Q.Analyse the circumstances under which the British officials invited Santhals to settle in the peripheries of Rajmahal hills during the nineteenth century.
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →Concept understanding — Paharias Response To Outsiders
Let’s start with an everyday intuition. Imagine a quiet neighbourhood where people have lived for generations, following their own rules, growing their own food, and keeping to themselves. One day, a powerful group of outsiders arrives — they start cutting down the forest, building roads, and telling everyone that the old ways are no longer valid. How would the original residents respond? Some might fight, some might run deeper into the forest, and some might try to negotiate. That, in essence, is the story of the Paharias — a tribal community living in the hills of present-day Jharkhand — when they first encountered the British, the zamindars, and the settled farmers of the plains.
The Paharias were not a single, unified tribe but a collection of hill-dwelling communities (like the Mal Paharias and Sauria Paharias) who lived in the Rajmahal Hills. Their entire way of life was built around the forest. They practised shifting cultivation (clearing a patch of forest, farming it for a few years, then moving on), gathered forest produce, and hunted. They had their own chiefs and their own systems of justice. The plains below were a different world — settled villages, fixed fields, tax collectors, and a government that wanted everything recorded and controlled.
When the British East India Company took over Bengal and Bihar in the late 18th century, they wanted to turn the forested hills into a source of revenue. They tried to bring the Paharias under their tax system, force them to become settled farmers, and clear the forests for timber and cultivation. The Paharias’ response to this pressure was not one single reaction — it was a mix of resistance, adaptation, and withdrawal.
The core of the Paharias’ response was defensive and conditional. They did not want to be absorbed into the British system, but they were not entirely isolated either. They used the hills as a natural fortress and negotiated from a position of strength — at least for a while.
Here is how that response played out in practice:
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Armed resistance and raids. When the British tried to collect taxes or push into the hills, the Paharias would descend from their hilltops, raid the plains villages, and then disappear back into the forest. They knew the terrain perfectly; the British soldiers did not. These raids were not random violence — they were a deliberate strategy to show that the hills were not safe for outsiders and that the Paharias could not be controlled by force.
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Refusal to settle down. The British offered land in the plains and tried to turn Paharias into settled peasants. The Paharias refused. Shifting cultivation and forest life were not just economic choices — they were tied to their identity, their gods, and their community bonds. To become a settled farmer meant becoming a subject of the zamindar and the Company, which they saw as a loss of freedom.
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Conditional cooperation. At times, the Paharias did negotiate. They agreed to stop raiding in exchange for a fixed payment (called dak or tribute) from the British. But this was not submission — it was a deal. The moment the British stopped paying or tried to impose new rules, the raids resumed. The Paharias saw themselves as independent allies, not subjects. …
Part (a): the British invited the industrious, plough-farming Santhals to clear and settle the forest fringe (the Damin-i-Koh) for revenue because the shifting-cultivating Paharias would not settle, and they served as a buffer against them.
Part (b): the late-eighteenth-century Paharias were forest shifting-cultivators, hunter-gatherers and traders in forest produce, living in clan settlements under chiefs and raiding the plains when hard-pressed.
By the later eighteenth century the East India Company was determined to transform the Rajmahal hills into a source of revenue by extending settled agriculture. The problem was the Paharias: they practised jhum (shifting) cultivation, moved from patch to patch, and refused to become ploughing tenants; force had only made them more hostile. The solution the British found was to bring in a different community. The Santhals — displaced from their own lands and moving in search of new fields — were plough cultivators, willing to clear forest and pay revenue, and the British judged them "industrious". From around the 1780s, and increasingly after 1810-1830, the Santhals were encouraged to settle on the lower slopes and peripheries of the hills. The Company demarcated a defined tract, the Damin-i-Koh (the "land of the hills"), and granted it to Santhal settlers, who cleared the forest and turned it into cultivated fields. Santhal numbers and the area under the plough grew dramatically. The settlement served the Company twice over: it produced revenue and it created a settled buffer that pressed the Paharias deeper into the hills.
Part (a): the British invited the industrious, plough-farming Santhals to clear and settle the forest fringe (the Damin-i-Koh) for revenue because the shifting-cultivating Paharias would not settle, and they served as a buffer against them.
Part (b): the late-eighteenth-century Paharias were forest shifting-cultivators, hunter-gatherers and traders in forest produce, living in clan settlements under chiefs and raiding the plains when hard-pressed.
Part (b) …
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