Saurashtra · Arid Northwest
Saurashtra's position is unusual: it produced far more of the national movement's leadership than it hosted of the movement itself. There was almost no British Indian territory in the peninsula — it was several hundred princely states under an agency — so the local fight was with durbars over taxation, assembly and speech, and it took the praja mandal form from 1921 onward, at Bhavnagar first and most visibly at Rajkot in 1938–39. Alongside that runs an older and quite separate armed resistance, the Wagher rising in Okhamandal in the middle of the nineteenth century, and an expatriate strand: a Kathiawari landholder was among the founders of the Indian Home Rule Society in London and of the Paris Indian Society in 1905. And the peninsula's largest contribution left it: Gandhi was born at Porbandar in 1869 and did his political work everywhere but here.
Risings and revolts
Wagher communities of the Okha coast rose against East India Company and Gaekwad authority after the bombardment of the temple town at Bet Dwarka, took Kodinar under Jodha Manek, and were pursued to a last stand at the Abhpara peak in the Barda hills.
Outcome: The rising was suppressed and Okhamandal was afterwards transferred to Baroda state. Accounts differ on the exact years of the main phase, and no single chronology is agreed.
Organisations demanding responsible government, civil liberties and relief from state exactions were formed in the peninsula's larger states, beginning with the Bhavnagar Praja Mandal founded by Balwantrai Mehta in 1921.
Outcome: Leaders were repeatedly imprisoned through the civil disobedience years and again after 1942. The states were merged into a single administration in February 1948.
An agitation in Rajkot state against heavy taxation and against restrictions on speech, assembly and access to education and welfare services, led by U. N. Dhebar and drawing in the wider Kathiawar states' people's movement.
Outcome: Dhebar was imprisoned in 1938–39, and again in 1941 and from 1942 to 1945. Rajkot became the centre of the peninsula's politics for the decade that followed.
People
| Name | Years | Movement | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mohandas Karamchand GandhiBorn at Porbandar; raised at Rajkot | 1869–1948 | Non-cooperation, Civil Disobedience, Quit India | Born at Porbandar on 2 October 1869, where his father was diwan, and educated at Rajkot before leaving for London and then South Africa. His political career was made outside the peninsula, but the Kathiawar states supplied both his origins and, in the Rajkot agitation of 1938–39, one of the few princely-state disputes he involved himself in directly.Assassinated in Delhi on 30 January 1948. |
| Kasturba GandhiPorbandar | 1869–1944 | Civil Disobedience; Quit India | Born at Porbandar in 1869 and married into the same town's merchant world, she took part in civil disobedience in South Africa and in India over four decades.Died in detention at the Aga Khan Palace, Pune, in February 1944. |
| Balwantrai MehtaBhavnagar | 1899–1965 | Bhavnagar Praja Mandal; Civil Disobedience; Quit India | Founded the Bhavnagar Praja Mandal in 1921, the peninsula's first organisation of its kind, and worked through the Kathiawar states' people's movement.Imprisoned for about seven years in total, including two years after the 1930 civil disobedience campaign and three after Quit India in 1942. |
| U. N. DhebarRajkot | — | Rajkot satyagraha; Kathiawar states' people's movement | Led the Rajkot satyagraha of 1938–39 against the state's taxation and its restrictions on speech and assembly, and organised the wider agitation across the Kathiawar states.Imprisoned in 1938–39, again during the individual satyagraha of 1941, and for three years from 1942. |
| Zaverchand MeghaniChotila; worked from Ranpur and Rajkot | 1896–1947 | Non-cooperation and Civil Disobedience; literary | Collected and published the peninsula's oral literature in the volumes of Saurashtra ni Rasdhar, and wrote the nationalist verse of Sindhudo. He edited Phulchhab and wrote for the weekly Saurashtra at Rajkot. Gandhi called him the national poet.Sentenced to two years' imprisonment in 1930 for Sindhudo; died on 9 March 1947. |
| Sardarsinh RanaKanthariya, Kathiawar; later Paris | 1870–1957 | Indian Home Rule Society; Paris Indian Society | A founding member and vice-president of the Indian Home Rule Society in 1905 and, with Bhikaji Cama and Munchershah Godrej, a founder of the Paris Indian Society in the same year. In December 1905 he endowed three fellowships of Rs 2,000 each, announced in The Indian Sociologist, and he was present at the Stuttgart congress of August 1907 at which Bhikaji Cama displayed a flag of Indian independence.Expelled by the French authorities to Martinique in 1911; returned permanently to India in 1955 and died at Veraval in 1957. |
People from Saurashtra who resisted colonial rule, and the regional risings and revolts that shaped that resistance. (9)