Utkal · Eastern Coastal Plains
Resistance on this coast has an unusually early start and then a long gap. The rising of 1817 is not a forerunner of anything that came after it — it was fought by a service militia over a specific and recent loss of land tenure, and once it was suppressed the countryside had no organisation left. What filled the gap from 1903 was a language movement rather than a national one: the argument was that Odia-speaking districts were split between Bengal, Bihar and Madras and neglected by all three, and it was pressed through conferences, petitions and newspapers for thirty-three years before it succeeded. Congress politics arrived on top of that, not instead of it, which is why the same men appear in the salt satyagraha of 1930 and in the campaign for a province.
Risings and revolts
After the Company's occupation of 1803, the terms agreed with Mukunda Deva II of Khurda were not honoured. Paiks were mobilised by the Rajguru, Jayakrushna Rajguru Mahapatra, and the Khurda fort was contested.
Outcome: Khurda was taken and the Raja removed to Puri; the Rajguru was tried and executed in 1806, and the Khurda state's remaining authority was dismantled.
A rising of the paiks, the hereditary militia of the Khurda country, whose rent-free service lands had been resumed after 1803. The grievances were specific — resumed jagirs, the salt monopoly, the demonetisation of the cowrie so that revenue had to be paid in silver, and estates farmed out to bidders from outside Odisha. Beginning in March 1817 with Kandhs from Ghumsur and joined by the paiks under Bakshi Jagabandhu, the rising took Banpur and Khurda before Company forces recovered the towns in April.
Outcome: Authority was restored across the district by May 1817, with operations in the forest tracts continuing to 1825. Sentences ranged from imprisonment to transportation and execution. A commission afterwards conceded that the revenue settlement had been the cause.
A conference movement founded at Cuttack in 1903, led initially by Madhusudan Das, arguing that the Odia-speaking tracts scattered across the Bengal, Bihar and Madras administrations should be brought under one. It worked through annual sessions, memorials, evidence to commissions and the Odia press.
Outcome: Odisha was constituted a separate province on 1 April 1936 — the first Indian province drawn on language rather than on conquest or convenience.
Volunteers marched from the Swaraj Ashram at Cuttack to the Balasore coast and made salt at Inchudi on 14 April; Kujang in Jagatsinghpur and Latra in Puri were the delta's other centres. From 20 April women joined the camps in numbers, which was new in Odisha.
Outcome: Mass arrests and eighteen-month sentences for the organisers; the campaign is the point at which national politics acquired a rural base on this coast.
People
| Name | Years | Movement | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jayakrushna Rajguru MahapatraKhurda | c. 1739–1806 | The Khurda rising of 1804 | Rajguru and effective administrator of Khurda; mobilised the paiks when the 1803 terms were not honoured.Tried and executed in 1806. |
| Bakshi Jagabandhu BidyadharKhurda and Rorang | died 1829 | The Paika rebellion of 1817 | Hereditary commander of the Khurda militia; led the rising after his own estate was attached in 1814.Surrendered in 1825 and died a prisoner at Cuttack in 1829. |
| Madhusudan DasSatyabhamapur, Cuttack | 1848–1934 | The Odia language movement; Utkal Sammilani | The province's first graduate and first practising lawyer, he founded the Utkal Sammilani in 1903 and argued the case for a single Odia-speaking administration for three decades. He also set up craft manufactories at Cuttack to give the argument an economic side. |
| Gopabandhu DasSuando, Puri district | 1877–1928 | Utkal Sammilani, then Non-cooperation | Founded the Satyabadi school at Sakhigopal in 1909 and the newspaper Samaj in 1919, and organised relief in flood and famine years. He carried the Utkal Sammilani's demand into Congress politics after 1920.Imprisoned during non-cooperation. |
| Gopabandhu ChoudhuryCuttack | 1895–1958 | Non-cooperation; salt satyagraha | Resigned a deputy magistracy in 1921 to join non-cooperation, and led the march from the Swaraj Ashram at Cuttack to Inchudi in April 1930.Arrested on 8 April 1930 and sentenced to eighteen months. |
| Rama Devi ChoudhuryCuttack | 1899–1985 | Salt satyagraha; constructive work | Led the entry of women into the Odisha salt camps from 20 April 1930, and afterwards ran khadi and relief work in the delta villages rather than returning to platform politics.Imprisoned more than once between 1930 and 1942. |
| Gouranga Charan DasBagalpur, Jagatsinghpur | 1899–1972 | Salt satyagraha; Congress Socialist Party; Quit India | Led a contingent in the salt movement at Inchudi and organised tenant cultivators in the delta afterwards.First arrested on 13 April 1930; imprisoned for more than six years in total. |
People from Utkal who resisted colonial rule, and the regional risings and revolts that shaped that resistance. (11)