CDS (I) 2023 General Knowledge · Question 81 of 120

Correct — A, The Rampa Rebellion, 1879-1880. The hill tracts of the Rampa country, in the Vizagapatam Hill Tracts Agency of the Madras Presidency, were held under a mansabdar who collected tribute from the hill people; the standard accounts name the Koya and the Konda Dora as the communities whose chiefs rose against him. The trigger was a bundle of grievances — unfair contracts imposed by traders from the plains, government partiality towards those traders when disputes went to law and the resulting seizure of tribal property, and a new Madras rule that made toddy-tapping for domestic use illegal and taxed it, striking directly at a customary practice. The rising began in March 1879 with attacks on police stations in Chodavaram taluk, spread through the Golconda hills and Bhadrachalam, and was put down only after the Madras government sent six regiments of infantry, cavalry, sappers and a Hyderabad regiment; many of those captured were transported to the Andamans. In the aftermath the mansabdar himself was arrested, his rule being blamed as the principal cause.

• (b)The Gudem Uprising, 1886 — The Gudem country produced a series of risings of its own in the same Agency tracts, and the one of 1886 is a later disturbance in that sequence. It is not the rising whose defining feature was a revolt of Koya and Konda chiefs against the Rampa mansabdar.
• (c)The Rampa Rebellion, 1922-1924 — The second Rampa rebellion, of 1922-1924, is the famous one led by Alluri Sitarama Raju, and its target was the colonial state itself — the forest laws that shut the hill people out of podu cultivation and the forced labour imposed for road-building. By then the mansabdari grievance was long settled.
• (d)The Telangana Armed Struggle, 1946-1951 — The Telangana armed struggle of 1946-1951 was fought in the Nizam's dominions against the deshmukhs and jagirdars over forced labour and land, and was organised by the Communists. Different territory, different overlords, different period.

The hill tracts behind the Andhra coast were administered as a special Agency, in which the colonial government left day-to-day authority with intermediaries — a zamindar or mansabdar who took tribute from largely self-governing hill communities. Nineteenth-century tribal risings in this belt follow a common shape: an intermediary's exactions, plus traders and moneylenders from the plains, plus a new law that criminalises a customary practice, produce a rising that the state suppresses with regular troops and then answers with conciliatory measures.

Two of the four options say 'Rampa', so the item turns on separating the first Rampa rebellion from the second. The stem hands you the discriminator — the overlord came from a mansabdar family. Only the 1879-80 rising was directed at the mansabdar; the 1922-24 rising under Alluri Sitarama Raju was directed at the British forest administration. The dates give a second check: an anti-intermediary revolt of the 1870s belongs to the same wave as the Deccan riots of 1875 and the agrarian disturbances of that decade, whereas a rising of the 1920s belongs to the non-cooperation years. A note on sourcing: the mansabdar's oppression and the toddy-tax grievance are documented in the general reference accounts of this rebellion, while the specific naming of the Koya and Konda Dora chiefs comes from the standard tribal histories of the region and is what the paper itself assumes.

• The Rampa rebellion of 1879-1880 broke out in March 1879 in the Rampa region of the Vizagapatam Hill Tracts Agency, Madras Presidency.
• The hill people paid tribute to a mansabdar, whose exactions the British themselves later identified as the principal cause of the revolt; he was arrested afterwards.
• A Madras law banning toddy-tapping for domestic use and taxing it was among the immediate provocations, along with unfair trading contracts from plains merchants.
• Suppression required six regiments of Madras infantry, cavalry, sappers and miners and a Hyderabad army regiment; many rebels were sent to the Andaman jail.
• The second Rampa rebellion, of 1922-1924, was led by Alluri Sitarama Raju and was aimed at British forest and labour policy, not at the mansabdar.

• Answering with the famous 1922-24 rising because the word Rampa is the same; the mansabdar clue points to 1879-80.
• Assuming every tribal revolt was directed at the British; several were aimed at intermediaries the British had installed or preserved.
• Confusing the Agency tracts of the Madras Presidency with the Nizam's Telangana districts.

As a revolt-to-cause or revolt-to-region item, and often paired with Alluri Sitarama Raju to see whether the two Rampa risings are kept apart.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Rampa rebellion of 1922-1924 in the Andhra hill tracts was led by

  • (a)Birsa Munda
  • (b)Alluri Sitarama Raju
  • (c)Sidhu Murmu
  • (d)Tirot Sing

  Answer(b) Alluri Sitarama Raju — his rising was directed against colonial forest restrictions and forced labour, not against the Rampa mansabdar.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following was an immediate grievance behind the Rampa rebellion of 1879-1880?

  • (a)The introduction of the permanent settlement
  • (b)A ban on toddy-tapping for domestic use, coupled with a toddy tax
  • (c)The abolition of the mansabdari system
  • (d)The imposition of the salt monopoly

  Answer(b) A ban on toddy-tapping for domestic use, coupled with a toddy tax — it criminalised a customary practice of the hill people.