<P> Many Indians felt that the Company was asking for heavy tax from the locals . This included an increase in the taxation on land . This seems to have been a very important reason for the spread of the rebellion, keeping in view the speed at which the conflagration ignited in many villages in northern India where farmers rushed to get back their unfairly grabbed title deeds . The resumption of tax free land and confiscation of jagirs (the grant or right to locally control land revenue) caused discontent among the jagirdars and zamindars . Dalhousie had also appointed Inam Commission with powers to confiscate land . Several years before the sepoys' mutiny, Lord William Bentinck had attacked several jagirs in western Bengal . He also resumed the practice of tax free lands in some areas . These changes caused widespread resentment not only among the landed aristocracy but also caused great havoc to a larger section of the middle - class people . Lands were confiscated from the landlords and auctioned . Rich people like the merchants and moneylenders were therefore able to speculate in British land sales and drive out the most vulnerable peasant farmers . </P> <P> During the late eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth century, the armies of the East India Company, in particular those of the Bengal Presidency, were victorious and indomitable--the term "high noon of the sepoy army" has been used by a military historian . The Company had an unbroken series of victories in India, against the Marathas, Mysore, north Indian states, and the Gurkhas, later against the Sikhs, and further afield in China and Burma . The Company had developed a military organisation where, in theory, fealty of the sepoys to the Company was considered the height of "izzat" or honour, where the European officer replaced the village headman with benevolent figures of authority, and where regiments were mostly recruited from sepoys belonging to the same caste, and community . </P> <P> Unlike the Madras and Bombay Armies of the BEIC, which were far more diverse, the Bengal Army recruited its regular soldiers almost exclusively amongst the landowning Bhumihars and Rajputs of the Ganges Valley . Though paid marginally less than the Bombay and Madras Presidency troops, there was a tradition of trust between the soldiery and the establishment--the soldiers felt needed and that the Company would care for their welfare . The soldiers performed well on the field of battle in exchange for which they were rewarded with symbolic heraldic rewards such as battle honours in addition to the extra pay or "batta" (foreign pay) routinely disbursed for operations committed beyond the established borders of Company rule . </P> <P> Until the 1840s there had been a widespread belief amongst the Bengal sepoys in the iqbal or continued good fortune of the East India Company . However much of this sense of the invincibility of the British was lost in the First Anglo - Afghan War where poor political judgement and inept British leadership led to the massacre of Elphinstone's army (which included three Bengal regiments) while retreating from Kabul . When the mood of the sepoys turned against their masters, they remembered Kabul and that the British were not invincible . </P>

What are the main causes of the revolt of 1857 in india