Braj's anti-colonial history is not the story of one movement, and the devotional region and the political region barely touch. There was no ruling house inside Braj to lead a revolt in 1857 — Bharatpur was a protected princely state and stayed out — so what happened in the Mathura countryside was led by village men, and it was directed as much at the moneylender's ledgers and the revenue record as at the district office. Seventy years later the one figure of national scale the region produced, Raja Mahendra Pratap of Mursan, worked almost entirely outside India and spent thirty-two years abroad. The parikrama towns themselves produced remarkably little organised nationalist politics.
The Raya risingJune – September 1857
Devi Singh, a cultivator of tappa Raya in Mathura district known locally as the Sadhu Raja, raised some sixty Jat villages after the district administration collapsed. The rising burned the police post and the indigo factory, destroyed revenue records and the moneylenders' bonds, and ran its own summary court through the summer.
Outcome: Broken by a force sent from Agra. Devi Singh and his associate Shri Ram were hanged on 17 September 1857 and the village of Acharya was destroyed.
The collapse and recovery of the Agra division1857
The Mathura treasury guard mutinied in late May and the district magistrate rode to Agra; the Agra garrison under Brigadier Polwhele was then defeated outside the city in July and the European population withdrew into Agra fort.
Outcome: Authority was restored only after Delhi fell and a column beat the rebel force before Agra on 10 October 1857.
The Kabul Provisional Government1915–1919
A government-in-exile proclaimed at Kabul on 1 December 1915 by Raja Mahendra Pratap of Mursan, with Maulana Barkatullah as its prime minister, seeking recognition and support from Germany, Ottoman Turkey and Afghanistan during the First World War.
Outcome: It obtained no formal recognition and dissolved after the war. Mahendra Pratap remained abroad until 1946.