1857 and the Peasant and Tribal Movements of Rajasthan

The revolt of 1857 and the long peasant and tribal struggles that followed it are the two parts of modern Rajasthan history that RPSC, RSMSSB and Rajasthan Police papers return to again and again. In 1857 the fighting in Rajputana was carried by the sepoys of the Company cantonments and by a handful of jagirdars, while the ruling houses stood with the British. The peasant and tribal movements that began at the end of the nineteenth century were of a different kind: long, local and economic, fought against cesses, forced labour and the loss of forest and grazing rights, and they fed straight into the Praja Mandal politics of the 1930s.

Rajputana on the eve of the revolt

After the treaties of subordinate alliance signed with the East India Company in 1817 and 1818, Rajputana was made up of nineteen princely states, the small chiefship of Lawa and the British-administered district of Ajmer-Merwara. The region was supervised by an Agent to the Governor-General, abbreviated AGG, who in 1857 was George St Patrick Lawrence, with his headquarters at Mount Abu. Company troops sat in a ring of cantonments at Nasirabad, Neemuch, Erinpura, Deoli, Beawar and Kherwara. Because the princes did not join the rising, every outbreak in Rajputana began inside one of these cantonments and then looked for a jagirdar to lead it.

From Nasirabad to Auwa

The revolt reached Rajasthan on 28 May 1857, when the 15th Bengal Native Infantry rose at Nasirabad in Ajmer district, burnt the cantonment and marched towards Delhi. Neemuch rose on 3 June 1857, and the Jodhpur Legion at Erinpura on 21 August 1857. The Erinpura soldiers did not go to Delhi. They turned instead to Auwa, a thikana of Marwar in present Pali district, whose Thakur Kushal Singh made his fort the centre of the revolt in western Rajasthan. On 8 September 1857 he defeated the Jodhpur state army at Bithoda, and on 18 September 1857 at Chelawas he beat a combined British and Jodhpur force in which Monck Mason, the Political Agent at Jodhpur, was killed. Auwa fort held out until 20 January 1858; when it fell the image of Sugali Mata was carried off to Ajmer, and Kushal Singh, after wandering through Mewar, surrendered later.

Kota, Tantia Tope and the closing months

The one rising in Rajputana made by a state army against its own ruler was at Kota on 15 October 1857. Led by Jaidayal and Mehrab Khan, the Kota troops killed the Political Agent Major Burton and his two sons and held the city for about five months until General Roberts recovered it in March 1858. In 1858 Tantia Tope crossed into Rajasthan and there was fighting at Bhilwara, Kothariya, Nathdwara, Tonk and Sanganer; Thakur Lakshman Singh of Lawa sheltered him and lost his chiefship for it. Amar Chand Bathiya of Bikaner, who was treasurer at Gwalior and funded the rebels, was hanged in 1858 and is remembered as the Bhamashah of 1857.

Bijolia: the longest peasant movement in India

Bijolia was a first-class thikana of Mewar in present Bhilwara district. Its peasants, mostly Dhakar cultivators, were charged some eighty-four kinds of lag-bag, among them chanwari, a tax on a daughter marriage, and talwar bandhai, a levy collected whenever a new jagirdar took the gaddi, besides begar or unpaid labour. The agitation began in 1897, when Girdhari Pal and Nanji and Thakri Patel carried the complaint to the Maharana, and it ran in phases until 1941, which makes it the longest-running peasant movement in India. Sadhu Sitaram Das organised the first panchayats; Vijay Singh Pathik, born Bhoop Singh in Bulandshahr, took charge from 1916 and founded the Rajasthan Seva Sangh at Wardha in 1919; Manikya Lal Verma, himself from Bijolia, led the last phase to the settlement of 1941. An agreement of 1922 had already withdrawn many of the cesses.

Begun, Neemuchana and the Shekhawati peasants

The Begun movement of Chittorgarh began in 1921 under Ram Narayan Choudhary; the Mewar government disliked its settlement so much that it called it the Bolshevik agreement, and on 13 July 1923 firing at Govindpura killed the peasants Rupaji and Kripaji. In Alwar state the peasants of Neemuchana were fired on 14 May 1925 over an increase in lagan; Mahatma Gandhi wrote of it as double dyed dyerism, and the village is called the Jallianwala of Rajasthan. In Sikar, Jat cultivators of the Shekhawati belt agitated from 1922 to 1935 against raised rents, held the Jat Prajapati Mahayagya at Sikar in 1934, and lost peasants to the firing at Kudan on 25 April 1935.

The Bhils: Govind Guru and Motilal Tejawat

Govind Guru, a Banjara of Dungarpur, founded the Samp Sabha in 1883 and preached the Bhagat panth, telling Bhils to give up liquor and refuse begar. His dhuni on Mangarh hill in Banswara district drew thousands, and on 17 November 1913 state and British forces fired on the gathering; the Mangarh massacre is called the Adivasi Jallianwala. Motilal Tejawat of Koliyari in Udaipur led the Eki movement from 1921 among the Bhils and Garasias of Mewar, Sirohi and Idar, listing their grievances in a charter known as the Mewar ki Pukar; Bhils of his movement were fired on at Neemda in Sirohi on 7 March 1922. Tejawat was called Eklingji ka Diwan and Bawji by his followers.

What these movements left behind

None of the 1857 risings in Rajputana was able to join the main theatres at Delhi, Kanpur or Lucknow, and the loyalty of the princes is the usual answer when a paper asks why the revolt failed here. The peasant and tribal movements were more successful: they ended particular cesses, forced the jagirdars to accept written settlements, and trained the leaders, Pathik, Verma, Ram Narayan Choudhary and Jaynarayan Vyas, who ran the Praja Mandals and later pressed for the integration of Rajasthan.