Two things shape resistance in Garhwal, and neither is a national campaign. The first is that after 1815 the region was two jurisdictions, so a movement in British Garhwal was a colonial matter and a movement in Tehri was a subject's quarrel with his own raja - which is why the Tiladi firing of 1930 was carried out by a princely state's own forces and why the Praja Mandal here demanded representative government rather than independence. The second is forests. Hill farming runs on grazing, leaf fodder and fuel taken from common forest, and both administrations reclassified that forest as reserved state property in the early twentieth century. Almost every rising here between 1921 and 1944 begins there. The famous exception happened outside the region entirely: on 23 April 1930 Garhwali soldiers at Peshawar refused an order to fire, which is the single act from these hills that entered the national story.
The coolie-begar refusal14 January 1921
Hill villagers were required to provide unpaid porterage, supplies and labour to touring officials, a burden recorded in village registers and falling on the households along the routes. At the Uttarayani fair at Bageshwar a very large gathering swore to refuse the demand, and the village headmen threw the registers into the Saryu. The refusal ran through Garhwal as well as Kumaon.
Outcome: The practice was abolished by the administration; it remains the most complete success of any hill campaign of the period.
The Peshawar refusal of the Garhwal Rifles23 April 1930
Soldiers of the Garhwal Rifles, ordered to fire on unarmed demonstrators at Kissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar during a Khudai Khidmatgar satyagraha, refused the order and grounded arms.
Outcome: Sixty-seven men were court-martialled. Barrister Mukandi Lal appeared for them; the death sentence on the platoon commander Chandra Singh was commuted to life imprisonment, and he served eleven years, released on 26 September 1941.
The Tiladi firing in the Rawain valley30 May 1930
Tehri state's forest settlement of 1927–28 withdrew customary rights of grazing, fodder-lopping and fuel-collection and added a livestock tax. Four organisers were arrested on 20 May; villagers assembled at Tiladi, near Barkot, as a mahapanchayat to demand their release and the withdrawal of the settlement, and the state's forces opened fire on the assembly.
Outcome: The official count of the dead was eighteen; contemporary estimates ran far higher. Wounded villagers were arrested and tried for sedition, and a number died in custody. The settlement was not withdrawn.
The Tehri Rajya Praja Mandal1939–1947
Founded on 23 January 1939 to demand a representative assembly, civil liberties and an end to arbitrary forest and revenue exactions in Tehri state. It was a movement against a princely government rather than against the colonial one, and it was met with prohibition orders and imprisonment.
Outcome: Its founder Sri Dev Suman died in Tehri jail on 25 July 1944 after an eighty-four-day hunger strike. Tehri Garhwal state acceded to India in 1949.