Titu Mir was a much-loved figure in Bangladesh, also renowned and appreciated in the Indian state of Bengal where he was born and slain. Titu Mir was born in 1782 in Chandpur, a village in the 24-Parganas district in present-day Bengal in India and was formally named Mir Nisar Ali. Within history and literature, he is portrayed as an inspirational figure who led a popular peasant movement against zamindars (landlords) and British imperialism. The building of his bamboo fort with his followers to resist the British army sent from Calcutta in November 1831 to deal with his rebellion is often cited inspiringly.

At some point during his life, he was a local hard nut who could be hired to enforce the will of influential people. After some trouble with the law, he went to Calcutta (Kolkata) in the early 1820s, where he met and became close to some wealthy Muslims in the city. They were Jamal al-Din Afendi and Mirja Ghulam Ambiya: 'The former was a rich and influential Egyptian merchant resident', and the latter was 'known as the "prince of merchants" in the Calcutta Commercial circle' (History of the Muslims of Bengal. Volume 2A, Muhammad Mohar Ali).

Under their encouragement and financial support from Mirja Ghulam Ambiya, Titu Mir decided to go to Makkah for pilgrimage and higher Islamic learning, where he arrived there sometime in 1823. While in Makkah during his four years stay, he is believed to have become influenced by the teachings of Muḥammad bin Abdul Wahhāb, who preached a stricter interpretation of Islam. His teachings subsequently became known as Wahhabism, which argued against 'unacceptable corruptions and innovations' that had entered the religious practices of Muslims.

When Titu Mir returned to his native Bengal in 1827, he is said to have started a reform movement along the lines of the teachings of Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab. And within a very short time, he became very influential as a leader, and his appeal grew quite fast among the local people where he settled. Although his followers were primarily Muslim peasants, Hindus from the poorer strata of society started to join the movement, perhaps due to Titu Mir’s conflict with local Hindu landlords that equally taxed and oppressed Hindu and Muslim peasants and British Indigo planters and authorities that dominated everything. 

Titu Mir settled down, dedicating his life to reforming the 'corrupted' form of Islam practised by many Muslims at that time. His main goal was to purify Islam from what was seen as unacceptable innovations that became part of the practices of ordinary Muslims, such as offering food to graves, and he encouraged people to live according to the tenets of Islam. His preaching and work attracted increasing numbers of followers, whom the British records described as mostly weavers. A small mosque was erected, and his followers grew beards and changed the way they dressed. This irritated some traditional Muslims who complained to Krishna Dev Rai, the zamindar (landlord) of the area where they lived and paid tax. However, Krishna Dev Rai and other zamindars nearby saw an opportunity in the internal Muslim conflicts to intervene and deal with Titu Mir's movement. Among the actions they took was to impose a beard tax on his followers and forbid the 'new sect' from practising, among other restrictions.

The zamindars collected the beard tax from some individuals, but they faced resistance from others who refused to pay. Krishna Dev Rai raided Titu Mir's mosque in a place called Narkelbaria and burnt it. Subsequently, after many attempts to achieve justice through the system, Titu Mir decided to fight back. The conflict lasted from June to November 1831. During that time, the movement grew and grew. Although Titu Mir’s followers were overwhelmingly Muslims, many Hindus also joined, probably due to the common experiences of peasants and other lower classes of people. They defeated the forces of local zamindars, law enforcers and the British magistrate during many encounters before the British army was mobilised and sent to crush the movement. 

From June to September 1831, Titu Mir's party sought to get redress through the local criminal justice system, but seeing no result, from October of the same year, they decided to take matters into their own hands. Many encounters occurred between Titu Mir's forces and those of the zamindars, British authorities and British Indigo planters, where Titu Mir's movement became victorious. Then on 19 November 1831, the British army arrived outside Titu Mir's 'Basher Kella' (bamboo fort) and bombarded it, killing Titur Mir and totally defeating his forces. This ended the short-lived attempt to eradicate what Titu Mir considered to be un-Islamic practices from Muslim society. 

For a long time, Titu Mir has been an important figure in the history of Bengal during the British period, admired and respected by both Hindus and Muslims. However, in recent years, communal interpretations and controversies around Titu Mir have emerged. A 2017 article in The Hindu illustrates this: 'Titu Mir returns to roil Bengal, 190 years after his fall in war'. It reported that Titu Mir had been given a communal anti-Hindu colour in a recent 'State-approved textbook', where he was accused of destroying Hindu temples and killing priests. But these claims and others in the article were rebutted and contextualised by respected historians such as Professor Gautam Bhadra and Professor Atis Dasgupta. 

Some in Bengal - such as Mahasweta Devi in her fiction called Titu Mir - have tried to popularise and give Titu Mir a voice. According to them, the voices of the subaltern, such as Titu Mir's, have been overshadowed and undermined by those of dominant narratives. Individuals like Atis Dasgupta in his Titu Meer's Rebellion: A Profile have contextualised and explained Titu Mir's struggles as a revolt against the oppression faced by Bengali peasants at the hands of local zamindars and British indigo planters. This perspective seems to be based on a left-wing reading of history and an attempt to show that the Bengal peasants did not only not accept but challenged the oppressive, exploitative feudalistic systems introduced by the British under the 1793 permanent settlement, under the governor-generalship of Charles Cornwallis.

The fiction on Titu Mir by Mahasweta Devi 'brings history alive in the person of a charismatic hero, embedding Titu Mir in the larger socioeconomic situation of the times.' Information on the book provided by the publisher describes Titu Mir as 'a peasant leader who led a revolt against the British in 1830–31, in the course of which he was killed. He has remained a hero in the popular imagination. This was a period of transition in agricultural Bengal. The evil effects of the Permanent Settlement were beginning to be felt by the rural people. Traditional zamindars were being replaced by absentee landlords, Indigo plantations were eating up fertile agricultural land. Titu, a headstrong young man and a natural leader, found himself defending the rural poor against the exploitation of the landlords and the British, at the cost of his own life'. In the novel, Mahasweta depicts the last moments of Titu Mir’s violent ending.

‘'Lathis against bayonets, spears against guns. Come my brother, let us remember the name of Syed Ahmad as we go. Hafiz, raise Tajuddin Chacha’s name. He taught us to hold a lathi. Masum, you must uphold the name Narkelbaria; don’t you see that Narkelbaria is becoming Balakot today? Kill, kill the enemies. They have brought these zamindars and moneylenders and planters to Bengal; kill them’.

     Titu sprang into the crowd using his lathi for leverage, then began wielding it. McDonald recognized him: a man whose skin was the colour of fire, with fire in his eyes, whose each word was a fireball. McDonald turned the cannon to face him. The gunner said, ‘But that’s not a fortification, you’re aiming at a man!’ McDonald pushed him away and set a light to the fuse. The shot missed Titu’s chest, but his right leg was crushed from the thigh downward. Blood gushed from the wound.

     The mujahids came running. They propped him up against the walls of the fort. ‘My lathi?’ whispered Titu. ‘Where is my lathis?’

     He took the lathi in his hand. But who was this beside him, calling his name? Who was saying over and over again, ‘Titu! Titu! Titu!’

     ‘Fakir, why are you calling me now? This is not the time to concern yourself with me. There’s a battle on.’

     ‘Titu, listen! Listen!

     What did he want to say? Could Titu hear him at all?

     ‘Brothers, raise the name of Titu Mir! Brothers, raise the name of Titu Mir! Who was saying this? Why were they calling his name? They should cheer the name of Narkelbaria, of ripe grain, of smiles on a farmer’s face! They should remember the names of the people for whom Mushirat Shah had taken up arms, for whom Syed Ahmad had died a martyr at Balakot, for whom Saryatullah kept his spear sharp! Yet they went on shouting – Titu Mir! Titu Mir! As if it was a charm, an elixir, an incantation! Slowly this tremendous noise faded in Titu Mir’s ears, until at one point it suddenly blinked into silence.

     Then much time passed, a time filled with hell and pain. All over Narkelbaria, in the fields, on the banks, the English soldiers played their killing game.

     Then the prisoners were chained, the army set itself in order. Titu lay surrounded by the bodies of slain mujahids. Scott, McDonald and Sutherland looked at Alexander.

     Alexander said, ‘Take up the bodies of Titu Mir and all the dead mujahids and put them in the fort. Then set fire to it, Make sure that every bit of it burns.’

     ‘Set fire to it? But Titu Mir is a Muslim.’

     ‘If we do not burn his body, Titu Mir will not be totally destroyed. If his followers get hold of his dead body they will start another rebellion. Even his corpse is danger. Burn the fort.’

     The soldiers began to pile up the bamboo stakes for Titu’s funeral pyre. Alexander could not decide whether this was the end, or the beginning, or merely one chapter in an unending story. He looked at Titu Mir, on whose face there still lingered a faint, unsullied smile. That smile seemed to be goading Alexander to think of the answer to his question for himself.

     19 November, 1831, Narkelbaria.’

(Titu Mir, a novel by Mahasweta Devi, translated from Bengali by Rimi B. Chatterjee)

Why Titu Mir continues to be an inspirational figure in Bangladesh and still to some extent in Bengal in India is difficult to comprehend based on the various records on his movement in terms of what he did and his views and plans. The British campaign obliterated his movement. Firstly, with the killing of Titu Mir and many of his followers when the British army attacked his bamboo fort on 19 November 1831. Then, by a formal investigation, criminal charges against some of his surviving followers, and their prosecution and punishment - including a death sentence and the jailing of most of the others for different periods. No one from Titu Mir's movement who survived has told their stories, or if they did, their accounts have not survived. 

As Titu Mir did not write anything down which we can examine and study, it is impossible to know his thoughts directly. So, we cannot judge the quality of his intellect, know precisely what he wanted to achieve, and understand the nature of his spiritual leadership. But, from how the story has been told, it seems that he was not a strategic or tactically sound thinker. He also lacked the leadership qualities needed to effectively navigate the challenges faced by the growing array of influential individuals and institutions organising to eliminate him. 

The first-hand information about Titu Mir, his movement and his defeat originates in British sources, consisting of magistrates' reports and recorded eyewitness accounts. These sources provide many details about Titu Mir, including his early life, the circumstances of his becoming an Islamic preacher, his activities and grievances and so on. He is mainly portrayed negatively, although there are acknowledgements that he was not treated justly by local law enforcers who sided with the zamindars for communal reasons. Another main source is 'Shaheed Titumir', written by Abdul Gafur Siddiqui (1872-1959) in a later period, who, in contrast, painted him more positively, including providing details of his views and what he tried to achieve. 

None of these main sources on Titu Mir are entirely reliable, although, from the British records, many of the details provide us with a sense of his movement, how it developed and spread and the process through which it was brought down. But the evaluations made by British officials involved in the campaign against Titu Mir and the subsequent investigation and trials need to be critically scrutinised to develop a better understanding of Titu Mir. The later Muslim sources on Titu Mir cannot be relied on either as anything could have been invented unless they can stand the tests of critical scrutiny, supported by other evidence.

Regardless, as Titu Mir has become a historical figure, he will continue to inspire people. However, in this new climate of the rise of Hindu nationalism, attempts will be made to discredit and paint him in a negative light as a 'fanatical anti-Hindu Muslim'. This can be resisted by undertaking a more in-depth study of Titu Mir through research and public discussion. But utilising Titu Mir for inspirational or political reasons by Muslims or left-wing Bengalis could become counterproductive as recorded evidence may provide little to support their goals.

Works Consulted

1.  Report of W.S. Alexander, Acting Joint Magistrate of Barasat, on Titu Mir’s Movement and its Suppression 

2.  Muhammad Mohar Ali,  History of the Muslims of Bengal, Volume 2A

3.  Suvojit Bagchi, "Titu Mir returns to roil Bengal, 190 years after his fall in war" accessed at https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/titu-mir-returns-to-roil-bengal-190-years-after-his-fall-in-war/article17665261.ece 

4.  Md Shahnawaz Khan Chandan, "Remembering the martyr" accessed at https://www.thedailystar.net/remembering-the-martyr-51285 

5.  Md Shahnawaz Khan Chandan, Reports of Trials of Titu Mir’s Followers

6.  J.R Colvin’s Report on Titu Mir’s Movement and some related Documents

7.  Atis Dasgupta, "Titu Meer's Rebellion: A Profile" in Social Scientist, Vol. 11, No. 10 (Oct., 1983), pp. 39-48 (10 pages) 

8.  Mahasweta Devi, Titu Mir, a novel translated from Bengali by Rimi B. Chatterjee 

9.  "Titumir: Know about the man who led peasant rebellion from a bamboo fortress against British administration" accessed at https://www.news9live.com/knowledge/titumir-know-about-the-man-who-led-peasant-rebellion-from-a-bamboo-fortress-against-british-administration-186423

Title Image: Titu Mir, accessed here

Muhammad Ahmedullah has lived in the UK since 1973 when he arrived there as a child from Bangladesh. He completed his early education in Newham, East London, further education in Hendon, North West London and higher education at the universities of Essex and Kent, from the latter gaining a PhD in 1998 on the relationship between theory of knowledge and political theory. Most of his career involved working for local councils in central government’s inner city regeneration programmes during 1990 and 2010. Since 2011, he has worked for several non-government organisations delivering projects on history and community cohesion. He also provides a fundraising service for small community and voluntary organisations. He is a founder member of Brick Lane Circle that runs a variety of projects and activities, one of which is the annual Bengal History Week. His personal blog website is www.imbuenomad.com, where he also writes a regular blog.