Draft:Battle of Baduria
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| Battle of Baduria | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Titumir's rebellion | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 British East India Company |
 Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
Alexander Ramram Chakroborty † |
Titumir | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| 120 policemen | 500 men | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 12 Killed | Low | ||||||||
In June 1830, Krishnadeva Rai, the Zamindar of Punra — in some sources, alternately described as the Talukdar of Sarfarazpur — imposed an annual tax similar to jizya on all bearded Muslims subjects to combat increase in radicalism among them caused by Titumir's preaching.
Background
[edit]On Titumir's advice, the peasants refused to pay and an enraged Krishnadeva led a bevy of armed men on a spree of arson, even destroying a local mosque. The Muslims reciprocated but the melee remained inconclusive; complaints were filed at the Baduria police station by both sides and eventually, the subdivisional magistrate of Barasat dismissed the issue but only after getting a declaration from the peasants about committing to peace.[1]
Buoyed up by the lack of any punishment for Krishnadeva, fellow Zamindars — Ramnarayan Nag Chaudhuri of Taragonia and Guru Prasad Chowdhury of Nagarpur — instituted similar tax-regime on their subjects and imprisoned dissenters.[1] The peasants organised themselves and sued the Zamindars but to little avail.[1] This led Titu to advocate for a full-fledged armed resistance against what he felt to be the nexus of Zamindars and Company; Atis Dasgupta, a scholar of peasant rebellions in early colonial India, notes that here onward, what was essentially a socio-religious agitation against misrule of Hindu zamindars morphed into a political-economic class-struggle against British rule.
Confrontations with the Company and Zamindars
[edit]Titumir shifted his base from Chandpur to Narikelberia, and began organizing an armed militia.[1] In October 1830, one of his declarations proclaimed him to be the natural sovereign of the country, who — rather than the Company — had a unilateral right of remittance on local revenues collected by zamindars; a Muslim landholder was raided in the same month for having disobeyed him.[1]
On 31 October, Titumir set out to avenge a Bengali Hindu zamindar called Krishnadeva along with 300 armed followers; his residence was ransacked, establishments of Hindu moneylenders in the local market were set on fire, and a cow was slaughtered in front of a Hindu temple in an act of desecration to avenge the previously mentioned demolition of the mosque.[1] In response, the Hindu zamindars, outraged at the inflammatory activities of the Muslims formed an alliance with the British indigo planters to render mutual assistance in case of assaults by Titumir's militia.[1] Soon Kaliprasanna Mukherjee, the zamindar of Habra-Gobardanga and a key member of the alliance, was targeted and though Davies, manager of a nearby plantation at Mollahati, came to aid with about 200 men, they were soundly defeated.[1] Davies escaped narrowly and was sheltered by Debnath Roy, the zamindar of Gobra-Gobindapur; this precipitated a confrontation between Titumir's militia and Debnath's forces at Laughati in Nadia, where the latter was killed.[1] Several Indigo plantations were subsequently set on fire.[1]
The month of November was replete with such cases and the local police proved to be of little use in the face of increasing peasant resistance; many of the Zamindars fled to Kolkata.[1] The Commissioner of the Presidency Division was solicited to tackle the situation, and accordingly, on 15 November 1830, Alexander, the Joint Magistrate of Barasat — along with Ramram Chakraborti, Officer-In-Charge of Baduria Thana — set out for Titumir with a force of 120 policemen.[1] Outnumbered by a 500-strong militia, they were defeated; Alexander barely escaped to a neighboring village while Ramram perished alongside 14 others.[1]
References
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