ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits the last stand of Bakshi Jagabandhu, military commander of the Khurda Raj, the dynastic patrons of the fabled temple of Jagannath, Puri in Orissa, against the East India Company, and his leadership of the Paik Rebellion of 1817. It traces how Bakshi’s call to arms resonated with landless peasants, dispossessed Zamindars, tribal Khonds of the northern hilly tracts, as well as the priests of Puri, who shared a seemingly impossible vision of the expulsion of the British. It also reflects on the political imaginaries of the uprising and its oppositional frames of historical time embedded in memories of anti-colonial struggle and popular militancy.
