What Indians should know about Charles Dickens

On the Indian Revolution of 1857:

Charles Dickens is reported to have contemplated this: "I wish I were
commander in chief in India.

"The first thing I would do is to strike that Oriental race with
amazement.... should be to proclaim to them, in their language that I
considered my holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean
that I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the
strain of the late cruelties rested (referring to the soldiers'
uprising of 1857 in the name of the last Mughal ruler); and that I
begged them to do me the favour to observe that I was there for that
purpose and no other, and was now proceeding, with all convenient
dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution, to blot it out of
mankind and raze it off the face of the Earth."

end quote.

Now I know another reason why I hated his morbid books even back in
school.
.