Magadh's anti-colonial history is the history of a provincial capital rather than of a countryside. The 1857 events here were urban, brief and heavily punished: a hanging at Patna in early July, a sepoy mutiny at Danapur later that month, and then nothing organised for a generation. What followed was legal and institutional - a bar-led Congress, the campaign to separate Bihar from Bengal, the Bihar Vidyapith - and, running alongside it and often against it, a tenant movement organised from an ashram at Bihta that named the landlord rather than the Government as the adversary. The best-known single day in the region's national politics, 11 August 1942, was made by schoolboys.
The Patna rising of July 1857July 1857
A conspiracy in the city was uncovered in early July; Peer Ali Khan, a bookbinder and bookseller whose shop had served as a meeting place, was arrested with others on 4 July and hanged publicly on 7 July with fourteen others. On 25 July the sepoy regiments stationed at Danapur, west of Patna, mutinied and crossed the Sone into Bhojpur.
परिणाम: The city itself was held throughout; the Danapur regiments joined Kunwar Singh's campaign in the country west of the Sone, outside this region.
The State trials at Patna1864-1871
A reformist religious network centred on the Sadiqpur quarter of Patna, which had for decades raised funds and recruits for a camp on the north-west frontier, was prosecuted by the Government in a series of trials held at Ambala, Patna and elsewhere.
परिणाम: Leading figures were convicted and transported to the Andaman Islands; the network's Patna organisation was broken up.
The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabhafrom 1929
A tenant organisation founded in 1929 and run largely from Swami Sahajanand Saraswati's ashram at Bihta in Patna district, campaigning against eviction from bakasht land and against rent enhancement. It supplied the organisational model for the All India Kisan Sabha, formed at Lucknow in April 1936.
परिणाम: The Bihar Tenancy Amendment legislation of 1937-38 followed from the bakasht agitation; the Sabha itself split from Congress leadership over the pace of tenancy reform.
Quit India at PatnaAugust 1942
On 11 August 1942 a student procession attempting to hoist the flag on the Secretariat building at Patna was fired on, and seven were killed: Umakant Prasad Sinha, Ramanand Singh, Satish Prasad Jha, Jagatpati Kumar, Devipada Choudhary, Rajendra Singh and Ramgovind Singh. Rail and telegraph lines across the region were cut over the following weeks.
परिणाम: The movement in Bihar was suppressed by the end of the year. The foundation stone of the memorial to the seven was laid at the same spot on 15 August 1947.