Resistance here has three strands and only the last of them is Congress politics. The first is dynastic. The Gond ruling houses had been displaced twice, by a Mughal army in 1564 and by the Marathas in 1781, and what happened at Jabalpur in 1857 was the final act of that displacement rather than the opening of a national one. The second is the forest. From the 1860s the sal, teak and bamboo on which upland households actually lived became state property, and almost every grievance recorded in these districts for the next seventy years runs back to that — which is why the region's largest twentieth-century movement was a forest movement, fought by Gond and Korku cultivators who sometimes had Congress leaders with them and often acted against their instructions. The third strand arrived last and stayed in the Hindi-speaking towns of the Narmada belt, where Jabalpur ran a flag satyagraha in 1923 and the Congress held its 1939 session beside the city.
The Jabalpur executions and the mutiny of the 52ndSeptember 1857
Shankar Shah, the titular head of the Garha line and a pensioner of the British, and his son Raghunath Shah were charged with plotting a rising at Jabalpur and with composing verses said to incite one. They were executed on 18 September 1857 by being fired from a cannon, and thirteen of their followers were executed the next day. The 52nd Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry, stationed at Jabalpur, mutinied afterwards.
परिणाम: The rising in the Narmada districts was suppressed during 1857 and 1858.
The Ramgarh rising1857–1858
Rani Avantibai of Ramgarh, in what is now Dindori, raised a force of about four thousand and sent bangles with her letters to neighbouring chiefs and landholders as a challenge to join. She defeated the deputy commissioner Waddington at Khairi near Mandla and afterwards fought in the Devharigarh hills.
परिणाम: She died at Sukhi-Talaiya between Balapur and Ramgarh on 20 March 1858.
The Jangom Dal in Chanda1857–1858
Baburao Shedmake, a Gond zamindar of Chanda on the Wainganga, raised about five hundred men in September 1857 and took the Rajgarh territory in March 1858, other zamindars joining him. His force fought at Nandgaon Ghosari on 13 March, Sagnapur on 19 April, Bamanpeth on 27 April and Ghot on 10 May 1858.
परिणाम: He was taken on 18 September 1858 after being informed on, and hanged at Chanda jail on 21 October 1858.
The jungle satyagraha1930
In Betul and the neighbouring Satpura districts, Gond and Korku cultivators went into forest held under malguzari control and cut trees and grass in defiance of the forest rules, led by Ganjan Singh Korku and Banjari Singh Korku. Congress leaders were sometimes present and were often acting against rather than with the movement's own direction.
परिणाम: Suppressed, but it is the largest mass action the region produced and the one that named the grievance the whole modern period turns on.