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1. Tribal Movements in India

2. Introduction
• Tribals such as Chuars, Kols, Bhils,
Santals, Oraons, Hoes, Hays, Manipuris
and Garos organised uprisings against
oppression by the English East India
Company and the British
Administration.

3. Tribe
• Meaning:
– a group of people of the same race,
and with the same customs, language,
religion, etc. living in a particular area
and often led by a chief.

4. Uprisings of Tribals
• Numerous uprisings of tribals have taken
place beginning with one in Bihar in 1772,
followed by many revolts in Andhra Pradesh,
Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal
Pradesh, Assam, Mizoram and Nagaland.

5. • The important tribes involved in revolt in the
nineteenth century were
– Mizos (1810),
– Kols (1795 and 1831),
– Mundas (1889),
– Daflas (1875),
– Khasi and Garo (1829),
– Kacharis (1839),
– Santhals (1853),
– Muria Gonds (1886),
– Nagas (1844 and 1879),
– Bhuiyas (1868) and
– Kondhas (1817)

6. Scholars worked on Tribal Studies
• Some scholars like
– A.R. Desai (1979),
– Kathelen Gough (1974) and
– Ranajit Guha (1983) have treated tribal
movements after independence as peasant
movements.
– but K.S. Singh (1985) has criticized such approach
because of the nature of tribals’ social and
political organisation, their relative social
isolation from the mainstream, their leadership
pattern and the modus operandi of their political
mobilization.

7. Nature of Revolt
• Tribals’ community consciousness is strong.
• Tribal movements were not only agrarian
but also forest based.
• Some revolts were ethnic in nature as these
were directed against zamindars,
moneylenders and petty government
officials who were not only their exploiters
but aliens too.

8. Reasons for the revolt
• When tribals were unable to pay their loan or
the interest thereon, moneylenders and
landlords usurped their lands.
• The tribals thus became tenants on their own
land and sometimes even bonded labourers.
• The police and the revenue officers never
helped them.
• On the contrary, they also used the tribals for
personal and government work without any
payment.

9. Cont…
• The courts were not only ignorant of the
tribal agrarian system and customs but also
were unaware of the plight of the tribals.
• All these factors of land alienation,
usurpation, forced labour, minimum wages,
and land grabbing compelled many tribes
like Munda, Santhals, Kol, Bhils, Warli, etc.,
in many regions like Assam, Orissa,
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra
Pradesh, Bihar, and Maharashtra to revolt.

10. Cont…
• The management of forests also led some
tribes to revolt, as forests in some regions are
the main sources of their livelihood.
• The British government had introduced
certain legislations permitting merchants and
contractors to cut the forests.
• These rules not only deprived the tribals of
several forest products but also made them
victims of harassment by the forest officials.
• This led tribes in Andhra Pradesh and some
other areas to launch movements.

11. How did the tribal groups live?
• Jhum cultivation
• This type of cultivation is usually found in
forests and hilly areas
• Some were hunter’s and gatherer’s
• They hunted deer, pig etc and gathered for their
survival
• Some were herderer’s
• Many tribal's lived by herding and grazing
animals they are nomads

12. Problem of British with shifting cultivation
• They wanted shifting cultivators to settle down
and become peasants.
• As people engaged in shifting cultivation move
around a lot, so calculating tax is very hard.
• Settled cultivation in those areas where water was
scarce.
• Jhum cultivators who were forced to take up
settled cultivation suffered, because their fields
hardly gave good yield.
• Facing widespread protests, the British had to
ultimately allow them the right to carry on shifting
cultivation in some parts of the forests.

13. • During pre-colonial time tribal chiefs
enjoyed many administrative and
influencing rights.
• but during the colonial period there was a
loss of power for the tribal chiefs they had
to obey.
• British law and the government restricted
the rights of the tribal chiefs.
How did colonial rule affect tribal lives?

14. Forests law and their impact
• The British extended their over all forests
and declared that forests were state
property.
• Some forests were classified as reserve
forests which was used to produce timber
which the British wanted.
• The colonial officials allowed some land
for Jhum cultivation that they would
provide labor for the forests department
for looking after forests.

15. Impact
• Many tribal groups reacted against the colonial forest
laws.
• They disobeyed the new rules, continued with the
practices that were declared illegal .
• Such was the revolt of Songram Sangam of 1906 in
Assam.
• Many people for example like moneylenders, traders for
purchasing raw goods and lending money, these traders
made huge profits but only a meager amount reached
the producers.
• The condition of people who went to towns for work
was not also better.

16. • The Tribals were paid low wages, and prevent
them from returning home.
• Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries Tribal's rebelled against the forest
laws .
• The Kolas rebelled in 1831-32
• Santhal rose in revolt in 1855
• The Bastar Rebellion in central India broke out
in 1910 .
• Warli revolt in Maharashtra on 1940

17. After independence, the tribal movements may
be classified into three groups:
1. Movements due to exploitation by
outsiders (like those of the Santhals and
Mundas),
2. Movements due to economic deprivation
(like those of the Gonds in Madhya
Pradesh and the Mahars in Andhra
Pradesh), and
3. Movements due to separatist tendencies
(like those of the Nagas and Mizos).

18. The tribal movements may also be classified on
the basis of their orientation into four types:
1. Movements seeking political autonomy and
formation of a state (Nagas, Mizos, Jharkhand),
2. Agrarian movements,
3. Forest based movements, and
4. Socio-religious or socio-cultural movements (the
Bhagat movement among Bhils of Rajasthan and
Madhya Pradesh, movement among tribals of
south Gujarat or Raghunath Murmu’s movement
among the Santhals).

19. S.M. Dubey (1982) has classified them in
four categories:
• (a) Religious and social reform
movements
• (b) Movements for separate statehood
• (c) Insurgent movements and
• (d) Cultural rights movements.

20. Tribal Revolts
• Chuar revolt
• Khol revolt
• Santhol revolt
• Khond Revolt and
• Manipuri, Khasia and Garo uprisings in the
north-east after 1826
• Sanyasi
• Rampa revolt
• Birsa Munda revolt

21. Santhal Revolt
(1855 – 1856)

22. The Santhal Revolt (1855-56)
• The Santhals were a hardworking, peace-loving
and simple folk, living mainly off agriculture in
the dense forests of Bankura, Midnapur,
Birbhum, Manbhum, Chota Nagpur and
Palamou.
• The Permanent Settlement brought these lands
under Company’s revenue control.
• The Santhals fled oppressive zamindars and
Company staff and settled down in the hill
tracts of Rajmahal and clearings in
Murshidabad forests.

23. • They started farming here as well, calling it Damin-i-Koh.
• But here too their oppressors followed them and
exploitation started in full swing.
• Local moneylenders cheated them with high interest rates
of 50% to 500%.
• The simple-minded Santhals reeled under loans and often
had to lose everything, even themselves, if loans were not
paid back.
• Shopkeepers gave them short weight.
• British soldiers and employees forcibly took away their
livestock; even the women were not spared.

24. Course
• Two brothers,Sidhu and Kanhu, rose against these
dreadful activities.
• On 30 June 1855, 10,000 Santhals assembled at the
Bhagnadihi fields and pledged to establish a free
Santhal state.
• Common people like blacksmiths, potters,
carpenters and weavers supported them.
• Other leaders were brothers Chand and Bhairav,
Bir Singh and Pramanik.
• The rebels’ ranks swelled and they numbered
nearly 50,000.

25. • Postal and rail services were thoroughly
disrupted.
• The rebels targeted railway stations, post offices,
police stations, European bungalows and
zamindars’ houses.
• They bravely fought with only bows and arrows
with the armed British soldiers and nearly
brought British rule down from Bhagalpur to
Munghyr.
• Trouble spread to Birbhum and Murshidabad as
well.
• Several British armies were dispatched to quell
the rebellion.

26. Result
• At last in February 1856 the uprising was
suppressed and 23,000 rebels were slaughtered.
• Sidhu, Kanhu and other leaders were hanged,
prisoners got jail terms of 7 to 14 years and 36
Santal villages were destroyed.
• The Santhal Revolt was essentially a peasant revolt.
• People from all professions and communities such
as potters, blacksmiths, weavers, leather workers
and doms joined in.
• It was distinctly anti-British in nature.

27. Birsa Munda Uprising
(1895 - 1900)

28. Birsa Munda Uprising
• In 1895 Birsa, a tribe urged his followers to recover
the past glory, a golden age were the tribals held
their heads high.
• He talked of a golden past were Mundas led a good
life, constructed embankments, tapped natural
springs, planted trees and orchards, practiced
cultivation to earn their living.
• As the movement spread the British officials
decided to act.
• They arrested Birsa in 1895, convicted him on
charges of rioting and jailed him for 2 years.

29. • When Birsa was released in 1897, he began to
gather support against the British by using
traditional methods.
• They attacked police stations and churches,
and raided the property of moneylenders and
zamindars.
• They raised the white flag as a symbol of Birsa
Raj.
• In 1900 Birsa Munda died of cholera and the
movement faded out.

30. Significance of the movement of Birsa Munda
• It showed that the Tribals could protest
against injustice and express their
dissatisfaction over the colonial rule
• It introduced laws so that the govt. could
not take away the land of the tribals