“Veer Narayan Singh?” says Sahasram Kanwar of Sonakhan village in Chattisgarh. “He was a lootera , a bandit. Some people have made him out to be a great man. Not us.” Quite a few of those sitting around nod in assent. Some weigh in with similar comments.
It was heart-breaking. We had come a long way in search of Sonakhan. This was the nerve centre of a Chattisgarh tribal revolt of the mid-1850s. One that began before the great uprising of 1857. And which threw up a genuine folk hero.
This is the village where Veer Narayan Singh rose against the British.
Near famine conditions here in the 1850s pushed matters to the brink. As things got worse, Narayan Singh of Sonakhan faced up to the feudals in the area. “He did not seek charity,” says Charan Singh, the oldest Adivasi resident in this largely tribal village. He alone seems to hold a more generous view of Narayan Singh.
“He asked the merchants and lords to open the godowns and let the poor eat.” Like in so many famines, the granaries were full. “And he said that when the first crop came, people would replace the grain they were given. When they refused, he led the poor to seize and distribute the grain.” The struggle that followed spread across the region as the tribals took on their oppressors.
“The conflict began well before the 1857 uprising,” says Prof. Hiralal Shukla of Barkatullah University, Bhopal. Yet, says Prof. Shukla; “It later networked with the rebels of 1857.” Which means the sacrifices of the Chattisgarh tribals came around the time the elite of Bombay and Calcutta were holding meetings to pray for the success of the British.
In 1857, the British hanged Narayan Singh in Raipur.
— source ruralindiaonline.org | P. Sainath | Aug. 14, 2015