Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → India → Alwar Meo revolt in 1932–34

One way tax resisters can foil the plans of the tax collectors is to send up the alarm when they’re on the way. Here are some examples:

• In rural Germany between the wars, a tax strike broke out, and when tax collectors came to distrain cattle from the resisters:

  they blew the fire horn, and on the road they lit a fire of straw, the age-old sign that help is needed. Peasants ran from all sides towards the smoke.

• “Horning” was a legal term of art describing the process under which tax debtors could be imprisoned for defying the King (because it was normally prohibited at the time to imprison someone merely for being a debtor in default). During the Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance, one victim of this process declared “Horning! horning! — by the powers! if they bring a horning against me, I’ll bring a horning against them.”:

  When the King’s messenger-at-arms, as tipstaves are called in Scotland, brought his horning to the Cowgate, the Irishman, previously provided with a tremendous bullock’s horn, blew a blast “so loud and dread,” that it might have brought down the Castle wall; and a faction mustered as quickly as if it had sounded in the suburbs of Kilkenny. The messenger-at-arms took leave as rapidly as possible, and without making the charge of horning at this time.

• Poujadist tax rebels in France in 1954–5 used this tactic: “Some priests ring church bells to warn of the arrival of the revenuers,” according to a Life magazine article on the movement. A Montreal Gazette reporter said of Poujade’s Union for the Defence of Shopkeepers and Craftsmen:

  The loudspeaker is its symbol and it all started in earnest one bright morning 18 months ago when a loudspeaker mounted on a truck brought awful tidings to the pleasant little town of St. Cere near Toulouse in south-west France.

  “Attention,” it blared. “Attention. The tax inspector is in town.”

  There was a rumbling sound as the steel curtains with which French shops are shuttered at night were rolled down all over St. Cere. …

  The tax inspector rapped on steel curtain after steel curtain, demanding to be let in to see the books. Nowhere did he get an answer. When they found that even the bistros were locked, the hapless inspector and his guards gave up their mission and beat a humble retreat from St. Cere.

  The triumph of St. Cere lit the fires of rebellion in the hearts of tax-ridden shopkeepers all over France. Poujade was suddenly a national figure and he lost no time in organizing his Union to spread the message of the loudspeakers and the steel curtains.

• More recently, in Greece, when tax official Nikos Maitos took a team of inspectors to the island of Naxos to hunt for tax evaders, “a local radio station broadcast his license plate number to warn residents.”
• During the Bardoli satyagraha, tax collectors and other government enforcers were tracked by the resisters, who warned villagers when they were on the way. Resister Govardhandas Chokhavala said, “We have provided our volunteers with drums and conches, and the moment they sight a Government servant, the drum or the conch gives the alarm. That is work which is after the heart of these youngsters.” Some other notes from The Story of Bardoli read:

  [E]very village had its volunteers ready with their bugles or drums which Were pressed into aid as soon as they caught sight of the Talati and Patel out on their japti [attachment] depredations

  The youngsters on duty announced [the Collector’s] arrival by a hearty beating of their drums. and all the doors were closed.

  [T]he other [new legal] notification which was over the signature of the District Superintendent of Police prohibited the beating of drums, playing music, or blowing conches or horns on or near public roads or public places or Government buildings.

  Some of them had to post themselves at and keep a strict watch over the various approaches to the village, and no sooner was a japti party sighted or the whank of a car heard, than they were to be on their alert, and the warning of the fact to be given to the village people. Some of them had always like sleuth hounds to be on the trail of the Government officials. Their business was to scent their plans and warn the village people against their machinations.

  Some boys were arrested, tried, and imprisoned for nothing more than keeping a watchful eye on a government building from across the street.
• Tax resisters in Alwar, India in 1932 used this system: “The paths are blocked by huge boulders and at intervals along the hills remote from the towns are watchers with giant tom-toms which are heard for five miles, giving warning of the approach of troops or the revenue collectors.”
• The horn became the symbol of the Rebeccaite uprising in Wales, because of incidents like this one:

  The constables then went towards Talog; but when on their way there they heard the sound of a horn, and immediately between two and three hundred persons assembled together, with their faces blackened, some dressed in women’s caps, and others with their coats turned so as to be completely disguised — armed with scythes, crowbars and all manner of destructive weapons which they could lay their hands on. After cheering the constables, they defied them to do their duty. The latter had no alternative but to return to town without executing their warrants. The women were seen running in all directions to alarm their neighbours; and some hundreds were concealed behind the hedges, intending to appear if their services were required. The entire district seemed to be aroused, and awaiting the arrival of the constables, who were going to levy on the goods of John Harris of Talog Mill for the amount of the fine and costs imposed upon him by the magistrates. There could not have been less than two hundred persons assembled to resist the execution of process, and vast numbers were flocking from all quarters, in response to the blowing of a horn, the signal of the Rebeccaites to repair thither. Various mounted messengers were scouring the country and sounding the trumpet of alarm.



• During the poll tax rebellion in Thatcher’s Britain, resisters tracked and shadowed bailiffs, and declared certain areas to be bailiff “no-go” zones, with watchouts established to raise the alarm if any approached. They first modeled this approach on tactics used in South African townships during the anti-apartheid resistance there, and then improvised from there:

  Throughout Britain, city-wide bailiff busting groups were formed. Activists in Edinburgh formed a group called “Scum-busters” which was equipped with CB radios, and squadrons of cars. Telephone trees were organised; bailiff companies were monitored; their car registration numbers were taken and distributed to activists in all the local areas. Camden, in London, followed their example in 1991:

  We have organised a rota so that we know who and when people are available to do whatever shift. We have organised a “knock up system” giving people different responsibilities for knocking up each part of the estate when the bailiffs are spotted. Telephone trees have also been established. We have approached a couple of mini-cab firms who have agreed to be bailiff spotters.…

Tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns have at times made use of barricades, blockades, and occupations to keep tax collectors at bay. Here are some examples:

• There were a number of prominent “sieges” in the tax resistance campaign that accompanied the British women’s suffrage movement. Dora Montefiore barred the arched doorway to her home against the bailiffs in 1906 and held out for six weeks before the bailiffs broke through,

  …addressing the frequent crowds through the upper windows of the house.

  WSPU meetings were held in front of the house daily, and resolutions were taken “that taxation without representation is tyranny.” After six weeks, the Crown was legally authorized to break down the door in order to seize property in lieu of taxes, a process to which Montefiore submitted, saying, “It was useless to resist force majeure when it came to technical violence on the part of the authorities.”

  The “Siege of Montefiore” was a publicity coup for the movement, and served as a useful rallying point for activists.

  On the little terrace of the front garden hung during the whole time of the siege a red banner with the letters painted in white: “Women should vote for the laws they obey and the taxes they pay.”

  Kate Harvey barricaded her home in 1912 and it took seven months for the authorities to crowbar their way in and seize her dining room furniture to auction for back taxes. The following year they needed battering rams to break her barricade. The Women’s Freedom League reported, of her first barricade:

  Passers-by read the bold declaration that she refuses to be taxed by a Government that refuses her representation because she is a woman. Her continued resistance has aroused keen interest in the London and Provincial Press, and afforded excellent “copy” for numerous illustrated papers.

  and of the second:

  An ingenious plan of protection had been devised and carried out, and the King’s officers wrestled with the fortifications for two hours before an entry was effected by means of a battering-ram!

  A newspaper article gives more details:

  Finally, after a heavy beam was used as a battering ram, the door went in with a crash. The door, however, led only to a narrow passage, where a still more obstinate door barred the way. A crowbar, battering ram, and a small jemmy were here brought into use, but even with those it was nearly half an hour before the door, almost splintered, gave way. Later, the hall was entered, where the tax collector was met by Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard. Here was little furniture visible, and it was not until a locksmith had forced the door of the dining room that the bailiff was able to place his levy upon goods. The amount of the tax, it is understood, is about £15.

  When the tax collector and bailiff came to seize goods from Isabella Harrison,

  Mrs. Harrison then gave instructions for the tradesmen’s entrance and windows to be locked and bolted, and herself opened the inner front door, closing it behind her and keeping her hand on the handle. The Tax Collector, who was standing with the bailiff inside the outer front door, asked if he was addressing Mrs. Darent Harrison, and hoped she would allow him to execute his trying task and produced his paper. Mrs. Harrison asked and was told the names of the local magistrates who had signed the warrant, and explained that her house could only be entered by force. … The Tax Collector protested that he could not employ force against a woman — that was quite out of the question. Mrs. Harrison then suggested that if he did not intend to stand there till he or she collapsed he must either employ force or call in the police to do so. He scoffed at the idea of sending for the police, but finally sent the bailiff to see if he could find any. But no police were to be found. The bailiff was next sent to get his dinner, and when he returned he reported “still no police anywhere to be found.” It was a complete impasse. They had been facing one another for three hours, and the Tax Collector seemed equally determined to “do his duty” and not to be guilty of even a technical assault on an elderly woman. It was only after being taunted with cowardice — with fear of the consequences of meeting moral with physical force — that he finally made an effort to get control of the handle of the door, and so with the assistance of the bailiff to force his way in.

  On an earlier occasion, Harrison had barricaded herself inside her home. Supporters brought her food and supplies by means of a basket she lowered from a window by a rope.
• There is at least one report of similar barricades in the American women’s suffrage movement. Lillie Devereaux Blake addressed a New York Women’s Suffrage Society meeting in 1873, and

  …narrated several anecdotes of vigorous ladies, who, in the security of their own castles, had defied all the approaches of the tax collector. One lady, she said, was in the habit of barricading herself in her house whenever the tax collector made his appearance, getting into a top room of the house, and from that coign of vantage, delaying the minion of the Government with potations from her parlors. [Laughter.] In this case, Mrs. Blake said it was suspected that the collector had paid the taxes himself, rather than submit to the convincing streams of the lady’s eloquence. [Laughter.]



• War tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner refused to leave their home when it was seized by the U.S. government in 1989, defying a federal court order. When Kehler is arrested and imprisoned for contempt of court, a dozen affinity groups maintained a round-the-clock occupation of the home through 1992.
• During the Dublin water charge strike:

  People were told how to block up their stopcocks to make it difficult for their water to be cut off. Empty bean tins and a little bit of cement were the necessary ingredients.

• In 1922 a group of French syndicalists and unemployed workers rallied at the home of “two of their comrades who refused to pay the income tax” and successfully deterred the police and bailiffs from appearing.
• During the Fries Rebellion, officials tried to arrest Henry Shankwyler, but were foiled by a crowd of fifty supporters, who “went in advance of the officers, and, reaching the house before them,” intimidated the marshal into withdrawing without his prey. “Some said if he were taken out of his house they would fight as long as they had a drop of blood in their bodies. … Seeing that nothing further could be accomplished there, the officers took their leave. As they left the house the people set up a shout and hurrahed for ‘Liberty.’ ”
• Irish “Blue Shirts” held a rally in County Cork to protest government property seizures against tax resisters, and “[w]hile the conference was sitting, County Cork farmers felled trees in the roads, cut telephone wires and made other efforts to prevent further seizure of cattle for unpaid annuities.” At one point “police fired upon a crowd attempting to prevent the forced sale of cattle seized for non-payment of taxes,” killing one.
• Una Ridley, an English council tax resister, told a reporter in 2005:

  …how the couple had managed to foil efforts by bailiffs to remove property. “So long as you make yourself secure, close all the downstairs windows and all the upstairs ones too, the bailiffs cannot make an entry,” she said.

• In Samoa in 1928, officials tried to arrest Tamasese, the head of the Mau movement, for tax refusal:

  …a party of civil police attempted to arrest Tamasese at Apia, but were prevented by crowds of Mau supporters, who obstructed the police and managed to get him away in a car. On the same day, at Vaimoso village, another attempt was made by a party of civil police at his home. On that occasion the police were covered by a party of 30 men from the cruisers. Resistance was again made, and the police and the naval party, to avoid bloodshed, retired. further attempt to make an arrest was made at the home of Tamasese at Vaimoso on November 13. The party of six military police was stoned by women and others, and it retired.

• Barricades were used successfully in the battle against Thatcher’s Poll Tax. In one early case:

  Over 300 people turned up outside [Jeannette McGuin’s] house. Banners were hung out of the window saying “God Help the Sheriffs.” The sheriffs didn’t show up and Jeannette McGuin never heard another word from them.

  In some others:

  [I]n Edinburgh over 300 people filled a central high street to prevent a poinding… 200 activists guarded flats in the Grass Market area… and 150 people guarded 11 flats in Stockbridge and Comely Bank.

  In another:

  Demonstrators threatened to form a human blockade outside the home at Irvine of Mr Alex Smith, MEP for Scotland South, who has refused to pay a £50 penalty imposed for not registering for the community charge. However, before the protesters arrived, two sheriff’s officers, who called at Mr Smith’s home, left without trying to force entry after he refused to let them in.

  Jackie Moyers of the Mayfield/Newtongrange Anti-Poll Tax Union reported:

  The very first poinding which was supposed to have been taking place was in a small village called Pathead…

  The back of eight o’clock everybody started coming up, they actually started running a relay service, a shuttle service with cars going to collect people, and I’d say by about half-past nine to ten o’clock we had 110 people standing in the garden. It was a beautiful day, it was like everybody was sunbathing, having a day out; we stood about there, everybody singing songs, we had the records on, a couple of them had a wee drink, things like that, waiting on the sheriff officers coming…

  The sheriff officers turned up, got on the phone and, lo and behold, a police car turned up… So the police came up and asked us if the sheriff officers could get in and I said, “Well, I’m telling you, under no circumstances whatsoever are we allowing any sheriff officers into anybody’s house to carry out a poinding.”

  …So the sheriff officers turned around to the police, and says “I want him arrested, because he’s organising this,” and the police says, “well, we can’t do a thing.” And everyone in the garden, I says to them, well, “They want me arrested.” They says, “Well, if you’re getting arrested then all of us are getting arrested.” And by this time, the local coalman had come up the road in his lorry, stopped his lorry and blocked the street. The two guys at the back jumped off, and the coalman who was driving the lorry, they jumped over the fence and joined us. The local council workers, who were doing the windows at the time, downed their tools and got in the garden and supported us. It’s worse than jungle drums, because the local baker heard it, he came around with his baker’s van and started dishing out cakes to us. The sheriff officers were getting quite panicky by this time. The police got in their car and left the sheriff officers. I told them again. I said, “You’d better get going. It’s a waste of your time. We know you’re not going to get in, so there’s nothing else you can do.” … They tried to get in for five or ten minutes and by this time the crowd were getting quite hostile, and I says, “I think you’d better go to your car while you’ve still got four wheels and you’re still able to walk.”

  At Bishops Lydeard, people “divided up into small groups, and blockaded every road into the village.”

  Barricades were constructed and every vehicle which tried to enter was stopped and asked its business. … In the end, the bailiffs didn’t come near the place.

  Poll tax resisters also sometimes occupied or blockaded the offices of sheriffs and bailiffs.
• During the Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance, blockades were used to obstruct the movement of constables when they were seeking to arrest resisters, and barricades were used to prevent property seizure. Here are excerpts from one government investigation of the Annuity Tax disturbances:

  …I saw sledge hammers and other instruments there to open the premises and get at the goods, but after labouring for half an hour or more they could not effect an entrance.

  Q: Was that because Mr. Dun used some of the metal in which he was a dealer to barricade his premises?

  A: Yes; tons of metal were put up against the back door, and it was impossible for them to get in.

  Mr. Dunn had barricaded the door of the room where the poinded effects were, so that an entrance could not be had… I found that the room where the poinded goods were was filled up to above the centre of the room with boxes filled with plates of iron of immense weight. We were told that the poinded goods were lying beneath those, and that we might get at them as we could. I sent for labourers, and had the whole of those boxes removed into the front shop until I got access, after great trouble, to the sheets of brass, which were the poinded articles. These were then declared by the sheriff officers to be of a different description, and inferior to what they had previously poinded; they refused to take them; and the only articles they recognised were some coils of copper wire; those they took to the police office, and those were all that were obtained on that occasion.

• During the Bardoli satyagraha, farmers famously barricaded their homes with their cattle inside to protect them from seizure.

  When the attachment operations began, minute instructions were issued to meet every situation. In the beginning only those who had received notices were to greet the attachment parties with closed doors. Then whole villages were turned into blackholes, and people who could not put up with the terrible strain involved were humourously asked to undertake a pilgrimage. When it was found that in spite of the greatest precautions, the Pathans managed to carry away carts, break into enclosures and unhinge closed doors, the Sardar [resistance commander] said: “Pull your carts to pieces. Keep the body in one place, wheels in another, and shafts in a third place; make your hedges extra strong with thorns and bushes; and fortify the doors in such a way that they might not be able to open them except by breaking them open with axes. Exhaust them thoroughly.”

  In order to save their beloved cattle 80,000 men, women, children with these cattle have locked themselves up in small and insanitary houses for over three months. As I passed through villages, silent, empty and deserted with sentinels posted at different ends, I saw women peeping through the barred windows to see whether it was the arrival of the japti [attachment] officer and on being reassured the doors being opened I was taken inside and I saw the darkness, the stench, the filth; and the men, women and children who had herded for months in the same room with their beloved cattle — miserable, lacerated, grown whitish by disease — and as I heard their determination to remain in that condition for months rather than abandon their cattle to the tender mercies of the japti officer I could not help thinking that the imagination which conceived the dire japti methods, the severity which had enforced them and the policy which had sanctioned them were difficult to be found outside the pages of a history of medieval times.

• In Alwar, India, in 1932, blockades were used against tax collectors:

  Thousands of armed Hindu Moslem [sic] peasants of splendid physique with fighting spirit are concentrating in an area of 22 square miles to repel the State tax gatherers.

  The roads by which the lorries have been bringing troops have been made impassable. The paths are blocked by huge boulders…

• “Early one morning in 1968 Karl North (Rochester, N.Y.) was alerted by neighbors that the IRS had seized his car and was about to have it towed for $11.29 in unpaid telephone tax. Without time to grab his car key, Karl rushed out of the house and lay down under the car. This disconcerted the IRS enough that when they stopped everything to call the police, he ran back into the house, got the key, rushed back out, and drove the car off.”
• Landholders in Tasmania launched a tax strike in 1874, and when the police came with distress warrants, “Householders padlocked their gateways, and mastiffs were chained at the approaches.”
• The tax resisters at the “New Rush” in South Africa in 1874 assembled a force to prevent the jailing of one of their comrades who had refused to pay a fine.
• The Hut Tax War in Sierra Leone began when a king named Bai Bureh assembled an armed group which successfully defended him against an expected attempt to arrest him for refusing to pay the Hut Tax — an attempt that a later government investigator labeled “aggression pure and simple on the part of the authorities.” Other angry kings and people, inspired by Bai Bureh’s successful action, rallied to his side.
• In 1934, drivers parked their cars in the middle of the streets in downtown Paris, blocking all traffic for 45 minutes at mid-day to protest a fuel tax.

Property seizures were also used by the British women’s suffrage movement as opportunities to hold protest rallies or for propaganda. Here are some examples from the news of the time:

• “Miss Muller, far from relenting to save her property, publicly advertised the date of the seizure, and invited the women of England to come and witness the disgraceful spectacle of a woman being robbed by the minions of the law because she dared to ask for a voice in the disposition of her taxation. The invitation was accepted by hundreds of well-dressed but excited and indignant women, who crowded into Cadogan Square and nearly mobbed the bailiffs while they were removing the lares and penates from the Muller residence. An indignation meeting was afterward held in Miss Muller’s drawing-rooms and many bitter and vehement denunciations of the tyranny and injustice of the law were indulged in.”
• “Miss Raleigh naturally made use of the occasion for propaganda purposes, conversing with the tax collector for some time on the subject of Woman Suffrage, and presenting him with Suffrage literature, which he accepted.”
• “A very successful protest was made at Finchley on May 29 in connection with the seizure of property belonging to Miss [Sarah] Benett, late hon. treasurer of the W.F.L. By courtesy of the auctioneer, Miss Bennet, was allowed to explain her reason for resisting payment of taxes. A very successful open-air meeting was held afterwards.”

Here’s a dispatch from India from 80 years ago today:

Peasants Revolt.

Trouble in India

Tax Resisters Destroy Roads

Calcutta, Nov. 26. — A serious situation has arisen at Alwar, a State in central India, where the peasants of hundreds of villages are refusing to pay land revenue to the Maharajah.

The resisters, including hundreds who served in the Indian Army during the Great War, armed themselves with ancient rifles and muskets, and destroyed roads and barricaded the passes leading to their villages, defying the tax collectors.

The disturbances are a sequel to the imposition of new taxes on animals and State irrigation schemes which the peasants claim infringe their rights. State troops have been sent to quell the outbreak, which closely resembles the recent revolt against the State administration in Kashmir.

And another take on it from a couple of days later:

Tax Revolt

Peasant Rising in Indian State

Resistance to Collectors

Demand for Inquiry

Calcutta, Monday.

The agrarian situation in Alwar State is assuming serious proportions. Thousands of armed Hindu Moslem [sic] peasants of splendid physique with fighting spirit are concentrating in an area of 32 square miles to repel the State tax gatherers.

The roads by which the lorries have been bringing troops have been made impassable. The paths are blocked by huge boulders and at intervals along the hills remote from the towns are watchers with giant tom-toms which are heard for five miles, giving warning of the approach of troops or the revenue collectors.

The inhabitants of hundreds of villages absolutely refuse to pay the taxes and are attacking small parties of troops and collectors.

The peasants are demanding an inquiry into their grievances by a commission of State officials and cultivators under the chairmanship of an Englishman from British India.

I’ve found a few other references to this on-line, but only have the sketchiest of sketches about what was going on. The Meo were Indian Muslims in the area, and in the 1932–4 range they rose up against what they felt to be discriminatory treatment by the Hindu-dominated Maharaja regime.

There had been earlier tax revolts, some quite violently repressed, that had been more ecumenical. But the Maharaja tried to divide the opposition by taking on a more-Hindu-than-thou attitude, which partially placated the Hindu opposition and further enraged the Muslims. Lots of people were refusing to pay the recently-inflated taxes in 1932, but the Meo wanted to go further and make an armed rebellion.

All of this took place around the same time as Gandhi’s nonviolent nationalist resistance, but they seem not to have had much to do with each other.

In one village, a tax collector was killed by Meo farmers. I found a reference to a song that was written to celebrate the attack:

Rebels in the open the Meos did then rejoice
They conferred among themselves and spoke in a single voice
Your názim’s dead and ever since
  we aren’t ruled by any prince
To London by now you should’ve fled,
  and do take along your dead.

Things went south, and the rebellion took on the look of a religious war. The British imperial authorities didn’t care for how the Maharaja failed to keep a lid on things and sent him into exile, and the acting administrator they appointed tried with some success to settle things down with compromises and conciliations.

Some tax resistance campaigns have had their own anthems or fight songs.

• Mahadev Desai, in The Story of Bardoli, mentions such songs on a few occasions:

  I paid a visit along with Sjt. Vallabhbhai to one of these [Raniparaj] villages. … The young women, who had taken the Khadi pledge three years ago in the presence of Gandhiji and shed their trinkets and heavy brass ornaments, were all there in spotlessly white Khadi, brimming over with joy and lustily singing Satyagraha songs.

  The mention of the Satyagraha songs reminds me of one or two things that happened during the month. … Phulchandbhai had already some songs ready, and the atmosphere in the taluka gave him the inspiration for many more. These friends were posted at Valod, and thanks to their bhajans they were in great demand everywhere. The plain and homely songs spread the message of Satyagraha in a most effective manner, and men, women, and children had them on their lips. One cannot speak too highly of the part played in the movement by Phulchandbhai and his songs.

  I shall describe one of the scenes. We visited Nani Phalod, a small village, at about 9 p.m. There was a huge procession of men and women, the former singing Satyagraha songs, and the latter singing a song from an old saint of which the refrain was: “All our sorrows have ended, now that the Master has come.”

  There were huge meetings everywhere, attended by hundreds of women, laying heaps of [homespun] yarn before Sjt. Vallabhbhai, as in 1921, and lustily singing bhajans. The invincible spirit of the people evidenced everywhere was bound to exasperate the officials even more.

  The women of Varad… had their own songs, some of them being old songs of the saints and some composed by themselves to suit the fight in which they were engaged, and tacked on to the originals. One of these songs sung soulfully by them ran:

  With full knowledge take up your arms even like a Gnani (seer). Let Purity and Contentment be your armour and Courage your shield. The valiant shall rush to the forefront, the laggards will be beaten and will take to their heels. With full knowledge, therefore, take up the fight like the Gnani.

  The path of fight is not strewn with roses. It is sharp as the edge of the sword, for it is the fight for Truth. Let us therefore be wide awake like the Gnani. With full knowledge etc.

  The tyrant has run amok and crushed the ryot under his heels. We slumbered so long, we have now found our Guru and are blessed with knowledge. With full knowledge etc.

  He has taught us to pit righteousness and truth against oppression and injustice. God is sure to run to the rescue of right and vanquish the wrong. With full knowledge etc.

  Vallabhbhai our leader assures us that ultimately victory is ours. Let us therefore keep our pledge. With full knowledge etc.

• The boycotts and tax strikes of the American Revolution also had their songs. When patriots gathered to spin home-spun yarn, the work would be accompanied by “many stirring tunes, anthems, and liberty songs,” such as the following:

  Young ladies in town, and those that live round,
    Let a friend at this season advise you;
  Since money’s so scarce, and times growing worse,
    Strange things may soon hap and surprise you.

  First, then, throw aside your topknots of pride;
    Wear none but your own country linen;
  Of economy boast, let your pride be the most
    To show clothes of your own make and spinning.

  What if homespun they say is not quite so gay
    As brocades, yet be not in a passion,
  For when once it is known this is much worn in town,
    One and all will cry out— ’Tis the fashion!

  And, as one, all agree, that you’ll not married be
    To such as will wear London factory,
  But at first sight refuse, tell ’em such you will choose
    As encourage our own manufactory.

  No more ribbons wear, nor in rich silks appear;
    Love your country much better than fine things;
  Begin without passion, ’twill soon be the fashion
    To grace your smooth locks with a twine string.

  Throw aside your Bohea, and your Green Hyson tea,
    And all things with a new-fashion duty;
  Procure a good store of the choice Labrador,
    For there’ll soon be enough here to suit you.

  These do without fear, and to all you’ll appear,
    Fair, charming, true, lovely and clever;
  Though the times remain darkish, young men may be sparkish,
    And love you much stronger than ever.

  Then make yourselves easy, for no one will teaze ye,
    Nor tax you, if chancing to sneer
  At the sense-ridden tools, who think us all fools;
    But they’ll find the reverse far and near.

• The modern American war tax resistance movement has in recent years managed to collect its own funk anthem (“What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes?” by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings):

  I was talking to a friend of mine
  Said he don’t want no wars no more
  They’re building bombs while our schools are falling
  Tell me what in the hell we’re paying taxes for

  What if we all stopped paying taxes?
  Now, what if we all stopped paying taxes?
  Stop paying taxes y’all

  Now tell me who’s gonna buy their bombs
  Their tanks, their planes and all their guns
  Well, tell me who’s gonna pay for their wars
  If we all get together and cut their funds

  Hey, listen people, listen to what I’ve got to say
  What if we all stopped paying taxes?

  folk song (“Don’t Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons” by Norman Blake):

  Don’t send your money to Washington
  To fight a war that’s never done
  Don’t play their games don’t be their pawns
  And don’t be afraid of the neo-cons

  and rap (“Uncle Sam Goddamn” by Brother Ali):

  You don’t give money to the bums
  On the corner with a sign, bleeding from their gums.
  Talking about you don’t support a crackhead —
  What you think happens to the money from yo taxes?

  Shit, the government’s an addict
  With a billion dollar a week kill-brown-people habit
  And even if you ain’t on the front line
  When the master yell crunch time you right back at it

  You ain’t look at how you hustling backwards
  And the end of the year add up what they subtracted:
  3 outta twelve months your salary
  Paid for that madness… man that’s sadness

• War tax resister Joan Baez was fond of including the Whiskey Rebellion celebration tune “Copper Kettle” in her concerts.

  Get you a copper kettle
  Get you a copper coil
  Cover with new made corn mash
  And never more you’ll toil

  You just lay there by the juniper
  While the moon is bright
  Watch them jugs a-fillin’
  In the pale moonlight

  Build your fires of hickory
  Hickory or ash or oak
  Don’t use no green or rotten wood
  They’ll catch you by the smoke

  My daddy he made whiskey
  My granddaddy did to
  We ain’t paid no whiskey tax
  Since seventeen ninety-two!

• When a youth activist group joined war tax resisters at a recent Tax Day demonstration at the Oakland federal building, they brought their lyrical skills along:

  People, People, People, can’t you see?
  They kill around the world with tax money.
  Stealing from workers how there money’s made,
  I guess that’s why we’re broke and they’re so paid!

  People, People, People, can’t you see?
  They tax the poor more, the rich stay greedy.
  No money for health or to educate,
  I guess that’s why we’re broke and they’re so paid!

  On-line, you can see some of the rehearsal video showing how they combined the lyrics with pantomime to drive the point home.
• At another American “Tax Day” protest, this one in St. Louis in 2003, war tax resisters at the federal building sang a protest song with lyrics like these:

  For the cost of cluster bombs
  that maim and leave to bleed
  our kids could have more teachers
  helping them to read

• Tax resisters against the British colonial government in Ghana had a fight song for the occasion:

  Cannon they have loaded, but couldn’t fire,
  Cannon they have loaded, but couldn’t fire.
  Whitemen dishonestly imposed poll-tax on the blacks.
  The poll-tax we will never pay, the grandees never deliver up,
  Go tell the white man to come out!

• Luzerne County, Pennsylvania is home to an unusually corrupt government culture (or maybe it’s just that they got caught). Federal authorities charged 23 county residents with various corruption charges, including three judges and a county commissioner. But then the county government decided to hike taxes by 10%. Fred Heller said no. Why fund a nest of crooks? He recorded a protest song titled “Take This Tax and Shove It” and started a campaign to get county residents to refuse to pay their taxes, at least until the government stables have had all their manure shoveled out. Excerpts:

  Take this tax and shove it
  We ain’t paying you crooks no more
  The good ol’ boys stole all our cash
  And ran out the courthouse door

• Residents in Castine, Maine, upset at their local taxes being siphoned off by state politicians, started a tax resistance campaign and accompanied it by protest songs:

  Write me a song of the Revolution,
  ’cause that’s what it’s gonna be.
  Write me a song of the Revolution,
  ’cause that’s what’s in store for me!
  I can’t sit by and watch this country
  go right down the drain.
  I gotta stand firm on the Constitution
  and stay aboard the freedom train.

  “In I Just Found Out (Who the ‘They’ Is), [songwriter] Linscott derides the notion of some anonymous outside government force, commonly called ‘They.’ ‘I’ve heard so many people talk about what “they” are doing. This is my attempt to show that the “they” are those who let government operate by default.’ ”
• When Meo farmers killed a tax collector during a tax strike aimed at the British-backed Maharaja in the 1930s, they commemorated the occasion with a song:

  Rebels in the open the Meos did then rejoice
  They conferred among themselves and spoke in a single voice
  Your názim’s dead and ever since
    we aren’t ruled by any prince
  To London by now you should’ve fled,
    and do take along your dead.