Praja Mandal Movements in Princely States

Praja Mandal Movements in Princely States

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The Praja Mandal movements represented the struggle of the people of India’s Princely States for democratic rights — fought simultaneously against their own autocratic rulers and against the British paramountcy that shielded those rulers from accountability. While British India moved, however haltingly, toward representative government through the Acts of 1919 and 1935, the subjects of the roughly 565 Princely States remained largely voiceless, governed by rulers whose absolute authority was, in practice, underwritten by the British Crown. From regional associations founded in the early 1920s to the powerful Satyagrahas at Rajkot, Hyderabad, and in Punjab, the Praja Mandal movements evolved alongside the wider national movement — shaped by it, yet constrained by political conditions very different from those in British India — before culminating in the integration of the Princely States into the Indian Union after independence.

Princely States under British Paramountcy: Background

• By the middle of the 19th century, the British Government had established treaty relations with most of the Princely States in India.
  • Under British paramountcy, internal administration was left to the Princes, while British Residencies served as channels of communication with the colonial Government.
  • In theory, the rulers held absolute power; in practice, they were subject to the dictates of the British Resident and dependent on the British Government for both internal and external protection, with even succession policies in the States laid down by the Resident.

Pitiable Conditions of the People in the Princely States

• Most Princely States were autocratically ruled, with a heavy economic burden on the people through high taxation, and with education and social services left backward and civil rights restricted.
  • State revenues were spent lavishly on the rulers’ own lifestyles, and since British protection guaranteed immunity from both domestic and external threats, the rulers felt free to disregard the interests of their subjects.
  • The British Government, for its part, expected the States to support its imperialist policies — a dynamic that actively worked against the development of nationalist sentiment within them.
• While the people of British India gained some political rights and a share in administration through the Acts of 1919 and 1935, the people of the Princely States were granted no equivalent rights.
• Most Princes remained hostile and suspicious toward nationalist forces, though Baroda and Mysore were notable exceptions — both sympathised with the nationalists and promoted internal political, administrative, agricultural, and educational reform.

The Emergence of the National Movement in the Princely States

• The onset of the nationalist movement in British India inevitably had an impact on the people of the Princely States, as many revolutionary nationalists fleeing British authority took refuge in the States during the first and second decades of the 20th century and initiated political activity there.
• The launch of the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movements stirred the entire Indian population, cutting across the boundaries of British India.
  • Under the influence of the national movement, subjects of the Princely States established people’s organisations — known as “Praja Mandals” or “Praja Parishads” — in states such as Mysore, Hyderabad, Baroda, Kathiawad, Jamnagar, Indore, and Nawanagar. Collectively, these came to be known as the Praja Mandal movements.

Nature and Activities of the Praja Mandal Movements

• The Praja Mandal movements fought their feudal princes and the British administration simultaneously, with democratic rights as their central demand.
• In terms of activity, the Praja Mandals implemented the constructive programme of the wider Indian national movement within their respective states — establishing schools, promoting the use of khadi, encouraging cottage industries, and campaigning against untouchability.

Early Regional Associations

Hitvardhak Sabha

• Founded at Poona in May 1921, the Hitvardhak Sabha aimed to address the problems of the people of the southern Princely States.

Akhil Bhor Sansthan Praja Sabha

• Founded by Wamanrao Patwardhan in the Bhor region in November 1921, this Sabha worked specifically on issues affecting the people of Bhor.

The All India States’ People’s Conference

• The All India States’ People’s Conference (AISPC) was founded to fight for the rights of the people of the roughly 600 Princely States across the country, holding its first session at Bombay in December 1927.
  • The Conference brought together representatives from hundreds of Indian Princely States, including Baroda, Bhopal, Travancore, and Hyderabad, and was established to encourage political dialogue between the princely class and the British Raj on questions of governance, political stability, and the future of India.
  • Beyond this, the Conference and allied people’s movements also took up issues such as farmers’ loans and taxation within the Princely States.
  • Leadership of the movement was assumed by Balwantrai Mehta, Maniklal Kothari, and G.R. Abhyankar.
• At its 1927 Bombay session, the Council elevated the Princely States’ movement into a national-level movement, demanding responsible government and rights of citizenship for the people of the States — demands subsequently endorsed by the Madras Session of the Congress.

Turning Points of the Mid-1930s: The 1935 Act and Congress Ministries

• Two developments in the mid-1930s brought about a radical change in the relationship between the Princely States and British India.
  1. The Government of India Act, 1935, envisaged a scheme of federation bringing the States into a direct constitutional relationship with British India, under which the States would send representatives to the Council of States, the upper house of the Central Legislature.
     • Crucially, these representatives were to be nominated by the rulers, not elected by the people — depriving the people of representation and effectively creating a bloc of hand-picked loyalists ready to back the British Government in the Federal Legislature at any crucial moment.
     • The Act’s further provision — leaving rulers free to decide whether or not to join the federation — undermined the people’s legislative representation still further.
     • At its Karachi session (1936), the Council rejected the clause permitting rulers to nominate representatives to the Imperial Legislature, demanding instead that the right of election rest with the subjects of the Princely States themselves.
  2. The acceptance of office by the Congress in most British Indian provinces in 1937 had an equally significant impact — the installation of Congress ministries in neighbouring provinces encouraged Praja Mandal leaders to intensify their own campaigns for responsible government within the Princely States.
• The years 1938–39 stand out as a period of new political awakening across the Indian States, witnessing a large number of movements demanding responsible government and other reforms.

The Congress and the Princely States: An Evolving Policy

• The Congress first enunciated its policy toward the Princely States’ people’s movements at its Nagpur Session (1920), calling on the Princes to grant full responsible government.
  • At this stage, however, people belonging to the States could enrol as individual Congress members but were barred from initiating political activity in the name of the Congress within their States — political work could only be carried out in an individual capacity, through the local Praja Mandals.
• From the mid-1920s, the Congress began taking a keener interest in the States’ people’s movements.
  • In his 1929 presidential address at the Lahore Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru observed: “The Indian States cannot live apart from the rest of India…. The only people who have a right to determine the future of the States must be the people of those States.”
• This position held until 1935, even as cooperation between the leaders of the States’ People’s Conferences and the Congress leadership steadily deepened.
  • It was eventually decided that Congress Committees could be formed within the Indian States, provided they did not engage in unparliamentary activity or direct action — a compromise that helped bring harmony between the Congress and the freedom movement inside the States.
  • A resolution passed at the Lucknow session of Congress (1936) stated: “Congress… desires to make it clear that, in its opinion, the people of the States should have the same rights of self-determination as those of the rest of India, and that the Congress stands for the same political, civil and democratic liberties for every part of India. The Congress, however, desires to point out that the struggle for liberty within the States has, in the very nature of things, to be carried on by the people of the State themselves.”
• Around this time, the Rajkot Satyagraha drew in figures like Gandhiji and Sardar Patel — though Gandhiji ultimately withdrew, acknowledging his failure to change the ruler’s heart, its impact proved far-reaching. A powerful people’s movement also built up in Hyderabad, while in Kashmir, the people organised under Sheikh Abdullah.
  • The Congress, while showing growing interest in these developments, continued to hold to its position that movements within the Princely States should be conducted in the name of local organisations, not the Congress itself.
• The Haripura session of Congress (1938) engaged with the problems of the States in considerable detail, treating them as integral parts of India and desiring for them the same political, social, and economic freedoms enjoyed elsewhere. The Congress’s demand for “Purna Swaraj” was understood to cover the whole of India, States included.
  • Even so, the Haripura session reiterated the Congress’s established policy: movements within the States should not be launched in the Congress’s name, but should rely on their own local strength.
• A few months later, having witnessed the spirit and capacity for struggle shown by the people of the States, Gandhi and the Congress reversed this stance — a change that radicals and socialists within the Congress, along with political workers inside the States, had been pressing for over some time.
  • Explaining this shift in January 1939, Gandhi remarked: “The policy of non-intervention by the Congress was in my opinion a perfect piece of statesmanship when the people of the States were not awakened. That policy would be cowardice when there is all round awakening among them and a determination to go through a long term suffering for vindication of their just rights. The moment they became ready, the legal, constitutional and artificial boundary was destroyed.”
  • The Congress session at Tripuri (March 1939) passed a resolution formally enunciating this new policy, removing all restraint the Congress had previously placed on itself.
• Jawaharlal Nehru was invited to become President of the All India States’ People’s Conference in 1935, and was formally elected to the post in 1939 at its session held at Ludhiana — a position he held until 1946. He exhorted the Praja Mandals to intensify their agitations to uphold the rights and dignity of the people.
  • Key leaders who spearheaded the movement in their respective States included Ramanand Tirtha and Ravi Narayan Reddy in Hyderabad, U.N. Dhebar and Balwantrai Mehta in Saurashtra and Kathiawad, and Sheikh Abdullah in Kashmir.
• During the Quit India Movement, the Congress formally extended its call to launch the struggle to the people of the States as well. Ongoing constitutional changes further underscored the need for an organic relationship between the Princely States and the Government of India.
  • In the post-World War II period, as British withdrawal from India became increasingly certain, the future of the Princely States drew the close attention of national leaders in both the Congress and the Muslim League.

Paramountcy, Partition, and Integration

• The Cabinet Mission (1946) proposed a federal scheme for free India. Its memorandum of 12 May 1946, explaining the consequences of British withdrawal, observed: “Thus, as a logical consequence and in view of the desires expressed to them on behalf of the Indian States, His Majesty’s Government will cease to exercise the powers of paramountcy. This means that the rights of the States which flow from the relationship to the Crown will no longer exist and that all the rights surrendered by the States to the paramount power will return to the States.”
  • Though the Congress never accepted this interpretation of paramountcy, some Princely States moved to declare independence, hoping for British support — and finding backing in Jinnah.
  • Jinnah argued that the Indian States were sovereign, save for whatever they had surrendered under treaty with the Crown, and that neither the Governor-General nor the British Parliament could constitutionally compel any State to join a Constituent Assembly; States could only join by voluntary agreement.
  • Nehru responded forcefully, arguing that no Indian State could, by any test of sovereignty, be considered sovereign.
• Congress pressure forced the British Government to act: the Political Department was removed from British control and placed under two new States Departments, one for each future Dominion, with Sardar Patel heading the States Department of India.
  • Backed firmly by the support of the States’ own people, both Nehru and Patel held firm on the issue, and when the Nizam of Hyderabad and Travancore-Cochin expressed a desire to declare independence, Patel acted swiftly.
• The Mountbatten Plan (June 1947) envisaged the division of India into two Dominions, with the Princely States left to choose their own course, since paramountcy’s technical lapse meant the States could, in principle, join either Dominion or remain independent.
  • Mountbatten and the British Government, however, ruled out the possibility of independence for the States, throwing their support behind integration into the Dominions. Where rulers leaned toward independence — as in Hyderabad, Travancore, and Junagadh — popular movements for responsible governance emerged to oppose the move.
• The AICC’s resolution of 15 June 1947 made the Congress position explicit, denying any State the right to declare independence or live in isolation from the rest of India, calling such a course a denial of the course of Indian history and the objectives of the Indian people.
  • Over the following weeks, the ground was prepared to bring all 565 States into the Indian Union.

Case Study: The Rajkot Satyagraha

• In the 1930s, Dharmendra Singhji, ruler of Rajkot, proved an autocrat living a life of luxury quite unlike his father, encouraged in this by his Diwan, Virawala, who concentrated power in his own hands.
  • State wealth was squandered to the point where monopolies for the sale of rice, matches, sugar, and cereals were sold off to individual merchants to raise revenue; taxes and rice prices rose, and the popular assembly was allowed to lapse — producing widespread discontent.
• Several political groups prepared for struggle in the Kathiawar region, with U.N. Dhebar, a Gandhian constructive worker, emerging as the leader of the main group. (In 1941, Gandhiji selected Dhebar to offer Individual Satyagraha at Viramgam.)
• The first blow was struck in 1936, when 800 workers in the state-owned cotton mill went on strike under a labour union organised by Jethalal Joshi, a Gandhian activist; the Durbar was forced to concede the union’s demand for better working conditions.
  • Encouraged by this success, Jethalal and Dhebar organised a Kathiawar conference (Rajkiya Parishad) in March 1937, demanding responsible government and a reduction in taxes and state expenditure.
• The Parishad launched its next phase of protest against gambling in August 1938, before escalating to a full-scale Satyagraha, with activities including cotton-mill worker strikes, student strikes, boycotts of goods produced by monopolistic merchants or the State, non-payment of land revenue, and withdrawal of deposits from the State bank — collectively blocking the State’s sources of income.
  • Volunteers arrived from Mumbai and British Gujarat, and Sardar Patel stayed in close touch with the satyagrahis.
• On 26 December 1938, the Durbar reached a settlement with Sardar Patel under which the Satyagraha was withdrawn and prisoners released; the Durbar committed to appointing a ten-member committee of state subjects and officials to formulate a scheme of reforms — with seven of the ten to be Patel’s nominees.
  • The British Government, which had initially opposed the agreement, now intervened at the highest levels: after consultations between the Viceroy and the Secretary of State, the Thakore Sahib was pressured to reject Patel’s list of seven, on the grounds that his nominees were exclusively Brahmins and Banias with no representation for Rajputs, Muslims, and Depressed Classes — a tactic aimed at sowing division among the people.
• Satyagraha resumed on 26 January 1939 and was met with heavy repression.
  • Kasturba Gandhi, who had grown up in Rajkot, travelled there despite her age and poor health, accompanied by Maniben, Sardar Patel’s sister. Gandhiji himself decided to proceed to Rajkot and undertook an indefinite fast, triggering nationwide protest, pressuring the Viceroy, and prompting Congress ministries to threaten resignation.
• On 7 March 1939, Gandhiji broke his fast after the Viceroy asked the Chief Justice of India, Sir Maurice Gwyer, to arbitrate on whether the Thakore had violated the agreement.
  • The CJI upheld Patel’s position in an award delivered on 3 April, but the Durbar — egged on by Diwan Virawala — continued to stoke communal and caste division by encouraging Muslims and Depressed Classes to press their own claims, then using these claims as grounds to refuse honouring the agreement. Jinnah and Ambedkar subsequently stepped in on behalf of their respective communities, and hostile demonstrations disrupted Gandhiji’s prayer meetings. The British Government, having nothing to gain and much to lose from a Congress victory, declined to use its influence.
  • At this point, Gandhiji withdrew, releasing the Thakore Sahib from the agreement and apologising to the Viceroy and the Chief Justice for the time spent.
• The Rajkot Satyagraha revealed the underlying complexity of politics in the Princely States, with the Paramount Power ever ready to intervene in its own favour while equally willing to cite the “legal independence” of rulers as grounds for non-interference when it suited British interests — demonstrating that identical methods of struggle could yield very different results in British India and the Princely States.
  • Though the Satyagraha ultimately failed in its immediate objectives, it had a tremendous politicising effect on the people of the States, demonstrated to rulers the power of popular resistance, and encouraged many States to integrate with India after independence.

Case Study: The Praja Mandal Movement in Hyderabad

• The State of Hyderabad was the largest Princely State in India by both population and territory, ruled by Osman Ali Khan, known as the Nizam of Hyderabad, whose dominions included Marathwada and parts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The Nizam enjoyed strong support from the British administration.
• The Non-Cooperation Movement also had an impact within Hyderabad, though the Nizam moved to crush both the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movements in his State — hesitating, however, to openly oppose the Khilafat Movement given its religious sensitivities.
  • The Nizam promoted the formation of the Ittehad-ul-Muslimin, an organisation built on loyalty to him through the common bond of the Islamic faith.

People’s Councils in Hyderabad

• The Andhra Mahasabha (for the Andhra region) and the Karnataka Council were founded in 1921, followed by the Maharashtra Council (for Marathwada) in 1937.
  • These councils worked primarily in the social and cultural spheres, demanding a responsible political system and the expansion of private and vernacular education, and placed the problems of Hyderabad’s people before the wider country despite the State’s restrictions.
  • The press played an important role in spreading political consciousness among the people of Hyderabad.

The Rise of the Hyderabad State Congress

• The Hyderabad State Congress was founded in September 1938 by leaders drawn from all three councils, marking the first phase of organised political struggle in the State.
  • Its leaders declared the party secular and national in character, open to all castes and tribes, with communal harmony and unity as its stated objective.
• Perceiving a threat, the Nizam banned the State Congress.
  • In October 1938, Swami Ramanand Tirtha, a Marathi-speaking Gandhian nationalist, launched a Satyagraha against the ban.
  • At the same time, the Arya Samaj, Hindu Maha Sabha, and Hindu Civil Liberty Union launched a separate Satyagraha against the religious persecution of Hindus in the State — a movement with religious objectives that carried a communal overtone, risking confusion with the State Congress’s political Satyagraha. To keep religious and political issues clearly separate, the State Congress and Gandhiji agreed to suspend the political Satyagraha.
• The ban pushed regional cultural organisations — particularly the Andhra Mahasabha among the Telugu population — into becoming the principal forum for political activity.
  • Ravi Narayan Reddy, who had emerged as leader of the Mahasabha’s younger radical wing and had taken part in the 1939 State Congress Satyagraha, was drawn toward the Communist Party of India; along with B. Yella Reddy, he secured the support of much of the younger cadre, radicalising the Andhra Mahasabha and shifting its focus toward peasant issues.
• Though forced to introduce some reforms, the Nizam did not lift the ban; in 1940, the State Congress launched an individual Satyagraha against it.

Repression and the Freedom Struggle

• The State of Hyderabad had banned the national song “Vande Mataram,” but students — most prominently those of the Government College, Aurangabad — took the lead in making it an anthem of the freedom movement.
  • The student movement subsequently merged with the wider national movement, strengthening the freedom struggle within the State, with Mukundrao Pedgaonkar, Srinivasrao Borikar, and Govindbhai Shroff among its key leaders.

The Hyderabad State Congress and the Quit India Movement (1942)

• With the launch of the Quit India Movement in 1942, the Hyderabad State Congress joined the struggle, organising a massive Satyagraha within the State.
  • Many arrests followed; a batch of women offered Satyagraha in Hyderabad city, in connection with which Sarojini Naidu was arrested.
• In August 1942, the State Congress placed the following demands before the Nizam:
  • Responsible government under the Nizam.
  • Integration of the State of Hyderabad with independent India.
  • Grant of civil rights to the people of Hyderabad.
  • Removal of the ban on the Hyderabad State Congress.
• The years 1945–46 saw the growth of a powerful peasant movement in the Nalgonda district, and to a lesser extent in Warangal and Khammam, directed against forced labour (Vethi/Begar), illegal seizures of land, and the forced grain levy imposed as part of wartime food procurement.
  • In 1946, the All India States’ People’s Conference also demanded that the Nizam revoke the ban on the Hyderabad State Congress.
• By the end of the Second World War, the Nizam’s position had grown increasingly difficult; the ban on the Hyderabad State Congress was finally lifted in July 1946.
• (The subsequent movement for Hyderabad’s integration with independent India is covered separately under Integration of Princely States.)

Significance of the Rajkot and Hyderabad Satyagrahas

• The experiences of Hyderabad and Rajkot together illustrate how methods of struggle developed for British Indian conditions — particularly non-violent mass civil disobedience or Satyagraha — did not carry the same viability or effectiveness within the Princely States.
  • The absence of civil liberties and representative institutions meant that the political space available for such hegemonic politics was far smaller than even under the semi-hegemonic, semi-repressive colonial state in British India.
• Because British protection allowed rulers to withstand popular pressure to a considerable degree, as seen at Rajkot, movements within the States showed a far greater tendency to resort to violent methods of agitation — a pattern visible not only in Hyderabad but also in Travancore, Patiala, and the Orissa States.
  • In Hyderabad, even the State Congress ultimately turned to violent methods, and the Nizam was, in the final analysis, brought into line only by the Indian Army.
• This also meant that Communists and other Left groups, less hesitant than the Congress to embrace violent forms of struggle, found themselves relatively better positioned to grow as a political force within these States — again, most strikingly in Hyderabad, Travancore, Patiala, and the Orissa States.
• These differences in political conditions also explain the Congress’s own hesitation to merge the movements in the States with those in British India: the strategy adopted in British India was specifically suited to its own political context, while political prudence dictated against unnecessarily pushing the Princes into hardened opposition to Indian nationalism — at least until the political weight of the States’ own people could act as an effective counterbalance.

Case Study: The Praja Mandal Movement in Punjab

• The Punjab Riyasti Praja Mandal, an organisation of the people of Punjab’s Princely States, was established in 1928 to secure civil liberties and political rights for them.
• In British Punjab, significant administrative and constitutional reforms had already taken hold, alongside socio-religious reform movements that had brought considerable political awakening.
  • The freedom struggle there had taken the form of vigorous agitation against the repressive Rowlatt Acts, culminating in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (13 April 1919), followed by the Gurdwara Reform Movement to liberate Sikh shrines from corrupt, British-backed priests, and the violent activities of the Babbar Akalis.
• By contrast, subjects of the neighbouring Punjab princely states remained largely voiceless under arbitrary, despotic rule, enjoying no freedom of speech or expression and lacking popular institutions such as legislative councils or assemblies, while their rulers squandered state revenue on personal luxury.
• A public platform for redress emerged with the Punjab Riyasti Praja Mandal, announced at a public conference at Mansa, in Patiala state, on 17 July 1928 — a year after the All India States’ People’s Conference itself had been founded, on 17 September 1927, to fight for the rights of the roughly 600 princely states across India.
  • The initiative for the Punjab body came from Akali workers belonging to the Punjab states, who had been newly politicised through their participation in the long struggle to reform the management of Sikh shrines, in which many had suffered imprisonment and injury.
  • Seva Singh Thikrivala, an Akali leader from Patiala state then still in jail, was elected president of the Punjab Riyasti Praja Mandal, with Bhagvan Singh Laungowalia, also an Akali, as general secretary.
• Membership was soon opened to all adult inhabitants of the Punjab states regardless of caste, class, or religion, and the Mandal’s activities were extended to cover all princely states in the Punjab, Kashmir, and Shimla Hill regions.
  • The central body, affiliated to the All India States’ People’s Conference, coordinated and directed the work of its local units, with its main objectives being the protection of people’s rights and liberties, the establishment of representative institutions, and the amelioration of the peasantry’s condition.
• Given that the princely rulers were intolerant of criticism and enjoyed the full protection of the British Government, launching a popular movement against them was no easy task.
  • Activity initially remained confined to four Sikh states — Patiala, Nabha, Jind, and Faridkot — with particular focus directed against Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala.
  • The Shiromani Akali Dal held a series of meetings in Patiala demanding Seva Singh Thikrivala’s release; Kharak Singh, a charismatic Akali leader, toured the state denouncing Bhupinder Singh’s administration, prompting the state authorities to arrest a large number of Akali workers. Master Tara Singh then opened his own campaign against the Patiala ruler, while the Praja Mandal intensified its agitation — a twofold pressure that ultimately led the Maharaja to release Seva Singh Thikrivala and the other Akali prisoners.
• After his release, Seva Singh threw himself back into the movement. On 27 December 1929, the first regular session of the Punjab Riyasti Praja Mandal was convened at Lahore, adopting a resolution condemning Maharaja Bhupinder Singh’s maladministration and launching a morcha in Jind state against a rise in land revenue and the practice of begar (forced free labour).
  • In Malerkotla, a document titled the Malerkotla Indictment was prepared, faulting both the ruler and the state administration; in Kapurthala, the Praja Mandal demanded the abolition of oppressive taxes and the establishment of responsible government.
  • In the spring of 1929, a memorandum titled Indictment of Patiala was addressed to the Viceroy, cataloguing instances of misrule in Patiala and misconduct by its ruler; an enquiry by the All India States’ People’s Conference found the Maharaja guilty of most of the charges.
• In November 1930, Maharaja Bhupinder Singh, as Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes, was nominated the sole representative of India’s princes at the First Round Table Conference in London.
  • The Praja Mandal responded by stepping up its campaign, and at a conference held at Ludhiana on 11 October 1930, Seva Singh Thikrivala castigated Bhupinder Singh for his misrule and demanded his deposition; Seva Singh was arrested and sentenced to ten years’ rigorous imprisonment, though released after a few months.
• In July 1931, the third annual conference of the Punjab Riyasti Praja Mandal was held at Shimla, with the deposition of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh as its central demand.
  • During 1932–33, the Praja Mandal issued a second memorandum against Patiala and staged demonstrations in support at Amritsar and Delhi. To counter this pressure, the Patiala Government issued the “Hidayat” (instruction) in 1931, banning all political activity in the state; under its provisions, Seva Singh was rearrested in January 1933 and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment, in protest against which he undertook a hunger strike.
• Held in solitary confinement in Patiala jail, Seva Singh Thikrivala died on 20 January 1935 — a death that marked the end of an important phase in the history of the Punjab Riyasti Praja Mandal.
• Early in 1936, the Patiala Government reached an agreement with Master Tara Singh resulting in the release of all Akali prisoners; the Akalis’ withdrawal from active struggle considerably weakened the Praja Mandal.
  • Several of its leaders, including Bhagvan Singh Laungowalia and Jagir Singh Joga, came under Marxist influence, and with the Akali Dal’s role in the Sikh states diminishing and tensions growing between the movement’s rural Communist and urban Congress factions, the Praja Mandal further waned.
• In 1945, following the expulsion of the Communists from the Indian National Congress, the All India States’ People’s Conference instituted a regional council for the Punjab states under the chairmanship of Brish Bhan, effectively passing leadership of the Punjab Praja Mandal into the hands of the urban Hindu leadership.
• The struggle for constitutional and administrative reform continued in the following years, with several states witnessing popular agitations — that in Faridkot in 1946 being the most severe. Nehru’s visit on 27 May 1946 marked its culmination, with Giani Zail Singh — later President of India — among the local leaders who spearheaded the movement.
• With the formation of PEPSU — a union of Patiala, Nabha, Jind, Malerkotla, Faridkot, Kapurthala, Nalagarh, and Kalsia — on 15 July 1948, soon after independence, the princely regimes came to an end and the Punjab Riyasti Praja Mandal lapsed, its place taken by the PEPSU Pradesh Congress.

Case Study: The Liberal Prince of Aundh

• Balasaheb Pant Pratinidhi, ruler of Aundh (within the Deccan States Agency division of the Bombay Presidency), stood out as a distinctly liberal ruler among his princely counterparts.
  • He formed a Representatives’ Council, granting the people of his state 50% representation in it.
  • In 1926, he extended to the Council the power to legislate and pass resolutions.
  • In 1929, he declared that his subjects would receive the right of self-rule within five years, and formed a committee to draft a constitution based on modern political principles.
• His progressive work was highly commended by the All India States’ People’s Conference.

Conclusion

The Praja Mandal movements occupied a distinctive place in India’s freedom struggle — fighting a two-front battle against feudal autocracy and colonial paramountcy in political conditions markedly more repressive than those prevailing in British India. From the Gandhian Satyagraha at Rajkot to the increasingly radical politics of Hyderabad and the long, often tragic struggle of the Punjab Riyasti Praja Mandal, these movements took different paths shaped by local conditions, yet shared a common demand for responsible government and a common trajectory toward eventual integration with independent India. In doing so, they ensured that the story of India’s freedom struggle was never confined to British India alone, but extended into the furthest corners of princely territory as well.