The Massacre on Mangadh Hill
Gujarat has a Jallianwala Bagh too. On November 17, 1913, the British gunned down more than 1,500 Bhils on Mangadh Hill, on the border between Rajasthan and Gujarat. INDIA TODAY speaks to the descendants of those killed.
In the hills and valleys of the Aravalli ranges on the Gujarat- Rajasthan border lies buried a brutal tribal massacre committed nearly a century ago, on November 17, 1913. Oral history, academic research and an INDIA TODAY investigation spread across several villages of Bhils in the Banswara- Panchmahal- Dungarpur region pieces together a little- known tragedy, one that echoes the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, Punjab, on April 13, 1919, when British forces under the command of Brigadier- General Reginald E. H. Dyer shot dead 379 people, though nationalist historiography puts the number at over 1,000 people. Oral tradition of the Bhils has it that as many as 1,500 followers of social reformer Govind Guru, a banjara ( gypsy) from Vedsa village near Dungarpur in Rajasthan, were felled on Mangadh Hill by British forces. The guru had launched a movement called “Bhagat movement” in the late 19th century among Bhil tribes, which aimed to ‘ emancipate’ them by prescribing, among other things, adherence to vegetarianism and abstinence from all kinds of intoxicants. Inspired by the guru, the Bhils then rose against oppressive policies of the British and forced farm labour imposed by the local princely rulers of Banswara, Santrampur, Dungarpur and Kushalgarh.
Present- day descendants of both survivors and victims of the massacre have kept alive an oral tradition that recounts events on that fateful day. Magan Hira Parghi’s grandfather, Dharji, was among those killed. “My father, Hira, who died a decade ago, used to say that the firing started after British negotiators failed to convince Bhils to vacate the hill they had assembled on. The relentless firing was halted by a British officer only after he saw a Bhil child trying to suckle his dead mother,” says the 75- year- old from Amalia village in Banswara district of Rajasthan. Virji Parghi, 86, of Khuta Tikma village, also in Banswara, says his father, Soma, who survived the 1913 tragedy and died in 2000 at the age of 110, would recount to him that the British placed ‘ canon- like guns’ on donkeys and made them swivel in circles while firing so that more people could get killed.
Soma managed to escape and hid in a cave for days before returning home. “He said hundreds fell to bullets and several died trying to escape as they slipped down the hill,” says Virji. Gala Kachra, the grandfather of Bhanji Rangji Garasia, 58, also fell to a British bullet. “My father, Rangji, was only 11 when it happened. Before his death in 1991, he would often narrate that around 1,500 Bhils died that day,” says Bhanji, a resident of Bhongapura village in Banswara. Fellow villager Matha Jithra Garasia, 69, lost his grandfather Var Singh Garasia and his aunt in the massacre. “The killings created such a scare that Bhils stopped going to Mangadh for several decades after Independence,” says Matha.
Lalshankar Parghi, 66, a Bhil farmer of Temerva village near Banswara, has been going from village
to village collecting evidence on the gory episode. His grandfather, Tiha, an aide of Govind Guru, was also killed in the massacre. Tiha had played a key role in establishing village- level units of the Samph Sabha, a socio- religious organisation formed by the guru to strengthen his Bhagat movement. Lalshankar has so far collated oral accounts from over 250 families whose relatives died on Mangadh Hill. Tiha’s body was brought to the village by six Bhils who survived and it was cremated in an adjoining jungle. Lalshankar’s father Pongar later built a memorial at the spot and named it ‘ Jagmandir Sat Ka Chopda’ ( Jagmandir, the place of true history).
Historical research backs the Bhil oral tradition. Arun Vaghela, 43, who teaches history at Gujarat University, says Govind Guru started his movement among Bhils in the early 1890s. The movement had, as its religious centrepiece, the concept of a fire god, which required his followers to raise sacred hearths in front of which Bhils pray while performing the purifying