Nimar · Central Highlands & Forest Belt
Resistance in Nimar was Bhil and Bhilala before it was ever Congress, and it came out of the ranges rather than off the valley floor. The floor itself was divided between British Nimar district and the Holkar, Scindia and Barwani territories, which made a district-wide campaign of the kind organised in a British province difficult to mount, and the mass politics of the plains reached the trough late. What the record does hold is two generations of armed resistance from the slopes — the rising of 1857 and 1858 in the Barwani and Sendhwa ghat country, and Tantya Bhil's decade from 1878, which was about forest, land and revenue at least as much as about the Company or the Crown. Both leaders were tried in British courts and both died in custody, and both survive in Nimadi and Bhili oral repertory more fully than in any file.
Risings and revolts
Bhil bands rose across the Barwani, Sendhwa and Satpura ghat country during the revolt, along the road between the Narmada and the Tapti. Bhima Nayak's force met Captain Keating's column and got away from it, and the rising went on after the main revolt had been put down elsewhere.
Outcome: Suppressed over the following years. Bhima Nayak was taken in 1861 and deported to the Andaman Islands.
An armed band kept in the field for more than ten years across the Vindhya and Satpura country between Indore and Khandwa, taking government treasure and redistributing part of it.
Outcome: Tantya Bhil was taken after being lured to a meeting on a promise of pardon, sentenced at the Jabalpur sessions court on 19 October 1889 and hanged on 4 December 1889.
People
| Name | Years | Movement | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bhima NayakBarwani and the Satpura ghats, western Nimar | c. 1840–1876 | 1857 | Bhil leader of the ghat country between the Narmada and the Tapti. He met Tatya Tope during the revolt and evaded Captain Keating's column, and kept the Sendhwa ghat road unusable for a period after the main revolt had ended.Captured in 1861 and deported to the Andamans; died at Port Blair on 29 December 1876. |
| Tantya BhilBorn at Pandhana, Nimar; active between Indore and Khandwa | c. 1840–1889 | Bhil resistance | Kept an armed band in the ranges for more than a decade from 1878, taking government treasure and distributing part of it, which is why he holds a place in Nimadi and Bhili oral repertory that the court record does not explain.Sentenced at Jabalpur on 19 October 1889 and hanged on 4 December 1889. |
| Makhanlal ChaturvediBorn at Makhan Nagar in the Narmada belt; edited Karmavir from Khandwa in east Nimar | 1889–1968 | Congress and nationalist journalism | Poet in Hindi and editor of the nationalist weeklies Prabha, Pratap and Karmavir, the last of which he ran from Khandwa, which gave the valley a nationalist press of its own rather than one imported from Nagpur or Allahabad.Repeatedly imprisoned under British rule. |
People from Nimar who resisted colonial rule, and the regional risings and revolts that shaped that resistance. (5)