The Hoe and the Plough

The Rajmahal hills in the early nineteenth century were a world apart from the settled rice fields of Bengal. Here, the land was not ploughed but scratched with a hoe; the people were not rooted peasants but shifting cultivators, hunters, and gatherers. The story of this region is the story of a collision — between the hoe and the plough, between a forest-based life and an expanding agrarian frontier, and between the Paharias who resisted change and the Santhals who were brought in to bring it about.

2.1 In the hills of Rajmahal

When Francis Buchanan travelled through the Rajmahal hills in 1810–11, he found a landscape that was impenetrable and dangerous. The people he encountered were hostile, often deserting their villages and fleeing at his approach. These were the Paharias, a hill people whose entire existence was bound up with the forest.

Who were the Paharias? They lived around the Rajmahal hills and practised shifting cultivation. Their method was simple: they cleared patches of forest by cutting bushes and burning the undergrowth. The ash enriched the soil, and on these patches they grew pulses and millets for their own consumption. They used only a hoe — a light tool that scratched the ground — never a plough. After a few years of cultivation, they left the land fallow to recover its fertility and moved to a new area.

Beyond cultivation, the forest provided everything else. The Paharias collected mahua flowers for food, silk cocoons and resin for sale, and wood for charcoal. The undergrowth and grassy fallow lands served as pasture for their cattle. They lived in huts within tamarind groves and rested under mango trees. They considered the entire region as their land — the basis of their identity and survival.

Social and political organisation. The Paharia chiefs maintained the unity of the group, settled disputes, and led the tribe in battles. From their hill bases, they regularly raided the plains where settled agriculturists lived. These raids were not random violence; they were a necessity for survival in years of scarcity, a way of asserting power over settled communities, and a means of negotiating political relations with outsiders. Zamindars on the plains often had to purchase 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 chiefs protected the traders and ensured their goods were not plundered.

Why did this fragile peace break down? 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. To the British, extending settled agriculture was 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 solution 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 contracted. This sharpened the conflict. The Paharias began to raid settled villages with increasing regularity, carrying away food grains and cattle. The British tried desperately to control them.

British policies towards the Paharias. In the 1770s, the British embarked on a brutal policy of extermination, hunting the Paharias down and killing them. Then, by 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 the community — they came to be seen as subordinate employees or stipendiary chiefs of the colonial government.

As the pacification campaigns continued, the Paharias withdrew deep into the mountains, insulating themselves from hostile forces and carrying on a war with outsiders. This is why, when Buchanan travelled through the region in 1810–11, the Paharias viewed him with suspicion and distrust. Every white man represented a power that was destroying their way of life, snatching away their control over their forests and lands.

By this time, a newer danger was emerging. Santhals were pouring into the area, clearing forests, cutting down timber, ploughing land, and growing rice and cotton. As the lower hills were taken over by Santhal settlers, the Paharias receded deeper into the Rajmahal hills. If Paharia life was symbolised by the hoe, the settlers came to represent the power of the plough. The battle between the hoe and the plough was a long one.

2.2 The Santhals: Pioneer settlers

In late 1810, Buchanan crossed Ganjuria Pahar in the Rajmahal ranges and reached a village. It was an old village, but the land around had been recently cleared to extend cultivation. The soil was rocky but "uncommonly fine," and Buchanan had never seen finer tobacco and mustard. On enquiry, he discovered that the frontiers of cultivation here had been extended by the Santhals. They had moved into this area around 1800, displaced the hill folk who lived on these lower slopes, cleared the forests, and settled the land.

How did the Santhals reach the Rajmahal hills? The Santhals had begun to come into Bengal around the 1780s. Zamindars hired them to reclaim land and expand cultivation, and British officials invited them to settle in the Jangal Mahals. Having failed to subdue the Paharias and transform them into settled agriculturists, the British turned to the Santhals. The Paharias refused to cut forests, resisted touching the plough, and continued to be turbulent. The Santhals, by contrast, appeared to be ideal settlers — clearing forests and ploughing the land with vigour.

The creation of Damin-i-Koh. The Santhals were given land and persuaded to settle in the foothills of Rajmahal. By 1832, a large area of land was demarcated as Damin-i-Koh. This was declared to be the land of the Santhals. They were to live within it, practise plough agriculture, and become settled peasants. The land grant stipulated that at least one-tenth of the area was to be cleared and cultivated within the first ten years. The territory was surveyed, mapped, and enclosed with boundary pillars. It was separated from both the world of the settled agriculturists of the plains and the Paharias of the hills.

Rapid expansion. After the demarcation of Damin-i-Koh, Santhal settlements expanded rapidly:

As cultivation expanded, an increased volume of revenue flowed into the Company's coffers. Santhal myths and songs of the nineteenth century refer frequently to a long history of travel — a tireless search for a place to settle. Here in the Damin-i-Koh, their journey seemed to have come to an end.

Impact on the Paharias. When the Santhals settled on the peripheries of the Rajmahal hills, the Paharias resisted but were ultimately forced to withdraw deeper into the hills. Restricted from moving down to the lower hills and valleys, they were confined to the dry interior and the more barren, rocky upper hills. This severely affected their lives, impoverishing them in the long term. Shifting agriculture depended on the ability to move to newer land and utilise the natural fertility of the soil. When the most fertile soils became inaccessible, being part of the Damin, the Paharias could not effectively sustain their mode of cultivation. When the forests were cleared, the hunters among them also faced problems.

The Santhals' own troubles. The Santhals, however, soon found that the land they had brought under cultivation was slipping away from their hands. The state was levying heavy taxes on the land they had cleared. Moneylenders (called dikus) were charging them high rates of interest and taking over the land when debts remained unpaid. Zamindars were asserting control over the Damin area. By the 1850s, the Santhals felt that the time had come to rebel against zamindars, moneylenders, and the colonial state, in order to create an ideal world for themselves where they would rule.

The Santhal Revolt and its aftermath. The Santhal Revolt of 1855–56 was a major uprising. After it was crushed, the colonial state created the Santhal Pargana, carving out 5,500 square miles from the districts of Bhagalpur and Birbhum. The hope was that by creating a new territory for the Santhals and imposing some special laws within it, the Santhals could be conciliated.

2.3 The accounts of Buchanan

While Buchanan's journal provides invaluable information, it is important to remember that he was an employee of the British East India Company. His journeys were not simply inspired by a love of landscape or a desire to discover the unknown. He marched everywhere with a large army of people — draughtsmen, surveyors, palanquin bearers, coolies. The costs were borne by the Company because it needed the information Buchanan was expected to collect.

Buchanan's instructions and priorities. Buchanan had specific instructions about what to look for and what to record. When he arrived at a village with his army, he was immediately perceived as an agent of the sarkar. As the Company consolidated its power and expanded its commerce, it looked for natural resources it could control and exploit. It surveyed landscapes and revenue sources, organised voyages of discovery, and sent its geologists, geographers, botanists, and medical men to collect information. Buchanan was one such individual. …