In the hills of Rajmahal

The Rajmahal hills in the early nineteenth century were a world apart — a dense, impenetrable region that most travellers avoided. When Francis Buchanan passed through in 1810-11, he found the local people hostile, suspicious, and unwilling to speak. Many simply abandoned their villages and fled at his approach. To understand why, we have to piece together what Buchanan’s journal tells us, and then look beyond it to other records.

Who were the Paharias?

Late-eighteenth-century revenue records identify these hill folk as Paharias. Their entire existence revolved around the forest. They lived in hutments within tamarind groves and rested in the shade of mango trees, considering the whole region their land — the basis of their identity and survival.

Their economy was a mix of activities:

• Shifting cultivation: They cleared patches of forest by cutting bushes and burning the undergrowth. The ash enriched the soil with potash. On these patches they grew pulses and millets for their own consumption, using only a hoe to scratch the ground lightly. After a few years of cultivation, they left the land fallow to recover and moved to a new area.
• Forest collection: From the forests they gathered mahua flowers for food, collected silk cocoons and resin to sell, and produced wood for charcoal.
• Pasture: The undergrowth that spread like a mat below the trees, and the grass that grew on fallow land, provided grazing for their cattle.

The Paharias were organised under chiefs. These chiefs maintained the unity of the group, settled disputes, and led the tribe in battles against other tribes and plainspeople. From their base in the hills, they regularly raided the settled agricultural villages on the plains. These raids served multiple purposes: they were a necessity for survival, especially in years of scarcity; they were a way of asserting power over settled communities; and they were a means of negotiating political relations with outsiders. Zamindars on the plains often had to buy peace by paying a regular tribute to the hill chiefs. Traders, too, paid a small amount for permission to use the passes controlled by the Paharias. Once the toll was paid, the Paharia chiefs protected the traders, ensuring their goods were not plundered. This was a fragile, negotiated peace.

Who was Francis Buchanan?

Francis Buchanan was a physician who served in the Bengal Medical Service from 1794 to 1815. For a time he was surgeon to Governor-General Lord Wellesley. In Calcutta, he organised the zoo that became the Calcutta Alipore Zoo and was briefly in charge of the Botanical Gardens. At the request of the Bengal government, he undertook detailed surveys of areas under British East India Company jurisdiction. He fell ill in 1815 and returned to England. Upon his mother’s death, he inherited her property and took her family name, Hamilton, which is why he is often called Buchanan-Hamilton.

Why were the Paharias so hostile to Buchanan?

The hostility was not personal — it was the product of decades of conflict. In the last decades of the eighteenth century, the British aggressively extended the frontiers of settled agriculture in eastern India. They encouraged forest clearance, and zamindars and jotedars turned uncultivated lands into rice fields. The British saw this expansion as necessary for three reasons: to enlarge the sources of land revenue, to produce crops for export, and to establish the basis of a settled, ordered society. They associated forests with wildness and saw forest people as savage, unruly, primitive, and difficult to govern. Their goal was to clear the forests, establish settled agriculture, and tame the forest people — persuading them to give up hunting and take up the plough.

As settled agriculture expanded, the area under forests and pastures shrank. This sharpened the conflict. The Paharias began raiding settled villages with increasing regularity, carrying away food grains and cattle. Exasperated colonial officials tried to control them. In the 1770s, the British embarked on a brutal policy of extermination, hunting the Paharias down and killing them. Then, in the 1780s, Augustus Cleveland, the Collector of Bhagalpur, proposed a policy of pacification. Paharia chiefs were given an annual allowance and made responsible for the proper conduct of their men. They were expected to maintain order and discipline their own people. Many chiefs refused the allowances. Those who accepted most often lost authority within their community — they came to be seen as subordinate employees or stipendiary chiefs, in the pay of the colonial government.

As the pacification campaigns continued, the Paharias withdrew deep into the mountains, insulating themselves and carrying on a war with outsiders. So when Buchanan travelled through the region in the winter of 1810-11, the Paharias naturally viewed him with suspicion and distrust. The experience of pacification and the memory of brutal repression shaped their perception. Every white man appeared to represent a power that was destroying their way of life, snatching away their control over forests and lands.

A new threat: the Santhals …