BharatSangraha

Desh · Deccan Inland Plateau

Freedom fighters

Three separate currents run through this plateau and they barely touch. The first is the dispossession that followed 1818, which produced armed risings by service and watan communities that had lost their place, from Umaji Naik in the 1820s to Vasudev Balwant Phadke in 1879. The second is agrarian: the debt riots of 1875 and the Mulshi dam satyagraha of the 1920s were about credit and land, not about the empire. The third is Pune's, and it is the one that entered the national record, through newspapers, colleges, the Servants of India Society and a revolutionary current that emerged from the plague administration of 1897. Kolhapur, a princely state, ran on a fourth track entirely, reform legislated from the throne. Only in 1942, in the Satara countryside, do the agrarian and the national strands finally converge.

Risings and revolts

The Ramoshi risings1826–1832 and 1879

Two armed risings, half a century apart, drawn largely from the Ramoshi community, whose hereditary village watch duties and land rights had been unsettled by the settlement after 1818. Umaji Naik operated in the Purandar and Jejuri country from about 1826; Vasudev Balwant Phadke recruited from Ramoshi, Koli, Bhil and Dhangar villages in 1879 and raided Dhamari in Shirur taluka and Palaspe and Chikhali in the Konkan below the ghats.

Outcome: Umaji Naik was hanged at Pune on 3 February 1832. Phadke was captured on 20 July 1879 at Kaladgi, tried at Pune and transported; he died at Aden on 17 February 1883.

The Deccan agrarian riotsMay–June 1875

Cultivators in the Bhimthadi and Indapur country of Pune district, and then across into Ahmadnagar, seized and destroyed the bonds and account books held by rural moneylenders. The trigger was the collapse of cotton prices after the American Civil War ended the boom that had drawn credit into the plateau, combined with a cash revenue demand that did not move with the price.

Outcome: A commission of enquiry reported in 1878, and the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act of 1879 gave courts power to reopen and reduce debt bonds in these districts.

The Mulshi Satyagraha1921–1924

Villagers of the Mulshi valley west of Pune, supported by Pandurang Mahadev Bapat, resisted the submergence of their land under a private hydro-electric dam on the Mula. It is among the earliest organised protests in India against displacement by a dam.

Outcome: The dam was built and the villages submerged; Bapat was imprisoned, and the campaign gave him the name Senapati.

The Satara parallel government1942–1946

After the Quit India arrests of August 1942 the Congress organisation in the Satara and Sangli countryside went underground and set up a parallel administration, running village courts, collecting dues and enforcing decisions through a volunteer body called the Tufan Sena. It operated across the Walwa, Tasgaon, Khanapur and Karad talukas, with Kundal among its centres.

Outcome: It functioned for roughly four years, longer than any comparable parallel government elsewhere in India, and was wound up in 1946.

People

NameYearsMovementKnown for
Umaji NaikPurandar and Jejuri, Pune district 1791–1832 Ramoshi rising Led an armed rising in the hill country south-east of Pune from about 1826, issuing proclamations under his own seal and calling on villages to withhold revenue.Captured after a reward was offered, and hanged at Pune on 3 February 1832.
Rango Bapuji GupteSatara died or disappeared after 1857 1857 Sent to London by Pratapsinh of Satara to petition against the deposition of 1839, he spent some fourteen years there without success. On his return he organised a network across the Satara, Sangli and Kolhapur country in 1857.The plan was discovered before it acted and several of those recruited were executed; Gupte himself disappeared in July 1857 and his end is not documented.
Vasudev Balwant PhadkeBorn at Shirdhon in Panvel; active in Pune district 1845–1883 Armed rising, 1879 Raised a band from the Ramoshi, Koli, Bhil and Dhangar villages of the plateau in 1879 and attacked government treasuries to fund it.Captured on 20 July 1879, tried at Pune and transported; died at Aden on 17 February 1883.
Bal Gangadhar TilakBorn at Ratnagiri; worked at Pune 1856–1920 Congress, then the Home Rule League Co-founded the New English School in 1880, the Deccan Education Society in 1884 and Fergusson College in 1885, and edited Kesari in Marathi and the Mahratta in English from Pune. Organised the public Ganesh festival from 1894 and the Shivaji commemoration from 1895 as a way of taking politics out of the meeting hall. Founded the Home Rule League in 1916.Convicted of sedition in 1897 and again in 1908; imprisoned at Mandalay from 1908 to 1914.
Damodar Hari ChapekarChinchwad and Pune 1869–1898 Revolutionary, 1897 With his brothers Balkrishna and Vasudeo, shot the plague commissioner W. C. Rand and Lieutenant Ayerst at Pune on 22 June 1897, in protest at the conduct of the plague segregation and house-search operations in the city.Damodar was hanged on 18 April 1898; Vasudeo on 8 May 1899 and Balkrishna on 12 May 1899.
Gopal Krishna GokhaleBorn at Kotluk in Guhagar taluka; worked at Pune 1866–1915 Congress; Servants of India Society Taught at Fergusson College, worked through the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, and founded the Servants of India Society at Pune in 1905, the year he presided over the Congress, to train men for full-time public work on a subsistence wage.Died at Bombay on 19 February 1915.
Pandurang Mahadev BapatMulshi, Pune district 1880–1967 Mulshi Satyagraha Led the Mulshi valley's resistance to submergence by a private dam between 1921 and 1924, and was repeatedly imprisoned.Known afterwards as Senapati Bapat; imprisoned again during the 1942 movement.
Shivaram Hari RajguruKhed, Pune district 1908–1931 Revolutionary, Hindustan Socialist Republican Association Convicted in the Lahore conspiracy case for the killing of a police officer at Lahore in December 1928.Executed at Lahore on 23 March 1931.
Nana PatilYedemachindra, Sangli district 1900–1976 Quit India; the Satara parallel government Went underground after August 1942 and organised the parallel administration that ran across the Walwa, Tasgaon, Khanapur and Karad talukas until 1946.Imprisoned repeatedly between 1932 and 1942 and underground for most of the war years.

People from Desh who resisted colonial rule, and the regional risings and revolts that shaped that resistance. (13)