UPPSC 2024 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 138 of 150

Correct — A, A-4, B-3, C-1, D-2. Taking the four risings in the order the list gives them. (A) The Paika Revolt of 1817–18 in Khurda, Odisha, was led by Bakshi Jagabandhu Bidyadhar Mahapatra — 'Bakshi' being his office as commander of the Khurda Raja's forces. The Paikas were a hereditary militia who held rent-free service land; when the Company took Odisha from the Marathas in 1803 it resumed those lands, insisted on revenue in silver instead of cowrie shells, raised the salt duty and monopolised the ports, and the Paikas rose under Jagabandhu in May 1817. So A goes with 4. (B) The Bareilly Revolt of 1816 was led by Mufti Muhammad Aiwaz, the town's senior Islamic jurist. The Company had imposed a house tax to pay for a municipal police establishment; the Mufti carried the townsmen's petition to the magistrate in March 1816, the dispute hardened after the tax collectors manhandled a woman, and the rising spread into Pilibhit, Shahjahanpur and Rampur before troops put it down with heavy loss of life. So B goes with 3. (C) The Malabar Revolt here is the Cotiote resistance of Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja of Kottayam, and Edachena Kungan was his most effective field commander — the man who planned the same action at Panamaram Fort in 1802 with about 150 Kurichiya bowmen, and who had already broken a Company column at Panamarathukota in Wayanad on 11 October 1802. So C goes with 1. (D) The Sylhet Revolt of 1786 was the rising of Radharam Datta, a merchant turned zamindar at Chargola on the Sylhet frontier, who refused to register his estate under the Company's settlement and was styled 'Nawab' by the people around him; Robert Lindsay, the Collector of Sylhet, crushed him with a fleet of war-boats. So D goes with 2. A-4, B-3, C-1, D-2 is option (a). One shortcut is worth having: 'Bakshi Jagabandhu' and 'Paika' are so tightly bound in every textbook that fixing A-4 alone eliminates (b), (c) and (d) in a single stroke.

• (b)A-3, B-4, C-1, D-2 — Swaps the first two leaders, giving the Paika Revolt to Mufti Muhammad Aiwaz and the Bareilly Revolt to Jagabandhu Bidyadhar Mahapatra. Both are impossible on geography alone: the Paikas were the militia of Khurda in coastal Odisha and were led by the Khurda Raja's own Bakshi, while Bareilly is a Rohilkhand town in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces of the upper Ganga plain, where the leader was its Mufti — a Muslim law officer, not a Maratha-era military commander from Odisha.
• (c)A-3, B-2, C-1, D-4 — Keeps the correct Malabar pair but scrambles the other three, handing Paika to the Mufti, Bareilly to Radharam and Sylhet to Jagabandhu. Radharam Datta's rising was at Chargola in the Sylhet country of eastern Bengal in 1786 and was suppressed by the Collector of Sylhet — he has no connection with Rohilkhand — and Jagabandhu belongs to Odisha, not to the Surma valley.
• (d)A-2, B-1, C-3, D-4 — Gets every pair wrong. It moves Radharam to Odisha, Edachena Kungan to Bareilly, the Mufti of Bareilly to Malabar and Jagabandhu to Sylhet. Edachena Kungan is a Malayali Nair commander of the Kottayam house in north Kerala, and the only revolt on this list he can belong to is the Malabar one.

Between the 1760s and 1856 the Company faced a long series of civil and tribal risings that historians group together as 'popular resistance before 1857'. They share a pattern rather than a programme: a new revenue settlement or tax dispossesses an old landholding, military or priestly group; that group's traditional leader — a zamindar, a militia commander, a religious figure — becomes the head of the resistance; the rising is local, fought with local weapons, and is put down by regular troops within a year or two. Paika, Bareilly, Malabar and Sylhet are four textbook specimens of exactly that pattern from four different corners of the subcontinent.

The reliable way through a revolt-to-leader match is region, not memory of the name. Each of these four leaders is unmistakably from one part of India: Jagabandhu is Odia, the Mufti is from Rohilkhand in what is now western Uttar Pradesh, Edachena Kungan is Malayali, and Radharam Datta is Bengali from the Surma valley. Fit the name to the map and the answer falls out. Two traps sit inside this item. First, 'Malabar Revolt' in an exam almost always means one of two very different things — the Pazhassi Raja's Cotiote wars of 1793–97 and 1800–05, which is what the name Edachena Kungan points to, or the Moplah/Mappila rebellion of 1921 under leaders such as Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji. Second, Bareilly appears twice in the syllabus: the tax rising of 1816 under Mufti Muhammad Aiwaz, and the 1857 rebellion in Bareilly under Khan Bahadur Khan, grandson of the Rohilla chief Hafiz Rahmat Khan. Keep the two Bareillys and the two Malabars apart by year.

• Paika Rebellion, Khurda (Odisha), May 1817 – December 1818, led by Bakshi Jagabandhu Bidyadhar Mahapatra, formerly commander of the Khurda Raja's forces. Grievances: resumption of the Paikas' rent-free service land after the Company took Odisha in 1803, revenue demanded in silver instead of cowries, a higher salt duty and the Company's port monopoly. Jagabandhu surrendered in 1825 and died a prisoner at Cuttack in 1829.
• Bareilly Revolt, 1816, led by Mufti Muhammad Aiwaz against a house tax levied to fund a municipal police establishment. The Mufti petitioned the town magistrate in March 1816; violence followed the collectors' treatment of a woman, the rising spread to Pilibhit, Shahjahanpur and Rampur, and troops suppressed it with several hundred rebels killed.
• Malabar: Edachena Kungan was a commander of Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja, the de facto head of the Kottayam kingdom in north Malabar, in the Cotiote War against the Company (first phase 1793–97, second phase 1800–05 over the annexation of Wayanad). He led the rebel victory at Panamarathukota — also called the Battle of Pancoorta Cottah, and the same action as the attack on Panamaram Fort — on 11 October 1802, with roughly 150 Kurichiya bowmen; he was killed by British troops at Panniyil (Edavaka) as the Cotiote resistance collapsed in late 1805. Pazhassi Raja himself died on 30 November 1805 at Mavila Thod near Pulpally.
• Sylhet: the Revolt of Radharam, 1786 — also called the Chargola Uprising or Pratapgarh Rebellion. Radharam Datta, a Bengali merchant who had become a zamindar at Chargola on the Sylhet–Tripura–Mizo hills frontier, refused to submit his estate to Company registration and was suppressed by Robert Lindsay, Collector of Sylhet, whose war-boats attacked Chargola across Son Beel lake.

• Reading 'Malabar Revolt' as the 1921 Moplah rebellion. With Edachena Kungan in the option list it is the Pazhassi Raja's Cotiote resistance of 1793–1805, more than a century earlier.
• Confusing the two Bareilly risings — 1816 under Mufti Muhammad Aiwaz over a house tax, and 1857 under Khan Bahadur Khan. UPPSC has asked the 1857 one directly.
• Assuming every pre-1857 rising was a peasant or tribal movement. Paika was a dispossessed militia, Bareilly an urban tax protest led by a religious jurist, and Sylhet a zamindar's defiance of the new revenue settlement.

UPPSC prefers the four-by-four match of revolt against leader, region or year; UPSC usually asks the same material as a single identification ('Ulgulan is the description of which event?') or as a pair-verification with two or three pairs to be judged correct or incorrect.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Paika Rebellion of 1817 broke out in which region, and what was the immediate grievance of the Paikas?

  • (a)Chotanagpur — the entry of outsider moneylenders and dikus into tribal land
  • (b)Khurda in Odisha — resumption of their hereditary rent-free service lands and the demand for revenue in silver instead of cowries
  • (c)Rohilkhand — a house tax imposed to pay for a municipal police force
  • (d)Malabar — the Company's annexation of Wayanad from the Kottayam kingdom

  Answer(b) Khurda in Odisha. The Paikas were the Khurda Raja's hereditary militia, paid in rent-free jagir land; after the Company took Odisha in 1803 those lands were resumed, revenue was demanded in silver rather than cowrie shells, and the salt duty rose. They rose in May 1817 under Bakshi Jagabandhu. Option (a) describes the Munda and Kol country, (c) the Bareilly rising of 1816 and (d) the second Cotiote war.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Edachena Kungan is associated with the resistance led by which ruler against the East India Company?

  • (a)Velu Thampi Dalawa of Travancore
  • (b)Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja of Kottayam
  • (c)Marthanda Varma of Venad
  • (d)Veerapandiya Kattabomman of Panchalankurichi

  Answer(b) Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja of Kottayam. Edachena Kungan was among his principal commanders in the Cotiote War in north Malabar and Wayanad, winning at Panamarathukota on 11 October 1802, the same action as the taking of Panamaram Fort. Velu Thampi's revolt (1808–09) was in Travancore, Marthanda Varma belongs to the eighteenth-century rise of Travancore, and Kattabomman led the Poligar resistance in Tirunelveli.