This plain has the longest record of armed resistance in the Kannada country, and nearly all of it predates the national movement by a generation or more. It was fought by desai households and their armed retainers, over adoption and succession, over confiscated land and over the orders that required villages to give up their weapons — not over anything national. Kittur in 1824, Sangolli Rayanna's campaign in 1829–30, and the cluster of 1857–58 risings at Supa, Bagalkot, Nargund and Dandeli are the sequence. Congress politics arrived afterwards but arrived early here, and Belagavi was chosen for the one Congress session Gandhi presided over, in December 1924.
The Kittur risingOctober – December 1824
When Rani Chennamma's adopted heir was refused recognition, the East India Company moved against Kittur. In the October fighting the Collector St John Thackeray was killed, with Amatur Balappa named in the accounts; a second assault in December, in which the sub-collector Munro was also killed, carried the fort.
Outcome: Chennamma was imprisoned at Bailhongal and died there on 21 February 1829. Kittur was taken over more than twenty years before the doctrine of lapse was formally stated.
Sangolli Rayanna's campaign1829–1830
Kittur's senior commander, his own lands confiscated, raised cultivators and fought a mobile campaign against Company administrative buildings, forces and treasuries, funding it from levies and captured cash, with support from the Siddi leader Gajaveera.
Outcome: He was taken in April 1830 along with Shivalingappa, whom he had intended to install at Kittur, and hanged from a banyan tree near Nandagad on 26 January 1831.
The risings of 1857–581857–1858
Risings at Supa, Bagalkot, Nargund and Dandeli, and the Bedas of Halagali refusing to surrender their arms under the disarming regulation. Bhaskar Rao Bhave of Nargund took Koppaldurg fort; Mundargi Bhimarao and Hammige Kenchanagouda fought alongside him.
Outcome: All were put down. Bhimarao and Kenchanagouda were killed at Koppal in June 1858 and Nargund fell the same year.
The Quit India actions in the Karnataka districts1942–1943
Congress workers across the Bombay Karnataka districts attacked revenue records, treasuries and communications after August 1942. At Hosaritti in Haveri on 1 April 1943 a group broke open the land revenue held in the village temple and began returning it to the cultivators it had been taken from.
Outcome: Police opened fire at Hosaritti; Mailara Mahadevappa, Tirakappa Madivalar and Veerayya Hiremath were killed.