BharatSangraha

Rarh · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain

Freedom fighters

Rarh's resistance runs in two streams that never joined. The older is agrarian and pre-national: the Chuar disturbances in the western Jungle Mahals from the 1760s, the risings of 1798-99, Ganga Narayan's rising of 1832-33, and the spillover of the Santhal Hul into Birbhum in 1855 - all of them fought over revenue, estate auctions and forest rather than over the country. The later stream is Bengali nationalist politics, and its peculiarity is that Rarh produced people who acted elsewhere: Rash Behari Bose organised in Delhi and then from Tokyo, Batukeshwar Dutt acted in the Central Legislative Assembly at Delhi, and the region's most quoted nationalist voice was a poet from a colliery village who was tried for sedition in Calcutta. The one place the region built its own institution was Manbhum, where a headmaster and a lawyer resigned their professions in 1921 and made an ashram at Purulia the base for the movement in the western districts.

Risings and revolts

The Chuar disturbances1760s-1809

Sustained rural resistance across the Jungle Mahals - Bishnupur, Barabhum, Dhalbhum, Manbhum and Midnapore - by Bhumij and other communities and by the paik militias of dispossessed chiefs, against Company revenue demand and the auctioning of estates for arrears. The peak years were 1798-99 under Durjan Singh, Lal Singh and Mohan Singh; Rani Shiromani directed resistance from Karnagarh in the south.

Outcome: Suppressed piecemeal over four decades. The Company reorganised the tract, eventually constituting the Jungle Mahals as a separate administrative unit.

Ganga Narayan's rising1832-33

Ganga Narayan Singh brought together Bhumij, Kurmi and Santal villages across Barabhum and the neighbouring Jungle Mahals and for a period held most of the tract.

Outcome: He was killed on 6 February 1833. The rising closed the Chuar sequence, and the administrative reorganisation that followed reassigned the district boundaries of the western uplands.

Non-cooperation in Manbhumfrom 1921

Nibaran Chandra Dasgupta resigned as headmaster of Purulia Zilla School in 1921 to join the non-cooperation movement and was imprisoned; Atul Chandra Ghosh gave up his legal practice at the same time. Together they founded Shilpashram at Purulia, a rural industry and khadi ashram that became the base of the movement in the western districts, and the Bengali paper Mukti.

Outcome: Shilpashram remained the organising centre for the Manbhum districts through the following two decades, and was visited by Gandhi, Rajendra Prasad and Subhas Chandra Bose.

Quit India in the Rarh districtsAugust 1942

Following the arrests of 9 August, rail and telegraph lines were cut and government offices attacked across Bardhaman, Birbhum and Bankura, with the coalfield and the main line east from Asansol among the principal targets.

Outcome: The movement was suppressed within a few months; mass arrests followed across the western districts.

People

NameYearsMovementKnown for
Rani ShiromaniKarnagarh, on the southern edge of the region died 1812 Chuar disturbances Directed resistance from Karnagarh during the peak years of the Chuar disturbances, using the paik militia of the estate against Company revenue collection.Taken into custody by the Company; she died in 1812.
Rash Behari BoseSubaldaha, Bardhaman district 1886-1945 Revolutionary Organised the Delhi conspiracy of 1912 and was a principal planner of the attempted rising of February 1915. He escaped to Japan later that year, took Japanese citizenship, and in 1942 founded the Indian Independence League there, handing its military arm to Subhas Chandra Bose in 1943.Died in Tokyo in January 1945.
Batukeshwar DuttOari, Khandaghosh, in Purba Bardhaman 1910-1965 Revolutionary - Hindustan Socialist Republican Association With Bhagat Singh, threw two bombs into the Central Legislative Assembly at Delhi on 8 April 1929 and scattered leaflets against the Trade Disputes and Public Safety Bills. The action was designed to be audible rather than lethal, and both men stayed to be arrested.Sentenced to transportation for life in 1929 and sent to the Cellular Jail; imprisoned again for four years after Quit India.
Kazi Nazrul IslamChurulia, near Asansol 1899-1976 Literature of the national movement Poet and songwriter from a colliery village, whose poem Bidrohi (1922) and journal Dhumketu made him the most widely read nationalist voice in Bengali after Tagore. He wrote in both the Hindu and Muslim devotional idioms of Bengal and refused to keep them apart.Imprisoned in 1923 for sedition over Dhumketu; his statement to the court, Rajbandir Jabanbandi, was published and circulated widely.
Rabindranath TagoreSantiniketan, Birbhum 1861-1941 Swadeshi Took part in the agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905, writing songs for it and proposing the rakhi-bandhan tying as its public form, and later withdrew from the movement's direction. He built Santiniketan and Sriniketan in Birbhum as an alternative to the colonial education system.Renounced his knighthood on 31 May 1919 in protest at the killings at Jallianwala Bagh.
Nibaran Chandra DasguptaPurulia; born at Bikrampur 1876-1935 Non-cooperation Resigned as headmaster of Purulia Zilla School in 1921 to join non-cooperation and was imprisoned. He founded Shilpashram at Purulia with Atul Chandra Ghosh and started Mukti, the first Bengali periodical in the district.Died at Shilpashram on 17 July 1935.
Atul Chandra GhoshPurulia; born at Khandaghosh in Bardhaman 1881-1969 Congress, non-cooperation Gave up his legal practice during the non-cooperation movement and co-founded Shilpashram at Purulia, which became the base of Congress organisation in the Manbhum districts. He edited the weekly Mukti.

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