Malnad · Deccan Inland Plateau
Malnad's resistance is early, rural and local, and it happened a generation before 1857. Two risings define it — the peasant revolt of 1830–31 in the Nagar country, directed at the Mysore state's own revenue farmers, and the rising of 1837 that followed the annexation of Kodagu, fought by cultivating households from both sides of the ghat crest. Neither had anything national about it; both were about revenue and about the removal of a familiar ruler. Organised nationalist politics arrived late and by an unusual door — the Kodagu planters' associations of the 1920s, and Gandhi's tours of the hill towns in the early 1930s — and the record of it is collective rather than biographical, so far fewer individual lives are documented here than the size of the movement would suggest.
Risings and revolts
Cultivators in and around Nagar, the old Bidanur, rose against the revenue exactions of the Mysore state's farmers of revenue. The rising spread through the north-western taluks and the maharaja's government could not contain it.
Outcome: In 1831 the East India Company assumed direct administration of Mysore under a Commission, which lasted until the Rendition of 1881.
A short campaign between the Haleri raja Chikka Virarajendra and the East India Company, ending in his deposition.
Outcome: Kodagu was annexed and administered as the separate province of Coorg, which it remained until 1947.
Three years after the annexation, cultivating households from Amara Sullia, Madikeri, Siddapura, Bhagamandala, Shanivarasanthe, Bellare, Puttur and Nandavara took up arms against the Company in a rising that crossed the ghat crest. Gowda, Bunt, Kudiya and other households joined it, and Guddemane Appaiah Gowda is the leader most consistently named.
Outcome: The rising was put down by Company troops. It is remembered in Kannada as the Amara Sulliada Swatantrya Sangrama and belongs to the record of the coast as much as to that of the hills.
People
| Name | Years | Movement | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guddemane Appaiah GowdaThe Kodagu and Sullia border country | — | The rising of 1837 | The leader most consistently named in accounts of the 1837 rising, which followed the deposition of the raja of Kodagu and drew households from both sides of the ghat crest. |
| Chikka VirarajendraMadikeri | deposed 1834 | The Coorg War | The last raja of Kodagu, whose refusal of the Company's terms brought on the campaign of 1834 and whose deposition ended the kingdom.Deposed and removed from Kodagu in 1834. |
| Pandyanda BelliappaKodagu | — | Congress; Gandhian constructive work | Entered public life in 1921 through the Coorg Planters' Association and became the province's leading Gandhian. Gandhi visited Gonikoppal in Kodagu at his invitation in 1933–34, on the anti-untouchability tour.Courted arrest during the freedom struggle. |
| Kadidal ManjappaHarohalli, Shivamogga district | 1908–1992 | Congress; the 1938 flag satyagraha and Quit India | Joined the Congress in 1938 and took part in the Shivapura flag satyagraha of that year and then in the Quit India movement.Imprisoned during Quit India. |
| Khadi ShankarappaShivamogga | — | Khadi and the Congress in Shivamogga | A khadi worker of Shivamogga remembered in the town's record of the movement; the name by which he is known is the work he did. |
People from Malnad who resisted colonial rule, and the regional risings and revolts that shaped that resistance. (8)