The participation of the common people, especially the lowest sections, in the 1857 revolution against oppression, loot and slavery is gradually starting to unfold, but some pages remain yet unread. The most important of these is the Rajwar rebellion in Bihar which has so far appeared only as a footnote in history books. This was the first dalit revolt in Bihar and possibly the biggest till date. The rebellion which started in 1857 continued for the next ten years.

A year back, after the sad demise of Comrade Gail Omvedt, a delegation from our party led by Com. Dipankar Bhattacharya, went to Kasegaon in the Satara district of Maharashtra to pay our respects share the grief with her partner Com. Bharat Patankar and her daughter Prachi. Bharat narrated her political and social journey with a communist family who was a part of the freedom struggle and the ‘Prati Sarkar’ in western Maharashtra.

After spending 711 days in detention, Siddique Kappan was granted interim bail on 9th September. He is still in jail, for there is another criminal case pending against him, in which he is yet to get bail. A journalist by profession, Kappan, was arrested by the police when he was en-route to cover the rape and murder of a young Dalit woman at Hathras, Uttar Pradesh.

A national campaign was organized across the country from August 9th to 15th , to mark the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Independence and 80th anniversary of the Quit India movement of 1942, with the slogan 'Save Constitution, Save Democracy! Build India of Martyrs' Dreams!' to fulfil the vision enshrined in the Preamble to the Indian Constitution of making India a sovereign, secular, socialist and democratic country, and against the relentless attacks on the values and vision of the Constitution, democracy and freedom.

Two days before the seventy-fifth anniversary of Independence, India was once again reminded of the horrific continuing reality of caste oppression.

A week ahead of the 75th anniversary of Independence, India commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Quit India movement on August 9th, 2022. The Congress leadership was arrested immediately after giving the ‘Quit India’ call from the 1942 All India Congress Committee session in Mumbai, but the call triggered a popular upsurge in several parts of India and even gave rise to four parallel governments – Ballia in UP, Tamluk in Bengal, Talcher in Odisha and Satara in Maharashtra.

Veer Kunwar Singh

Kunwar Singh was born in Jagdispur of the Shahabad (now Bhojpur) District of Bihar to a landed family. Remarkably, he led the armed uprising of 1857 at the age of 80, not caring for his failing health. Oral history maintains that he said he had been waiting for the uprising, and was sorry only that it had come when he was so old. He was an expert in guerilla warfare, baffling the British forces with his military tactics and expelling them from Shahabad on 23 April 1858.

On the 10th of May, 1857, the soldiers of the British East India Company at Meerut began the historic uprising against colonial rule. The Company Raj called it the “sepoy mutiny”, but history remembers it as India’s first war of Independence. Indeed, it was the first dawn of an Indian national consciousness: where people in the Indian subcontinent united for the very first time across the divides of religion, caste, community, and language against a common enemy – the colonial Company Raj.

Concluding part of the article by the late Dr Gail Omvedt serialised by Liberation as part of its Freedom 75 series.

Class Meaning of the Prati Sarkar

Liberation is serialising this seminal article by the late Dr Gail Omvedt as part of its Freedom 75 series.