Celebrating freedom before 8217;47

8220;Every part of the country did something in the course of the struggle, but the activities of Satara district have no parallel in the history of India,8221; Aruna Asaf Ali was to say at a meeting of Congress Socialist Party members in Pune on February 20, 1946.

The movement began as a guerrilla uprising and became a judicial and organisational set-up in the region. It did evoke condemnation from a few contemporary leaders. The contention was that it had deviated from Gandhi8217;s doctrine of non-violence. 8220;Complaints8221; were also made to the Mahatma during his Mahabaleshwar sojourn in 1945-46. The Mahatma, however, did not condemn the movement.

The Prati Sarkar was a struggle by simple, uneducated peasants of Satara led by Kranti Sinh Nana Patil, Y.B. Chavan, who later became deputy prime minister, Vasantdada Patil, former Maharashtra chief minister, Kisan Veer, Kashinath Deshmukh, P.G. Patil alias Pandu Mastar and Nagnath Naikawadi and G.D. 8220;Bapu8221; Laad, now sugar barons.

Says political scientist Dr Abasaheb Shinde: 8220;Sprouted from the Congress8217; disobedience movement, the Satara struggle was a movement with a difference. Guerrilla warfare and a secular parallel government were its distinct features.8221;

Arrests of Mahatma Gandhi and others provided the spark on August 9, 1942 and the proclamation of Prati Sarkar at Kameri, now a slumberous village in the Sangli district of Maharashtra on the Pune-Bangalore National Highway, on June 1, 1943 marked its formal beginning. 8220;Satara was practically emancipated from the shackles of the British and was under the rule of the Parallel Government,8221; says Dr Arun Bhosale of Kolhapur8217;s Shivaji University.

Satara erupted a day after the AICC8217;s Quit India resolution in Mumbai. Villagers were divided into units, committees were formed. Demonstrations marked a non-violent beginning of the movement.

Everyday, students of schools and colleges boycotted classes, demonstrators held rallies at tehsil and other government offices, cut telegraph and telephone lines and destructed railway properties.

Kisan Veer and Vasantdada Patil escaped from jail; the national flag was hoisted at the Tasgaon tehsil office on September 3, 1942; there were at least half-a-dozen rallies in that week itself. But what changed the complexion and dimension of the protest was the firing at Vaduj on September 9.

Though Satara was never declared liberated, it was effectively 8220;free8221;. The British rule ended outside the boundaries of the province. The Prati Sarkar was a democratic and secular government with an unwritten charter. It maintained armed forces, but worked without the bureaucracy and secretariat. The Congress tricolour was its flag and Vande Mataram, the anthem.

According to the erstwhile Bombay State committee report, the underground activists were initially divided into nine groups led by Nana Patil, Y.B. Chavan, Kashinath Deshmukh, Vasantdada Patil, Baburao Charankar and Barade master, Bapurao Kachare, Swami Ramanand Bharati and Bhupal Katte. These later grew into 29 groups. The Tuphan Sena, established on the lines of Russia8217;s Red Army, and the Bahirjee Patahk, an intelligence group were the other organs working under the government. Contacts were established with like-minded organisations in Goa and Hyderabad for supply of arms. In September 1945, Nagnath Naikawadi sought help from Subhash Chandra Bose8217;s Indian National Army to train the Prati Sarkar men.

Even while waging a near-war against the British, Satara leaders also embarked upon welfare activities. Land disputes, harassment of women, extravagance during marriages, liquor and ganja addictions, black marketing, money-lending and dacoities were handled by the Prati Sarkar court.

The experiment of gram rajya was a creative effort of the villagers. 8220;The inspiration was the urge to resist the incubus of a mighty and organised violence of the police and find a way out for a decent and self-respecting collective life,8221; says veteran Congress leader Shankarrao Deo.

To fund the parallel government, the guerrillas raided the government treasury bus between Dhule and Nandurbar on April 14, 1944 and collected Rs 5.51 lakh. Earlier they had attacked the Pay Special train near Shenoli village on June 7, 1943. Besides political dacoities, finances were also raised through donations, contributions, fees for services judicial and others rendered and fines collected as punishments.

The geo-political conditions of Satara immensely contributed to the success of the underground movement. The then Satara 8212; now divided in two revenue districts of Satara and Sangli was surrounded by the princely states of Kolhapur, Aundh, Phaltan, Bhor and Jat, rulers of almost all of which were sympathetic to the underground movement. Kundal village, regarded as the headquarters of the movement, was in Aundh State.

By February 1945, parallel government came to possess all broad attributes of a government. This set-up remained intact till the underground movement was officially wound up on June 13, 1946, weeks after the Congress assumed power. 8220;Albeit not sovereign, the parallel government was the government at the most general level,8221; says Shinde.

From the files

Parasharam Sripati Ghatge was the first to fall to police bullets during the Satara struggle at the Vaduj tehsil office on September 3, 1942. According to records, 15 persons were killed in police-guerrilla fights. This includes a police constable who was killed at Bahe village. The bloody trail ended with a battle at Mandur on February 25, 1946 which claimed Kisan Atmaram Ahir and Nanak Singh, a former soldier with the Sikh Regiment, who were entrusted with the responsibility to choose a location for a military camp.Satara observed its first hartal on August 10, 1942 and 23 more were reported. The then Madras and Southern Maratha M amp; SM railway was attacked 66 times while 146 instances of cutting the telegraph and telephone lines were reported between August 12, 1942 and May 2, 1946.Thirty-four government buildings were also attacked, among them a former rest house of Maratha diplomat Nana Phadnis at Wai, which was used as the civil court.Records show that 6,250 litigations were brought to the judiciary of the Prati Sarkar from Khanapur, Tasgaon, Walva now in Sangli district and Karad, Shenoli, Shere in Satara district areas. Of these 4,040 were settled.