News:Chief Minister of Karnataka has inaugurated the Kittur Utsav festival.
Facts:
About Kittur Utsav:
- Kittur Utsav is a three-day festival which celebrates the Queen Rani Channamma’s victory over East India’s company in 1824.
- The festival organizes sports, cultural programmes and lectures by resource persons on the kingdom of Rani Channamma.
About Kittur Chennamma:
- Kittur Chennamma (1778 – 1829) was an Indian freedom fighter and Rani of the Kittur, a former princely state in Karnataka.
- She is one of the first women freedom fighters to have fought against the British rule in India.
- She led an armed force against the British East India Company in 1824 in defiance of the doctrine of lapse in an attempt to maintain Indian control over the region.
- She was defeated in the third war and was imprisoned at Bailhongal Fort where she died in 1829.
Additional information:
About Doctrine of Lapse:
- The doctrine of lapse was an annexation policy applied by the British East India Company in India until 1859.
- Under the doctrine,the ruler of an independent state died childless,the right of ruling the State reverted or ‘lapsed’ to the sovereign.
- The policy is most commonly associated with Lord Dalhousie who was the Governor General of the East India Company in India between 1848 and 1856.
- However,it was not solely his invention.The East India Company had annexed Kittur in 1824, Mandvi in 1839, Kolaba and Jalaun in 1840 and Surat in 1842 by imposing a ‘doctrine of lapse’.
