The Prajamandal movement was the struggle of the people of the princely states of Odisha, the Garhjat, for civil liberties, relief from feudal exactions and responsible government, which gathered strength in the late 1930s and culminated in the merger of the states with the province of Orissa in 1948–49. The twenty-six Garhjat states covered more than half the land area of the Odia-speaking region and contained a large part of its population, including many of its tribal communities. Their people lived under rulers who, secure in the protection of the British paramount power, exercised almost unchecked authority, and they suffered from forced labour (bethi or begari), arbitrary levies for royal ceremonies (magan), the obligation to provision officials free of cost (rasad), state monopolies on essential goods, restrictions on the use of forests, and the absence of freedom of speech, assembly and the press. The Prajamandals, or people’s associations, formed in one state after another from the late 1930s, gave voice to these grievances and organised the people to resist them, and their struggle became one of the most important and most heroic chapters in the history of the freedom movement in Odisha.
This article examines the Prajamandal movement in detail. It begins with the Garhjat states, their rulers and their relationship with the British, and the conditions of life of their people. It then traces the course of the movement: the foundation of the Orissa States People’s Conference at Cuttack on 20 June 1931 and its revival under Sarangadhar Das in the later 1930s; the great wave of agitation in 1938–39, with the movements in Nilagiri, Dhenkanal, where the twelve-year-old boatman Baji Raut was shot dead on 11 October 1938, Talcher, where some sixty thousand people left their homes in protest, and Ranpur, where the Political Agent Major Bazalgette was killed on 5 January 1939; the work of the Orissa States Enquiry Committee chaired by Harekrushna Mahtab; the Quit India phase of 1942, with the Chasi Mulia Raj in Talcher; the revival of the movement after the war; and the merger of the states with Orissa, beginning with the takeover of Nilagiri on 14 November 1947, the agreements signed at Cuttack with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on 14–15 December 1947, and the integration of the states on 1 January 1948 and of Mayurbhanj on 1 January 1949. It then considers the movement’s leaders and organisations, its character and social base, a set of case studies, and the ways in which Odia historians have interpreted it.
The article argues that the Prajamandal movement was at once a part of the national movement and a distinct struggle with its own aims and character. It was directed primarily against the rulers of the states and the feudal order they upheld, rather than directly against British rule, and it drew its strength from the grievances of peasants and tribal communities against forced labour, oppressive taxation and the denial of forest rights. It was supported by the Congress and its leaders in British Odisha, and it shared their aim of national freedom, but it was also a movement for social and political democracy within the states, and its achievement was not only the end of colonial rule but the end of princely rule. Without the Prajamandal movement, the merger of the states with Orissa in 1948, which completed the unification of the Odia-speaking region and brought the people of the states into a democratic polity, would have been far more difficult, and perhaps impossible.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction and background
1.1 The Garhjat states
The Garhjat, literally the “land of forts”, was the name given to the princely states of the Odia-speaking interior, the hill and forest country that lay behind the coastal plain. By the twentieth century there were twenty-six such states: Athgarh, Athmallik, Bamra, Baramba, Baudh, Bonai, Daspalla, Dhenkanal, Gangpur, Hindol, Kalahandi, Keonjhar, Khandapara, Mayurbhanj, Narasinghpur, Nayagarh, Nilagiri, Pal Lahara, Patna, Rairakhol, Ranpur, Sonepur, Talcher and Tigiria, together with Seraikela and Kharsawan in the north. They varied enormously in size and character, from Mayurbhanj, a large and comparatively developed state with its own railway and administrative services, to tiny states such as Tigiria and Baramba that consisted of little more than a few villages. Many of their ruling families claimed descent from Rajput or other prestigious origins, but many were in fact of local or tribal origin, and their legitimacy had traditionally depended on rituals and relationships that acknowledged the rights of the tribal and peasant communities they ruled. Together the states covered more than half the land area of the Odia-speaking region and contained a large part of its population, including the greater part of its tribal communities.
1.2 The states under British paramountcy
The British established their supremacy over the Garhjat states in the years after the conquest of the Maratha province of Cuttack in 1803. The rulers of the states that had been tributaries of the Marathas entered into engagements with the East India Company, acknowledging its paramountcy and agreeing to pay a fixed tribute, and in return the British left them in control of their internal affairs. These states, known as the Tributary Mahals of Orissa, were supervised by a Superintendent based at Cuttack, while others were attached to Chota Nagpur or, after 1862, to the Central Provinces; in 1905 the Odia-speaking states of the Central Provinces and Chota Nagpur were transferred to the supervision of the Orissa authorities, and in the 1930s the states were grouped under the Eastern States Agency with a Political Agent for the Orissa states. The rulers’ powers were defined and limited by successive sanads, which gave the British the right to intervene in cases of misrule, to control the most serious criminal cases and to supervise succession, and the British did intervene, as in Keonjhar after the Bhuyan risings and in Kalahandi after 1882 (see Tribal Uprisings in Odisha). But in general the paramount power supported the rulers against their subjects, regarding them as loyal allies and as a bulwark of order in the interior, and this support removed the traditional checks on princely power.
1.3 The condition of the people
Under this system, the people of the Garhjat states lived in conditions that many contemporaries described as feudal. The most resented burden was bethi or begari, forced and unpaid labour exacted by the rulers and their officials for the construction of roads, palaces and other works, for carrying the baggage of officials, for royal hunts and for the personal service of the ruler and his household. The people were also required to pay magan, contributions demanded on the occasion of royal marriages, births, funerals and festivals, and rasad, the free supply of provisions to the ruler and to touring officials. In addition, the rulers levied heavy and arbitrary taxes on land, on forest produce and on markets; they established monopolies on essential goods such as salt and kerosene, which were sold to the people at inflated prices; and they restricted the people’s traditional rights in the forests, on which tribal communities in particular depended for food, fuel, grazing and shifting cultivation. The administration of justice was often arbitrary, the police were the instruments of the ruler’s will, and there was no freedom of speech, assembly or the press. Any attempt at protest could be met with fines, imprisonment, the confiscation of property or expulsion from the state.
These conditions were not uniform: some rulers were enlightened and progressive, some states had begun to introduce modern administration, schools and hospitals, and the burdens of the people varied from state to state. But the common features of the Garhjat system, the absolute power of the ruler, the exaction of forced labour and arbitrary levies, the restriction of forest rights and the denial of civil liberties, provided the grievances on which the Prajamandal movement was built.
1.4 Earlier resistance
The people of the Garhjat states had a long history of resistance to oppressive rulers. The Bhuyan risings in Keonjhar in 1868 and 1891–93, the Kandha rising in Kalahandi in 1882 and many smaller conflicts showed the readiness of tribal and peasant communities to rise against rulers who overstepped the limits of custom. In the twentieth century, the spread of education, the influence of the national movement in British Odisha, the movement of people between the states and the coastal districts, and the creation of the separate province of Orissa in 1936 brought new ideas into the states. Young men from the states studied in Cuttack, took part in the Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements, and returned with the conviction that the people of the states, too, were entitled to the rights for which the national movement was fighting. It was from this conjunction of old grievances and new ideas that the Prajamandal movement emerged.
2. Sources and historiography
The history of the Prajamandal movement presents particular difficulties. The princely states kept their own records, many of which were lost, dispersed or destroyed at the time of the merger, and those that survive reflect the perspective of rulers who regarded the Prajamandals as seditious conspiracies against legitimate authority. The records of the British Political Agents and of the Eastern States Agency are more systematic but reflect the paramount power’s preference for order and its alliance with the rulers. The Prajamandal movement itself produced few archives of its own, for its organisations were often banned and its leaders imprisoned or exiled, and much of its history has been preserved in the records of the Congress in British Odisha, in the press of the province, in the report of the Orissa States Enquiry Committee, and in the recollections of participants. The historian must therefore assemble the history of the movement from fragmentary and partisan sources, reading the records of rulers and Political Agents against the accounts of the movement’s supporters, and supplementing both with oral testimony.
2.1 The report of the Orissa States Enquiry Committee
The most important single source for the conditions in the Garhjat states and the grievances of their people is the report of the Orissa States Enquiry Committee, set up under the auspices of the Orissa States People’s Conference and chaired by Harekrushna Mahtab, whose report was issued in 1939. Its members, according to Mahanta, included Satish Chandra Bose, Balwantrai Mehta, Braja Sundar Das and Sarangadhar Das. The committee collected evidence from the people of the states on forced labour, taxation, monopolies, forest restrictions, the administration of justice and the denial of civil liberties, and its report presented a comprehensive indictment of the Garhjat system. As a document produced by a committee sympathetic to the Prajamandal movement, it must be read as a statement of the movement’s case rather than as a neutral survey; but its detail and range make it indispensable.
2.2 Official records
The records of the Political Agent for the Orissa states, the Eastern States Agency, the Political Department of the Government of India and the Government of Orissa, preserved in the Odisha State Archives and the National Archives of India, document the course of the agitations, the responses of the rulers and the paramount power, the incidents of firing and repression, and the negotiations that led to the merger. They are particularly valuable for establishing the chronology and scale of events such as the Talcher exodus and the Ranpur incident, but they consistently present the Prajamandal movement as the work of outside agitators from British Odisha and minimise its popular support.
2.3 The press and the Congress
The Odia and English press of British Odisha, especially Harekrushna Mahtab’s Prajatantra, the Samaja and other nationalist papers, reported the Prajamandal agitations extensively, published the grievances of the people of the states, and campaigned on their behalf. Gandhi’s Harijan also commented on events in the Orissa states, especially the Talcher exodus. The records of the Utkal Pradesh Congress Committee, the All India States Peoples’ Conference and the Orissa States People’s Conference contain resolutions, correspondence and reports on the movement. These sources are partisan, but they preserve the voice of the movement in a way that official records do not.
2.4 Memoirs and oral history
Many leaders and participants of the Prajamandal movement left memoirs or were interviewed after independence, and local historians in the former states have collected oral testimony, songs and traditions about the movement, especially concerning dramatic episodes such as the death of Baji Raut and the Talcher exodus. Such material preserves the experience of ordinary participants, including tribal communities and women, who are almost absent from the written record, but it must be used critically, since memory has been shaped by later commemoration.
2.5 Key documents examined
| Document | Date | What it tells us | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sanads and engagements with the rulers | 1803 onwards | Legal relationship between the paramount power and the states | Silent on conditions of the people |
| Proceedings of the Orissa States People’s Conference | from 1931 | Demands and organisation of the movement | Reflects the views of its leadership |
| Report of the Orissa States Enquiry Committee | 1939 | Comprehensive account of grievances in the states | Produced by a committee sympathetic to the movement |
| Political Agent’s and Eastern States Agency records | 1930s–1940s | Course of agitations; official responses; firings | Minimises popular support; sides with rulers |
| Prajatantra, Samaja and other papers | 1930s–1940s | Reports of agitations and repression | Nationalist and partisan |
| Merger agreements | December 1947 – 1949 | Terms of the integration of the states with Orissa | Formal; silent on popular pressure |
2.6 How the historiography developed
The first histories of the Prajamandal movement were written by its participants and by historians of the freedom movement, who presented it as part of the national struggle and celebrated its martyrs, Baji Raut above all. Later studies, including detailed regional studies of particular states such as Dhenkanal and Talcher, examined the movement’s organisation, leadership and social base more closely, and historians of peasant and tribal movements, notably Biswamoy Pati, emphasised its agrarian and anti-feudal character and the tensions between its popular base and its middle-class leadership. These studies are discussed in section 7.
3. The course of the movement
The Prajamandal movement developed in several distinct phases. After a slow beginning in the early 1930s, it was revived in the later 1930s and rose in a great wave of agitation in 1938–39, when Prajamandals were formed in many states and the people of Nilagiri, Dhenkanal, Talcher, Ranpur and other states rose against their rulers. Repression and the outbreak of the Second World War brought a lull, broken by the Quit India movement of 1942. After the war, the movement revived with new force and merged with the demand for the integration of the states with Orissa, which was achieved in 1948–49. The drawing below sets out the principal phases.
The two great waves of 1938–39 and 1946–49 had different aims. In the first, the Prajamandals sought reform within the states: the abolition of forced labour and oppressive levies, the restoration of forest rights, civil liberties and the introduction of responsible government under the rulers. In the second, as independence approached and the rulers sought to preserve their power, the movement increasingly demanded the end of princely rule itself and the merger of the states with Orissa.
3.1 The Orissa States People’s Conference, 1931–1937
The first attempt to organise the people of the Garhjat states as a whole was the Orissa States People’s Conference, also called the Garhjat Praja Sammilani, which held its first meeting at Cuttack on 20 June 1931 under the presidency of Bhubanananda Das, according to Mahanta. It was inspired by the All India States Peoples’ Conference, founded in 1927 to represent the people of the princely states throughout India, and by the example of the national movement in British Odisha. In its early years, however, it achieved little: the rulers banned its activities, its leaders were mostly men from British Odisha with limited influence in the states, and the Congress, under Gandhi’s policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of the states, gave it only limited support.
The Conference was revived in the later 1930s through the efforts of Sarangadhar Das, a native of Dhenkanal who had studied chemistry in the United States and who became the principal organiser of the movement, earning the name Garhjat Gandhi. According to Mahanta, its second session, held on 23–24 June 1937, was chaired by the Congress leader Pattabhi Sitaramayya, and appointed an enquiry committee; an article in the Orissa Review dates Sitaramayya’s visit to Cuttack and the launch of the movement to 24 June 1936. Whatever the precise date, the revival coincided with the formation of the Congress ministry in Orissa in 1937 and with a change in Congress policy towards the states, which culminated in the Haripura session of 1938, where the Congress, while maintaining that the struggle in the states should be conducted by their own people, recognised their right to responsible government. From 1938 Prajamandals were formed in one state after another.
3.2 Nilagiri, 1938
In Nilagiri, a small state adjoining Balasore district, the Prajamandal was organised under the presidency of Kailash Chandra Mohanty, with Banamali Das as secretary. On 11 July 1938, the day of the Ratha Yatra, it held a mass assembly to press its demands for the abolition of bethi and other exactions and for civil liberties. The ruler responded with repression, arresting about 120 people and fining fifty of them Rs. 50 each, according to Mahanta; but Sarangadhar Das and Harekrushna Mahtab intervened, and negotiations with the ruler secured some concessions. Nilagiri, close to British territory and with an active Prajamandal, remained a centre of the movement, and in 1947 it became the first princely state in India to be taken over and integrated with a province.
3.3 Dhenkanal and Baji Raut, 1938
The most bitter struggle of 1938 took place in Dhenkanal, whose ruler, Shankar Pratap Singh Deo, was notorious for the severity of his administration. The Dhenkanal Prajamandal, led by Harmohan Patnaik and Baishnab Charan Patnaik, demanded the abolition of forced labour, oppressive taxes and monopolies, the restoration of forest rights and civil liberties. On 13 September 1938, according to Mahanta, a rally of more than fifty thousand people was held, and the ruler, supported by police brought from other states and from British territory, responded with mass arrests, the burning of villages and collective fines. On 11 October 1938, a police party pursuing Prajamandal workers reached the Nilakanthapur ghat on the Brahmani river near Bhuban and ordered the boatman, Baji Raut, a twelve-year-old member of the Banar Sena, the youth wing of the Prajamandal, to ferry them across. When he refused, they shot him dead, and others who had gathered at the ghat were also killed. Baji Raut became the youngest martyr of the freedom movement in Odisha and a national symbol of the struggle of the people of the states.
3.4 Talcher and the exodus, 1938–1939
In Talcher, a Prajamandal was established on 6 September 1938 under Pabitra Mohan Pradhan, according to an article in the Orissa Review, and it demanded relief from forced labour, oppressive taxes and monopolies. The ruler responded with arrests and repression, and the people adopted a form of protest unique in the history of the national movement: a mass exodus, or hijrat. From 8 November 1938, about sixty thousand of the state’s eighty-six thousand people left their homes and crossed into the neighbouring British district of Angul, where they lived in camps for about eight months. The exodus attracted national attention and the sympathy of Gandhi, and in 1939 an agreement negotiated by Harekrushna Mahtab, which Mahanta calls the Hessene–Mahtab Accord and which Gandhi welcomed, provided for reforms and allowed the people to return to their homes in June 1939.
3.5 Ranpur and the death of Major Bazalgette, 1939
In Ranpur, a small state near Nayagarh, the Prajamandal agitation came to a violent climax on 5 January 1939. The Political Agent for the Orissa states, Major R. L. Bazalgette, came to Ranpur to deal with the agitation, and when a crowd gathered, he fired on it, wounding or killing a protester. The crowd then attacked and killed him. The British responded with severe repression: troops were sent into the state, villages were punished, and many people were arrested. Raghunath Mohanty was sentenced to death and hanged for the killing; the fate of Dibakar Parida is reported differently, Mahanta’s article stating that he was transported to the Andaman Islands and another account stating that both men were executed. The Ranpur incident was used by the British and the rulers to portray the Prajamandal movement as violent and dangerous, and it led Gandhi to counsel restraint, but it also showed the depth of popular anger against the Garhjat system.
3.6 The movement in other states
The Prajamandal movement spread to many other states. According to the Orissa Review, Prajamandal agitations took place in Nilagiri, Dhenkanal, Talcher, Ranpur, Nayagarh, Hindol, Athmallik, Sonepur, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Khandapara and Tigiria, among others. In Nayagarh, the movement was led by Sridhar Das and Narayan Nanda, according to GKToday. In Gangpur, in the north-west, a movement of the Munda and other tribal communities against oppressive rents and forest restrictions was suppressed by police firing at Simko in April 1939. The intensity of the movement varied from state to state, depending on the severity of the ruler, the strength of the local leadership and the proximity of British territory, but by 1939 there were few states in which the people had not organised to press their demands.
3.7 The Enquiry Committee and the Congress
The Orissa States Enquiry Committee, chaired by Harekrushna Mahtab and including Satish Chandra Bose, Balwantrai Mehta, Braja Sundar Das and Sarangadhar Das, investigated conditions in the states and issued its report in 1939. Its account of forced labour, arbitrary taxation, monopolies, forest restrictions and the denial of civil liberties provided a powerful indictment of the Garhjat system and strengthened the case for reform. The Congress ministry in Orissa, though it had no authority over the states, gave the Prajamandals moral support and sheltered the Talcher refugees in Angul, and Congress leaders, Mahtab above all, mediated between the people and the rulers. In 1939, the All India States Peoples’ Conference, meeting at Ludhiana under the presidency of Jawaharlal Nehru, gave the movement in the Orissa states national prominence.
3.8 Quit India and the Chasi Mulia Raj, 1942
The outbreak of the Second World War and the resignation of the Congress ministry in 1939 brought a period of repression in the states, and many Prajamandal leaders were imprisoned. In August 1942 the Quit India movement revived the struggle. In Talcher, on 6–7 September 1942, following rumours about the fate of Pabitra Mohan Pradhan, the people rose and established a parallel government, the Chasi Mulia Raj, or rule of peasants and labourers. The British suppressed it with machine guns, bombs and aircraft; according to the Orissa Review, four people were killed and more than a hundred injured. In Dhenkanal, Nilagiri and other states there were similar outbreaks, suppressed with similar severity.
3.9 The post-war revival and the merger, 1946–1949
After the war, the Prajamandal movement revived with new energy, and as independence approached, its demands shifted from reform within the states to the end of princely rule and the merger of the states with Orissa. Some rulers, anxious to preserve their power after the lapse of British paramountcy, sought to form an Eastern States Union with the states of Chhattisgarh, and resisted merger. The Prajamandals, supported by the Congress government of Orissa under Harekrushna Mahtab, responded with mass agitation, and in several states the administration broke down. In Nilagiri, where disorder threatened, the Government of India authorised the Orissa government to take over the administration on 14 November 1947, making Nilagiri the first princely state in India to be integrated with a province. On 14–15 December 1947, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon met the rulers of the Orissa states at Cuttack, and, according to GKToday, twenty-five of the twenty-six signed agreements of merger. The states were integrated with Orissa on 1 January 1948. Mayurbhanj, which had held out, acceded in October 1948 and merged on 1 January 1949, while Seraikela and Kharsawan were assigned to Bihar. The merger ended princely rule in Odisha, completed the territorial unification of the Odia-speaking region, and brought the people of the former states into a single democratic polity.
4. Leaders and organisations
The leadership of the Prajamandal movement was drawn from two sources: educated men from the states themselves, many of whom had studied or worked in British Odisha and taken part in the national movement there, and Congress leaders from British Odisha who took up the cause of the people of the states. Below them, the movement depended on local organisers in the villages, many of them peasants, teachers and small traders, and on the participation of large numbers of ordinary people, including tribal communities and the young men and boys of the Banar Sena.
4.1 Sarangadhar Das, the Garhjat Gandhi
Sarangadhar Das (1886–1957) was the principal architect of the Prajamandal movement. A native of Dhenkanal, he had gone to the United States as a young man and studied at the University of California at Berkeley, worked in the sugar industry and returned to India with a commitment to social reform and nationalism. In the later 1930s he revived the Orissa States People’s Conference, organised Prajamandals in many states, served on the Orissa States Enquiry Committee, and led the movement in Dhenkanal and elsewhere. His devotion to the cause of the people of the states, and his commitment to non-violence, earned him the name Garhjat Gandhi. After independence he became a member of the Constituent Assembly and of Parliament, associated with the socialist movement.
4.2 Harekrushna Mahtab and the Congress
Harekrushna Mahtab (1899–1987), the leading Congress figure in Odisha, played a central role in the Prajamandal movement as chairman of the Orissa States Enquiry Committee, as mediator in Nilagiri and Talcher, where he negotiated the agreement that ended the exodus, and, above all, as Chief Minister of Orissa from 1946, when he pressed for the merger of the states and worked with Sardar Patel to achieve it. His role reflected the Congress’s growing involvement in the affairs of the states and its determination to see them integrated with the rest of India. Other Congress leaders of British Odisha, including Nabakrushna Choudhury and Malati Choudhury, also supported the movement, and Malati Choudhury later founded the Baji Raut Chhatravas in Angul.
4.3 Leaders in the states
In the individual states, the movement was led by local leaders who often paid a heavy price for their activities. In Dhenkanal, Harmohan Patnaik and Baishnab Charan Patnaik led the Prajamandal and the Banar Sena. In Talcher, Pabitra Mohan Pradhan led the Prajamandal, the exodus of 1938 and the Chasi Mulia Raj of 1942, and he later became a leading figure in the politics of independent Odisha. In Nilagiri, Kailash Chandra Mohanty and Banamali Das led the movement. In Nayagarh, Sridhar Das and Narayan Nanda were prominent. The Orissa Review names other leaders of the movement, including Balunkeswar Acharya, Radhanath Rath, Maheswar Subahu Singh and Braja Kishore Dhal. Many of these leaders were imprisoned, exiled from their states or forced to work underground, and their families suffered persecution.
4.4 Martyrs
The Prajamandal movement produced its own martyrs, whose memory became a source of inspiration. Baji Raut, shot at Bhuban on 11 October 1938, is the most famous; others were killed with him at the Nilakanthapur ghat. In Ranpur, Raghunath Mohanty was hanged for the killing of Major Bazalgette. In Talcher, in Gangpur and in other states, people were killed in police firings. These martyrs, many of them poor peasants and tribal people, are commemorated in their localities and in the public memory of Odisha.
4.5 Principal organisations
| Organisation | Founded | Character and role |
|---|---|---|
| All India States Peoples’ Conference | 1927 | National body representing the people of the princely states; held its 1939 session at Ludhiana under Nehru |
| Orissa States People’s Conference (Garhjat Praja Sammilani) | Cuttack, 20 June 1931; revived 1936–37 | Coordinating body of the movement in the Orissa states |
| Prajamandals of individual states | mostly from 1938 | People’s associations in Nilagiri, Dhenkanal, Talcher, Ranpur, Nayagarh and other states |
| Banar Sena | late 1930s | Youth wing of the Prajamandal; Baji Raut was a member |
| Orissa States Enquiry Committee | appointed 1937; reported 1939 | Investigated conditions in the states; chaired by H. K. Mahtab |
| Chasi Mulia Raj | Talcher, September 1942 | Short-lived parallel government of peasants and labourers |
5. Character and social base of the movement
The Prajamandal movement had a character distinct from that of the national movement in British Odisha. Its immediate adversary was not the British government but the rulers of the states and the feudal order they upheld, and its demands were for relief from specific burdens, forced labour, arbitrary levies, monopolies and forest restrictions, and for civil liberties and responsible government, rather than for national independence as such. At the same time, it was closely linked to the national movement, drew on its leaders, methods and ideals, and became, by 1947, part of the final struggle for the freedom and unity of India. Understanding the movement requires attention both to its local roots and to its national connections.
5.1 Peasants and agrarian grievances
The backbone of the Prajamandal movement was the peasantry of the states, who bore the burden of forced labour, arbitrary levies and heavy taxation. For them, the movement was first and foremost a struggle against bethi, magan and rasad, against monopolies that made salt and kerosene expensive, and against the exactions of the rulers’ officials. The mass participation of peasants gave the movement its strength, as the Dhenkanal rally of more than fifty thousand people in September 1938 and the Talcher exodus of some sixty thousand showed; and it gave the movement an agrarian and anti-feudal character that distinguished it from the more middle-class nationalism of the coastal towns. The tension between the peasants’ desire for immediate relief and the leadership’s more political aims was a recurring theme of the movement.
5.2 Tribal communities
Many of the people of the Garhjat states belonged to tribal communities, and their participation was central to the movement in many states. For them, the restriction of forest rights, the prohibition of shifting cultivation, the exactions of forced labour and the intrusion of outsiders were the most pressing grievances, continuing the concerns that had driven the tribal uprisings of the nineteenth century (see Tribal Uprisings in Odisha). The movement in Gangpur, among the Mundas, and the participation of tribal communities in Dhenkanal, Talcher and Nilagiri showed that the Prajamandal movement drew on older traditions of tribal resistance and gave them a new organisational form.
5.3 Youth and women
Young people played a prominent part in the movement. The Banar Sena, the youth wing of the Prajamandal, drew boys and young men into the struggle as messengers, volunteers and lookouts, and the death of the twelve-year-old Baji Raut made the Banar Sena famous throughout India. Women also took part, in the exodus from Talcher, in processions and meetings, and in sustaining families whose men were imprisoned or in hiding, though their role has been less fully documented than that of women in British Odisha.
5.4 The middle-class leadership
The leadership of the movement came largely from educated men of the states and from Congress leaders of British Odisha. They gave the movement its organisation, its connections with the national movement and its political programme, and they negotiated on its behalf with the rulers and the paramount power. Their aims, civil liberties, responsible government and eventually merger with Orissa, were political, and they sought to channel popular anger into disciplined, non-violent agitation. The relationship between this leadership and the peasant and tribal masses was not always smooth: the masses were more interested in immediate relief from exactions than in constitutional reform, and their anger sometimes broke out in violence, as at Ranpur, which the leadership deplored.
5.5 Relations with the Congress and Gandhi
The relationship between the Prajamandal movement and the Congress evolved over time. In the early 1930s the Congress followed a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of the states, which limited its support for the Orissa States People’s Conference. From 1938, after the Haripura session, the Congress recognised the right of the people of the states to responsible government while leaving the conduct of their struggle to themselves, and in Odisha, where the Congress was in office from 1937 to 1939 and where its leaders had close ties with the states, it gave the Prajamandals considerable support. Gandhi took a close interest in the Orissa states, expressed his sympathy for the people of Talcher and his satisfaction with the agreement that ended the exodus, and counselled non-violence after the Ranpur incident. After 1946, the Congress government of Orissa under Mahtab became the principal ally of the Prajamandals in the struggle for merger.
5.6 Variations between states
The movement varied considerably from state to state. It was strongest in the small and medium states close to British Odisha, such as Nilagiri, Dhenkanal, Talcher, Ranpur and Nayagarh, where the influence of the national movement was greatest, communications were easiest and refuge in British territory was close at hand. It was weaker in the larger and more remote states, and in states such as Mayurbhanj, whose rulers had introduced a measure of modern administration and reform, the movement took a more moderate form. The character of individual rulers also mattered: the more oppressive the ruler, the more bitter the struggle.
6. Case studies
The five case studies below examine particular episodes of the Prajamandal movement in closer detail. Each illuminates a broader feature of the movement: the sacrifice of ordinary people in the face of princely repression; the power of collective non-violent protest; the eruption of popular violence and its consequences; the breakdown of princely authority on the eve of independence; and the negotiated end of princely rule.
Case study 1: Baji Raut and the Nilakanthapur ghat, 11 October 1938
In the autumn of 1938 the Dhenkanal Prajamandal was engaged in a bitter struggle with the ruler, Shankar Pratap Singh Deo, who had brought in police from neighbouring states and British territory to crush the movement. On the night of 10–11 October, a police party pursuing Prajamandal workers reached the Nilakanthapur ghat on the Brahmani river near Bhuban, where the Banar Sena had been posted to watch the crossing. The police ordered the boatman, the twelve-year-old Baji Raut, to ferry them across. He refused, and the police shot him dead; several others who had gathered at the ghat were also killed. The bodies were brought to Cuttack, where the funeral procession became a great demonstration of popular grief and anger.
Significance. The death of Baji Raut transformed the Prajamandal movement in Dhenkanal into a cause that resonated throughout Odisha and India. His youth, his poverty and the simplicity of his act of defiance made him the perfect symbol of the struggle of the people of the states against the overwhelming power of their rulers, and the poet Sachidananda Routray’s poem on his death became one of the best-known works of Odia patriotic literature. The episode exposed the brutality of the Garhjat system and the complicity of the paramount power, and it strengthened the determination of the Congress to support the people of the states.
Case study 2: The Talcher exodus, 1938–1939
When the ruler of Talcher responded to the Prajamandal’s demands with repression, the people chose a remarkable form of protest. From 8 November 1938, according to the Orissa Review, about sixty thousand of the state’s eighty-six thousand inhabitants left their homes, fields and possessions and crossed into the British district of Angul, where they lived in camps for some eight months, supported by the Congress and by public contributions. The exodus drew national attention, and the agreement negotiated by Harekrushna Mahtab, welcomed by Gandhi, allowed the people to return in June 1939 with promises of reform.
Significance. The Talcher exodus was one of the largest acts of collective non-violent protest in the history of the Indian national movement. By withdrawing en masse from the state, the people of Talcher demonstrated that the ruler’s power depended on their labour and their revenue, and that it could be undermined by the simple act of leaving. The exodus showed the extraordinary organisational capacity of the Prajamandal and the depth of popular commitment to its cause, and it compelled both the ruler and the paramount power to negotiate. It also anticipated the more radical rising of 1942, when the people of Talcher established the Chasi Mulia Raj.
Case study 3: Ranpur, 5 January 1939
In Ranpur, a small state near Nayagarh, the Prajamandal agitation had produced a tense confrontation between the people and the ruler. On 5 January 1939, the Political Agent for the Orissa states, Major R. L. Bazalgette, arrived to deal with the situation. When a crowd gathered, he fired on it, and the crowd, enraged, attacked and killed him. The British responded with a punitive expedition, arrests and trials; Raghunath Mohanty was hanged for the killing, while the fate of Dibakar Parida is reported differently in different sources.
Significance. The Ranpur incident was the most violent episode of the Prajamandal movement and the only one in which a senior British officer was killed. The British and the rulers used it to portray the movement as violent and dangerous and to justify repression throughout the states, and Gandhi used it to urge the Prajamandals to adhere strictly to non-violence. For historians, the episode shows both the depth of popular anger against the Garhjat system and the difficulty the leadership faced in keeping that anger within non-violent bounds. Raghunath Mohanty is remembered in Odisha as a martyr of the movement.
Case study 4: Nilagiri, November 1947
After independence, the ruler of Nilagiri, like several other rulers in Odisha, resisted the demands of the Prajamandal and the pressure for merger. As agitation intensified and the administration of the state broke down amid unrest, the Government of India authorised the Government of Orissa to take over the administration of Nilagiri, which it did on 14 November 1947, according to GKToday.
Significance. The takeover of Nilagiri was the first integration of a princely state with a province in independent India, and it set a precedent for the integration of the other Orissa states and, in time, of princely states throughout the country. It showed that the Government of India, under Sardar Patel, would not allow the rulers to preserve their independence against the wishes of their people, and that the Prajamandal movement had made princely rule untenable. The episode gave the Orissa government and the Prajamandals decisive momentum in the negotiations that followed.
Case study 5: The Cuttack meeting, 14–15 December 1947
On 14–15 December 1947, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Minister for States, and V. P. Menon, Secretary of the States Ministry, met the rulers of the Orissa states at Cuttack. Some rulers had sought to preserve their power through an Eastern States Union, but Patel made clear that the Government of India would not support them against the demands of their people, and, according to GKToday, twenty-five of the twenty-six rulers signed agreements of merger. The states were integrated with Orissa on 1 January 1948, and Mayurbhanj followed on 1 January 1949.
Significance. The Cuttack meeting marked the end of princely rule in Odisha and the culmination of the Prajamandal movement. The merger was achieved by negotiation, but the negotiation was made possible by the years of agitation that had undermined the rulers’ authority and by the determination of the Orissa government under Mahtab and of the Government of India under Patel. The integration of the Orissa states became a model for the integration of princely states elsewhere in India, and it completed, in large measure, the territorial unification of the Odia-speaking region that had been the aim of the Odia movement since the nineteenth century (see The Odia Movement).
7. Odia historians, memory and the main debates
The Prajamandal movement has attracted the attention of Odia historians as one of the most dramatic and consequential episodes of the freedom movement in Odisha. Their interpretations have differed in emphasis, reflecting different views of the relationship between the movement and the national struggle, of its social character and of the role of its leaders, and several questions remain under discussion.
7.1 The nationalist interpretation
The earliest and most widely held interpretation presents the Prajamandal movement as part of the national movement, the extension of the freedom struggle into the princely states. Historians writing in this tradition, including those associated with the history of the freedom movement in Odisha prepared under Harekrushna Mahtab’s direction, emphasised the leadership of the Congress, the role of Mahtab, Sarangadhar Das and their colleagues, the sacrifices of martyrs such as Baji Raut and Raghunath Mohanty, and the culmination of the movement in the merger of 1948. This interpretation captures an essential truth, for the movement was inspired and supported by the national movement and shared its aims, but it tends to subordinate the movement’s local and social character to its national significance.
7.2 The anti-feudal and agrarian interpretation
Social historians, notably Biswamoy Pati in Resisting Domination: Peasants, Tribals and the National Movement in Orissa, 1920–50, have emphasised the agrarian and anti-feudal character of the Prajamandal movement. In this view, the movement was driven by the grievances of peasants and tribal communities against forced labour, oppressive taxation and the denial of forest rights, and its mass base gave it a radicalism that its middle-class leadership did not always share or control. Episodes such as the Talcher exodus, the Chasi Mulia Raj and the Ranpur incident show the strength of popular initiative, and the relationship between the leadership and the masses was marked by tension as well as cooperation. This interpretation has enriched the history of the movement by recovering the experiences of its ordinary participants.
7.3 Regional studies
Detailed studies of the movement in particular states, such as Dhenkanal and Talcher, have shown how its character varied with local conditions: the nature of the ruler, the composition of the population, the strength of the local leadership, the proximity of British territory. These studies have drawn on state records, local oral traditions and the recollections of participants, and they have shown that the Prajamandal movement was not a single movement but a series of local movements, linked by common grievances, common leaders and a common organisation.
7.4 The merger and its interpretation
Historians have also debated the merger of the states. Some have emphasised the role of the Prajamandal movement in making princely rule untenable and in forcing the rulers to accept merger; others have emphasised the role of the Government of India and of Sardar Patel, and the negotiations and inducements, including privy purses, that persuaded the rulers to sign. A further question concerns the experience of the people of the former states after the merger, and whether their integration into Orissa brought the democratic and social changes the Prajamandal movement had demanded; the Orissa Review refers to 1948–49 as a “dark period”, reflecting the disruption and uncertainty of the transition.
7.5 Public memory
The Prajamandal movement occupies an important place in the public memory of Odisha. Baji Raut is honoured as the youngest martyr of the freedom struggle, and Sachidananda Routray’s poem about him is widely known; the Baji Raut Chhatravas at Angul, founded by Malati Choudhury, bears his name. Raghunath Mohanty, Sarangadhar Das and Pabitra Mohan Pradhan are remembered in their regions, and the Talcher exodus is commemorated as an example of non-violent resistance. Brajabandhu Mahanta’s article on historyofodisha.in, “The Prajamandal Movement”, presents this history for students and general readers and is the source of many of the dates and details in this article.
7.6 Main debates
| Debate | One view | The other view | Where the evidence stands |
|---|---|---|---|
| Character of the movement | Part of the national movement in the states | A distinct anti-feudal and agrarian struggle | Both: local agrarian grievances, national leadership and aims |
| Leadership and masses | Led by the Congress and Sarangadhar Das | Driven by peasant and tribal initiative, often beyond the leaders’ control | Leaders organised and negotiated; masses supplied the force and sometimes went further |
| Violence | The movement was non-violent | Popular anger broke out in violence, as at Ranpur | Mostly non-violent, with episodes of violence under extreme provocation |
| Who achieved the merger | The Prajamandal movement | Sardar Patel and the States Ministry | The movement made princely rule untenable; Patel’s diplomacy completed the merger |
| Date of revival | 23–24 June 1937 (Mahanta) | 24 June 1936 (Orissa Review) | Sources differ |
| Fate of Dibakar Parida | Transported to the Andamans (Mahanta) | Executed (Orissa Review) | Sources differ; needs archival verification |
8. Assessment
The Prajamandal movement was the struggle that brought the people of the Garhjat states, more than half the territory of the Odia-speaking region, into the freedom movement and into the democratic polity of independent India. When it began in the early 1930s, the people of the states lived under rulers whose power was almost absolute, bound by forced labour and arbitrary exactions, deprived of their traditional rights in the forests, and without any means of redress or any voice in their own government. Within two decades, princely rule in Odisha had come to an end, the states had been merged with Orissa, and their people had become citizens of a democratic republic. This transformation was not the work of the Prajamandal movement alone, but it would not have been possible without it.
The movement’s achievement rested on the courage and endurance of ordinary people. The fifty thousand who gathered at Dhenkanal in September 1938, the sixty thousand who left Talcher in November 1938, the boy Baji Raut who refused to ferry the police at Bhuban, the people of Ranpur, Gangpur, Nilagiri and many other states who faced firing, imprisonment, fines and exile, these were the force that made the movement effective. Their leaders, Sarangadhar Das, Pabitra Mohan Pradhan, Harmohan Patnaik and many others, gave them organisation and direction, and the Congress leaders of British Odisha, above all Harekrushna Mahtab, gave them support, publicity and, in the end, the political power that made merger possible.
The movement was distinctive in combining the aims of the national movement with an anti-feudal and agrarian struggle. Its demands for the abolition of bethi, magan and rasad, for the restoration of forest rights and for the end of monopolies addressed the immediate grievances of peasants and tribal communities; its demands for civil liberties and responsible government addressed the political aspirations of the educated; and its final demand for merger with Orissa linked the struggle in the states with the national and regional movements. In this combination lay both its strength and its tensions, for the aims of its different constituencies did not always coincide, and the popular anger it mobilised sometimes outran the leadership’s commitment to non-violence.
The movement also had its limits. It was uneven, strong in some states and weak in others. Its leadership was drawn largely from the educated middle class, and the agrarian and tribal grievances of its mass base were not fully resolved by the merger. And the end of princely rule, though it brought the people of the states into a democratic polity, did not immediately transform their social and economic conditions; the questions of land, forest rights and tribal welfare that had driven the movement remained central to the politics of Odisha after independence.
The fairest verdict is that the Prajamandal movement was one of the most important and heroic chapters of the freedom struggle in Odisha: a mass movement of peasants and tribal communities against a feudal order upheld by colonial power, led by devoted leaders and supported by the national movement, which made princely rule untenable and prepared the way for the merger of the states with Orissa in 1948–49. It completed the territorial unification of Odisha, it extended democracy to the people of the states, and it left a legacy of courage and sacrifice, embodied in the memory of Baji Raut and the people of Talcher, that remains a living part of Odia identity.
9. Glossary
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Banar Sena | “Monkey army”; the youth wing of the Prajamandal, of which Baji Raut was a member |
| Bethi / begari | Forced, unpaid labour exacted by rulers and their officials |
| Chasi Mulia Raj | “Rule of peasants and labourers”; the parallel government established in Talcher in September 1942 |
| Darbar | The court and government of a princely state |
| Eastern States Union | A union of eastern princely states proposed by some rulers in 1947 to preserve their power |
| Garhjat | “Land of forts”; the princely states of Odisha |
| Garhjat Gandhi | The title given to Sarangadhar Das |
| Hijrat | Mass migration as a form of protest, as in the Talcher exodus of 1938 |
| Magan | Levies demanded on the occasion of royal ceremonies and festivals |
| Paramountcy | The supremacy of the British Crown over the princely states |
| Prajamandal | “People’s association”; the organisations of the people of the princely states |
| Rasad | The obligation to supply provisions free of cost to rulers and touring officials |
| Sanad | A grant or charter defining the powers of a ruler under British paramountcy |
| Tributary Mahals | The princely states of Orissa that paid tribute to the British |
10. Frequently asked questions
1. What was the Prajamandal movement? The Prajamandal movement was the movement of the people of the princely (Garhjat) states of Odisha, from the 1930s to 1949, for the abolition of forced labour and arbitrary exactions, the restoration of forest rights, civil liberties and responsible government, and finally for the merger of the states with Orissa. It was organised through Prajamandals, or people’s associations, in the individual states and through the Orissa States People’s Conference.
2. What were the main grievances of the people of the Garhjat states? The main grievances were bethi or forced labour, magan or levies for royal ceremonies, rasad or the free supply of provisions to officials, heavy and arbitrary taxes, state monopolies on essential goods such as salt and kerosene, restrictions on the use of forests, and the denial of freedom of speech, assembly and the press.
3. Who was Sarangadhar Das? Sarangadhar Das (1886–1957), a native of Dhenkanal educated in the United States, was the principal organiser of the Prajamandal movement. He revived the Orissa States People’s Conference in the later 1930s, organised Prajamandals in many states, and served on the Orissa States Enquiry Committee. He is known as the Garhjat Gandhi.
4. Who was Baji Raut? Baji Raut was a twelve-year-old boatman of Dhenkanal and a member of the Banar Sena. On 11 October 1938, at the Nilakanthapur ghat on the Brahmani river near Bhuban, he refused to ferry a police party across the river and was shot dead. He is remembered as the youngest martyr of the freedom movement in Odisha.
5. What was the Talcher exodus? In November 1938, in protest against the repression of the Talcher Prajamandal, about sixty thousand of the state’s eighty-six thousand people left their homes and took refuge in the neighbouring British district of Angul, where they stayed for about eight months. They returned in June 1939 after an agreement negotiated by Harekrushna Mahtab and welcomed by Gandhi.
6. What happened at Ranpur in 1939? On 5 January 1939, the Political Agent for the Orissa states, Major R. L. Bazalgette, fired on a crowd of Prajamandal supporters at Ranpur and was killed by the crowd. The British responded with severe repression; Raghunath Mohanty was hanged for the killing.
7. When were the princely states of Odisha merged? Nilagiri was taken over by the Orissa government on 14 November 1947. On 14–15 December 1947, Sardar Patel met the rulers at Cuttack, and twenty-five of the twenty-six signed agreements of merger; the states were integrated with Orissa on 1 January 1948. Mayurbhanj merged on 1 January 1949, while Seraikela and Kharsawan went to Bihar.
11. How to cite this article
Mahanta, Brajabandhu (ed.). “The Prajamandal Movement in Odisha.” History of Odisha. https://historyofodisha.com/prajamandal-movement-in-odisha/ (accessed [date]).
12. References
12.1 Primary sources
- Engagements and sanads between the British Government and the rulers of the Orissa Tributary Mahals, from 1803.
- Report of the Orissa States Enquiry Committee (chaired by H. K. Mahtab), 1939.
- Proceedings of the Orissa States People’s Conference, from 1931.
- Records of the Political Agent, Orissa States, and the Eastern States Agency, Odisha State Archives.
- Prajatantra, Samaja and Harijan, 1937–1948.
- Agreements of merger of the Orissa states, December 1947.
12.2 Secondary sources
- Menon, V. P. The Story of the Integration of the Indian States. Calcutta: Orient Longmans, 1956.
- Chandra, Bipan, et al. India’s Struggle for Independence, 1857–1947. New Delhi: Penguin, 1988.
12.3 Works by Odia historians
- Mahtab, Harekrushna (ed.). History of the Freedom Movement in Orissa. Cuttack: Government of Orissa, from 1957.
- Pati, Biswamoy. Resisting Domination: Peasants, Tribals and the National Movement in Orissa, 1920–50. New Delhi: Manohar, 1993.
- Patra, K. M. Orissa Legislature and Freedom Struggle, 1912–1947. New Delhi: ICHR, 1979.
- Samal, J. K. History of Modern Orissa. Calcutta, 1989.
- Mahanta, Brajabandhu. The Prajamandal Movement. historyofodisha.in.
- Mahanta, Brajabandhu. The Quit India Movement in Odisha. historyofodisha.in.
12.4 Online resources
- Confronting the Durbar: the Prajamandal movement in Talcher, Orissa Review, April 2017.
- Prajamandal movement, Orissa Review, November 2012.
- Prajamandal movement and the merger of the Garhjat states, Odisha Reference Annual, 2011.
- Orissa States Movement, GKToday.
- Baji Rout, Wikipedia.