BharatSangraha

Kumaon · Western Himalaya & Trans-Himalaya

Freedom fighters

Kumaon was annexed outright in 1815, not restored as a princely state, so its politics were aimed at the colonial administration directly and specifically at two of its departments. The first grievance was coolie-begar: the obligation on hill villages to supply unpaid porters, provisions and labour to touring officials, recorded in village registers, which fell hardest on the households nearest the roads. The second was forest. When reservation restricted grazing, leaf-fodder and fuel collection, villagers responded by burning reserved forest on a very large scale. Both campaigns peaked in 1921 and both largely succeeded, which is unusual enough to be the main point: the coolie-begar registers were destroyed in public and the practice abolished, and the forest campaign produced elected village forest councils by 1931. Individual biography matters less here than those two collective refusals, and the region's most famous political figures were organisers of them rather than martyrs.

Risings and revolts

The rising of 1857 in the Kali valley and the bhabar1857

The revolt reached the foothills rather than the interior ridges. Rebels and sepoys held Haldwani in the bhabar in September 1857, and Kalu Singh Mahara of Bisung, near Lohaghat, is remembered as having raised a band in the Kali and Gumdesh country and attacked the post at Lohaghat.

Outcome: Suppressed. The detail of Mahara's rising rests on later Kumaoni accounts rather than on contemporary record, and specific dates for it are not reliably attested.

The Kumaon forest campaign1916–1921

A campaign against forest reservation and the loss of customary grazing, fodder-lopping and fuel rights. Its principal method was arson in reserved forest - 395 recorded fires across roughly 246,000 acres in 1921 - carried out anonymously and on a scale the forest department could not police.

Outcome: The government appointed the Kumaon Forest Grievances Committee, which examined more than five thousand witnesses; most of its recommendations were accepted, grazing restrictions were relaxed, and the Forest Council Rules of 1931 created elected van panchayats to manage village forest. It is one of the few colonial-era forest agitations in India that got what it asked for.

The coolie-begar refusal at Bageshwar14 January 1921

At the Uttarayani fair, at the confluence of the Saryu and the Gomati, a gathering reported at around forty thousand took an oath at the river to refuse coolie-begar, coolie-utar and coolie-burdayash - the three forms of compulsory unpaid service owed to touring officials. Village headmen then threw the labour registers into the Saryu.

Outcome: The practice was abolished by the administration. Gandhi, visiting Bageshwar in 1929, described it as a bloodless revolution.

Civil disobedience and Quit India in the hills1930–1942

Salt satyagraha, picketing and flag-raising in Almora, Bageshwar and Ranikhet from 1930, and arrests across the hill districts after Quit India in 1942. The Almora flag-raising of 25 May 1930 brought women into the movement here for the first time.

Outcome: Repeated arrests of the Kumaon Parishad leadership; the organisation merged its work with Congress through the 1920s and 1930s.

People

NameYearsMovementKnown for
Kalu Singh MaharaBisung patti, near Lohaghat, Champawat — 1857 Remembered in Kumaoni accounts as the organiser of a band in the Kali and Gumdesh country in 1857 that attacked the post at Lohaghat. He is conventionally called the first freedom fighter of these hills.Imprisoned. The surviving detail is drawn from later regional histories rather than contemporary record, and no death date is reliably attested; it is given here as it is remembered.
Badri Datt PandeyAlmora 1882–1965 Kumaon Parishad; the coolie-begar refusal, 1921 Journalist and organiser. He founded the Almora Akhbar in 1913 and, after it was closed, the weekly Shakti on 15 October 1918, and led the oath-taking at Bageshwar on 14 January 1921 that ended coolie-begar. He also wrote Kumaon Ka Itihas, still the standard regional history, and campaigned against the nayak pratha.Imprisoned repeatedly - in 1921, 1930, 1932, 1941 and again during Quit India in 1942.
Hargovind PantRanikhet and Almora 1885–1957 Kumaon Parishad; the coolie-begar refusal Lawyer who practised at Ranikhet from 1910 and was among the founders of the Kumaon Parishad, the first political organisation in these hills. He financed local nationalist newspapers and was one of the organisers of the Bageshwar refusal of 1921.
Govind Ballabh PantKhoont, Almora district 1887–1961 Kumaon Parishad, then Congress Began in hill politics through the Kumaon Parishad and the forest and coolie-begar grievances before moving to provincial politics; he was injured in the lathi charge on the Simon Commission protest at Lucknow in 1928 and was Premier of the United Provinces from 1937.Imprisoned during civil disobedience and again after Quit India in 1942.
Victor Mohan JoshiAlmora — Kumaon Parishad; the coolie-begar refusal, 1921 Among the leaders of the Bageshwar oath of 14 January 1921 and of the Kumaon Parishad's press and organising work at Almora.
Lala ChiranjilalAlmora — Kumaon Parishad; the coolie-begar refusal, 1921 One of the organisers of the Bageshwar refusal of 1921, and part of the Almora town leadership that connected the bazaar to the village campaign.
Bishni Devi ShahBageshwar and Almora 1902–1972 Civil disobedience, 1930 Led the women who raised the national flag at the Almora Nagar Palika on 25 May 1930 after the procession was stopped, with Durga Devi Pant and Tulsi Devi Rawat. She later sold spinning wheels door to door and managed the women's section of the local Congress committee.Imprisoned at Almora after the flag-raising, and arrested again in 1931; she is described as the first woman from these hills jailed in the freedom movement.

People from Kumaon who resisted colonial rule, and the regional risings and revolts that shaped that resistance. (11)