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Guntur (Murtazanagar)

Town south of the Krishna that gave its name to the Guntur or Murtazanagar sarkar (district), the southernmost of the five Northern Circars of the Qutb Shahi and Mughal coast. Its standard assessment of about 11.7 lakhs of rupees, more than half of it crown land, was entered on the Mughal records after 1687. The Mughals counted the coast south of it as the Haidarabadi Karnatak. It passed to the East India Company only in 1788.

Guntur was the chief place of the southernmost of the five coastal sarkars (districts): Guntur, Kondapalli, Eluru (then Ellore), Rajahmundry and Srikakulam (then Chicacole).1 The Imperial Gazetteer of Madras says that they dated “from the Musalman occupation of that part of the country”.1 The English called them the Northern Circars, and their chief town was Machilipatnam (then Masulipatam).1 See the Mughals in the Telugu country, Machilipatnam and Kondaveedu.

The Murtazanagar sarkar

James Grant wrote a Political Survey of the Northern Circars, printed with the Fifth Report of 1812. He calls the sarkar “Guntoor, or Moortezanagur”. He gives its standard assessment as Rs 11,67,709, as entered on Aurangzeb’s records after the conquest of Golconda.2 Of this, “the havillee, or household portion, was” Rs 6,79,945.2 So more than half the sarkar was crown land, managed directly by the government.2

Grant explains that a large part of the revenue in Guntur was set aside for the household cavalry stationed there.3 The same was done in Srikakulam on the northern frontier.3 This was “before the conquest of the Carnatic, in the year 1652”.3

Gateway to the Karnatak

Grant describes Guntur, “as lying on the south side of the Kistna”, as “the master-key of the Carnatic towards the north”.4 The Mughals treated the coast south of it as part of the Karnatak. Sarkar says that the lowland of the Haidarabadi Karnatak “embraced the sea-coast from Gantur to Sadras”.56 Grant Duff says that the Hyderabad Carnatic “extended from Guntoor along the Coromandel coast”.7

Later history

The Nizam ceded the Northern Circars to the East India Company in 1766.8 At that time Guntur was held for life by his brother Basalat Jang, and it came under British administration only in 1788.8

Footnotes

  1. Imperial Gazetteer of India: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 185 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. James Grant, “Political Survey of the Northern Circars”, in W. K. Firminger (ed.), The Fifth Report from the Select Committee … on the Affairs of the East India Company, Vol. III (1918), p. 47 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Grant, “Political Survey”, in Firminger, Fifth Report, Vol. III (1918), p. 48 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. James Grant, “Political Survey of the Northern Circars”, in W. K. Firminger (ed.), The Fifth Report from the Select Committee … on the Affairs of the East India Company, Vol. III (1918), p. 10 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  5. Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, Vol. V (1924), p. 50 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  6. Sarkar, Aurangzib V (1924), p. 51 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  7. James Grant Duff, A History of the Mahrattas, Vol. I (1826), p. 346 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  8. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 186 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

Photos

People

Muhammad Ali Khan Walajah

1749–1795 CE

Nawab of the Carnatic (Arcot) from 1749 to 1795, the son of Anwar-ud-din Khan. His father was killed at Ambur in 1749. He held out at Trichinopoly and, with English help, won the Nawabship from Chanda Sahib and the French. The treaty of Paris of 1763 recognised him, and the Mughal emperor gave him the title Walajah. His Telugu districts were Nellore, held under his brother Najib-ullah, who rebelled in 1757, Ongole and the Palnad. He owed large debts to the Company and to private lenders. He handed the revenues of the Carnatic to the Company in 1781, saw it take over their management in 1790–92, and agreed by the treaty of 1792 to pay nine lakhs of pagodas a year for its troops. He died in October 1795.

Salabat Jang

1751–1761 CE

Third son of Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I, raised to the throne of the Deccan by the French commander Bussy in 1751. Under Bussy's protection he defeated the Marathas and his elder brother Ghazi-ud-din, and in 1753 assigned the Northern Circars to the French. After Colonel Forde drove the French from the coast, he ceded Masulipatam to the English (1759). His brother Nizam Ali took power as his minister, deposed him in 1761 or 1762 and had him killed in prison about 1763.

Nizam Ali Khan (Asaf Jah II)

1761–1803 CE

Fourth son of Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I. He pushed aside his brother Salabat Jang in 1761–62 and ruled the Deccan until his death at Hyderabad in 1803. In his reign the Northern Circars passed to the East India Company (1766, Guntur in 1788). The Nizam joined the British against Tipu Sultan, was defeated by the Marathas at Kharda (1795) and accepted a permanent subsidiary force (1798). To pay for it he gave up his Mysore gains, the later Ceded Districts of Rayalaseema (1800). He is the first Nizam buried at the Mecca Masjid.

N. G. Ranga

1900 CE

Peasant leader and economist from Nidubrolu in Guntur district (born 1900). He organised ryots' associations in Andhra from 1923, founded the Andhra Socialist Party in 1934, ran schools of politics for young workers, and helped found the All India Kisan Sabha. He was jailed for organising rural ryot societies and again in 1942. In 1951 he left the Congress and founded the Krishikar Lok Party, and he sat in the Rajya Sabha from 1952.

Unnava Lakshminarayana

Lawyer and Congress worker of Guntur. Government intelligence reports named him during the Vandemataram movement; he gave up his legal practice in the non-cooperation movement, and in 1921 he was jailed for a year after going to enquire into the forest troubles of Palnadu. In 1932 the government forbade him, with Unnava Lakshmibayamma and others, to hold a civil disobedience conference.

References

Sources (4)
  1. Walter Kelly Firminger (ed.), The Fifth Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East India Company, Vol. III: British Acquisitions in the Presidency of Fort St. George, Madras Appendices, Wilkins' Glossary and Index (opens in a new tab), R. Cambray and Co., Calcutta, 1918, pp. 10, 47–48. James Grant, Political Survey of the Northern Circars. [Public domain]
  2. Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, Vol. V: The Closing Years, 1689-1707 (opens in a new tab), M. C. Sarkar and Sons, Calcutta, 1924, pp. 50–51. [Public domain]
  3. James Grant Duff, A History of the Mahrattas, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Longmans, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, London, 1826, pp. 346. [Public domain]
  4. Government of India, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1908, pp. 185–186. [Public domain]

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