History · Ch 9 — Colonialism and the Countryside — Exploring Official Archives
The Santhals: Pioneer settlers
The Santhals: Pioneer settlers
The Santhals were not the original inhabitants of the Rajmahal hills. They arrived as pioneers — settlers who cleared forests, broke rocky soil, and turned a wild landscape into productive farmland. Their story is one of mobility, labour, and eventual betrayal by the very forces that had invited them in.
The transformation of the landscape
When Francis Buchanan crossed the Ganjuria Pahar in the Rajmahal ranges around 1810, he found an old village where the surrounding land had been recently cleared for cultivation. The rocky soil was "uncommonly fine", and Buchanan saw tobacco and mustard of a quality he had never seen before. He wrote that the region had been transformed through the "proper application of human labour", and that its beauty and riches could be made equal to almost any in the universe.
On enquiry, Buchanan discovered that the frontiers of cultivation had been extended by the Santhals. They had moved into this area around 1800, displaced the hill folk who lived on the lower slopes, cleared the forests, and settled the land.
How the Santhals reached the Rajmahal hills
The Santhals began arriving in Bengal around the 1780s. Zamindars hired them to reclaim land and expand cultivation. British officials also invited them to settle in the Jangal Mahals.
The British had failed to subdue the Paharias — the original hill people — and transform them into settled agriculturists. The Paharias refused to cut forests, resisted touching the plough, and remained turbulent. The Santhals, by contrast, appeared to be ideal settlers. They cleared forests and ploughed 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 was demarcated as Damin-i-Koh — declared to be the land of the Santhals. They were to live within it, practise plough agriculture, and become settled peasants.
The land grant came with a condition: at least one-tenth of the area had 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 of Santhal settlements
After the demarcation of Damin-i-Koh, Santhal settlements expanded dramatically:
| Year | Number of Santhal villages | Santhal population |
|---|---|---|
| 1838 | 40 | 3,000 |
| 1851 | 1,473 | over 82,000 |
As cultivation expanded, an increased volume of revenue flowed into the Company's coffers.
Santhal myths and the end of a journey
Santhal myths and songs of the nineteenth century refer frequently to a long history of travel. They represent the Santhal past as one of continuous mobility — a tireless search for a place to settle. 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 for cultivation, the hunters among them also faced problems.
The Santhals' new life — and its collapse
The Santhals gave up their earlier life of mobility and settled down. They cultivated a range of commercial crops for the market and dealt with traders and moneylenders.
But soon, the land they had brought under cultivation began slipping away from their hands. Three forces worked against them:
- The state levied heavy taxes on the land the Santhals had cleared.
- Moneylenders (called dikus) charged high rates of interest and took over the land when debts remained unpaid.
- Zamindars asserted 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 …
Source 3 — Buchanan on the Santhals. Buchanan wrote of the Santhal settlers:
They are very clever in clearing new lands, but live meanly. Their huts have no fence, and the walls are made of small sticks placed upright, close together and plastered within with clay. They are small and slovenly, and too flat-roofed, with very little arch. …
The sketch by Walter Sherwill, published in the Illustrated London News on 23 February 1856, shows a Santhal village nestled in the lower Rajmahal hills. The scene is deliberately peaceful: clusters of thatched huts with sloping roofs are set among cleared patches of land, with the rocky, forested slopes of the hills rising behind them. A few figures — Santhal men and women — are shown going about daily tasks; there are no soldiers, no officials, no signs of colonial authority or conflict. The village appears self-contained, its life flowing at its own rhythm, untouched by the revenue demands, moneylenders, or legal disputes that were already pressing in on the Santhals by the 1850s.
This image was published in the same issue of the Illustrated London News that carried engravings of the Santhal rebellion (Figs. 9.12, 9.13, 9.14). The contrast is deliberate and instructive. Before the revolt, British officials and the metropolitan public in England saw the Santhals as ideal settlers — hardworking, peaceful, transforming the wilderness into productive farmland. Sherwill’s sketch captures that official view: the village as a picture of pastoral contentment, the reward of colonial policy. After the rebellion, the same villages were depicted as dens of violence, and the Santhals themselves as savages. The image thus teaches us that colonial visual sources are never neutral. They carry the political message of the moment: here, the message is that the Santhal experiment was working, that the Damin-i-Koh was a success story, and that the Santhals were grateful and docile subjects — a narrative that the rebellion …
Figure 9.11 is a portrait of Sidhu Manjhi, one of the two principal leaders of the Santhal rebellion of 1855–56 (his brother Kanhu Manjhi was the other). The image shows a single figure — Sidhu — in a formal, posed style typical of nineteenth-century portraiture. He is depicted as a young or middle-aged Santhal man, wearing traditional attire: a simple cloth wrapped around his waist and a turban on his head. His expression is serious and composed, and he holds a weapon — likely a bow or a sword — in one hand, signalling his role as a warrior and rebel leader. The background is plain and unadorned, focusing all attention on his face and posture.
The portrait is not a photograph but an engraving or painting, probably made after the rebellion was crushed, based on descriptions or sketches. It was included in the textbook to give students a visual sense of who led the Santhal uprising — a figure who, in the official British records, was often demonised or dismissed. The image humanises him: he is not a caricature or a savage, but a determined individual. This matters because the chapter contrasts the British portrayal of Santhals as peaceful settlers (Fig. 9.10) with their later depiction as violent rebels (Fig. 9.12). Sidhu’s portrait sits between these two extremes, reminding us that the rebellion had real leaders with clear grievances. …
The engraving from the Illustrated London News of 23 February 1856 shows a violent confrontation between Santhal rebels and sepoys of the British East India Company. The scene is set in open, rocky terrain — likely the lower slopes of the Rajmahal hills — with a few scattered trees and low scrub. In the foreground, a group of Santhal men, armed with bows and arrows and a few axes, charge toward a line of sepoys. The sepoys, in uniform and carrying muskets with bayonets fixed, are shown firing into the advancing crowd. Several Santhals have already fallen; one lies on the ground, an arrow still nocked in his bow. In the middle distance, a British officer on horseback directs the sepoy line, his sword raised. Behind the fighting, a village of thatched huts is visible, some of them on fire, with smoke rising into a grey sky. The engraving is crowded and dramatic, with no clear single focal point — the eye moves from the fallen rebels in the foreground to the volley of musket fire, then to the burning village beyond.
The caption in the textbook tells us that this image was published just after the Santhal rebellion (1855–56) had been crushed. The rebellion had begun when Santhals, who had been brought into the Damin-i-Koh as pioneer settlers, found their land being taken over by moneylenders, zamindars, and the colonial state. The British had earlier depicted Santhal villages as peaceful and idyllic — Figure 9.10 in the same chapter shows a calm hill village sketched by Walter Sherwill in the early 1850s. After the revolt, the same villages were reimagined in the British press as places of "violent and savage deeds." This engraving is part of that shift: it presents the Santhals not as industrious settlers but as a dangerous, armed mob that must be subdued by force.
What the image teaches us is how colonial visual propaganda worked. The Illustrated London News was a weekly newspaper read by middle-class families in Britain. By showing the Santhals as aggressors — charging at disciplined soldiers — the engraving justified the brutal suppression that followed. It also erased the causes of the rebellion: the heavy taxes, the seizure of land, the exploitation by moneylenders. The burning village in the background is not shown as a tragedy but as a necessary consequence of rebellion. The image thus served to reassure British readers that the Empire was restoring order, and that the Santhals were a primitive, violent people who needed to be controlled. …
Figure 9.13 is an engraving from the Illustrated London News dated 23 February 1856. It shows Santhal villages being set on fire during the suppression of the Santhal rebellion (1855–56). The image was published in England for a British audience, and its purpose was to display the might of the colonial state.
The engraving depicts several thatched huts in a rural landscape, engulfed in flames and smoke. The villages appear to be in the Rajmahal hill region, the area where the Santhals had been settled in the Damin-i-Koh after 1832. There are no people shown actively fighting or resisting; instead, the focus is on the destruction of the settlement itself. The burning huts are the central visual element, with columns of smoke rising into the sky. The landscape around them is open and cleared — a reminder that the Santhals had transformed this rocky terrain into cultivated fields through hard labour, as noted in Buchanan’s earlier description.
The image does not show British soldiers or officials directly, but the caption and context make clear that the burning was carried out by colonial forces as a punitive measure after the rebellion was crushed. The Illustrated London News caption reads: "Santhal villages during the suppression of the rebellion." The textbook explains that after the rebellion was put down, the region was searched, suspects were picked up, and villages were set on fire. This engraving was one of several images circulated in England to demonstrate that order had been restored and that British power was absolute.
What this image teaches is that visual sources from the colonial period were not neutral records. They were produced for a specific audience — the British public — and carried a clear political message. The burning villages were shown as evidence of the rebellion’s defeat, not as a scene of tragedy or loss. The Santhal homes, which in earlier images (like Fig. 9.10) had appeared peaceful and idyllic, are now shown as targets of destruction. The message was: the rebellion has been crushed, and the colonial state is in control. …
The engraving from the Illustrated London News (1856) shows a column of captured Santhal rebels being marched away under armed escort after the Santhal Rebellion (1855–56) had been crushed. The composition is carefully staged to send a clear political message to its British readership.
At the centre of the image, British officials ride triumphantly on an elephant — a deliberate visual symbol of colonial authority and control. One officer on horseback is shown smoking a hookah, a detail that the textbook highlights as emphasising that “the time of trouble was over”. The rebellion had been suppressed, and the British were now relaxed, in command, and enjoying the spoils of victory. The Santhal captives, in contrast, are shown in chains, being taken away to jail. They are surrounded and escorted by soldiers of the Company, reinforcing the idea that the rebels were defeated, powerless, and being removed from the landscape.
The image does not show any specific location or named site; it is a generalised scene meant to represent the aftermath of the rebellion across the Santhal Pargana region. There are no panels, arrows, or labels on the engraving itself — the meaning is carried entirely by the arrangement of figures: the elevated, relaxed British officials at the centre versus the bound, dejected Santhals being led away. …