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| Mandi Town |
✓A major upsurge against labour and revenue demands and against 'oppressive' officials on the pattern of the traditional Dumh was held in the State of Mandi in A.D.1909 where over
20,000 peasants had converged on the palace to seek justice from their Raja Bhawani Sen(A.D.1902-1912).
✓This Dumh was led by an ex-sepoy Sobha Ram of Sarkaghat tehsil who came back from the army and found the political, social system "oppressive and unjust".
✓He formed an organisation to agitate
against this "oppressive and unjust" regime and against the misrule of the Wazir Padha Jiwa Nand, the highest official of the State.
✓Initially the opposition took the form of petitioning the Raja and marching up to Mandi town for an audience with him..
✓Rebuffed the first few times, revolutionaries reorganised themselves and came in a large group, 20,000 proprietary peasants, tenants and others.
✓They imprisoned tehsildar Hardev
Singh and Miri Negi.
✓The Raja and his officers ran away and the
state fell into the hands of these rebels who started organising a "People's Government".
✓Raja Bhawani Sen appealed to Colonel H.S. Davies, the Commissioner at Jullandhar, who marched towards Mandi with two companies of the 32nd Pioneers.
✓The rebels were not prepared for armed combat of this magnitude, even though the local tradition has it that the rebels had been given military training by Sobha Ram the ex-sepoy.
✓The British army had little difficulty taking control of the town after putting down whatever sporadic resistance they met.
✓Sobha Ram, his father and twenty four others, were tried and jailed -Sobha Ram was sent to Kalapani, the others to Multan.
✓All that the British did after the 'pacification' in response to popular demand was to replace the Wazir Padha Jiwa Nand with Inder Singh, son of the later Wazir Uttam Singh.
✓Subsequently Tikka Rajendra Pal, was appointed Advisor to the Raja and Munshi Amar Singh as acting Wazir.
✓The political situation then improved.
✓No changes were brought in the Begar system or in the assessment of land revenue, which were the basic demands of the peasants.
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