On this day, leader of the Faraizi Movement in Bengal Peer Muhsin ad-Din Ahmad, or Dudu Miyan, as he was better known, attacked an indigo plantation in Auliapur (now in Bangladesh). The movement within the Muslim community in Bengal asked the community members to live as true Muslims and also defended peasants’ rights.
Dudu Miyan’s father had started the movement. It is said that Dudu Miyan met the prominent leader Titumir, who has mobilised the Muslim peasantry against zamindars and the East India Company, at a very young age when on his way to Mecca from Calcutta. Under Dudu Miyan, the movement started by his father became politically more radical and became centred around peasants. Dudu Miyan believed the land belonged to farmers. He asked farmers not to pay taxes to zamindars and under his influence several indigo plantations were attacked. He was arrested many times between the 1830s and 1840s but was released because no one would speak against him.
During the 1857 Uprising, he was arrested by the British as a precaution. He died in 1862 after his release.