Chenab Valley & Chamba · Western Himalaya & Trans-Himalaya
Neither half of this region was British India, so neither had a colonial administration to agitate against. On the Ravi side Chamba was a protected princely state, and its politics were about the state's own demands on its people — above all begar, the unpaid porterage owed to officials, which in country where every route crosses a high pass was a serious and sometimes fatal obligation. The first real agitation is agrarian and nineteenth-century: the Bhattiyat cultivators' refusal of revenue and forced labour in 1896. Organised politics arrives forty years later, through associations formed in 1932 and 1936 that were banned and continued their work from Dalhousie, and then through the praja mandal that pressed for representative government and for merger. On the Chenab side, Kishtwar, Bhaderwah and Doda lay inside the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir from the 1820s and 1840s, so their politics ran through that state's institutions rather than through the hill-states movement. Individual biographies are poorly recorded here; the names below are those the accounts of the movement preserve, often without dates.
Risings and revolts
Cultivators of the Bhattiyat wazarat, in the lower part of the state, refused the revenue demand and the begar obligation and boycotted state works, in the first collective agrarian action recorded in Chamba.
Outcome: The agitation was suppressed and its organisers arrested, but the grievance remained the central political question in the state for the next fifty years.
The Chamba People's Defence League of 1932 and the Chamba Sevak Sangh of 1936 took up unpaid porterage and the conduct of the state's administration, moving from social work into political demands for representative government.
Outcome: The Sevak Sangh was banned and continued from Dalhousie, outside the state's jurisdiction; the demands it raised were carried forward by the praja mandal.
The praja mandal, sending representatives to the All India States People's Conference, pressed for responsible government in the state and then for its merger.
Outcome: Chamba merged into the newly formed Himachal Pradesh on 15 April 1948.
People
| Name | Years | Movement | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vidya SagarChamba | dates not established | Chamba Sevak Sangh and Chamba Riyasti Praja Mandal | One of the principal organisers of the Chamba movement and among its representatives to the All India States People's Conference. |
| Vidhya DharChamba | dates not established | Chamba Riyasti Praja Mandal | Named among the Chamba delegates to the All India States People's Conference and an organiser of the state's praja mandal. |
| Gulam RasoolChamba | dates not established | Chamba Riyasti Praja Mandal | One of the Chamba praja mandal's organisers and delegates, in a movement whose leadership was drawn from both the state's communities. |
| Prithi ChandChamba | dates not established | Chamba Riyasti Praja Mandal | Named among the Chamba representatives to the All India States People's Conference sessions of the 1940s. |
| Jaswant RaiChamba | dates not established | Chamba Sevak Sangh | An organiser of the Chamba Sevak Sangh's campaign against begar after its formation in 1936. |
| Daulat RamChamba | dates not established | Chamba Sevak Sangh and praja mandal | Named among the workers of the Chamba movement in the 1930s and 1940s. |
| M. A. AhmedChamba | dates not established | Chamba People's Defence League | Associated with the formation of the Chamba People's Defence League in 1932, the state's first body to make an explicitly political demand for civil rights and better administration. |
People from Chenab Valley & Chamba who resisted colonial rule, and the regional risings and revolts that shaped that resistance. (10)