Neither half of this region was under direct British administration — Jaipur was a princely state and Shekhawati a group of thikanas held under it — so the fight was with the durbar and the thikanedars rather than with a colonial district officer. It also started in the fields, not the city. The Jat cultivators of Sikar and Jhunjhunu organised from 1922 against enhanced revenue shares and levies, and by 1934 were holding gatherings of thousands, including one of women alone. The Praja Mandal in Jaipur city, with its demand for responsible government, came afterwards and was in part a response to what the countryside had already built. Both movements were largely non-violent and both were organised through caste panchayats rather than through Congress committees, which is why they are often missing from national accounts.
The Shekhawati and Sikarwati kisan movement1922–1947
Jat cultivators in the Sikar and Jhunjhunu thikanas organised against an increased revenue share and against customary levies, through kisan panchayats rather than through any party. Thakur Deshraj took a leading role from 1931, and a large assembly, the Jat Prajapati Mahayagya, was held at Sikar on 20 January 1934.
Outcome: Confrontations at Jaisinghpura on 21 June 1934 and at Kudan on 25 April 1935 left cultivators dead; Kudan was raised in the House of Commons. Agreements followed in 1935 and again in 1947, the later one settled through Hiralal Shastri and Tika Ram Paliwal.
The women's assembly at Katrathal25 April 1934
More than ten thousand women assembled at Katrathal, in Sikar, in protest at the treatment of women by a thikana official, chaired by Kishori Devi with Uttama Devi among the organisers.
Outcome: Recorded as the first occasion on which women took public part in a peasant agitation in Rajasthan; it changed the scale of the Shekhawati movement and the state's willingness to use force against it.
The Jaipur Praja Mandal satyagraha1938–1939
The Jaipur Praja Mandal, founded in 1931 by Kapoorchand Patni and reorganised in 1938 under Jamnalal Bajaj, demanded civil liberties and responsible government in the state and launched a satyagraha in 1939.
Outcome: Leaders including Hiralal Shastri were imprisoned; representative government was conceded in Jaipur state in March 1948.