Mangarh
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1913
Tribhuvan, Nov 13, 2022: The Indian Express
A noteworthy name in these lost pages of history is that of Govind Guru, a revolutionary leader of the tribals of the region that included present-day Udaipur, Dungarpur and Banswara in Rajasthan, Gujarat’s Idar and Malwa in Madhya Pradesh.
On November 17, 1913, six years before the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of April 13, 1919, a horrifying tragedy occurred in Mangarh (Banswada, Rajasthan). While 379 lives were lost in Jallianwala, British cannons and machine guns are known to have killed more than 1,500 tribals in Mangarh.
Yet, unlike the Jallianwala massacre, this heinous crime against the tribals of Rajasthan could not find its place in the history of India’s freedom struggle. While Amritsar was closer to Delhi and in the hands of prominent politicians and freedom fighters, the same was not the case with Mangarh. Much like today, the tribals of Mangarh struggled to find their place in Indian society even as they fought with all their might for India’s Independence.
A noteworthy name in these lost pages of history is that of Govind Guru, a revolutionary leader of the tribals of the region that included present-day Udaipur, Dungarpur and Banswara in Rajasthan, Gujarat’s Idar and Malwa in Madhya Pradesh. Guru was a living legend among the Bhil and Garasiya tribal communities, a man who united thousands of tribals with his voice.
Bhil soldiers also played a significant role in the battlefields of Mewar — the erstwhile Mewar army’s emblem that portrayed a Bhil archer next to a Rajput warrior is further proof of their importance. In fact, their significance can be traced in the battlefields of Haldighati to Maharana Pratap’s slogan “Bhili jayo rani jayo bhai-bhai (A Bhil’s son and that of a queen are brothers)”.
Before Govind Guru became a leader in India’s freedom struggle, he played an important role in India’s renaissance movement. At the age of 25, he impressed Swami Dayanand Saraswati, a central figure of that movement in north India. Those days, Dayanand Saraswati was in Udaipur; a sanyasi, he was raising issues related to swaraj, swabhasha and swadeshi (self-rule, self-language, and self-reliance) in the country and was spearheading social reforms in the Rajputana. These two figures together initiated a wave of social reforms in the tribal areas.
In 1903, Govind Guru pledged not to drink alcohol, shifting his focus to eradicating social evils, boycotting foreign goods, ending forced labour, educating girls, and resolving mutual disputes among tribes instead of taking them to the courts. This led to the creation of a Sump (Unity) Sabha, whose first meeting was held on the hilltop in Mangarh. This historical event solidified Mangarh’s significance in Indian history as it became central to the tribal movement in this area. Like the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, this incident worried the British government and the local princely states. While the British were worried about their participation in the freedom struggle, the princely states were more concerned about social reform that could lead to the tribes demanding an independent Bhil state.
Consequently, there were many attempts to suppress the movement that started in 1883 but had spread like wildfire by 1903. Called the Bhagat movement, the gathering of tribals around the fire to reaffirm their oath was seen by the British as a threat. By 1913, the movement had turned into a revolution that made British officers even more wary as the tribals pledged to fight against suppression.
In November 1917, thousands of tribals gathered on the call of Govind Guru to decide on a decisive action against the suppression being faced by them in the form of forced labour, bonded system, and taxes on farmers during the famine. In what is today known as the Mangarh massacre, British soldiers fired cannons and machine guns at a large crowd of unarmed tribals who had gathered in an open space on the hilltop of Mangarh. More than 1,500 tribals were killed in the massacre and hundreds were injured.
While during the Jallianwala massacre, thousands of shots were fired after closing the only gate of the garden, it is said that five times as many rounds were fired by the British officers in Mangarh. Like Jallianwala, anecdotes say, the firing stopped only when the soldiers ran out of ammunition. Yet, amid this brutality, the tribals of the area are said to have continued singing, “Hey Bhuretia Nai Maanu Re, Nai Manu Re (Hey, British, we will not agree)!”. Their song about standing up to British suppression was as scary as it was magnificent.
The consequence of the Mangarh massacre was cruel. Unlike in the Jallianwala Bagh case, no Dyer was held responsible or punished here. Rather, Govind Guru was given a death sentence, and his wife was arrested. But fearing that the movement of tribal Bhils would turn violent, the British postponed his execution and sentenced him to 20 years of imprisonment on an isolated island. When he was released from jail, all the princely states came together to exile him. He lived his last years in Kamboi, Gujarat, where he died on October 30, 1931.
The cruel irony is that this extraordinary incident, which tells the story of tribal contributions to India’s struggle for Independence, has still not found its rightful place in history. During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s November 1 visit to Mangarh Dham, it was expected that he would finally announce it as a national monument. However, for whatever reasons, it was not declared so.
