The rebellions that broke out at regular intervals against the British authorities in the hill region of Visakhapatnam, popularly known as the Gudem area, were due to which of the following reason(s) ? 1. The feudal affinities of the muttadars with the Bhupathi family of Golconda zamindari 2. Placing the ex-zamindari family on the seat of Golconda 3. British authorities' refusal to grant annual maintenance for the Bhupathi family Select the answer using the codes given below :

Correct — A, (a) 1 and 2.

The hill tracts west of Narasapatam in the Visakhapatnam district - the Golconda hills, so often called the Gudem hills that the two names are used interchangeably - produced a run of risings between the 1830s and 1891. The contemporary record of them is the Madras District Gazetteer for Vizagapatam compiled by W. Francis in 1907, which devotes several pages of its Golgonda Taluk chapter to them, and it settles all three statements. Note that the Gazetteer spells the place Golgonda and the family Bhupati, where the stem prints Golconda and Bhupathi.

Statement 1 is correct. The muttadars, also called hill sirdars, were the chiefs of the hill muttas and stood in a feudal relation to the Bhupatis of the Golconda zamindari, a family whose title - Bhupati, lord of the earth - had been conferred by an early Raja of Jeypore. That bond drove the risings. When the zamindari was made over to a woman in 1836 the sirdars 'objected that they had not been consulted', and in the rising of 1845 to 1848 they set up the nineteen-year-old Chinna Bhupati as their Raja. Forty years later, in 1880, Tagi Virayya Dora, the muttadar of Gudem Patavidi, sent word that he would never surrender unless 'his Raja, Chinna Bhupati', told him to.

Statement 2 is correct. Restoring the displaced family to the seat of Golconda was the declared object of the risings. After the estate was confiscated in 1836 and auctioned in 1837 the sirdars, their standing reduced by being placed under an ordinary amin, 'grew discontented and finally united to restore the Bhupati family by force'; they held the jungles for three years. The insurrection of 1857-58 under Sanyasi Bhupati is described as 'having a similar object to the last'.

Statement 3 does not survive the record and is the reason the answer is (a) rather than (c). The Government did not refuse maintenance to the family; it granted it repeatedly. On surrendering in 1848 Chinna Bhupati 'was granted villages worth Rs. 4,000 annually as maintenance for himself and his three brothers'. Sanyasi Bhupati, convicted after the 1857-58 rising, had his share in the maintenance villages continued and was drawing Rs. 913 a year at his death in 1886. The last rising, in 1891, was led by Santa Bhupati, who was 'discontented with the allowance granted him by Government' - a grievance about the size of a grant, not about its refusal - and after his death a compassionate allowance was granted to his mother, widow and daughter.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)2 and 3 — This option drops the feudal bond between the muttadars and the Bhupatis, which is the thread running through every one of these risings, and keeps statement 3 instead. The record runs the other way on maintenance: the Government made a grant of villages worth Rs. 4,000 a year in 1848, continued the family's share in those villages even after the 1857-58 insurrection, and made a compassionate grant to the last rebel's dependants in 1891. What the Gazetteer records is dissatisfaction with the amount of an allowance that had been made - which is a different grievance from a refusal to make one, and the difference is exactly what this statement gets wrong.
• (c)1 and 3 — This is the option a candidate reaches when the first statement has been correctly accepted and the second misread as something the British did rather than something the rebels wanted. Read as an act of the administration, 'placing the ex-zamindari family on the seat of Golconda' never happened - the estate was confiscated in 1836 and bought in by Government at auction for Rs. 100 in 1837, and no Bhupati was restored to it. Read as the object of the risings, which is how a list of reasons for a rebellion invites it to be read, it is documented in terms: the sirdars united to restore the family by force in 1845, and the rising of 1857-58 had the same object. Statement 3, which this option adds in its place, is contradicted by the successive grants of maintenance.
• (d)3 only — This option rests the whole rebellion on the one statement the record contradicts, and it discards the two that the Gazetteer supports at length. It is also implausible on its own terms as an account of a forty-five-year sequence of risings: a refusal of maintenance to one family would explain a grievance, but not why hill chiefs across ten muttas withheld rents, barricaded the hills, installed a claimant as their Raja and were still refusing to surrender except at his word three decades later. That persistence is what the feudal bond in statement 1 and the restorationist aim in statement 2 explain between them.

The Gudem-Rampa country was a tract where the Company and then the Crown governed through intermediaries whose authority was older than their own, and the risings there are best understood as what happens when that authority is disturbed.

The structure had three layers. At the top was the zamindar of Golconda, of the Bhupati family, holding under a sanad at a fixed peshkash after the permanent settlement of 1802. Below him were the muttadars or hill sirdars, chiefs of the individual muttas, mostly of the Bagata community, who collected from the villages and owed service to the zamindar. Below them were the cultivating communities, chiefly Konda Doras.

British administration disturbed the middle layer twice over. In 1836 it persuaded an incapable zamindar to resign in favour of a woman without consulting the sirdars, who murdered her; the estate was then confiscated and auctioned. The sirdars kept their muttas but were subordinated to an ordinary revenue official, and the Gazetteer is explicit that they 'found their status seriously lowered' by it. Loss of standing, not loss of land, is what moved them.

After the rising of 1879-80 the terms were rewritten. Two muttas were transferred to Godavari for accessibility in 1881, and the rest were given sanads making the muttas inalienable and held on service tenure, subject to an annual kattubadi and to conditions requiring the muttadar to hand over offenders and report disturbances, with forfeiture as the penalty. Those terms, re-affirmed in 1888, converted the hill chiefs into agents of the police - which is why the response to the 1891 rising was mass forfeiture and deposition rather than pursuit of the rebels alone.

Key facts

• The Golconda hills in the Visakhapatnam district are so closely identified with the village of Gudem, once a chief seat of the Golconda Bhupatis, that the Madras District Gazetteer records that they 'are often called the Gudem hills'.
• The muttadars or hill sirdars held the individual muttas and stood in a feudal relation to the Bhupati family; in 1836 they objected to a new zamindar being installed without their being consulted, and in 1845 they set up Chinna Bhupati, then nineteen, as their Raja.
• The estate was confiscated after the murder of the woman installed as zamindar in 1836 and was sold at auction in 1837, being bought in by Government for Rs. 100 - so the family was never restored to the seat, though restoring it was the rebels' object.
• On surrendering in 1848 Chinna Bhupati was granted villages worth Rs. 4,000 a year as maintenance for himself and his three brothers, and the family's share in those villages was continued even after the insurrection of 1857-58.
• The last Golconda rising, in 1891, was led by Santa Bhupati, described in the Gazetteer as discontented with the allowance granted him by Government - a complaint about the amount of a grant rather than about any refusal to make one.

Common traps

• Assuming any Rampa or Gudem question refers to the 1922-24 rebellion of Alluri Sitarama Raju, which is only the last episode in a long sequence.
• Reading a 'reason' for a rebellion as a grievance only, and rejecting a statement that names the rebels' object.
• Accepting the maintenance statement because it sounds like a standard colonial grievance; the record shows repeated grants and a complaint about their size.
• Confusing the muttadar, a hill chief holding a mutta, with the mansabdar of the neighbouring Rampa tract in the Godavari Agency.
• Being thrown by spelling: the Gazetteer prints Golgonda, Bhupati and Vizagapatam where this stem prints Golconda, Bhupathi and Visakhapatnam.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Consider the following statements about the muttadars of the Golconda hills : 1. They were the chiefs of individual muttas and collected dues from the villages within them. 2. After the rising of 1879-80 they were given sanads holding their muttas on service tenure, subject to conditions about surrendering offenders and reporting disturbances. Which of the statements given above is/are correct ?

  • (a)1 only
  • (b)2 only
  • (c)Both 1 and 2
  • (d)Neither 1 nor 2

  Answer(c) Both 1 and 2 - the muttadars were the hill chiefs of the muttas, and after the 1879-80 rising the Golconda muttadars were given sanads declaring the muttas inalienable and held on service tenure, subject to an annual kattubadi and to conditions requiring them to hand over offenders and report disturbances, with forfeiture as the penalty.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The village of Gudem, from which the Golconda hills take their alternative name, is associated with which one of the following ?

  • (a)A former seat of the Golconda Bhupatis
  • (b)The headquarters of the Vizagapatam district
  • (c)A Portuguese trading factory of the seventeenth century
  • (d)The capital of the Jeypore Rajas

  Answer(a) A former seat of the Golconda Bhupatis - the Madras District Gazetteer records that Gudem 'was once one of the chief places of the Golgonda Bhupatis and the Golgonda hills are often called the Gudem hills'.