Titumir Rebellion

Conflict with native zamindars

In June 1830, Krishnadeva Rai, the Zamindar of Punra — in some sources, alternately described as the Talukdar of Sarfarazpur — imposed an annual tax similar to jizya on all bearded Muslims which was caused by On Titumir's advice, the peasants refused to pay and an enraged Krishnadeva led a levy of armed men on a spree of arson, even destroying a local mosque. The Muslims reciprocated but the melee remained inconclusive. Complaints were filed at the Baduria police station by both sides and eventually, the subdivisional magistrate of Barasat dismissed the issue but only after getting a declaration from the peasants about committing to peace.

Buoyed up by the lack of any punishment for Krishnadeva, fellow Zamindars — Ramnarayan Nag Chaudhuri of Taragonia and Guru Prasad Chowdhury of Nagarpur — instituted similar tax-regime on their subjects and imprisoned dissenters. The peasants organised themselves and sued the Zamindars but to little avail. This led Titumir to advocate for a full-fledged armed resistance against what he felt to be the nexus of Zamindars and Company. Atis Dasgupta, a scholar of peasant rebellions in early Colonial India, notes that here onward, what was essentially a socio-religious agitation against misrule of Hindu zamindars morphed into a political-economic class-struggle against British rule.

End of the movement

Titumir would make a last stand against the British by creating a bamboo fortress. However the British defeated and killed him during the siege. The political environment changed in the mid-nineteenth century, when a section of the Muslim intelligentsia began to rethink about the unequal war against the British. Karamat Ali Jaunpuri came up with an alternative theory of peaceful co-existence with the British rulers and the Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya movement gradually subsided.