Haryana Quiz: 1857 and the Freedom Struggle in Haryana

The ruler of Rewari in the Ahirwal country took charge of the administration there in 1857, raised troops, cast cannon at Rampura and sent help to the rebel government in Delhi.

Nasibpur lies next to Narnaul in the south of present-day Haryana, and it was there that Rao Tula Ram's forces, with Rao Kishan Singh and contingents from the rebel side, met the British column.

After the defeat at Nasibpur, Rao Tula Ram left India to seek foreign help against the British, travelling through Iran and Central Asia, and he died at Kabul on 23 September 1863 while still trying to build an alliance.

In 1858 the government took the Delhi territory out of the North-Western Provinces and attached it to Punjab, partly as a punishment for the region's part in the revolt and partly because Punjab's administration had stayed loyal and effective.

Raja Nahar Singh of Ballabgarh, in the present Faridabad district, sided with the rebels of Delhi, and after the city was retaken he was arrested, tried and hanged in January 1858 at Chandni Chowk in Delhi, his state being confiscated.

Letters recovered after the fall of Delhi showed that the two men of Hansi had written to the Mughal court in support of the revolt, and they were tried and hanged there in January 1858, their property confiscated.

Chhotu Ram, born at Garhi Sampla in Rohtak district on 24 November 1881 and honoured as Deenbandhu, started the Urdu weekly Jat Gazette in 1916 to carry the case of the indebted peasant, and he used it for the rest of his career alongside his work in the Punjab legislature…

Chhotu Ram helped found the Unionist Party of Punjab with Fazl-i-Husain, a party of landholders and peasants across community lines, and as a minister he carried measures for the indebted cultivator, among them the Punjab Relief of Indebtedness Act of 1934.

He began the weekly Haryana Tilak in 1923 to give the national movement in the Haryana districts a newspaper of its own, since the region's news was otherwise carried only in the Lahore papers.

The large cantonment at Ambala, on the road from Delhi to the hills, reported restiveness among its sepoys in May 1857, and some accounts place signs of it even before the outbreak at Meerut on 10 May.

Lajpat Rai started his legal practice at Hisar in 1886, took part in the municipal and Arya Samaj work of the town and in early Congress organisation there, and only later moved to Lahore, from where he became a national figure.