A century of sparks: the civil uprisings before 1857

Between the Battle of Plassey and the Revolt of 1857, Company rule faced not silence but a century of sparks: peasants, disbanded soldiers, deposed chieftains and tribal communities rose again and again, in every corner of the subcontinent. Prelims treats them as a match-list of leader, region and year; mains treats them as the essential pre-history of 1857. This compendium gathers them in one place.

Why they kept rising: the common causes

Different regions, same pressures. The Company's land-revenue experiments (Permanent Settlement, Ryotwari, Mahalwari) raised demands to levels peasants could not pay and created new classes of absentee landlords. Annexations and the disbanding of old armies threw thousands of paiks, poligars and gadkaris, men whose livelihood was soldiering, onto the streets. In tribal country, forest laws and bans on shifting cultivation criminalised ways of life. Add religious and political sparks, the Wahabi and Faraizi ferment, the humiliation of deposed rulers, and you get a century in which some part of India was always in revolt.

They failed for shared reasons too: each rising was local and leader-centric, the rebels fought with matchlocks against artillery, and the British combined military suppression with conciliation (tax remissions, recruiting rebels as hill police). What they lacked was an all-India frame. That frame arrived only in 1857, which is why historians read these uprisings as its pre-history.

The typology: Bipan Chandra's three forms of resistance

Historian Bipan Chandra sorts the century of revolts before 1857 into three forms: civil uprisings (by deposed rulers, zamindars and peasants), tribal uprisings (by indigenous communities defending land and custom), and military uprisings (by sepoys against the Company's army). All three share a character: they were traditional and backward-looking (fighting to restore an old order, not to build a new one), localised (each rose in its own region with its own leader), and led by traditional sections of society - rajas, chiefs, holy men - not the English-educated middle class that would lead the movement later.

The civil uprisings, region by region

Poligar wars (1795-1805), Tamil country

The Poligars were warrior-chieftains of the Tamil country who held forts and collected revenue under the Nayaks. When the Company demanded direct revenue control and disarmed them, they rose under leaders like Veerapandiya Kattabomman, hanged in 1799. It took the British five years of campaigning to break the poligar strongholds.

Pazhassi Raja (1797; 1800-05), Malabar

Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja of Kottayam fought the British in two phases from the Wynad forests, using guerrilla warfare with wide peasant support against excessive taxation and broken British promises. The British eventually captured and killed him in 1805, but only after one of the longest resistances in south India.

Velu Thampi's revolt (1808-09), Travancore

Diwan Velu Thampi Dalawa of Travancore rose against British interference after the harsh subsidiary alliance imposed by the Treaty of 1805. His Kundara Proclamation of 1809 openly called for resistance, and Nair troops joined him. Denied full support by the Maharaja and facing internal divisions, he died by suicide in 1809 as British forces closed in.

Paika rebellion (1817), Odisha

The Paikas were the landed militia of the Khurda king, men who held rent-free land in exchange for military service. British annexation of Odisha (1803), harsh land-revenue exactions and the humiliation of the Raja of Khurda pushed them to revolt under Bakshi Jagabandhu Bidyadhar. They briefly took Puri before British military force suppressed the rising; Jagabandhu eventually surrendered.

Kutch rebellion (1816-32)

A long, intermittent rising against British interference in Kutch's internal feuds and administrative changes imposed on the Rao. Local chieftains sustained it for sixteen years; the British won militarily but, chastened by the cost, followed victory with a conciliatory policy.

Bareilly rising (1816) and Hathras (1817)

At Bareilly, Muslims led by Mufti Muhammad Aiwaz rose against a new police tax amid religious tension; over 300 rebels were killed in the suppression. At Hathras, the chief Dayaram resisted from a strong fort against high revenue demands before surrendering to superior British artillery.

Ahom revolt (1828), Assam

After the First Burma War the British tried to annex Ahom territory outright. Gomdhar Konwar and other Ahom leaders rose to restore their kingdom and won initial successes. The British, unwilling to fight a long war in the hills, chose conciliation and handed Upper Assam back to the Assamese king.

Ramosi uprising (1822-29), Western Ghats

The Ramosis were hill communities whose livelihood collapsed with the Maratha defeat. Led first by Chittur Singh and then by Umaji Naik, they took to plundering and armed resistance. The British suppressed the revolt militarily, then characteristically recruited Ramosis as hill police to keep order.

Pagal Panthis (1825-33), Bengal

The Pagal Panthis were religious mendicants whose following turned militant under Karam Shah (the founder) and Tipu Shah (the anti-British phase). They fought zamindars and British forces to protect peasants from oppression and unjust rent claims. Tipu Shah was captured in 1833, but the government conceded rent reductions, which fragmented the movement and restored peace.

Kuka movement (1840s-72), Punjab

The Kukas, followers of Baba Ram Singh in the Namdhari Sikh tradition, fused religious and social reform with anti-British politics: abolition of caste, widow remarriage, hand-spun cloth, and boycott of British goods and institutions, decades before these became nationalist staples. The British deported Ram Singh to Rangoon and crushed the movement between 1863 and 1872.

Gadkari revolt (1844), Kolhapur

The Gadkaris were the hereditary fort-guards of Kolhapur in Maharashtra. The British takeover of Satara lands in 1844 abolished their status and rent-free holdings; they seized the Samangarh and Bhudargarh forts and set up a parallel government before the British army suppressed them.

Kolhapur and Savantvadi revolts

Companion risings to the Gadkari revolt: disbanded military classes rose in Kolhapur while Savantvadi rose against the British deposition of its local ruler. Both were put down by military action, followed by new laws to curb dissent.

The Wahabi movement

A religious-reform movement turned anti-British: inspired by Syed Ahmed of Rai Bareilly, the Wahabis declared jihad first against the Sikh kingdom of Punjab from their base at Sithana in the northwest, and then against the British. British military operations weakened it, with repression continuing into the 1860s. Its reformist face is covered in the socio-religious reform article.

The North-East frontier: the uprisings the mainland forgets

Beyond the Ahom revolt already profiled here, the frontier produced its own cluster. Before 1857: the Khasi revolt (1829-33) led by Tirot Sing of Nongkhlaw against British occupation of the hills, and the Singpho rebellion (1829-33) in Assam. After 1857: the Kuki revolt (1917-19) against wartime labour recruitment, the Zeliangrong movement of the 1920s led by Jadonang, the Heraka movement continued by Gaidinliu, the Phulaguri Dhawa of 1861, and the Nupi Lan of 1904 - Manipur's first women's war. (The full frontier table sits in modern-30's 'North-East frontier at a glance.')

The tribal uprisings the other articles miss

The great tribal revolts, Santhal, Birsa's Ulgulan, Kol, Rampa, are covered in the tribal movements article. These five have no home elsewhere.

• Sardari / Larai movement (1890s), Chotanagpur: began against landlords and turned against British rule over tribal rights, revenue demands and eviction from land. It matured into the Sardari movement of the 1890s.
• Naikada movement (1860s), MP and Gujarat: a rising against British policies and local oppression; limited in success but persistent in resistance.
• Khonda Dora campaign (1900), Visakhapatnam: led by Korra Mallya against British-backed local chiefs after the death of the tribals' own Raja; harshly suppressed.
• Bhuyan and Juang rebellions (1867-91), Odisha: led by Tarna Nayak and Dharni Dhar Nayak against British-supported exploitative chiefs; twenty-four years of intermittent resistance.
• Devi movement (1922-23), South Gujarat: under Devi Salabai, a protest of tribals against landlords and moneylenders, marked by ritual offerings; it faced strong suppression.

The military uprisings: sepoys before 1857 (UPSC 2019)

The sepoys were 'peasants in uniform,' and they mutinied long before 1857. The causes recur in every mutiny: unequal treatment (lower pay, fewer promotions than British soldiers), mistreatment and racial contempt, resentment at foreign service across the sea, shared political grievances, and religious flashpoints - the Vellore Mutiny of 1806 exploded when the Madras Army ordered sepoys to replace their turbans with a hat-like shako. The General Service Enlistment Act of 1856, which required recruits to serve overseas, was the last straw before the great revolt.

The roll-call: the Bengal sepoy mutiny of 1764; Vellore 1806; the 47th Native Infantry at Barrackpore (1824); the Grenadier Company revolt in Assam (1825); Sholapur (1838); and the 34th, 22nd, 66th and 37th Native Infantry mutinies of 1844, 1849, 1850 and 1852. Each was suppressed, but each taught the next generation of sepoys that the Company's army could be defied.

The prelims match-list: leader, region, year

Surendra Sai of Sambalpur: the revolt's longest fighter

Surendra Sai (1809-1884) was the tribal chief of Sambalpur in western Odisha who fought the British for nearly four decades, longer than almost any other leader of the 1857 era. He first took up arms in the 1827-1840 phase, when the British set aside his claim to the Sambalpur throne and tightened their grip on the region; he was captured and imprisoned. Released during the upheaval of 1857, he led the rising across the Sambalpur region, running a guerrilla resistance from the forests that tied down British columns for years.

Why he matters for the exam: Surendra Sai is the bridge between the pre-1857 civil uprisings and the Revolt of 1857 itself - proof that 1857 in central India was not a sudden mutiny but the continuation of a decades-old tribal resistance. Re-arrested in 1864, he died in Asirgarh fort jail in 1884, unbroken to the end.

• 1827-1840: first resistance - opposes the British settlement of the Sambalpur succession; captured.
• 1857-1862: leads the Sambalpur rising; guerrilla war from the forests of western Odisha.
• 1864-1884: re-arrested; dies in Asirgarh jail - the revolt's longest-suffering prisoner.

Key Terms

• forest laws and bans on shifting cultivation: Colonial forest laws, culminating in the Indian Forest Act of 1927, criminalized shifting cultivation (jhum, podu, bewar), restricted tribal access to forests and created reserved and protected forests under state control. They disrupted tribal livelihoods and fuelled revolts such as Birsa Munda's ulgulan and the Bastar rebellion. UPSC relevance: colonial economic policy and tribal movements; a recurring theme in modern-history questions. Indian Forest Act, 1927
• British interference in Kutch's internal feuds: British interference in Kutch's internal feuds describes how the East India Company exploited succession disputes and factional strife in the Kutch state to impose the treaties of 1816 and 1819, deposing Rao Bharmalji II and installing a minor under a British-supervised regency. The episode exemplifies the wider pattern of internal disorder serving as a pretext for British paramountcy over princely states. For UPSC it illustrates subsidiary-alliance-era expansion before the formal doctrine of lapse.
• Bhuyan and Juang rebellions (1867-91), Odisha: The Bhuyan and Juang rebellions are the tribal uprisings of Keonjhar in Odisha, first in 1867-68 led by Ratna Nayak against the British-backed installation of Dhanurjaya Bhanja, and again in 1891 under Dharanidhar Nayak. They defended the tribes' customary role in choosing their raja and resisted colonial revenue and forest policies. They matter for UPSC as classic cases of tribal resistance to the colonial disruption of traditional authority. Ratna Nayak was captured and executed in 1868 after the first uprising was crushed with troops drawn from neighbouring states.
• Sardari / Larai movement (1890s), Chotanagpur: The Sardari / Larai movement (1890s), Chotanagpur, is the climactic phase of the Munda agrarian agitation in which Munda and Oraon farmers, led by their Sardars, refused to pay rent to zamindars over begari (forced labour) and illegal rent enhancement. By 1887 the rent refusal had spread widely, and the movement peaked around 1895, when the young Birsa Munda emerged as its charismatic religious-political leader. It is a key UPSC topic on pre-Ulgulan tribal unrest. The agitation peaked in 1895 as Birsa Munda emerged in the Ranchi region of Chotanagpur.
• Naikada movement (1860s), MP and Gujarat: The Naikada movement is the tribal revolt of the Naikda forest tribes of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat in the 1860s against British officers and caste-Hindu oppression. Led by Rup Singh and the religious leader Joria Bhagat, the rebels attacked police stations in 1868 aiming to establish a Dharma Raj under their own chiefs. It exemplifies the religious-millenarian strand of tribal uprisings and is a standard prelims entry in lists of 19th-century tribal revolts. The 1868 Naikda rising in the Panch Mahals under Rup Singh and Joria Bhagat
• Tarna Nayak and Dharni Dhar Nayak: The names point to Nayak figures from Odisha's tribal history, but the extraction is a fragment and publicly traceable records do not firmly establish who Tarna Nayak and Dharni Dhar Nayak were or which uprising they joined. It likely comes from an account of a 19th-century tribal resistance in Odisha. For UPSC, treat it as a reminder that many tribal leaders remain under-documented in standard sources.
• Khonda Dora campaign (1900), Visakhapatnam: The Khonda Dora campaign of 1900 is the uprising of the Khonda Dora tribals of the Dabur region in the Visakhapatnam Agency. Led by Korra Mallaya, who claimed to be an avatar of the Pandavas and promised that magic would turn the tribals' bamboos into guns and the government's weapons into water, it fused millenarian belief with anti-colonial anger. It is a distinctive prelims fact in the tribal-revolt series. Korra Mallaya's claim to be an avatar of the Pandavas
• Devi movement (1922-23), South Gujarat: The Devi movement was an Adivasi socio-religious reform wave in South Gujarat in 1922-23. Tribal communities, gathering around goddess-centred gatherings led by local mediums, pledged to give up liquor, toddy and meat, observe personal cleanliness, and adopt Gandhian programmes like prohibition and boycott of foreign goods. It was an early tribal assertion of self-reform against exploitation by moneylenders and liquor contractors. For UPSC it links tribal movements, Gandhian constructive work and the Raniparaj identity. The Adivasi conference at Shekhpur in Mahuva taluka in January 1923 resolved to start a Seva Sangh for the economic, social, religious and political betterment of the Adivasis.

• General Service Enlistment Act (1856): Required Bengal Army recruits to serve overseas; a direct trigger of the 1857 revolt.

• Syed Ahmed of Rai Bareilly: Syed Ahmed of Rai Bareilly is Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi (1786-1831), leader of the Wahhabi movement in India. Preaching a return to pure Islam through the Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya, he declared jihad against the Sikh kingdom in the north-west and established a theocratic base at Peshawar before being killed at the Battle of Balakot in 1831. For UPSC, his movement is a classic example of a 19th-century religious-political resistance and appears in GS-1 peasant and tribal uprising themes. Battle of Balakot, 1831
• Kundara Proclamation of 1809: The Kundara Proclamation of 1809 is the call to arms issued by Velu Thampi Dalawa, the Dalawa (prime minister) of Travancore, at Kundara in January 1809, urging the people to rise against British domination. It followed the British attempt to disband Travancore's army and reduce its ruler's power. For UPSC, it is an early example of organized anti-British resistance in South India, predating 1857 by nearly five decades. Velu Thampi Dalawa's proclamation at Kundara, 11 January 1809

• 47th Native Infantry (1824): Mutinied at Barrackpore against orders to embark for Burma.

Practice questions