The Doab is where the revolt of 1857 began and where it was fought hardest, for the same reason that made it easy to govern: a corridor with no obstacles moves armies as readily as it moves carts. It is also the only region in this group where the twentieth-century movement matters at least as much as 1857. Kanpur's mills produced an organised working class, a trade union movement and, in the Meerut conspiracy case of 1929–33, the largest political trial of the interwar years; Allahabad was simultaneously a centre of Congress organisation and of the revolutionary underground. One further point of attribution: in the upper Doab the risings of 1857 had no court behind them at all. They were led by Jat and Gujjar clan bodies around Meerut and Bulandshahr, and the heaviest reprisals of that year fell on those villages.
The Meerut outbreak10–11 May 1857
Eighty-five troopers of the 3rd Light Cavalry were sentenced on 9 May for refusing the new cartridges. The cantonment rose the following evening, the central jail was opened and some eight hundred prisoners released, and by the morning of 11 May the column had reached Delhi. In the surrounding countryside Jat and Gujjar villages rose and cut the Delhi road for weeks afterwards.
परिणाम: Delhi was held by the rebels until September 1857. The villages of the Meerut and Bulandshahr countryside were subjected to punitive expeditions, and Dhan Singh, the town kotwal, was tried and hanged.
Kanpur in the revoltJune – November 1857
The Kanpur regiments rose on 5 June 1857 and Nana Sahib, whose pension claim had been refused, took command. The British entrenchment surrendered on 27 June and the party was attacked while embarking at the Satichaura ghat; captives held at the Bibighar were killed on 15 July, the day before a relieving column reached the town.
परिणाम: Kanpur was retaken on 16 July 1857 and held after Tatya Tope's attempt to recover it was defeated in November. Reprisals in and around the town were severe and are recorded in the trial and campaign papers.
The Fatehpur rising and the Bawani Imli hangings1857–58
Jodha Singh Ataiya of Rasulpur Ataiya organised the seizure of the Fatehpur treasury and courthouse and then fought an irregular campaign in the surrounding country with peasant levies.
परिणाम: He and fifty-one companions were taken near Ghoora and publicly hanged at Khajuha on 28 April 1858; the bodies were left hanging for weeks as a deterrent.
The Meerut conspiracy case1929–1933
Trade unionists, communists and labour organisers arrested in March 1929 were brought to Meerut and tried together over nearly four years, the case being heard there because it removed it from a jury.
परिणाम: Judgment in January 1933 convicted most of the accused; sentences were reduced on appeal, and the trial's length and publicity made the defendants' politics far better known than before.