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On hearing the name of Jallianwala Bagh, one remembers the massacre of Amritsar which happened on the orders of General Dyer in 1919, but very few people know that a similar incident happened in Vidurashvattha in Mysore (now Karnataka). Here too there was fierce firing on the freedom fighters.
On hearing the name of Jallianwala Bagh, one remembers the massacre of Amritsar which happened on the orders of General Dyer in 1919, but very few people know that a similar incident happened in Vidurashvattha in Mysore (now Karnataka). Here too, there was fierce firing on the freedom fighters, that too only to stop them from hoisting the flag of Swaraj. In this fierce firing, 32 freedom fighters were martyred and hundreds of people were injured. In this special series of NewsNCR, we are telling you about Vidurashvattha situated between Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and its importance in the freedom movement.
Controversy started over stopping flag hoisting
This was the period when the freedom movement was slowly gaining momentum. At that time Vidurashvattha used to be a village of Kolar. Mysore was under British rule, so the freedom movement was at its peak. Meanwhile, flag hoisting was banned in Mysore. It was also warned that if anyone did this, he would be shot. At present this area is 90 km from Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka and 20 km from Hindupur in Andhra Pradesh.
Congress leaders protest
Senior Congress leaders opposed the order of ban on hoisting the flag and decided that the flag would definitely be hoisted in the party meeting. According to the book ‘Jallianwala Bagh of Karnataka’, there was tight security in that three-day meeting so that no one could hoist the flag. Despite all efforts, the flag could not be hoisted in the meeting held at Shivpura in Mandya district and the leaders who tried were also arrested. Revolutionaries and Congress leaders were also stunned by this. After this, the order of the government was refused to be accepted clearly and it was decided to run the flag satyagraha in the entire state.
getting support
After taking the decision to hoist the flag in any case, people started joining this movement. Crowds of people started gathering in Vidurashvattha. The leaders promised that whatever could not be done in Shivpura, they have to be done here in any case. He also knew that the police would try to stop him.
The fighters thought that there would be only lathi charge
On 25 April 1938, crowds of people started gathering here. Seeing the number of hundreds turned into thousands. There was a temple on one side of the park and a river on the other side. According to Gangadhar Murthy, author of the book ‘Jallianwala Bagh of Karnataka’, the freedom fighters present there felt that there would be a bus lathi-charge and if this happened, they would cross the river from the other side of the park and reach Hyderabad because at that time the princely state of Hyderabad would have crossed the river. Used to go which was under the Nizam. That is why the Mysore police could not do anything there.
plan backfired
The plan that the freedom fighters had deviated completely, Gangadhar Murthy, while writing the book, quoted 85-year-old Narasimhaiya, who was alive in that case, as saying that ‘the crowd was increasing, it was noon, the movement The big faces of the police had been arrested. Meanwhile, the agitators started clashing with the police and the police started firing. This caused a stampede. More than 100 bullets were fired, in which 32 freedom fighters were martyred and the number of injured was in hundreds.
Gandhiji had said that the sacrifice will not go in vain
Exactly 19 years after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, this massacre in Mysore had become a topic of discussion across the country, on April 29, Gandhi had issued a statement regarding this incident, saying that those who sacrificed their lives in Vidurashvattha. What is given will not go in vain.
Those who fired were told innocent
A clean chit was given to the policemen who opened fire on the freedom fighters in the garden of Vidurshvattha. The British government accepted the matter of massacre here, but only accepted that 10 people have lost their lives here.
Ban on flag hoisting lifted
After this incident, anger grew among the people. It was only after this that the famous Mirza-Patel Pact was signed and all restrictions on flag hoisting were lifted. After independence in 1973, a memorial was also built here, around it there is a garden which has been named as Veer Saudh Garden. It is supervised by the Satyagraha Memorial Development Committee. Gangadhar Murthy, who wrote the book Jallianwala Bagh of Karnataka, is its member, who also takes care of the monument.
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