Buxi Jagabandhu and the Paika Rebellion of 1817
Revisiting and Rewriting the Narrative in the Postcolonial Space
Abstract
This article revisits the Paika Rebellion of 1817 through the twin lenses of political economy and vernacular memory, centring the figure of Buxi Jagabandhu. The rebellion, centred in Khurda and neighboring regions of Odisha, represents one of the earliest significant resistances to the East India Company’s administration in eastern India. Traditionally celebrated as the heroic fight led by Buxi Jagabandhu Bidyadhara Mohapatra Bhramarbar Ray, the rebellion is often considered as “India’s first war of independence.” Yet a closer scholarly inquiry reveals a more complex picture of the event which cannot be reduced to a singular nationalist narrative. The paper argues that while the rebellion has recently been invoked as a proto-nationalist anticolonial uprising, a closer reading shows it was a heterogeneous conflation of military, peasant, tribal, and elite restorative impulses responding to local grievances, notably the disruption of the entitlements of land-tenures (niskar/jagir) and administrative encroachments by the East India Company. By juxtaposing colonial documentation, regional sources, and recent scholarship, the paper reframes the Paika Rebellion of Odisha as a complex historical phenomenon than it has been portrayed for long. The article concludes by suggesting historiographical and methodological moves for future work: integrate micro-archival evidence, oral/vernacular sources, and comparative perspectives on early nineteenth-century insurgencies in eastern India.
References
Bates, C. (Ed.). (2013–2017). Mutiny at the margins: New perspectives on the Indian uprising of 1857 (7 vols.). New Delhi: Sage.
Behera, D. (1984). Freedom movement in the state of Ghumsar in Orissa, 1836–1866. Calcutta: Punthi Pustak.
Behera, S. (1999). Oriya literature and the Jagannath cult, 1866–1936: Quest for identity (D. Phil thesis). University of Oxford, UK.
Behera, S. (2014). The unfortunate celebrity: The life and times of Buxi Jagabandhu. New Delhi: Samskriti.
Benjamin, W. (1969). Theses on the philosophy of history. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (pp. 253–264). New York: Schocken Books.
Chatterjee, P. (2012). After subaltern studies. Economic & Political Weekly, 47(35), 44–49.
Das, M. (1951). Bakshi Jagabandhu. Cuttack.
Dash, G. N. (1978). Jagannatha and Oriya nationalism. In H. Eschmann, H. Kulke, & G. C. Tripathi (Eds.), The cult of Jagannath and the regional tradition of Orissa (pp. 359–374). New Delhi: Manohar.
De, S. C. (Ed.). (1961). A guide to Orissan records (Vol. II). Bhubaneswar: The State Archives of Orissa.
De, S. C. (Ed.). (1962). A guide to Orissan records (Vol. III). Bhubaneswar: The State Archives of Orissa.
Declare Paika Bidroha as 1st war of independence. (2017, July 20). The Pioneer.
Ewer, W. (n.d.). Letter from W. Ewer to W. B. Bayley, Calcutta, May 13, 1818. In Selections from the correspondence (Vol. I).
Guha, R. (1983a). Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Guha, R. (1983b). The prose of counter-insurgency. In R. Guha (Ed.), Subaltern studies II: Writings on South Asian history and society (pp. 1–42). Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Guha, R. (1985). The career of an anti-God in heaven and on earth. In A. Mitra (Ed.), The truth unites: Essays in tribute to Samar Sen (pp. 1–25). Calcutta: Subarnarekha.
Guha, R. (Ed.). (1998). A subaltern studies reader, 1986–1995. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Mahtab, H. K., & De, S. C. (Eds.). (1957). History of the freedom movement in Orissa (Vol. 1). Secretary, State Committee for Compilation of History of the Freedom Movement, Orissa. https://archive.org/details/history-of-the-freedom-movement-in-orissa-vol-1957/page/120/mode/1up
Mubayi, Y. (1999). The “Paik” rebellion of 1817: Status and conflict in early colonial Orissa. Studies in History, 15(1), 45–66.
Odisha’s 1817 Paika Rebellion to be mentioned as first war of independence. (2017, October 22). The New Indian Express.
‘Paika Bidroha’ to be named as 1st war of independence. (2017, October 24). The Hindu.
Pattanaik, P. K. (1979). A forgotten chapter of Orissan history (with special reference to the Rajas of Khurda and Puri) 1568–1828. Calcutta: Punthi Pustak.
Ray, B. C. (1996). Biplabī bīra Jagabandhu. Bhubaneswar: Gyanaloka Prakashan.
Ray, B. C. (2001). Bakshi Jagabandhu: The path founder of freedom movements of India. Bhubaneswar: Labanga Lata Ray.
Sterling, A. (1822). Orissa: Its geography, statistics, history, religion and antiquity. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press.
Sterling, A. (1904 [1846]). An account (geographical, statistical, and historical) of Orissa proper or Cuttack with appendices. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press.
Tanabe, A. (2020). Genealogies of the “Paika Rebellion”: Heterogeneities and linkages. International Journal of Asian Studies, 17(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479591420000157
Toynbee, G. (1873). A sketch of the history of Orissa from 1803 to 1828. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tanutrushna Panigrahi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
