Rampa Rebellion
- The Rampa Rebellion of 1922, also known as the Manyam Rebellion, was a tribal uprising led by Alluri Sitarama Raju in Godavari Agency of Madras Presidency, British India.
- It began in August 1922 and lasted until the capture and killing of Raju in May 1924.
Background of the system:
- The Rampa administrative area, situated in the hills of what are now the Alluri Sitarama Raju district of Andhra Pradesh, comprised around 700 square miles
- (1,800 km2) and had a mostly tribal population of approximately 28,000.
- They had traditionally been able to support their food requirements through the use, in particular, of the podu system, whereby each year some areas of jungle forest were burned to clear land for cultivation.
- The British Raj authorities had wanted to improve the economic usefulness of lands in Godavari Agency, an area that was noted for the prevalence of malaria and blackwater fever.
- With the 1882 Madras Forest Act authorities took control of the forests, mostly for commercial purposes such as produce for building railways and ships, without any regard for the needs of the tribal people.
- The act restricted the free movement of Adivasisin their forest habitats, and prevented them from practicing their traditional form of agriculture called podu.
- There was discontent among the muttadars, who had been hereditary tax collectors and de facto rulers in the hills prior to the arrival of the British.
- They had acted on behalf of the rajas, the actual rulers who lived on the plains, and essentially had unlimited powers.
- But with the British subsumed them into the colonial administration, leaving them as bureaucrats with no substantive power at all and no automatic right of inherited position.
Syllabus: Prelims
