Subject: tribal warrior

Culture: Santhal

Setting: Chota Nagpur 19thc

Evolution:

Context (Event Photos, Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, Field Notes)

* Fuchs 1992 p54-59

"In 1793 the British administration gave Bengal a 'Permanent Settlement' which created a new class of landlords after the English pattern. The Santals whose labour was required to cultivate the new estates were enticed by the promise of high wages or rent-free farms to leave their jungle homes where they had enjoyed independence and freedom. Those who followed the invitation of the new landlords now became tenants or agricultural labourers. Once they had accepted service they were enslaved as agricultural serfs, or mercilessly exploited as tenants. The promises made to them were not honoured. The Santals who had abandoned their original homesteads in the hills could not return to them, because these had been occupied by other settlers.

"The Santals, harassed by their landlords and exploited by usurers beyond endurance, could, however, get no redress in the British courts. Knowing only their own language, the Santali, they could not make themselves understood, and interpreters and pleaders were in the pay of their oppressors. Consequently they were often unjustly condemned. Oppression was fiercest in the so-called Damin-i-koh -- a government estate in the north-east of the Santal parganas, extending over 1356 square miles, where the Santals had settled only a few decades earlier.

"Gradually tensions heightened and many disturbing rumours were spread through the Sandal country. [....]

"The first Messianic movement arose in 1854. Bir Singh, parganait (district headman) of Sasan in Lachimpur, declared that their principal god, Chando Bonga, had appeared before him, and had given him some magical charms by which he could put to instant sleep any man whom he desired to relieve of his wealth.

"He consequently collected a band of followers with the intention of committing robbery. With his band he broke into a number of houses and committed robberies. However, the Bengalis (diku) of the district became suspicious of Bir Singh and his band and kept a watch on their movements. They also questioned them about their reasons for holding meetings at night. Bir Singh replied that during their nightly meetings he and his followers worshipped God Shiva of Gadi (a place of pilgrimage lying 5 miles north of Barhait). The maharajas were not quite satisfied with this explanation and reported their movements to the police officer of Dighi and requested him to take prompt measures to check Bir Singh's activities. As the police officer paid no attention to their application, they reported the matter of Rani Kshemasundari, the zamindar of Amber pargana (Pakur Raj). The manager of her estate passed orders to the naib (revenue officer) of the Santali mahals to look into the matter.

"[....] The measures adopted by the police officer to suppress the robberies of Bir Singh and the harassment of Gocho so incensed the Santals that six or seven thousand of them came from Birbhum, Bankura, Chota Nagpur and Hazaribagh early in 1855 to avenge the punishment inflicted on their innocent caste-fellows.

"Their endurance had reached its maximum; and while the people were in this state of mental stress and resentment, it needed but a spark to kindle a conflagration. This spark was released by two brothers Sido and Kanhu, who gradually emerged from tribal anonymity as the outstanding and undisputed leaders of all Santals. Sido and Kanhu were later joined by their younger brothers Chandu and Bhairab. All four brothers were living at Bhagnadihi, a village some miles south of Barhait. The village had suffered severely under Hindu usurers and furthermore the father of the four brothers had lost his ancestral land to them. The four brothers had long been brooding over their real or imaginary wrongs.

"They now gave out that they had witnessed a divine apparition and that they had received a divine message. The story ran that Thakur Bonga, the Great Spirit, had appeared to them seven times, and each time in a different disguise. First he came in the form of a cloud descending from the skies, then as a tongue of fire, thirdly as a hooded figure the face veiled in mist, fourthly as a shadow in the full sunlight were no earthly shadow fell, fifthly as a mountain rising suddenly out of the earth, sixthly as a Sal tree springing up where no tree ever grew, and last as a white man, but clothed like a Santal, simply with a cloth around his loins. At his last the deity gave the brothers a sacred book wherein no words were written the pages of which they were enjoined to distribute far and wide throughout the Santal country as a sign to prepare for the great events to come, by which all their wrongs would be redressed and the Santals become once more a free people. So from hand to hand and village to village passed these slips of paper, apparently meaningless and vague, yet stirring the race to its depths, and by their very mysteriousness appealing with supreme force to the Santal mind.

"[....] The news of the divine apparition spread far and wide, and was proclaimed as a sure indication that the time was ripe for the Santals to start their rising. The insurrection should aim at the slaughter of all usurers adn officers, at the banishment of traders and landlords, and all rich Bengalis from the Santal country. The Santals should also sever their connection with the Damin-i-koh, and fight all who resisted them, including the British. They should have no fear, so the bullets of their enemies would be turned into water.

"The two leaders Sido and Kanhu then issued the order that one man from each family should come to fight and proceeded to give the Santals a military organization. They themselves assumed the rank of subah (officers) and installed their closest friends and associates as lieutenants (naibs, darogas, etc.) whom the mass of Santals should obey promptly and blindly. The Santals accepted these orders eagerly, moved obviously by their deeply ingrained desire for independence and for recognition as lords of the soil, with the idea of establishing a kingdom for themselves.

"[....] As a last peaceful step the Santal leaders decided on a corporate march of all Santals to Calcutta, the capital, with the intention of appealing in person to the Governor-General of India. First they sent cups filled with oil and vermilion, or branches of the Sal tree, from village to village to placate the spirits and to call the Santals together for this march. About 30,000 Santals, together with their wives and children, obeyed the summons and assembled at Bhagnadihi in June, 1855 to march under the leadership of Sido and Kanhu into a body to Calcutta and to place their petition of grievances before the Governor-General in person.

"But the way to Calcutta proved to be longer than they had imagined. Soon their provisions gave out and they were forced to plunder some markets. This of course provoked police action. At Pachkutia, north of Barhait, an over-eager and ambitious Indian police officer rashly intercepted them and tried to arrest the two brothers. But he only provoked violence. When he laid his hand on Sido to arrest him the Santal leader felled him, and the angry crowd then hacked to death his escort consisting of eight constables.

"Thus on July 7, 1855, the Santal rebellion (hul) precipitately and against the initial intention of the leaders broke out in its full fury. Soon other Santal chiefs and headmen joined the rebel group, sent the Sal branch, their traditional symbol of war, through the villages, raised their own private armies, and began the rebellion by looting markets and killing a number of their worst oppressors.

"The rebellion was marked by scenes of inhuman cruelty. The most brutal outrages were committed on the Bengalis whom the Santals regarded as their main enemies. But they also murdered police officers and even innocent people whom they met on the way. Santals who refused to join the rebels were also killed."

* Mishra/Devi/Singh/Kumar 2025 p18-20

"The Santhal rebellion of 1855-57 was not restricted only to Santhal Parganas but it reverberated as far as Birbhum, Bankura and Hazaribagh. The main leaders of this insurrection were Sidhu, Kanhu, Chand and Bhairav of village Bhagnadihi. It had its origin in the economic grievances of the Santhals, due to the oppressions and frauds committed in those simple minded people by the Bengali and upcountry merchants and moneylenders. The extortions of those merchants and Mahajans had become awful, and they had amassed large fortunes within an incredibly short period by recurring cash and grains from the Santhals through various obnoxious ways.

"According to the settlement officer H. Macpherson, the deeper cause of the insurrection was 'the Santhal yearning for independence, a dream of the ancient days when they had no overlords'. The Santhals wanted to drive out the British and the dikus and establish an independent Santhal Raj. The insurgents used bows, poisoned arrows, axes and swords. In Hazaribagh, the 40th Regiment was sent for suppressing the rebellion and it was brutally suppressed. Santhal villages were raided and their property destroyed.

"[....] However these early uprisings were in fact not against the Government, but mainly against the local Rajas and the Zamindars. But as the British wanted to consolidate their power in Chotanagpur, they had to interfere and they naturally sided with the local Rajas and landlords because they were influential people and their cooperation would have proved quite beneficial for the alien rulers. It was much due to the British power that all these rebellions which occurred in Chotanagpur before the outbreak of the Revolt of 1857 were crushed with iron hands."

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