Tribals, Dikus and the Vision of a Golden Age

This is Chapter 4 of Our Pasts – III. Chapter 3 (hess203) showed how the Company organised land revenue and commercial crops in the plains. This chapter turns to the forests and hills: how tribal societies lived by jhum cultivation, hunting and gathering, herding and settled farming; how colonial rule changed the position of their chiefs, settled or restricted shifting cultivators, closed forests, and drew them into debt and distant labour; and how they resisted — above all in the movement led by Birsa Munda in Chotanagpur (1895–1900). The title’s three words are its argument: tribals, the outsiders they called dikus, and Birsa’s vision of a golden age.

• Links within this book: hess201 (sources ‘from below’ — songs, anthropologists’ notes — and why official records are partial); hess202 (the Company becomes a territorial power); hess203 (land settlements — the ‘Chapter 2’ this chapter refers back to is now Chapter 3, see the trap below); hess205 (1857 — Kol and Santhal risings were its forerunners).
• Live pages to pair with: lehs301 (Class 12, Colonialism and the Countryside — the Paharias and Santhals of the Rajmahal hills and the Santhal revolt of 1855–56 in depth); lesy208 (Class 12 sociology, Social Movements — tribal movements, Jharkhand, Birsa); lesy103 (what sociologists mean by ‘tribe’); kesy205 (Class 11 sociology — Verrier Elwin and the protection–integration debate with G.S. Ghurye); jess102 (Class 10 — forests, the forest acts and community forest rights); lehs302 (1857 and earlier risings such as the Kol).
• UPSC: Modern Indian history is among the most heavily tested parts of Prelims and GS1, and tribal movements are a favourite sub-topic: the common cause of nineteenth-century tribal risings (2011), what ‘Ulgulan’ refers to (2020), and in Mains how colonial rule affected tribals and how they responded (GS1 2023). Geography asks about jhum (1979). This foundational chapter gives the base; lehs301 and lesy208 add depth.

• Ways of life: jhum (shifting) cultivation — cut, burn, ash as manure, broadcast seed, leave fallow; hunting-gathering (Khonds, Baigas); herding (Van Gujjars, Labadis, Gaddis, Bakarwals); settled cultivation (Mundas — clan land).
• Chiefs kept land titles but lost administrative power, paid tribute and disciplined tribals for the British.
• Shifting cultivators: the British wanted them settled (control, revenue); plough farming failed on dry soils; protests in the north-east won some forest land for jhum.
• Forest laws: forests made state property; Reserved Forests closed to jhum, gathering, hunting; forest villages traded plots for labour (railway sleepers). Resistance: Songram Sangma (1906, Assam), forest satyagraha (1930s, Central Provinces).
• Trade and work: Santhal cocoon growers got Rs 3–4 per 1,000, resold at five times the price; tribals recruited to Assam tea and Jharkhand coal (about half the Jharia–Raniganj miners in the 1920s).
• Revolts: Kol 1831–32 · Santhal 1855 · Bastar 1910 · Warli 1940 (NCERT). Birsa Munda: movement from 1895; jailed 1895–97; satyug, reform, Munda Raj; attacks on police stations and churches; white flag; died 1900 → laws protecting tribal land.

In 1895, NCERT begins, a man named Birsa was seen roaming the forests and villages of Chotanagpur (now in Jharkhand). People said he could cure diseases and multiply grain; he declared that God had appointed him to free his people from the ‘slavery’ of the dikus. Thousands came to believe he was bhagwan. Birsa was a Munda, but his followers also included Santhals and Oraons — all unhappy with what was happening under British rule: their familiar ways of life seemed to be disappearing, their livelihoods were threatened and their religion seemed in danger.

Who were these communities? NCERT recalls the previous year’s book: most tribes had customs and rituals very different from those laid down by Brahmans, and did not have the sharp social divisions of caste societies. Members of a tribe thought of themselves as sharing ties of kinship. But, NCERT adds at once, this did not mean there were no social and economic differences within tribes.

By the nineteenth century, tribal people in different parts of India lived in a variety of ways. Some were jhum cultivators. They practised shifting cultivation on small patches of land, mostly in forests: they cut treetops to let sunlight reach the ground, burnt the vegetation, and spread the ash, which contains potash, to fertilise the soil. They used the axe to cut trees and the hoe to scratch the soil, and broadcast the seed — scattered it — instead of ploughing and sowing. After the harvest they moved to another field, leaving the old one fallow for several years. Shifting cultivators were found in the hilly and forested tracts of north-east and central India, and their lives depended on free movement within forests.

Some were hunters and gatherers. The Khonds of Orissa’s forests went on collective hunts and shared the meat; they ate forest fruits and roots, cooked with oil pressed from sal and mahua seeds, used forest shrubs and herbs as medicine, and sold forest produce in local markets. Local weavers and leather workers depended on them for kusum and palash flowers to dye cloth and leather. For grain, forest people exchanged produce or bought it with small earnings; some did odd jobs — carrying loads, building roads, labouring in peasants’ fields. When forest produce shrank, more had to wander in search of labouring work. But many, like the Baigas of central India, were reluctant to work for others: they saw themselves as people of the forest, and it was below a Baiga’s dignity to become a labourer.

Buying and selling made tribal groups dependent on traders and moneylenders. Traders sold goods at high prices; moneylenders lent cash at very high interest. So, NCERT says, for tribal people market and commerce often meant debt and poverty, and they came to see the moneylender and trader as evil outsiders and the cause of their misery — the first meaning of ‘diku’.

Some herded animals, moving with the seasons when grass ran out: the Van Gujjars of the Punjab hills and the Labadis of Andhra Pradesh herded cattle, the Gaddis of Kulu were shepherds and the Bakarwals of Kashmir reared goats. Some took to settled cultivation, even before the nineteenth century: they used the plough and gradually gained rights over the land. Among the Mundas of Chotanagpur, land belonged to the clan as a whole, since all members were regarded as descendants of the original settlers who had first cleared it; but some within the clan became more powerful — chiefs and followers — and powerful men often rented out land instead of cultivating it themselves.

British officials ranked these ways of life. They saw settled groups like the Gonds and Santhals as more ‘civilised’ than hunter-gatherers or shifting cultivators, and regarded forest dwellers as ‘wild and savage’, people who had to be settled and ‘civilised’ (Exercise 1a). NCERT reports this as the officials’ view, not its own — and the rest of the chapter shows its consequences.

NCERT’s first source asks whether all societies share the same notion of work and time. It draws on Verrier Elwin, a British anthropologist who lived among the Baigas and Khonds of central India in the 1930s and 1940s. In his account, the year of a shifting cultivator was divided by month and by sex: men felled large trees, went on ritual hunts (starting at full moon) and worked the fields in the rains; women cut the reaped stalks, gathered fruits, roots and mahua seeds and collected unburnt wood after the forest was fired. Pus was a time for winnowing and for dances and marriages; in Magh the group shifted to new bewars. In the second year fewer crops were sown and there was more hunting; only in the third year did the diet need much forest food. Elwin also notes that, of all the adivasis of central India, the Baigas were known as the best hunters.

What happened to tribal chiefs? Before the British, chiefs in many areas were important people: they had economic power and the right to administer and control their territories; in some places they had their own police and decided local rules of land and forest management. Under British rule they were allowed to keep their land titles over a cluster of villages and to rent out land, but lost much of their administrative power, had to follow laws made by British officials, pay tribute to the British and discipline tribal groups on their behalf. They lost the authority they had enjoyed among their people and could no longer fulfil their traditional functions.

What happened to the shifting cultivators? The British were uncomfortable with groups who moved about and had no fixed home. They wanted them to settle as peasant cultivators, for two reasons: settled peasants were easier to control and administer, and they gave the state a regular revenue. So the British introduced land settlements: they measured the land, defined each individual’s rights to it, and fixed the revenue demand; some peasants were declared landowners and others tenants, the tenants paying rent to the landowner, who paid revenue to the state (hess203).

The effort to settle jhum cultivators was not very successful. Settled plough cultivation is hard where water is scarce and the soil is dry, and jhum cultivators who took to the plough often suffered poor yields. In north-east India they insisted on continuing their traditional practice, and, facing widespread protests, the British ultimately allowed them to carry on shifting cultivation in some parts of the forest.

Because tribal life was directly connected to the forest, changes in forest laws had a considerable effect. The British extended control over all forests and declared them state property. Some were classified as Reserved Forests because they produced timber the British wanted; in these, people could not move freely, practise jhum, collect fruits or hunt. Many jhum cultivators were forced to move elsewhere in search of work.

But this created a problem: where would the Forest Department get labour to cut trees for railway sleepers and to transport logs? Officials decided to give jhum cultivators small patches of land in the forests on condition that villagers provided labour to the Forest Department and looked after the forests. So in many regions the department set up forest villages to ensure a regular supply of cheap labour.

Many tribal groups reacted against the colonial forest laws. They disobeyed the new rules, continued practices declared illegal, and at times rose in open rebellion — NCERT names the revolt of Songram Sangma in 1906 in Assam and the forest satyagraha of the 1930s in the Central Provinces.

During the nineteenth century, traders and moneylenders came into the forests more often, wanting to buy forest produce, offering cash loans and asking tribal people to work for wages. It took time for tribal groups to understand the consequences. NCERT’s example is silk. In the eighteenth century Indian silk was in demand in Europe and exports rose fast, so Company officials encouraged production. In Hazaribagh (in present-day Jharkhand) the Santhals reared cocoons. Silk traders’ agents gave them loans and collected the cocoons, paying Rs 3 to Rs 4 for a thousand; the cocoons were exported to Burdwan or Gaya and sold at five times the price. The middlemen made huge profits; the growers earned very little. Understandably, many tribal groups saw the market and traders as their main enemies.

The search for work was even worse for those who had to go far from home. From the late nineteenth century, tea plantations spread and mining became an important industry. Tribal people were recruited in large numbers for the tea gardens of Assam and the coal mines of Jharkhand, through contractors who paid miserably low wages and prevented them from returning home.

Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, NCERT says, tribal groups in different parts of the country rebelled against changes in laws, restrictions on their practices, new taxes and exploitation by traders and moneylenders. Its list: the Kols (1831–32), the Santhals (1855), the Bastar rebellion in central India (1910) and the Warli revolt in Maharashtra (1940). Birsa’s movement was one of these. The table adds names that standard references attach to each (Beyond NCERT), for recognition only.

Birsa was born in the mid-1870s, the son of a poor father who moved from place to place for work. He grew up around the forests of Bohonda, grazing sheep, playing the flute and dancing in the village akhara. As a boy he heard tales of earlier Munda uprisings and saw the sirdars urging people to revolt; they spoke of a golden age when the Mundas had been free of the dikus and of a time when the community’s ancestral rights would be restored. They saw themselves as descendants of the original settlers, fighting for their land (mulk ki larai).

Birsa went to the local missionary school, where he heard that the Mundas could attain the Kingdom of Heaven and regain their lost rights if they became good Christians and gave up their ‘bad practices’. Later he spent time with a prominent Vaishnav preacher, wore the sacred thread and began to value purity and piety. His movement drew on all these ideas. It aimed to reform tribal society — he urged Mundas to give up liquor, clean their villages and stop believing in witchcraft and sorcery — yet he also turned against missionaries and landlords as outside forces ruining the Munda way of life.

In 1895 Birsa urged his followers to recover their glorious past — a satyug, an age of truth, when Mundas lived a good life, built embankments, tapped springs, planted trees and orchards, cultivated for a living, did not kill their kin and lived honestly. He wanted people to work on their land again and settle down. What worried officials most was the movement’s political aim: to drive out missionaries, moneylenders, landlords and the government and set up a Munda Raj with Birsa at its head. The movement blamed all these forces for the Mundas’ misery: British land policies were destroying their land system, landlords and moneylenders were taking their land, and missionaries were criticising their culture.

As the movement spread, officials acted. They arrested Birsa in 1895, convicted him of rioting and jailed him for two years. Released in 1897, he toured the villages to gather support, using traditional symbols and language: he urged people to destroy ‘Ravana’ (the dikus and Europeans) and establish a kingdom under his leadership. His followers attacked police stations and churches and raided the property of moneylenders and zamindars; they raised the white flag as the symbol of Birsa Raj. In 1900 Birsa died of cholera, NCERT says, and the movement faded out.

The movement, NCERT concludes, mattered in at least two ways. It forced the colonial government to introduce laws so that tribal land could not easily be taken over by dikus. And it showed once again that tribal people could protest against injustice and express anger against colonial rule — in their own way, inventing their own rituals and symbols of struggle.

The chapter’s central idea is the diku — the outsider. In Chotanagpur the word covered a whole cast of newcomers: traders and moneylenders who brought debt, zamindars who demanded rent and forced labour, missionaries who criticised customs, and a government that took the forests, reshaped chiefs’ powers and imposed taxes. Exercise 5 asks why tribal people were angry with them; the answer combines economics (land, debt, low prices, labour) with culture and dignity (religion, customs, self-rule).

The second idea is about categories. British officials ranked tribal ways of life — settled Gonds and Santhals ‘more civilised’, forest dwellers ‘wild and savage’ — and made policy on that basis: settle the mobile, reserve the forests, put chiefs under British law. The chapter shows instead societies with their own economies, calendars, land rights and beliefs, already trading and changing before the British came.

The chapter’s two Activities, in order. Short outlines follow.

‘Let’s recall’ (two), ‘Let’s discuss’ (four), ‘Let’s do’ (two) and ‘Let’s imagine’, pages 49–50.

Numbers

One-liners

• Most tribes had kinship ties and no sharp caste divisions, but not equality.
• Jhum: cut, burn, fertilise with ash, broadcast seed, move on, leave fallow.
• Khonds and Baigas hunted and gathered; Baigas thought labouring for others beneath them.
• Buying and selling made tribals dependent on traders and moneylenders — debt and poverty.
• Among the Mundas land belonged to the clan, as descendants of the first settlers.
• Officials called forest dwellers ‘wild and savage’ and settled groups ‘more civilised’.
• Chiefs kept land titles but lost administrative power, paid tribute and policed their people for the British.
• The British tried to settle jhum cultivators for control and revenue; it largely failed.
• Forests became state property; Reserved Forests banned jhum, gathering and hunting.
• Forest villages gave plots in return for labour for the Forest Department.
• Santhal cocoon growers got Rs 3–4 per thousand; middlemen resold at five times.
• Contractors took tribals to Assam’s tea gardens and Jharkhand’s coal mines.
• Birsa mixed Munda, Christian and Vaishnav ideas: reform plus a Munda Raj.
• His movement led to laws protecting tribal land and showed tribal capacity to resist.

Traps to avoid

• Birsa was a Munda; Sido and Kanhu led the Santhals (1855).
• ‘Ulgulan’ = Birsa’s revolt of 1899–1900.
• Jhum cultivators did not plough: axe, hoe, broadcasting.
• Chiefs kept land titles; they lost administrative power.
• The British did not want to preserve the tribal way of life.
• Cocoons resold at five times the price: Rs 3–4 → Rs 15–20 per thousand.
• Raniganj lies in Bengal; NCERT calls Jharia and Raniganj ‘coal mines of Bihar’.
• Warli revolt: NCERT 1940; standard accounts 1945–46.
• NCERT’s ‘Chapter 2’ cross-reference for land settlements now means Chapter 3 (hess203).
• Kandha and Khond are variant names of the same people, though NCERT’s map lists both.
• Songram Sangma is usually spelt Sonaram Sangma.
• Birsa died in Ranchi jail after capture — NCERT mentions only cholera.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Tribal revolts: the common factor in nineteenth-century tribal risings — outsiders as middlemen: moneylenders, traders, revenue farmers (2011); ‘Ulgulan’ = Birsa Munda’s revolt, 1899–1900 (2020). Build a one-line card per revolt: people · region · date · leader · grievance (table in section 7; Santhal detail on lehs301).
• Jhum: connected with tribal people (1979); know its features (cut-and-burn, ash, broadcasting, fallow) and regional names (bewar, podu).
• Answer-key notes (keep all keys): 2011 — option (d), ‘complete disruption of the old agrarian order’, is also defensible, and (a) and (b) were real causes too; the stored key (c) — the rise of moneylenders, traders and revenue farmers as middlemen — matches NCERT’s dikus and the standard key. Read ‘common factor’ as the cause present in almost every revolt. 1979 — ‘hilly people’ (d) is partly true; the key is ‘tribal people’ (a).
• Not taught here, though tribal: the origin of the word ‘Adivasi’ (1995), ‘denotified tribes’ (1996) and ST-location questions (1985, 2000, 2005) — use the polity and sociology pages.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• How colonial rule affected tribals and how they responded (GS1 2023): impact — chiefs reduced to agents of the state; land settlements and individual titles; forest laws, Reserved Forests, forest villages; traders, moneylenders and debt; recruitment to plantations and mines; missionary pressure. Response — everyday defiance of forest rules, migration, and revolts (Kol, Santhal, Birsa, Bastar, Warli, forest satyagraha), often with religious and millenarian idioms; outcomes such as the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act and Santhal Parganas. Add lehs301 (Santhals) and lesy208 (later movements); attribute the historians’ readings.
• Peasant and tribal movements: compare Birsa’s movement (land, outsiders, a golden age) with the indigo revolt (hess203) and the Deccan riots (lehs301) to show common grievances and different forms.

Tap an option. NCERT's own exercise questions come first; the rest test the figures and common confusions.

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