Subject: History

The Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) has deferred its decision on a recommendation to remove the 1921 Malabar Rebellion martyrs, including Variamkunnaathu Kunhahamad Haji and Ali Musliyar, from the list of India’s freedom fighters.

Malabar Rebellion

• The Malabar Rebellion in 1921 started as resistance against the British colonial rule and the feudal system in southern Malabar but ended in communal violence between Hindus and Muslims.
• There were a series of clashes between Mappila peasantry and their landlords, supported by the British, throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.
• It began as a reaction against a heavy-handed crackdown on the Khilafat Movement, a campaign in defence of the Ottoman Caliphate by the British authorities in the Eranad and Valluvanad taluks of Malabar.
• The Mappilas attacked and took control of police stations, British government offices, courts and government treasuries.

Who was Variyankunna Kunjahammed Haji?

• He was one of the leaders of the Malabar Rebellion of 1921.
• He raised 75000 natives, seized control of large territory from the British rule and set up a parallel government.
• In January 1922, under the guise of a treaty, the British betrayed Haji through his close friend Unyan Musaliyar, arresting him from his hideout and producing him before a British judge.
• He was sentenced to death along with his compatriots.

Back2Basics: “Dictionary of Martyrs” Project

• The project for compilation of “Dictionary of Martyrs” of India’s Freedom Struggle was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, to the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) to commemorate the 150th anniversary of uprising of 1857.
• In this dictionary a martyr has been defined as a person who died or who was killed in action or in detention, or was awarded capital punishment while participating in the national movement for emancipation of India.
• It includes ex-INA or ex-military personnel who died fighting the British.
• Information of about 13,500 martyrs has been recorded in these volumes.

Who are included?

• It includes the martyrs of 1857 Uprising, Jallianwala Bagh Massacre (1919), Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-22), Civil Disobedience Movement (1930-34), Quit India Movement (1942-44), Revolutionary Movements (1915-34), Kissan Movements, Tribal Movements, Agitation for Responsible Government in the Princely States (Prajamandal), Indian National Army (INA, 1943-45), Royal Indian Navy Upsurge (RIN, 1946), etc.

Five Volumes

• Volume 1: In this volume, more than 4400 martyrs of Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh have been listed.
• Volume 2: In this volume more than 3500 martyrs of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jammu & Kashmir have been listed.
• Volume 3: The number of martyrs covered in this volume is more than 1400. This volume covers the martyrs of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Sind.
• Volume 4: The numbers of martyrs covered in this volume is more than 3300. This volume covers the martyrs of Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura.
• Volume 5: The number of martyrs covered in this volume is more than 1450. This volume covers the martyrs of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Try this question from CSP 2020:

Q. With reference to the history of India, “Ulgulan” or the Great Tumult is the description of which of the following event?

(a) The Revolt of 1857

(b) The Mappila Rebellion of 1921

(c) The Indigo Revolt of 1859-60

(d) Birsa Munda’s Revolt of 1899-1900

 

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The Gujarat government has marked 100 years of the Pal-Dadhvav killings, calling it a massacre “bigger than the Jallianwala Bagh”.

Pal-Dadhvav Massacre

• The massacre took place on March 7, 1922, in the Pal-Chitariya and Dadhvaav villages of Sabarkantha district, then part of Idar state.
• The day was Amalki Ekadashi, which falls just before Holi, a major festival for tribals.
• Villagers from Pal, Dadhvav, and Chitariya had gathered on the banks of river Heir as part of the ‘Eki movement’, led by one Motilal Tejawat.
• The movement was to protest against the land revenue tax (lagaan) imposed on the peasants by the British and feudal lords.
• Tejawat, who belonged to Koliyari village in the Mewad region of Rajasthan, had also mobilised Bhils from Kotda Chhavni, Sirohi, and Danta to participate.

The fateful day

• Tejawat had been outlawed by the Udaipur state, which had announced a Rs-500 reward on his head.
• The Mewad Bhil Corps (MBC), a paramilitary force raised by the British that was on the lookout for Tejawat, heard of this gathering and reached the spot.
• On a command from Tejawat, nearly 2000 Bhils raised their bows and arrows and shouted in unison- ‘We will not pay the tax’.
• The MBC commanding officer, HG Sutton, ordered his men to fire upon them creating a huge stampede.
• Nearly 1,000 tribals (Bhils) fell to bullets. While the British claimed some 22 people were killed, the Bhils believe 1,200-1,500 of them died.

Must read:

Important Rebellions and Peasant Movements

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Maharashtra Governor has recently received flak for his remarks on the social reformist couple Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule.

Who were the Phules?

• Mahatma Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule stand out as an extraordinary couple in the social and educational history of India.
• They spearheaded path-breaking work towards female education and empowerment, and towards ending caste- and gender-based discrimination.
• In 1840, at a time when child marriages were common, Savitri at the age of ten was married to Jyotirao, who was thirteen years old at the time.
• The couple later in life strove to oppose child marriage and also organised widow remarriages.

The Phules’ endeavors and legacy

• Education: Jyotirao, the revolutionary that he was, observed the lack of opportunities for education for young girls and women.
• Leaders of the masses: He started to educate his wife at home and trained her to become a teacher. Together, by 1848, the Phules started a school for girls, Shudras and Ati-Shudras in Poona.
• Widow shelter: The historic work was started by Jyotirao when he was just 21 years old, ably supported by his 18-year-old wife. In 1853, Jyotirao-Savitribai opened a care centre for pregnant widows to have safe deliveries and to end the practice of infanticide owing to social norms.
• Prevention of infanticide: The Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha (Home for the Prevention of Infanticide) started in their own house at 395, Ganj Peth, Pune.

The Satyashodhak Samaj:

• Literally meaning ‘The Truth-Seeker’s Society’ was established on September 24, 1873 by Jyotirao-Savitribai and other like-minded people.
• The Samaj advocated for social changes that went against prevalent traditions, including economical weddings, inter-caste marriages, eradication of child marriages, and widow remarriage.
• The Phules also had far-sighted goals — popularising female education, establishing an institutional structure of schools in India, and to have a society where women worked in tandem with men.

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The stalemate continues in Visva-Bharati University as students demand the reopening of hostels and conducting of online examinations.

Visva-Bharati

• Visva-Bharati is a central research university and an Institution of National Importance located in Shantiniketan, West Bengal, India.
• It was founded by Rabindranath Tagore who called it Visva-Bharati, which means the communion of the world with India.
• Until independence, it was a college.
• Soon after independence, the institution was given the status of a central university in 1951 by an act of the Parliament.

Its establishment

• The origins of the institution date back to 1863 when Debendranath Tagore was given a tract of land by the zamindar of Raipur, zamindar of Kirnahar.
• He set up an ashram at the spot that has now come to be called chatim tala at the heart of the town.
• The ashram was initially called Brahmacharya Ashram, which was later renamed Brahmacharya Vidyalaya.
• It was established with a view to encouraging people from all walks of life to come to the spot and meditate.
• In 1901 his youngest son Rabindranath Tagore established a co-educational school inside the premises of the ashram.
• From 1901 onwards, Tagore used the ashram to organize the Hindu Mela, which soon became a center of nationalist activity.

Try this PYQ from CSP 2021:

Q. With reference to Madanapalle of Andhra Pradesh, which one of the following statements is correct?

(a) Pingali Venkayya designed the tricolour Indian National Flag here.

(b) Pattabhi Sitaramaiah led the Quit India Movement of Andhra region from here.

(c) Rabindranath Tagore translated the National Anthem from Bengali to English here.

(d) Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott set up headquarters of Theosophical Society fi rst here.

 

 

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Bihar CM has announced that February 15 would be celebrated as “Shahid Diwas” in memory of the 34 freedom fighters who were killed by police in Tarapur town of Bihar’s Munger district 90 years ago.

Why such move?

• The Tarapur massacre was the biggest carried out by the British police after the one in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in 1919.
• The freedom fighters had never got their due, the CM said.
• PM Modi too had referred to the Tarapur massacre in his Mann ki Baat radio address of January 2021.

Tarapur Massacre: Course of events

• On February 15, 1932, a group of young freedom fighters planned to hoist an Indian national flag at Thana Bhavan in Tarapur.
• Police were aware of the plan, and several officers were present at the spot. Around 2 pm, even as the police carried out a brutal lathicharge, Gopal Singh succeeded in raising the flag at Thana Bhavan.
• A 4,000-strong crowd pelted the police with stones, injuring an officer of the civil administration.
• The police responded by opening indiscriminate fire on the crowd.
• After about 75 rounds were fired, 34 bodies were found at the spot, even though there were claims of an even larger number of deaths.

Trigger for protest

• The hanging of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru in Lahore on March 23, 1931, sent a wave of grief and anger around the country.
• Following the collapse of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, the Mahatma was arrested in early 1932.
• The Congress was declared an illegal organization, and Nehru, Patel, and Rajendra Prasad were also thrown in jail.
• In Munger, freedom fighters Srikrishna Singh, Nemdhari Singh, Nirapad Mukherjee, Pandit Dasrath Jha, Basukinath Rai, Dinanath Sahay, and Jaymangal Shastri were arrested.
• A call given by the Congress leader Sardar Shardul Singh Kavishwar to raise the tricolour over government buildings resonated in Tarapur.

Back2Basics:

https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/explained-jallianwala-bagh-massacre/

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