The Mangarh massacre occurred on 17 November 1913, when British and Indian troops attacked the stronghold of Govindgiri Banjara at the end of the Bhil Revolt. [1] It occurred on a hillock in the Mangarh Hills of Rajasthan. There are no accurate figures for the number of Bhil, Banjara who were killed, but estimates range from "several Bhils died" [2] to the oral tradition that 1,500 Banjara tribals were killed. [3]
Govindgiri Banjara was a social and religious reformer among the tribes ( adivasi ) of the Rajasthan and Gujarat areas of India. [4] He had run afoul of the local princely state rulers, notably Sunth, Banswara, Idar, and Dungarpur because of his critique of the Indian hierarchy and its exploitation of the adivasi, and the subsequent social disruptions by his followers that his doctrines caused. [1] [4]
Fleeing from an attempt by the ruler of Idar State to capture Govindgiri, Govindgiri Banjara and his adherents formed a defensive position on a hillock in the Mangarh Hills on the borders of the princely states of Banswara and Sunth. [2] On 31 October, some of his followers attacked the police outpost at Gadhran, looted it, killed one police constable and took another officer captive. [5] On 1 November, some of his followers unsuccessfully attacked the Parbatgadh fort in Sunth. [5] Meanwhile, bands of Bhil from the Mangarh Hills were attacking and looting local villages in both Sunth and Banswara. [2] [5] Police were dispatched from both Banswara and Sunth to end the assembly, but negotiations failed. [5] So the rulers sought a military solution. [2] [5] Units of Imperial Service Troops and the Mewar Bhil Corps besieged the hillock. [2] On 12 November 1913, Govindgiri and his deputy Punja Pargi (aka Punja Dhirji) sent a delegation to the British with their list of grievances, "but negotiations did not take place." [2] However, the commanding officer did give the delegation an ultimatum: Disband before 15 November. The Bhil stood firm and stayed. On 17 November 1913, the Indian and British forces attacked the Bhil defensive works, and captured Govindgiri Banjara and his deputy Punja Pargi [5] as well as 900 prisoners. [2]
A monument was built on the hillock honouring the victims of the massacre. [6] In November 2022, it was declared a national monument. [7] In 2017, plans were begun to put a Tribal Freedom Struggle Museum there as well. [8] The museum was completed in 2022. [9]
At the time of the Mangarh massacre little note was made of it, [6] [1] [10] in part because the victims were mere tribesmen, and details only appeared in local or regional documents. [2] However as Indian nationalism grew, so did interest in past injustices, [11] with the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre taking center stage. [12] As a result, the Mangarh massacre was often referred to as the Adivasi Jallianwala Bagh [10] or the Jallianwala Bagh of Vagad [8] in reference to the better known one.
Colonel Reginald Edward Harry Dyer, was a British military officer in the Bengal Army and later the newly constituted British Indian Army. His military career began in the regular British Army, but he soon transferred to the presidency armies of India.
Meena is a tribe from northern and western India which is sometimes considered a sub-group of the Bhil community. It used to be claimed they speak Mina language, a spurious language. Its name is also transliterated as Meenanda or Mina. They got the status of Scheduled Tribe by the Government of India in 1954.
The Adivasi are heterogeneous tribal groups across the Indian subcontinent. The term adivasi is a Sanskrit word coined in the 1930s by political activists to give the tribal people an indigenous identity by claiming an indigenous origin. However, the Government of India officially does not use the word Adivasi, instead use Scheduled Tribes and Janjati as defined by the Constitution of India. Most of those Adivasi groups are notified as the Scheduled Tribe for the provision of Indian constitution.
Bhil or Bheel refer to the various indigenous groups inhabiting western India, including parts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and are also found in distant places such as Bengal and Tripura. They speak various dialects of regional Indo-Aryan languages, collectively referred to as the Bhil languages, while the indigenous non-Indo-Aryan language that the Bhil originally spoke is lost. Bhils are divided into a number of endogamous territorial divisions, which in turn have a number of clans and lineages.
Banswara is a city in the Banswara district in southern Rajasthan, India. The name, Banswara, came from king ‘Bansiya Bhil’.
Dungarpur is a city in the southernmost part of Rajasthan, India.
Udham Singh was an Indian revolutionary belonging to Ghadar Party and HSRA, best known for assassinating Michael O'Dwyer, the former lieutenant governor of the Punjab in India, on 13 March 1940. The assassination was done as an act of protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar in 1919, for which O'Dwyer was responsible and of which Singh himself was a survivor. Singh was subsequently tried and convicted of murder and hanged in July 1940. While in custody, he used the name 'Ram Mohammad Singh Azad', which represents the three major religions in India and his anti-colonial sentiment.
Saifuddin Kitchlew was an Indian independence activist, barrister, politician and later a leader of the peace movement. A member of Indian National Congress, he first became Punjab Provincial Congress Committee head and later the General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee in 1924. He is most remembered for the protests in Punjab after the implementation of Rowlatt Act in March 1919, after which on 10 April, he and another leader Satyapal, were secretly sent to Dharamsala. A public protest rally against their arrest and that of Gandhi, on 13 April 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, led to the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre. He was also a founding member of Jamia Millia Islamia. He was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952.
Dahod district is a district of Gujarat state in western India. This largely tribal district is mostly covered by forests and hills.
Banswara District has an area of 5,037 km2 (1,945 sq mi), which is 1.47% of Rajasthan state, India. The city of Banswara is the district headquarters. It is bounded on the north by Udaipur District, on the northeast by Pratapgarh District, on the east and southeast by Madhya Pradesh state, on the southwest by Gujarat state, and on the west by Dungarpur District.
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919. A large crowd had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab, British India, during the annual Baisakhi fair to protest against the Rowlatt Act and the arrest of pro-Indian independence activists Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal. In response to the public gathering, the temporary brigadier general R. E. H. Dyer surrounded the people with his Gurkha and Sikh infantry regiments of the British Indian Army. The Jallianwala Bagh could only be exited on one side, as its other three sides were enclosed by buildings. After blocking the exit with his troops, Dyer ordered them to shoot at the crowd, continuing to fire even as the protestors tried to flee. The troops kept on firing until their ammunition was low and they were ordered to stop. Estimates of those killed vary from 379 to 1,500 or more people; over 1,200 others were injured, of whom 192 sustained serious injuries. Britain has never formally apologised for the massacre but expressed "deep regret" in 2019.
Abhai Singh Rathore was an 18th-century Indian Raja of the Kingdom of Marwar (Jodhpur).
Kotra is a tehsil of Udaipur district in Rajasthan, India, consisting of 262 revenue villages and 31 panchayats. The tehsil is bordered to the north by Pali and Sirohi districts, to the east by Gogunda and Jhadol tehsils, and to the south by Gujarat state. The tehsil headquarter is located in the village of Kotra, southwest of the Udaipur at a distance of 57 km and 120 km by road.
Motilal Tejawat , (1885–1963) was the leader of the Eki Movement that was agitated in the 1920s in the adivasi-dominated border areas of present-day Rajasthan and Gujarat.
The beginning of the Eki Movement is generally attributed to the events at the Matrikund fair in Chittod. Here, a group of adivasis agreed to desist from paying taxes to jagirdars until the Maharana addressed the problems with the jagirdari system.
Govindgiri, also known as Govind Guru Banjara, (1858–1931) was a social and religious reformer in the early 1900s in the tribal border areas of present-day Rajasthan and Gujarat states in India. He is seen as having popularized the Bhagat movement, which was first started in the 18th century.
Bharatiya Tribal Party is a political party based in Gujarat, India. It was formed in 2017 by Chhotubhai Vasava and Maheshbhai Vasava. The Election Commission of India allotted the Auto rickshaw symbol to BTP.
Bhima Nayak or Bheema Nayak was an Indian revolutionary. He fought against the British in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. When Bhima was convicted by the British government, he was kept in Port Blair and Nicobar.
Lado Bai is a tribal artist from the Bhil tribe of Madhya Pradesh. Her work has been showcased in various exhibitions in India, France and the UK.
Rajkumar Roat is an Indian politician and a two-time MLA from the Chorasi constituency and MP from Banswara Lok Sabha Constituency. He is the founder and a member of the Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP). In the 2024 general election, he was elected as a Member of Parliament for the Banswara Lok Sabha constituency, defeating Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya by a margin of 2,47,054 votes.
23°21′01″N73°59′12.5″E / 23.35028°N 73.986806°E
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