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Photo: Loksabha Secretariate, New Delhi · CC BY-SA 4.0
Freedom fighter

Vasudev Balwant Phadke

Led an armed rising in Maharashtra, 1879

1845—1883

4 November 1845 – 17 February 1883

A government clerk in Pune who, after the famine of 1876–77, raised a band of Ramoshis, Kolis and Dhangars to fight British rule. He was transported to Aden and died there in prison.

01From the accounts office to the hills

He was born at Shirdhon in Kolaba (now Raigad) district and worked as a clerk in the Military Finance office at Pune. The story told in Maharashtra is that he was refused leave in time to see his dying mother, and never forgave it. The Deccan famine of 1876–77 decided him. He left service and gathered Ramoshis, Kolis and Dhangars around him. From early 1879 his band raided the houses of moneylenders and government treasuries in the villages around Pune to raise money for a larger rising, and for a few weeks Pune itself was in alarm.

02Capture and Aden

On 20 July 1879 he was caught asleep in a temple at Devar Navadgi in Kaladgi district (now in Karnataka). At his trial in Pune he was sentenced to transportation for life and sent to the prison at Aden. In February 1883 he escaped, was retaken, and refused food. He died in Aden on 17 February 1883. Maharashtra calls him the father of armed revolution in modern India; India issued a stamp in his memory in 1984.

Pune
Place · Old town on the Mula–Mutha; resettled by Shahaji and Jijabai in the 1630s; Peshwa capital from 1730PuneThe town where Shivaji grew up under Jijabai’s eye, and for nearly a century the seat of the Peshwas, from which Maratha armies rode to Attock and Bengal. Later it became the workshop of Tilak, Agarkar and the Deccan Education Society.Read →

Places

PuneStanding
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Pune

The town where Shivaji grew up under Jijabai’s eye, and for nearly a century the seat of the Peshwas, from which Maratha armies rode to Attock and Bengal. Later it became the workshop of Tilak, Agarkar and the Deccan Education Society.

On the timeline

  • 1879

    Vasudev Balwant Phadke’s armed risingResistance

    A clerk in the Pune military accounts office, Phadke raises bands of Ramoshis and others for armed revolt against British rule. Captured in July, he dies in Aden prison in 1883.

  • 17 February 1883

    Vasudev Balwant Phadke dies in Aden prisonResistance

    Transported for life after his armed rising of 1879, Phadke escapes once, is recaptured and dies after a hunger strike in the jail at Aden.