Light touch indeed. They fucked it up so badly
Eh... the story preceding that rebellion argues, if anything, that the Company tried too hard to bend to local practices, and the British public was outraged that "Clemency Canning" didn't want to come down like a hammer on the natives.
Look, explanations of complex stuff that happened is basically what historians do. The fact of the matter is, the EIC policies led to an enormous rebellion that ultimately resulted in the Crown taking over in India, and the EIC ending its independent existence. The EIC policies were terrible and very heavy handed, here is one example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_salt_tax_in_India
(And it's not like it was not known by this point that people hated salt taxes, they could have just asked the French about how the gabelle worked out for...
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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