Who was the first to describe the great mutiny of 1857 as the first War of Independence?

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was the first to explicitly term the 1857 revolt as the 'First War of Indian Independence' in his 1909 book 'The History of the War of Indian Independence'. This re-framing was significant in nationalist historiography, moving away from colonial characterizations as merely a 'sepoy mutiny'. While Nehru and others later used similar terminology, Savarkar was the pioneer in this conceptual reframing.