Discuss the impact of Christianity on the tribal population of Jharkhand. (Answer in 250 words)

- Discuss the impact of Christianity on the tribal population of Jharkhand. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
Conversion in Chotanagpur was won in the courtroom before it was won in the church. Christianity there is inseparable from the land question, which is why its effects were political as much as religious.

Body
1. Religious change: the Gossner Lutherans from 1845 and the Belgian Jesuits under Constant Lievens from 1885 drew mass conversions among Oraon, Munda, Kharia and Ho. Sarna practice — Singbonga and Dharmes worshipped in the sacred grove, the pahan's sacrifices, propitiation of bongas — was abandoned or reinterpreted, while Sarhul, Karma and Sohrai survived in secularised form.
2. Social change: mission schools and colleges, of which St Xavier's Ranchi is the best known, produced the region's first professional class. Missionaries reduced Mundari and Kurukh to writing, Hoffmann's Encyclopaedia Mundarica among them; hospitals and nursing training followed, and the position of women improved markedly through schooling.
3. Economic and political change: Lievens fought tenancy cases against zamindars and restored khuntkatti holdings, work that fed directly into the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act of 1908. Mission-educated men founded the Chotanagpur Unnati Samaj in 1915 and the Adivasi Mahasabha, and Jaipal Singh Munda's Jharkhand Party descends from them, as ultimately does statehood in 2000.
4. The divisions produced: a lasting Christian-Sarna cleavage, visible now in the demand for a separate Sarna code in the Census and in the campaign to delist converts from Scheduled Tribe status.

Conclusion
Christianity gave Jharkhand's tribes literacy, a legal defence of land and a political leadership. It also split them along a line that state politics has since found useful.