellectuals have re-christened the rebellion as the country’s First War of Independence, presenting it as a unifying historical event for the nation of 1.1 billion people, which continues to be riven by sharp - sometimes violent - religious, economic, linguistic and caste divisions.

At the Red Fort on Friday, colourful floats, cut-outs and a huge demon-shaped balloon with the Union Jack printed on it showed scenes from the conflict that glorified the mutineers’ courage in the face of the might of the country’s British masters.

“There is no doubt that 1857 was a shining example of our national unity,” said Manmohan Singh, the prime minister speaking from the high rampart of the fort, built by Mughal Emperor Shahjahan in 1648.

“Our war of independence was based on unity in diversity and today our national unity is also based on this. This is our strength and this is our destiny,” said Mr Singh, referring to India’s secular constitution and its many faiths, castes and languages.

Patriotic songs were played in the background as a huge and mobile cutout of Zafar showed the reclining emperor smoking a hookah. Thousands of young volunteers shouted “Jai Hind” (long live India) during the celebrations.

Men with swords performed traditional martial arts while two people dressed as British gentlemen walked on stilts. The costume of one of them carried the words “Economic Exploitation”.

Nearby, men dressed in red balloons, ridiculing British soldiers, waddled like penguins.

Hundreds of policemen, including anti-terrorist commandos, stood guard as thousands of people including the president, APJ Abdul Kalam and the head of the ruling Congress party, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, watched the two-hour show.

The government had declared a public holiday in the capital to mark the occasion.

Thousands of young people marched to the Red Fort on Thursday from the city of Meerut, a three-hour drive from the capital.

Meerut is where the revolt started after soldiers killed their British officers and their families. The uprising was fully - and violently - quelled by the summer of 1858 and the reins of power passed directly into the hands of the British government from the East India Company, which was viewed as having mismanaged the situation.

Rebels killed hundreds of British women and children but the British revenge was savage. Many rebels were tied to the mouths of cannons and blown to bits while whole villages were wiped out for supporting the rebellion.

The rebellion sowed the seeds of India’s freedom movement which culminated in independence in 1947.

A surviving freedom fighter from the 1940s, Ram Kumar Awasthi, 87, had a bit of advice for the current government of independent India.

“Please govern better and improve law and order,” a frail Awasthi said, after attending the celebrations. IT ALL BEGAN WITH A RUMOUR ABOUT GREASING OF RIFLE CARTRIDGES

THE Red Fort became the focus of the 1857 rebellion after the mutineers declared Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar their leader. But it was also scene of one of the worst atrocities committed during the three-month rising and the brutal British backlash which followed it.

Fifty-two British prisoners, including women and children, taken into protective custody to save them from the mob, were shot and hacked to death by sepoys inside the palace grounds. The event, recorded in diaries by witnesses, was a deliberate act by the sepoys to bind Zafar to their cause. The mutineers rose against their British officers after rumours spread through the British Indian Army that cartridges for the new Enfield rifles, which had to be bitten open, were greased with pig and cow fat. As the cow is holy to Hindus, and the pig unclean and forbidden to Muslims, the rifle’s introduction united sepoys from both faiths in revolt.

Britain’s eventual avenging force took no prisoners, and matched the sepoys for atrocities. The entire Muslim population of Delhi was either killed or expelled as British prize agents looted the city.