One hundred twelve years have passed since the dawn of 17 November 1913, when Mangarh Hill, a forested ridge along the border of present-day Rajasthan and Gujarat, witnessed one of the deadliest mass killings of the colonial era. The British Indian Army and forces of several princely states gunned down more than 1,500 Bhils, Garasiyas and Banjaras. Yet, outside tribal belts of western India, the tragedy barely registers in the collective conscience.
Often called the “Adivasi Jallianwala Bagh”, the massacre predated the Jallianwala Bagh killings by six years, but its story slipped through the cracks of India’s official narrative. To the communities whose blood soaked the hilltop, Mangarh is not a historical footnote, it is a living wound, a symbol of resistance, and a testimony to the civilisational pride of India’s forest-dwelling peoples.
Forgotten warriors of a forgotten frontier
In the late nineteenth century, the Bhils, once proud guardians of the Aravallis and Mewar’s forests, were slipping into crisis. Their autonomy, their movement, and even their cultural rhythms were being choked. Forest restrictions imposed by the British, severe taxation, crippling famines of 1899-1900, and increasing interference from princely states had combined to erode their self-sufficiency.
This was a society that once stood alongside Rajput rulers, immortalised on the Mewar insignia under the line: “Jo dridh raakhe dharm ko, taahi raakhe Kartaar.” The Bhil represented the unshaken defender of dharma. But by the early 1900s, many had been pushed into begaar (bonded labour), alcoholism, and humiliating servitude.
Into this despair stepped a reformer who would change their fate.
The fire that lit a forest
Born into a Banjara family, Govind Giri, revered today as Govind Guru, saw the Bhils not as outlaws or primitives, but as a civilisation wronged and in need of spiritual revival. His Bhagat movement promoted:
moral discipline
abstinence from alcohol
vegetarianism
rejection of criminal activities
worship of the sacred dhuni (fire pit)
His message was simple but transformative: reclaim dignity, reclaim dharma.
Within a decade, more than five lakh Bhils embraced his teachings. Mangarh Hill, with its dense forests and clear views of the valleys below, became the centre of his spiritual and social reform. To the Bhils, the hill was not merely a refuge; it was home, temple, and fort.
But to the local rulers, Govind Guru’s growing influence was a threat.
Fear among the rajas, anger among the British
The princely states of Banswara, Dungarpur, Santrampur, and Edar, each tied to the British by subsidiary alliances, watched the Bhagat movement with suspicion. When Bhils demanded relief from excessive taxes and bonded labour, princely courts panicked.
False cases followed. Govind Guru’s family was jailed. Liquor merchants complained of losses. British officers accused him of inciting rebellion. When attempts were made to arrest him in 1913, Govind Guru and his followers retreated to Mangarh Hill, preparing a defensive encampment.
In the months before the massacre, tensions rose sharply. Bhil youths clashed with police, and the hilltop community refused to abandon their position until their grievances were heard. In a rare yet telling act, Govind Guru’s followers wrote directly to Captain J.P. Stockley of the Mewar Bhil Corps, demanding justice.
They received no reply.
The silence was not diplomatic; it was ominous.
November 1913
By early November, the British had resolved to quash what they labeled a “tribal uprising.” On 13 November, seven armed companies of British troops—backed by equal forces from Rajasthan’s princely states—encircled Mangarh Hill.
The operation was chilling in its precision and ruthless in its execution.
British commanders Major S. Bailey and Captain E. Stoiley ordered machine guns to be mounted on donkeys and mules, allowing rapid movement around the hill’s contours. The Bhils, armed with nothing more than bows, arrows, a handful of swords, and a few revolvers, had no chance against mechanised firepower.
When the gunfire began, it did not pause for hours.
In that rain of bullets, men, women, elders, and children fell indiscriminately. Oral histories recount that the firing finally stopped only when a British officer discovered a newborn still attempting to suckle milk from its mother’s lifeless breast.
British records tried to downplay the casualties.
But Bhil accounts, historians, and independent researchers converge around a grim truth:
More than 1,500 people were killed.
Nearly 900 more were arrested.
Govind Guru was taken prisoner.
The hilltop, once alive with song and prayer, became a silent graveyard.
The Aftermath
Govind Guru was sentenced to death, though it was later commuted to life imprisonment. He spent years in the Hyderabad jail, released in 1919 on the condition that he never return to the princely territories where his influence was strongest. He lived his final years in Gujarat, passing away in 1931.
For decades after the massacre, Bhils avoided Mangarh Hill. Fear lingered like smoke. But memory survived—through songs like the haunting “Oh Bhuretia, Nahi Manu Re” (O Britisher, we shall not bow).
And yet, beyond Bhil settlements, India moved on, almost unaware of the bloodshed that had soaked Mangarh’s soil.
Unlike Jallianwala Bagh, Mangarh Hill received little official recognition for most of independent India’s history. Several factors contributed to its erasure:
1. The victims were tribal, a community rarely centred in mainstream freedom narratives.
2. The massacre occurred in a princely state, not in British India directly, complicating bureaucratic documentation.
3. Colonial archives suppressed details, often dismissing it as a “minor tribal disturbance.”
4. Post-independence historiography, dominated by elite leftists, urban, and academic perspectives, barely touched upon tribal resistance movements.
As retired IPS officer and author Hari Ram Meena has repeatedly argued, Mangarh is not an exception but part of a pattern: hundreds of Adivasi uprisings across India were underreported or ignored, surviving largely through folklore.
Even after independence, Mangarh Hill remained contested territory, claimed by both Rajasthan and Gujarat. Only around the early 2000s was an arrangement reached: approximately 80 percent of the area lies in Rajasthan, and 20 per cent in Gujarat.
It was only in the last two decades that Mangarh Dham began receiving attention from state governments, researchers, and community leaders. Today, nearly one lakh devotees, descendants, and curious citizens visit the hill every year during the annual Mangarh fair.
For the Bhils, Garasiyas, and Banjaras, the hill is sacred, a memorial to their uprising, a temple to their martyrs, and a reminder that the freedom struggle was not fought only in city squares but also in the deep forests and rugged hills of Bharat.
The courage of the tribal communities who rose under Govind Guru reveals a broader truth: India’s freedom was not the victory of one ideology, one leader, or one method. It was a mosaic of everyday heroism, from peasants to tribal groups, from revolutionaries to satyagrahis.
Govind Guru’s Bhils fought with bows and sacred fire. Others fought with slogans, marches, or underground networks. Together, they rattled an empire.
Mangarh Hill is one of those stories, nearly erased, now finally resurfacing.
112 years later, Mangarh Hill still whispers its painful testimony. Its soil hides the bones of forgotten soldiers; its wind carries the songs of an unbreakable people. As new research emerges, and as tribal voices reclaim their space in the nation’s historical memory, Mangarh demands recognition not as a footnote, but as a cornerstone of India’s freedom story.
For a civilisation that speaks of vasudhaiva kutumbakam, Mangarh reminds us of another timeless truth.
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