Vidarbha · Deccan Inland Plateau
Vidarbha had three separate political worlds and they produced three different kinds of resistance. Berar's was old, constitutional and lawyerly, run out of Amravati and Yavatmal by men who had come up through the Home Rule agitation and the provincial legislatures. Wardha's was of national consequence out of all proportion to its size, because from 1936 Gandhi lived at Sevagram and the Congress leadership met there; the Quit India resolution was drafted at Wardha in July 1942. The eastern forests' resistance was to forest and revenue regulation and produced the region's largest local rising of the movement, at Chimur and Ashti in August 1942. One further point about this region has to be stated plainly: the Gondi-speaking east has a far longer history of resistance to outside administration than the documentary record preserves, and the individual names in it are mostly lost.
Risings and revolts
Volunteers defied a prohibition on carrying the national flag in procession through the civil lines at Nagpur, courting arrest in batches over several months; volunteers came in from other provinces to join. Jamnalal Bajaj was among those detained.
Outcome: The dispute was settled by negotiation, the procession was allowed to pass, and those arrested were released.
As part of the civil disobedience movement, cultivators and volunteers in the Central Provinces and Berar broke forest regulations by cutting grass and timber in reserved forest. Madhav Shrihari Aney was arrested at Pusad in Yavatmal district on 10 July 1930.
Outcome: Aney was convicted and imprisoned for six months; the episode gave him the name Loknayak, and forest grievance stayed a live issue in the region long afterwards.
Following the Quit India arrests, crowds at Chimur in the Chandrapur country and at Ashti in Wardha district took over police stations and government offices and held the towns for some days before order was restored. Officials were killed in both places.
Outcome: A mass trial followed, in which a large number of people from both towns were convicted and death sentences were passed; the sentences were later commuted. The detailed record of the trial is held in provincial archives and is not consistently reported in general reference works.
People
| Name | Years | Movement | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Madhav Shrihari AneyWani, Yavatmal district | 1880–1968 | Home Rule League; Congress | Joined the Home Rule League in 1918 and was president of the Vidarbha provincial Congress committee from 1921. Prosecuted for his writing in 1910 and disbarred twice. Arrested during the forest satyagraha at Pusad on 10 July 1930 and imprisoned for six months, after which he was known as Loknayak.President of the Indian National Congress in 1933; later held office and served abroad. |
| Ganesh Srikrishna KhapardeAmravati, in Berar | 1854–1938 | Congress; Home Rule League | A lawyer of Berar and one of Tilak's closest associates, active in the Congress divisions of the 1900s and in the Home Rule agitation, and a member of the central legislature. His diaries are a first-hand source for the politics of the period. |
| Jamnalal BajajWardha | 1889–1942 | Congress | Made Wardha the base of the national movement by persuading Gandhi to move there and giving the land on which Sevagram was built. Detained during the 1923 flag satyagraha at Nagpur, treasurer of the Congress from 1933, and a member of its working committee. He opened his family temple at Wardha to all castes in 1928.Died in 1942. |
| Mohandas Karamchand GandhiSevagram, Wardha district, from April 1936 | 1869–1948 | Congress | Lived at Sevagram from April 1936, which made a village in the Wardha valley the working centre of the national movement for a decade. The Congress Working Committee met at Wardha on 14 July 1942 and adopted the resolution that became the Quit India demand. |
| Vinoba BhaveBorn at Gagode Budruk in Kolaba; based at Wardha and Paunar from 1921 | 1895–1982 | Congress; individual satyagraha | Sent by Gandhi to run the Wardha ashram in 1921, and chosen in 1940 as the first individual satyagrahi, the single person selected to offer public resistance when mass civil disobedience had been ruled out. He was arrested repeatedly through the 1920s and 1930s and served a long sentence during the war. |
| Rashtrasant Tukdoji MaharajYavali, Amravati district | 1909–1968 | Quit India | A singer and preacher who took the movement into village bhajan gatherings across Vidarbha, composing in Marathi and Hindi. He offered satyagraha in 1941.Arrested in 1942 and imprisoned in the Nagpur and Raipur central jails. |
People from Vidarbha who resisted colonial rule, and the regional risings and revolts that shaped that resistance. (9)