The Tribal Movements

The tribal movements in India are not a single, uniform story. While different tribal groups across the country may share common issues, the distinctions between them are equally significant. Most of these movements have been concentrated in the so-called ‘tribal belt’ of middle India — a region that includes the Santhals, Hos, Oraons, and Mundas of Chota Nagpur and the Santhal Parganas. This area forms the core of what came to be called Jharkhand.

Jharkhand: A Century of Resistance

Jharkhand is one of India’s youngest states, carved out of south Bihar in the year 2000. Behind its formation lies more than a century of resistance.

The social movement for Jharkhand had a charismatic leader in Birsa Munda, an adivasi who led a major uprising against the British. After his death, Birsa became an important icon of the movement. Stories and songs about him can be found all over Jharkhand, keeping his memory alive.

The memory of Birsa’s struggle was also preserved through writing. Christian missionaries working in south Bihar were responsible for spreading literacy in the area. Literate adivasis began to research and write about their own history and myths. They documented and disseminated information about tribal customs and cultural practices. This helped create a unified ethnic consciousness and a shared identity as Jharkhandis.

Literate adivasis were also in a position to get government jobs. Over time, a middle-class adivasi intellectual leadership emerged that formulated the demand for a separate state and lobbied for it both in India and abroad.

Within south Bihar, adivasis shared a common hatred of dikus — migrant traders and moneylenders who had settled in the area, grabbed its wealth, and impoverished the original residents. Most of the benefits from the mining and industrial projects in this mineral-rich region had gone to dikus, even as adivasi lands had been alienated. These experiences of marginalisation and the sense of injustice were mobilised to create a shared Jharkhandi identity and inspire collective action that eventually led to the formation of a separate state.

The specific issues against which the leaders of the movement in Jharkhand agitated included:

• Acquisition of land for large irrigation projects and firing ranges
• Survey and settlement operations, which were held up and camps closed down
• Collection of loans, rent, and cooperative dues, which were resisted
• Nationalisation of forest produce, which they boycotted

The North East: Distinct Identity and Autonomy

The process of state formation initiated by the Indian government after independence generated disquieting trends in all the major hill districts of the North East. Conscious of their distinct identity and traditional autonomy, the tribes were unsure of being incorporated within the administrative machinery of Assam.

The rise of ethnicity in the region is a response to cope with this new situation — a consequence of the tribe’s contact with a powerful alien system. Long isolated from the Indian mainstream, the tribes were able to maintain their own worldview and social and cultural institutions with little external influence. …