Princely States, 1857, the Freedom Movement and the Formation of Madhya Pradesh

The Marathas took Malwa in the 1730s. The Peshwa Bajirao I granted territory to Malhar Rao Holkar in 1732 and gave Ranoji Scindia his share, and the two houses became the leading powers of the plateau. Bajirao I defeated the Nizam of Hyderabad at the Battle of Bhopal on 24 December 1737; the treaty that followed in January 1738 ceded Malwa to the Marathas. In 1729 Bajirao had also come to the aid of Chhatrasal of Bundelkhand, who gave him a third of his realm in return.

Ahilyabai Holkar ruled Indore from 1 December 1767 to 13 August 1795. She made Maheshwar the seat of the dynasty on the Narmada, supported the weavers of the Maheshwari sari, and sponsored temples at Varanasi, Somnath and Gaya, among many works. Her successors moved the capital to Indore in 1818, after the Holkar defeat.

The Holkars and Scindias were drawn into the wars that made the British paramount. Daulat Rao Scindia accepted the Treaty of Surji-Anjangaon on 30 December 1803, which gave up territory and admitted a British force. In the Third Anglo-Maratha War the Holkar army was beaten at the Battle of Mahidpur on 21 December 1817, and the Treaty of Mandsaur of 6 January 1818 made Indore a British-protected state within the Central India Agency.

Chhatrasal, a Bundela Rajput born in the 1640s, rose against the Mughals in 1671 with a small band and later ruled from Panna. He is called the Lion of Bundelkhand. His help from Bajirao I in 1729 against the Bangash Nawab of Farrukhabad, who had besieged him at Jaitpur, cost him a third of his realm. Chhatrasal died in 1731 by the usual reckoning.

Orchha, founded by the Bundela Rudra Pratap Singh, is dated 1501 by one account and 1531 by another, when he moved to the Betwa. Its ruler Bir Singh Deo (1605–1627) was a Mughal vassal under Jahangir, and his time is the state's architectural peak. The seat moved to Tikamgarh in 1783.

Rewa, the Baghela state, is traced to Vyaghra Dev, whose seat was Bandhavgarh. Its ruler Vikramaditya Singh moved the capital to Rewa in 1617. Akbar's connection with Rewa and its court musicians is part of the state's lore, and the Baghela rulers accepted British protection by a treaty of 5 October 1812. Rewa was the largest state of the Baghelkhand Agency. Its last ruler, Martand Singh, was made Rajpramukh of Vindhya Pradesh.

The Gond kingdom of Garha-Mandla fell to the Marathas in 1781, after a long decline under Maharaj Shah, who was killed in 1742 in a Maratha attack. The best-known Gond figure is Rani Durgavati, widow of Dalpat Shah, who ruled as regent from about 1550 to 1564 for her minor son Vir Narayan. Her seat was Singorgarh and later Chauragarh. In 1564 the Mughal general Asaf Khan attacked Garha, and at the Narrai nala on 24 June 1564 she fell fighting, rather than surrender. Her memory is held by the Jabalpur university, renamed Rani Durgavati Vishwavidyalaya in 1983, and by a postage stamp issued in 1988.

The province of Central Provinces and Berar was thus a British creation that absorbed Nagpur, Berar and the Chhattisgarh states. Its name was changed to Madhya Pradesh in 1950, but its territory was not yet the state of 1956. The name and the boundary changed on different dates, a distinction examinations test.

The revolt reached central India through the cantonments and the Gwalior and Holkar armies. At Neemuch on 3 June 1857 the Bengal Native Infantry and a cavalry wing rose and killed or drove out their British officers, and most accounts name Muhammad Ali Baig as a leader. At Indore on 1 July 1857 Holkar cavalry under Saadat Khan rose, and the Holkar ruler Tukoji Rao II stayed loyal to the British. At Jabalpur the British executed the Gond ruler Shankar Shah and his son Raghunath Shah. Accused of plotting against the English, they were blown from a cannon on 18 September 1857, and the 52nd Native Infantry, sent to suppress the revolt, mutinied after the executions.

Gwalior is the state's most complicated case. Jayajirao Scindia stayed allied with the British, and when his forces went over to the rebels on 1 June 1858 he fled to Agra. The rebels held the city only briefly, because Hugh Rose's force retook it in the days after the Battle of Gwalior on 19 June 1858. Rani Lakshmibai died in a cavalry action at Kotah-ki-Serai on 17 June 1858. The revolt's central India leaders were then hunted down, and Tantia Tope was betrayed and hanged at Shivpuri in April 1859.

Resistance in the state did not begin in 1857. In 1824, at Narsinghgarh in the Malwa country, Kunwar Chain Singh refused to submit to the British Political Agent when the British tried to remove him from the management of the state. He was killed in the fight at Sehore. Local histories honour him as an early martyr, which is a claim of local tradition rather than of a national ranking.

The Flag Satyagraha of 1923 was a major campaign of the non-cooperation years in the state. In March 1923 the Jabalpur municipality resolved to fly the national flag, the district authorities banned it, and when the flag was raised anyway the police pulled it down. The protest spread and was carried most notably to Nagpur, where Vallabhbhai Patel led the campaign. The Nagpur satyagraha ended in an agreement with the British that allowed the march and released the arrested protesters.

In 1930 the Jungle Satyagraha in Betul district drew Gond and Korku villagers into the reserved forests. In August 1930 Ganjan Singh Korku led Gond and Korku people into the forests in defiance of the forest laws, and he is the leader the movement is remembered by. The movement protested the restrictions on the forest produce on which tribal livelihoods depended.

At the Tripuri session of the Indian National Congress in March 1939, near Jabalpur, Subhas Chandra Bose was the president. He had won the presidency against a candidate backed by Gandhi, and the Pant Resolution that followed restricted his executive authority. Bose resigned and founded the Forward Bloc in 1939. The session's place in the state's history is its venue, not a state-level decision.

Makhanlal Chaturvedi, born in 1889 at Babai in the Narmadapuram district, edited the nationalist journals Karmaveer and Prabha and was repeatedly jailed. He became the first recipient of the Sahitya Akademi award in Hindi, in 1955, for Him Tarangini, and died at Bhopal on 30 January 1968. Chandrashekhar Azad, most sources agree, was born on 23 July 1906 at Bhabra in Alirajpur, and his childhood was spent in the princely state of Alirajpur.

The Mains syllabus names tribal heroes of the state, and each needs a profile. Bhima Nayak, a Bhil leader of Barwani, was active in the 1857 rising in the Nimar country and his raids on the roads and villages of Nimar and Khandesh made him a target of the British. He was captured in the 1860s (sources give 1861 or 1868), sent to the Andaman Islands, and died at Port Blair on 29 December 1876; some accounts say he was hanged. Khajya Nayak, a Bhil in the Sendhwa and Nimar hills, had served as a guard on a road before he turned against the British and joined Bhima Nayak. Accounts of his end differ, so an answer should say that his fate is reported in more than one way.

Tantya Bhil, born in the Nimar country (Pandhana or Badada village, as sources differ), led a guerrilla campaign from about 1878 to 1889, and a New York newspaper called him the Robin Hood of India. He was betrayed by a relative by marriage, tried at Jabalpur, and sentenced to death. He was hanged at Jabalpur on 4 December 1889. His remains are believed to have been thrown near Patalpani station on the Khandwa line, where a memorial stands. His birth year is reported differently in different sources.

Badal Bhoi of Chhindwara district joined the national struggle in 1923 and organised a gathering at Tamia that drew Gond (Koitur) villagers into the movement. The state's first tribal museum at Chhindwara was renamed after him, and the Shri Badal Bhoi Tribal Freedom Fighters' Museum was inaugurated in 2024.

The States Reorganisation Commission was appointed in December 1953 under Fazal Ali, with H. N. Kunzru and K. M. Panikkar, and reported on 30 September 1955. The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 was enacted on 31 August 1956 and came into force on 1 November 1956, the day Madhya Pradesh was formed. The new state was built from the Central Provinces' Mahakoshal districts, the Bhopal State, Vindhya Pradesh and Madhya Bharat, and the Sironj sub-division of Kotah was added to it. The Marathi-speaking Nagpur division went to Bombay State, and the Sunel-Tappa enclave went to Rajasthan. At formation the state had 43 districts.

The commission recommended Jabalpur as the capital, but Bhopal was chosen, and the choice is usually explained by political considerations and the buildings already available at Bhopal. Ravishankar Shukla became the first Chief Minister, and the state's first Foundation Day is observed on 1 November.

The Madhya Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2000 (Act 28 of 2000) received presidential assent on 25 August 2000, and it fixed 1 November 2000 as the appointed day on which the south-eastern districts became the new state of Chhattisgarh. Sixteen districts, from Bastar to Surguja, were transferred. Chhattisgarh became the 26th state of the Union, with Raipur as its capital. The division's logic was the separate identity of the Chhattisgarh country, which had belonged to the Central Provinces and whose princely states had been merged into the province after 1947.

After the division, Madhya Pradesh kept 45 districts, and it remains the second-largest Indian state by area, after Rajasthan. Jabalpur and Tripuri stayed in the state, so the Kalachuri and Gond monuments of the Narmada valley remain in Madhya Pradesh, while the Bastar and Surguja tracts went to Chhattisgarh.