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Gadicherla Harisarvottama Rao

Nationalist journalist who, as a teacher trainee at Rajahmundry, was expelled and barred from government service in 1907 for his part in the Vande Mataram movement. He was jailed in 1908 for an article in his weekly Swaraj, and later led the Home Rule League in Andhra. Regani counts him among the first political prisoners of the movement in Andhra.

Gadicherla Harisarvottama Rao was a nationalist journalist of Andhra in the early twentieth century.12 In 1907 he was dismissed from the Government Training College at Rajahmundry during the Vande Mataram agitation.3 Sarojini Regani calls him one of the first political prisoners of the Vande Mataram movement in Andhra.4

Vande Mataram at Rajahmundry

In September 1905 Gadicherla Harisarvottama Rao was one of a group of Andhra students in Madras who called a meeting on the Madras beach.5 The meeting supported the Vande Mataram agitation against the partition of Bengal.5 He attended the Calcutta session of the Congress in 1906 and, with the Raja of Munagala and Komarraju Lakshmana Rao, sided with the nationalists.6

In 1907 he was a teacher trainee at the Government Training College in Rajahmundry.3 He addressed a meeting of the town’s Bala Bharati Samiti, a Swadeshi youth society.7 When Bipin Chandra Pal visited the town that April, he read addresses of welcome to him on behalf of the young men and of the new Swadeshi stores.7

The principal of the Government Arts College, Mark Hunter, had forbidden students to wear Vande Mataram badges or join political processions.3 On 24 April 1907, according to Sarojini Regani’s history of the freedom movement, students walked out when he ordered them to remove their medals.3 That evening he dismissed Harisarvottama Rao from the Training College.3

Harisarvottama Rao was barred from government and aided schools, and later from any government office.8 In all about 138 of the college’s 222 students were punished.8 Regani dates the start of student involvement in politics in Andhra from this incident.8

Swaraj and prison

After his expulsion Harisarvottama Rao settled at Vijayawada.9 He raised funds for the National College at Machilipatnam, which he helped Koppalli Hanumantha Rao to found, and worked for social reform.9 He started a Telugu weekly, Swaraj, in which he wrote about revolutionary movements in Europe.1

In 1908 he condemned in its pages the killing of two Indians by an Englishman in Madras, and the government treated the article as sedition (stirring up rebellion).10 He and his publisher, Bodi Narayana Rao, were arrested on 18 July 1908.10 The sessions judge gave him six months’ simple imprisonment.10 But on appeal the Madras High Court raised the sentence to three years’ rigorous imprisonment (prison with hard labour).10

Regani calls the two men the first political prisoners of the Vande Mataram movement in Andhra.4 She says the government demoted the sessions judge for leniency.4 The Criminal Investigation Department listed him among the leaders active against the government in these years.11

Home Rule and later work

When the Home Rule League was founded in 1916, an Andhra branch was formed with Harisarvottama Rao as secretary.2 He toured the Telugu districts, and wrote and translated cheap Telugu pamphlets explaining swaraj (self-rule).2 He argued in the press that no government, however kind, could deny a people the right to govern themselves.2 The security deposit of his English weekly, The Nationalist, was forfeited (taken by the government) under the Press Act.2

Government intelligence reports blamed labour and farmers’ unrest during the war partly on his writings.12 After the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, he wrote an article titled “Cult of the Bullet”, for which the paper was banned.13

In the 1920s he joined the Swarajists, who entered the legislatures.14 In 1928 he spoke at the Madras meeting called to boycott the Simon Commission.14 In 1935 he was among the founders of the Andhra Swaraj Party at Vijayawada.15 Its leaders wanted the agitation for complete independence to go on after civil disobedience was suspended.15

Regani also names him among the Andhra leaders who wanted cultural links with Telangana.16 After his arrest in 1908, she writes, the Nizam’s government grew suspicious of the Vignana Chandrika Grantha Mandali, a Telugu publishing society in Hyderabad.16 The society then moved to Madras.16

Footnotes

  1. Regani, Highlights (1956), p. 38 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  2. Regani, Highlights (1956), pp. 50–51, 54 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. Regani, Highlights (1956), pp. 35–37 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  4. Regani, Highlights (1956), p. 39 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Sarojini Regani, Highlights of the Freedom Movement in Andhra Pradesh (1956), p. 32 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  6. Regani, Highlights (1956), p. 25 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  7. Regani, Highlights (1956), pp. 32–34 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  8. Regani, Highlights (1956), p. 37 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  9. Regani, Highlights (1956), pp. 38, 43 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  10. Regani, Highlights (1956), pp. 38–39 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  11. Regani, Highlights (1956), p. 47 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  12. Regani, Highlights (1956), p. 53 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  13. Regani, Highlights (1956), p. 65 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  14. Regani, Highlights (1956), pp. 105, 109 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  15. Regani, Highlights (1956), p. 140 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  16. Regani, Highlights (1956), p. 171 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

References

Sources (1)
  1. Sarojini Regani, Highlights of the Freedom Movement in Andhra Pradesh (opens in a new tab), Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, 1956, pp. 25, 32–39, 43, 47, 50–51, 53–54, 63, 65, 105, 109, 140, 171. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]

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