1883: Vasudev Balwant Phadke dies on hunger strike
February 17th, 2019 Headsman
Vasudev Balwant Phadke died on hunger strike against his British captivity on this date in 1883.
The “father of armed rebellion” in India, Phadke radicalized while working as a clerk in Pune and arose as a prominent revolutionary in 1875 whipping up protests against the British for deposing the Maharaja of Baroda State and for the grinding agricultural crisis.
He took his sharp anti-colonial oratory on a then-novel barnstorming tour, and eventually formed the Ramosi Peasant Force — an armed peasant insurgency consisting of a few hundred souls.
Its successes were more of the local and symbolic variety — most notably, he got control of the city of Pune for a few days — but they sufficed to draw a price on Phadke’s head which eventually found a seller. (Phadke had made contemptuous reply by issuing his own bounty on the Governor of Bombay, a purse that was not claimed.) Even after capture, he briefly escaped by tearing his cell door off his hinges.
Needing to defuse his power as a potential martyr, the British gave him a term of years rather than a death sentence, and they moved him to Aden, Yemen, to serve it. Phadke overruled the sentence and clinched his martyr’s crown by refusing food until he succumbed on February 17, 1883.
There’s an eponymous 2007 biopic celebrating this Indian national hero, clips of which can be found in the usual places.
On this day..
- 1819: Pierre Charles Rodolphe Foulard, Henry-Clement Sanson's first execution - 2020
- 1955: Three for the death of King Ananda of Thailand - 2018
- 1719: Richard Worley, pirate - 2017
- 1688: James Renwick, to end the Killing Time - 2016
- 1526: Guillaume Jobert, Genevieve-blasphemer - 2015
- 1815: Eight deserters by order of Andrew Jackson - 2014
- 1938: Juan Soldado, patron saint of Mexico-US migrants - 2013
- 1524: Not Jean de Poitiers, father of the mistress - 2012
- 1944: Jean Cavailles, philosopher-mathematician - 2011
- 1872: Gomburza - 2010
- 1600: Giordano Bruno, freethought martyr - 2009
- 2004: Cameron Willingham, for an accidental fire? - 2008
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Arts and Literature,England,Guerrillas,History,India,Martyrs,Not Executed,Occupation and Colonialism,Power,Revolutionaries,Soldiers,Starved,Yemen
Tags: 1880s, 1883, aden, cinema, february 17, nationalism, pune, separatists
