On 9 October 1831, the administration of the kingdom was taken over by the British East India Company - a state of affairs that lasted for 50 years before the Wodeyars were re-instated as rulers under the aegis of the Crown.
After the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, the British East India Company assumed indirect control of the Kingdom of Mysore through a subsidiary alliance with the Wodeyar dynasty.
[1] Wasteful expenditure, ill-considered grants of land to undeserving courtiers and courtly intrigue between the royal family and Maratha Brahmin advisors led to declining revenue and rising costs in the kingdom, ultimately resulting in a recession in the 1820s.
Haider and his successor Tipu Sultan considered Keladi strategic in its geographic location as a buffer region between the kingdom and the Maratha state, but their efforts to integrate it into Mysore economically and culturally were resisted by the local population.
[1] When Keladi was conquered by Haider, taxation policies underwent changes, and by the early 19th century, the Shurtee and Sayar system was adopted under Krishnaraja Wodeyar III.
Descendants of the erstwhile rulers of Keladi, called the Palegars, continued to enjoy an influence across the region, and they, led by Rangappa Naik, encouraged the retention of a distinct political identity in Nagar.
Basavappa, in reality Sadara Mulla the son of a farmer, had obtained the signet rings of the last Keladi ruler from the latter's spiritual advisor and exploited his possession of them to stake a claim to the kingdom of Nagar.
A significant part of the Nagar population was Lingayat, and the dominance of Deshastha Brahmin in the kingdom's administration could also have played a role in inciting the rebellion.
[3] Due to declining revenue from Nagar, the king deputed two of his advisors, Ram Rao and Venkata Kistniah, to visit the region in 1827.
The farmers complaints of taxation of uncultivated land and excessive pressure by administrators including torture, resulted in Ram Rao remitting the collection of some rent.
The local leaders and peasants started gathering in mass meetings, called Kuttams, to express their dissatisfaction with the tax system and the administration.
The peasants of Nagar sent letters to neighbouring areas asking people to gather in Kuttams and stop paying taxes and cultivating land.
Naik promised lower taxation and a restoration of the Keladi kingdom, evoking nostalgia amongst the farmers for what they regarded as happier times.
The local administration of the kingdom resorted to increasingly violent means of countering the rebellion, with more than 50 deaths and 200 injured in clashes in Nagar alone by the end of 1830.
The peons in remote regions of the kingdom were not particularly loyal to the king, and they were not paid regularly, with arrears amounting in many cases to up to 18 months of salary.
The kuttam dispersed only to regroup 25 kilometres north, at Honnali, where their ranks were swollen to between seven and twenty thousand by other farmers joining the meeting.
Apart from warning the king about the progress of the uprisings and the ensuing violence and reporting to the government of the Madras Presidency, the local Resident, James Archibald Casamajor, tried to keep British troops out of the action.
Rochfort and Urs joined Annappa and Infantry Commander Syed Salar at Shimoga, and marched to Honnali, where the insurgents had occupied the fort.
The report did acknowledge that the standard of living in the kingdom had deteriorated since the turn of the century, due to factors beyond the king's control, like bad crop seasons and reduced income.