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conflict is seen to be the result of the infiltration of 'non-tribals' into 'tribal' territory:
'insiders' against 'outsiders'. The implicit assumption is that while one can identify an
occasional borrowing of religious and cultural symbols by tribals from non-tribals, the
alien and unacceptable elements that had entered their land. K.S. Singh identifies
basis to the 'rebel tribal consciousness'; 2 Prabhu Prasad Mohapatra, drawing upon the
struggle'. 5
172
My study of the Tana Bhagat movement recognizes the importance of tracing
Oraon and Tana opposition to the zamindars, hamm and the British State, but it also
suggests that protest must be located \vi thin the intemal hierarchy of the communi:y
itself. In a tribal community in which the economic and secular aspects were closely
interlinked, the leaders- in this case the hhuinlwrs among the Oraons- were not only
till! holders of privileged tenures but also the sources of authority within the Oraon
society. As members of the panch and from amongst whom the pahan, pujar and
mahto were ~hosen, these hhuinhar-~ carved out for themselves a position that clearly
differentiated them from the less privileged sections of the Oraon community. British
legislation, only intensified the already prevalent hierarchies of the tnbal structure. As
administrators identified in the agrarian population the leaders of the community, they
directly promoted the interests of a particular section of the Oraon tribe - the
hhuinhars. It was the special position of these hhuinhurs that the Tanas challenged
through their movement. The two seemingly disparate realms of Tana protest - an
opposition to the pahan and mahto, the world of spirits and ritual celebrations, and a
resistance to the landlords, hunia\ and the Raj -were thus, in reality, interlinked. The
Tanas articulated the ideology of a marginal group within Oraon society and
challenged those elements - tribal and non-tribal - that had forced them into
In this chapter, I have classified the precepts of the Tana faith and analyzed
certain myths in order to understand the Tana opposition to the Oraon world of spirits,
sacrifice and festivity, and their selective critique of an agricultural and settled
economy; I have also examined Tana protest against the zarnindars and hanw' and
173
.located the community in the agrarian terrain of Chho!anagpur. Lastly, i consider the
THE PRECEPTS
At first the name Tana came into existence and then Tanaism came
and is proceeding to the villages from the Wcst. 6
Thus began one of the hymns of the Tanas. These rhythmical hha;ans took the
fonn of stories, questions and answers, or prohibitions and instructions, that would
inspire the adherents of the faith. The compositions indicate the origin and history of
As the Tana movement spread, inhabitants of village after village would gather
to learn the essentials of the faith. At the common boundaries of adjacent villages, the
men would meet, and in their .wbhm and panchayats they enunciated the 'Gospel of
7
Dhanne' or the 'Gospel of Lakshmi'. 8 From the outset, therefore, the Tana movement
became a collective enterprise, its ideals were consciously learnt and carried by word
of mouth. Teachings were imparted by an 'enlightened man' who became the 'head
teacher' and 'showed the way to all men'. 9 The guru taught the followers of the new
faith its doctrines and showed them the path to the 'True Religion', for he was
believed to have a link with Dharmes, the Supreme God of the Oraons. The Tanas
affinned that their faith had been disclosed to' the guru by God Himself.
9 Ibid , pp 354-55
174
For initiation into the Tana faith, it was necessary to keep 'carefully ... good clothes
on ... stand ... in a line with .. .faces eastward'. 1 Cleanliness and purity were essential as
the Tanas prayed to the God with folded hands, meditation being carried out in ''1c
morning and evening. The principal God to whom they prayed was Dhanne Baba or
Bhagwan Baba, and his name features in all invocation-.: In addition, a retinue of other
deities drllwn from the Hindu pantheon was mentioned: Suraj Baba, Chandar Baba,
Gunibani Baba, Tarigan Baba, lndra Baba, Brahma Baba, Ganesh Baba, Jagamath
Baba, Hindu Baba, Siva Saba, Jodhaji Baba, Ganga Baba, Jamuna Baba, Ram Baba,
Lachman Baba, Bharat Baba, Satrughan Baba, and Mahadeo. The German Baba was
also referred to in Tana hymns. The only female deity invoked is Dharti Ayo, also
referred to as Sita Ayo. What is interesting to note is that in the Oraon myths, Sita
Ayo is identified with Parvati, the consort of Siva, and is described as the wife of
Dharmes. Significantly, it was Dharmes whom the Tanas had in mind in their prayers,
even when they worshipped other Gods. The following extract may be quoted.
Dharmes, then, is all important even when other Gods are invoked. In Tana
gatherings, prayers were conducted while facing the east, the direction traditionally
175
faced in the propitiation of Dharmes. Dharmes would come from 'heaven', from the
'nether world', 'from out of the clefts of the earth.! 2 to promise to the Tan as 'religious
consciousness ... the happiness that religion brings ... all spiritual treasur .all things that
enrich the soul. .. [and] enable [the Tanas] to lead a pious life'. 13 Dhannes was all
pervasive. The Tanas asked him to visit their doors and yards, houses and families,
assemblies, their fairs and festivals. He was to visit the kachari (court) and police
station; he would accompany the Tana on the road and during joumeys, and when he
was sitting or standing. He would enter the heart and body, and even the bowels.l 4
In other words, Dharmes was present in every comer of the Tana universe, and even
within his devotees. The Tanas prayed: 'Our Baba is within our hearts and within our
So powerful was the grace of Dhannes that under his influence 'even water is
milk and dust is incense ... even a clod of earth is fire'. 16 Dhannes would destroy the
'wicked men' and 'sinners', or the 'enemies of this world'; 17 he would end the f.: ali Y UK
18
or the Age of Sin. With his advent would begin the Sat YuK or the Golden Age.
176
Come Baba, bringing holy
rain, Come, Baba, taking the
shape of Dharam, come
Baba bringing [Thy 1golden
kingdom and golden altar.
What was the path that was to be followed in order to usher in this 'Golden Age'?
A movement that had spread over Ranchi, Palamau, Hazaribagh and parts of north
Bengal, and had spanned a considerable period of time, threw up doctrines that often
differed according to the location and needs of the congregation. Yet, certain essential
principles marked the Tana faith. And these were as follows. Ghosts and spirits were
to be purged, along with dains, matis and ojhas; the traditional leadership of the
ornaments were discarded; bonds between men and women beyond marriage were
177
Through an analysis of Tana hymns and the proceedings of their meetings, I have
Spirits (hhuts)/GlliJsts(nwls)
I. On the full moon of Magh, setting in motion the gnnding stone during the
young men's Chandi Puja ceremony for the election of the headmen is
forbidden.
2. Moving the grinding stone in the name of the 'Old Lady of the Sacred Grove'
(Chala Pachcho) for the election of the headman (mahto) and priest
(pahanlnaega) is forbidden.
Sacrifices/Non-violence/Vegetarianism
178
6. Killing fowl and pigs for marriage feasts is forbidden.
7. Eating fish, crab and flesh of birds, hens, pigs and goats is forbidden.
8. Hunting excursions (sikar) have been done away with.
9. Children are not to be vaccinated.
I 0. In marriages, the usc of vennili<'ll (stndur) is forbidden.
Alcoholism
Religious Ceremonies/Festivities
179
2. Do not pay rent to the zam indars.
3. Do not work for zamindars as labourers or carriers.
4. Do not perform hcKtJri.
5. Do not cultivate land since it entails cruelty to cattle or Lakshmi.
6. Land, ifcul1'1ated, should be on hataia.
7. Do not pay clwuk idari tax to the British state.
8. Do not work as coolies for the govemment.
9. Oppose the Brahmins, haniao;, Muhammadans and Christians.
10. Recite mantras in the name of the German Baba.
lf Tana precepts were followed, an ideal society would be created. The utopian
world that the Tanas sought to achieve is expressed in the following hymn.
180
0 Baba, the word of God is
being spread abroad,
0 Baba, spread abroad 20
II
The Tana Bhagat movement which represented a specif1c fonn of a critique of the
Oraon world had articulated the protests of the poorer sections of the agrarian
community. Their demands related, among other things, to questions of land, rent and
a variety of other fonns of dues which were extracted by the dominant landed
privileged sections of the ryot community. Their protest was a critique of a history of
settl.!ment and peasant agriculture that veered around the plough, agricultural
festivities, elaborate customs and dancing. Their resistance was directed against the
pre-agricultural fonns that Jatra's affinnations inJicated: he had asked his followers
to give up ploughing of fields since , 1 entailed cruelty to cows and oxen, but did not
save the Oraons from famine and poverty. God would provide for them, he stated. A
being to a state of impoverishment. This was the context in which their subordination
was complete and their freedom lost. Their escape lay, therefore, in a renunciation of
the basis of their subjection. In their articulating opposition, the Tanas drew upon their
cultural resources, and mythical structures could provide the framework in which the
present was understood and analyzed, their reading of history and self-representation
situated.
had relied on oral informants and recorded these myths. Their texts, although made
need to emphasize here that I do not intend to equate myth with history. But, instead
of establishing an opposition between the two, I treat myths as a fonn of the ordering
mythic tradition suggests the ways in which the Oraons and the Tanas related to a
common history, and yet, did not homogenize it; the specific symbols drawn from
. hegemonic and popular traditions by the Tanas reflect the boundaries of their faith and
define the construction of Tanaism. What is important for me, however, is not the
fixed appearance of images and plots, or 'cliches', 21 that appear in different versions
of a myth. Rather, I analyse myths as a changing and creative cultural process; I study
lSD
the transfonnations and improvisations that occurred during the many renditions of a
myth as the imagined past was recollected and reconstituted differently by the Oraons
I deal with two detailed accounts of Oraon tradition: the first was initially
recorded by S.C. Roy in 1915 and completed in 1928, while the second was recounted
to me in 1993, when I visited Hutar, a village in the district of Ran chi, on the
occasion of a wedding in a Tana family. The story begins "1th the history of the
Oraons in the Rohtas plateau, their entry into Chhotanagpur and finally, their
The Oraons say that they once dwelt on the Rohtas Plateau under a Raja or
king of their own tribe. The place was well fortified so as to defy the
strongest enemy. The Oraon had erected a stone rampart about a mile in
height, and the enemy long sought in vain to effect a breach. At length the
'Hakims' caught hold of a milk woman of the Ahir caste who used to supply
milk to the Oraon Raja, and who had therefore free access to the fort.
Inducements were offered to this woman to suggest to the enemy a
practicable means of occupying the fort. She accordingly advised them to
wait till the ensuing Khaddi or Sarhul festival when all the Oraon males were
sure to get dead drunk. This turned out to be correct and the enemy followed
her instructions and succeeded in entering the fort. Although the Oraon
women, who had been at the time pounding rice with their wooden pestles
to prepare bread for the Khaddi festival, came out with their pestles and
valiantly met the foe, these Amazons were soon overpowered. The Oraon
Raja and his subjects, it is said, fled the fort through a subterranean passage
known only to themselves. The enemy lighted huge torches 'each of which
consumed four maunds of oil', but they failed to discover their exit. 22
The Oraons of those days, it is asserted, knew no hhuts or spirits nor ate beef
or other unclean food, but were more clean in their habits and even wore the
janeu or the sacred thread. In order to elude the pursuit of the enemy, the
Oraons, it is said, took shelter in the houses of the Mundas whom they found
in occupation of the country, and concealed their own identity by discarding
183
their sacred threads and taking to the unclean food and habits of the Mundas
and adopting as their own the deities and spirits of the Munda pantheon. 23
The Oraon society was very simple. The people were vegetarian, they
followed the Hindu religion and they lived in Haldighati near Sind. The
Oraons pursued their own vocation and lived cordially, maintaining peace and
love. The Oraon deota was very pleased and the Oraons received sufficient
returns for whatever they did. When people cam, they also spend and the
expenditure took different forms. Some people started fermenting food which
led to the making of the haria drink. When the people fought with the
Mughals they fled to Rohtasgarh. Oraons were frequently under the influence
of haria. The Mughals decided to attack the Oraons when they were in a
drunken state. But Oraon females were very intelligent. They did not take
haria and followed devoutly their religion. Whenever the Mughals attacked,
they would dress like males and retaliate. The Mughals were in a qu:mdary:
How could the Oraons defeat them even when they were in an inebriated
state? They asked the old and the widows. Then, the old widows revealed
that the Oraon fighters were not males, but women who dressed and fought
like males, and returned to their places at night. We get the names of Lundri,
Champee and Singri as infonnants. Lundri was a goa/in while Champee and
Singri were adiva\is. Lundri disclosed that the Oraon warriors were females.
The enemies could verify her statement if they observed the warriors
carefully: unlike men who washed their faces with one hand, these women
washed their faces with both hands. The Oraons were thereafter attacked and
cut to pieces. Only one person survived who fled from Rohtasgarh and
reached Nagpur. The Mundas. who ate ox and cow meat, were the rulers in
Nagpur; they employed the boy as a cook and cut his hair. .. The Mussalmans
thought that they had become conquerors ... they cut a cow, a black cow, and
threw it on the road. The road was thus blocked and the deota was trapped
in that area. His purity was lost and he was taken to Mecca. Our ancestors
tell us that whenever the Hindu hhav starts rising in him, he cries out: 'If
there is any Hindu here, then please give me a drop of water'. Then, again,
a black cow is sacrificed there by the Mussalmans, and the deota becomes
quiet again.
As documentary evidence of the Tana belief that the1r deota had been carried bv
may be cited. The Sub-Inspector of Porsha had reported to him that 'the word
"German", referred to in the [Tana] mantras', could stand 'for the word "Jaban", that
184
referred to the legendary image of Seo Mahadeh, which was said to have been kept
Religiosity and the loss of their deoto, a utopian past and 1 degraded present,
crucial battles and an unfortunate defeat -this is the pattern of the traditions outlined
above, a pattern that finds its parallels in the traditions of other lower castes and
tribes. The crux of the narrative is as follows. The original Oraon high status was
ritually polluted after they were forcibly evicted from Rohtasgarh. The unclean status
of the Oraons was a later accretion~ ritual defilement had occurred because of contact
with outsiders. Their ritually impure status was thus not innate but superimposed.
Reference to a 'fall from glory' indicated the Oraon recognition of the present, for it
was the endorsement of the moment that had made them accept their ritually impure
status. At the same time, by asserting that Oraon ritual impurity, rather than being
intrinsic, was the result of circumstances in a distant past, they were challenging at the
same time their present. They imbibed therefore the logic of existing urcumstances,
The sharing of traditions points to a common Orauil identity that was collectively
shared by members of the community. Yet the myths of the Tanas and the Oraons
differed. Variations indicated the ways in which the Tanas recast their identities and
distanced themselves from the rest of the Oraons, despite sharing a common repertoire
of myths and legends. The differences in the ideals of the pristine past, in the
conceived histories and in the location of the causes of ritual impurity, signalled the
24. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Extract, Bengal Abstract, 27th May, 1916.
185
processes through which the Tanas appropriated and opposed ideas from different
worlds.
The Oraon myth begins at Rohtasgarh where the Oraons, as settled agriculturists,
had lived a ritually pure and comfortable life. They were the envy of many a
non-Oraon people. The invasion of the 'Hakims' took place at the time of the
agricultural festival of Sarhul or Khaddi when haria drinking was the accepted means
of celebration for men. The women then remained alert and were the protectors of the
community. Oraon defeat was not because of their own weakness, but as a result of
betrayal by an outsider, an Ahir woman, wh~ let out the Oraon secret. Their
defilement occurred when they were forced to adopt the unclean practices of the
Mundas so as to escape from the enemy; worshipping hhuts or spirits, eating beef and
discarding the janeu were thus not a part of pristine Oraon faith, but were the
degrading elements of the present. The importance of the pollution 'cliche' and the
deturnination of status in terms of purity and pollution indicated Oraon contact with
The Tanas, as a part of the Oraon community, shared this myth of their ancestors.
Yet, in it occurred changes in consonance with Tana beliefs that resulted in the
reconstitution of the myth itself. For the Tan as, Oraon history prior to their settlement
stage, albeit an important one. Their critique was of a society that did not believe in
wealth, a concomitant of settled agricultural pursuits, had unleashed the process of the
degeneration of the community, and the Oraons eventually lost their religion, their
deota and their land Rohtasgarh. Oraon females who did not drink were, in Tana
186
perception, the devout followers of their religion. The root cause of Oraon decline,
though not the act of ritual pollution, is therefore placed within the community itself;
references made to the adiva,is Champee and Singri in the context of those who
divulged the Oraon secret reinforce this point. As a result of their defeat caused due
to their inebriated state, the Oraons lost their God to the Mussalmans who took the
deota to Mecca. The reference to the Mundas, in whose contact eventual defilement
some references made by them that in the Tana conceptualization of their past,
pristine form had pursued the Hindu religion; their god had been hauled to Mecca by
the Mussalmans; the deota periodically appealed to the Hindus for water. The 'Hakims'
in this version are the Mussalmans or the Mughals. In this construct, the proclivity of
the Tanas was towards a society that predated a settled agricultural one; their plea was
Ill
The Tana movement drew upon a collective Oraon identity and, at the same time,
distanced itself from some of the Oraon traditions and practices. To locate the
specific form of Tan a protest that appropriated and opposed elements from the Oraon
past and present, one needs to enquire into the structure of landed power in
Chhotanagpur, and the internal structure and dynamics of Oraon society. I study in
this section the various elements of Tana protest against landed elements and their
187
critique of Oraon agricultural pursuits. I seek to locate the Oraons within the agrarian
and study the processes th: lHJgh which the already prevalent hierarchies in Oraon
Colonial records, particularly settlement reports, reflected the rural scenario, and
reconstructed it as well. The intervention of the Raj altered and reconstituted tenurial
socio-economic forces and forged a closer link between labour, capital and the market.
Transformations in the Oraon world need to be located within this context. The Tana
Bhagat movement, with its varying dimensions and dichotomies, must be seen against
this background.
From the outset, Tanas protested against landed elemc11ts. This protest took the
form of refusals to pay rent and offer heRari, assaults on the zamindar, forcible
cultivation of his lands and cutting of crops, and appeals to the State through the
submission of p~11nphlets, petitions and memorials. Their protest drew upon a longer
tradition of Oraon agrarian struggle. Cases of crop-cutting and refusals to pay rent or
perform heRari were common among hhuinhars, particularly after the Bhuinhari
Settlement of 1869. Appeals to revenue officials were frequent during the survey and
agitation of the Sirdars and Christian ryots. At moments, then, the Tanas articulated
the feelings of outrage that were shared by other members of the agricultural
community against the infiltration of 'outsiders' into their land; it was this protest that
188
reinforced community solidarity. Jatra had decided that the Oraons and the Mundas
would come together, the smiths and the Kuhhir caste would melt into oue
occasions, groups with whom the Tanas had shared a hannonious relationship and
Rajwars, Khairwars, Ghansis, Korwas Kidakus and Bar~ahs would be spared if they
joined the Tanas, the leaders at Sirguja proclaimed. 26 At times however, Tanas
expressed their links only with the Oraon people. Sibu threatened that 'the hands and
legs of all the people except the Oraons would be cut down'. 27
Jatra, in 1914, had insisted that his disciples were to do no work for zam indars,
or pay rent to them. The servants of the zamindars were harassed, refused any
assistance, beaten and turned out of the jungles when they went to cut wood. 28 Tana
the years 1915-17 expressed their disapproval of those elements who had participated
in the inter-related credit and land markets and had wieldeJ power.
By 1918, memorials which claimed the rights of the Oraons to hold rent-free
lands as descendants of the original settler-. were submitted to the government by Jura
Bhagat. lanas had drawn upon the mythical histories of the Oraons: as the original
settlers and reclaimers of land, they were supposed to have the ultimate right over
189
land. The State was expected to intervene on behalf of the Tanas: the Raj was the
arbiter, its legal institutions were the altar of judgement, and submission of memorials
became a new mode of Tana appeal. Jura stated that he had filed a case before the
Subscriptions at the rate of Rs. 17 per village were sought from Tanas in order to fight
the case. Hundreds of typed copies of the petitlllll were prepared and circulated. Tana
residents of Dana Kera Police Station in Lapsung refused to pay rent to the Maharajah
of Chhotanagpur on the grounds that their land was lakhift!}. 29 The same memorial
was submitted by Tana tenants of the Kairo Estate to Hansen, the Manager of the
Estate, against the Kairo thakurs, who they claimed, had usurped their rights to
property. The new proprietors, they hoped, would not take rent from them. 30
Jura and his followers. Tana 'tenants' on the estate of Baldeo Das Birla proclaimed
that they had obtained their Raj. Cutting and claiming the crops on haka,htlands with
the cultivator's consent was stated to be their right. A copy of Jura Bhagat's petition
to the government was produced by them along with an order stating that Jura's case
had been referred to the Revenue Department. 31 Similar cases were reported from
elsewhere. 32
29. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
VII, Patna, 27th July, 1918.
30. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
VIII, Patna, 14th June, 1919.
31. Bihar and Orissa Government, Political Department, Special Section, File No.
86 of 1919.
32. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence,
Volume VIII, Patna, 25th October, 1919.
190
The Tana Bhagat movement continued between 1919 and 1921 under the
leadership of Sibu and Turia Bhagat. Sibu threatened the zamindars Jagdeo Nand
Tewarry and Jagjiwan Nand Tewarry, and distributed leaflets, supposed to have been
It is no longer the Raj of the Zamindars. The earth belongs to pious men.
- Nobody should give any rent or chaukidari tax. The bania'l must not attend
bazars. They rob the men. Marwaris, may your cloth be burnt to ashes.
Mussalmans, may you perish! The vagabonds and their prostitutes will perish
as soon as Phalgun (the time of the Holi festival) comes. Brahmans, Rajputs,
Rajas and zamindars had nothing to eat when they came here, but now they
have become so powerful as to beat the Oraons and Mundas. Christians are
the lowest class. God says so. 33
When Sibu was arrested, the movement did not flag. Tanas continued their
movement under the new leader Turia, and refused to pay rent, perform begari or
work as labourers or carriers. They claimed that Oraons were forced to pay Rs 2 per
bigha while formerly they had paid only 4 to 8 annas. 34 Turia demanded rosad from
the zamindars: 200 maunds of arwal chawal, 20 maunds of dal anl2 maunds of spices
were reyuisitioned for the Gennan paltan. The zamindars were to provide the means
rent was accompanied by a claim made to the zamindar of Tusmu for 8 maunds of
paddy and for the produce of his manjhihas lands. Under Turia's leadership, the
33. Bihar and Orissa Government, Political Department, Special Section, File No.
86 of 1919.
34 Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
VII, Patna, 23rd March 1918.
35. Bihar and Orissa Government, Political Department, Special Section, File No.
86 of 1919.
191
zamindar of village Chetar, Kuru, was assaulted. While Tanas declined to pay rent,
The story of Tan a protest expressed, at one level, the hostility of the lowest strata
within the Oraon agrarian community towards the existing power structure and forms
illaquadars,Jagirdar.~ and hania'l; their demands related, among other things, to issues
of land, rent and a variety of other forms of dues. This antagonism towards the
zamindars and banias, and towards the existing power structure, fused with an
agriculture and forest dwelling. Tana interest in land thus went beyond an anti-
zamindari campaign. What distinguished them from their community brethren was
their critique of a history of settlement and peasant agriculture. In their myths and
legends they had linked their subjugation and impoverishment to this history, a history
assertions, Jatra had indicated an attachment to pre-agrarian forms; his disciples left
their fields uncultivated, as they drowned their axen, hoes, ploughs, sickles and
baskets into the river. Jatra pronounced that large areas of land was not required for
cultivation. 'One or two small quadrangles' were sufficient for the maintenance of an
entire family: a handful of rice grains, if scattered on this land, would produce enough
to fill a grain attic. A grain of rice would fill a large earthen jug, and a split grain of
36. Ibid.
37. Refer to Section II of this chapter, pp. 181-87.
192
dal would fill the samc 38 Similar ideas were repeatedly emphasized by Tana gurus.
Preachers in Sirguja advised their followers to give up tilling of lands: a single plot
30
ofl:md would be sufficient for the whole ofOraon and Kishan populations. In 1919,
Sibu forbade his followers from cultivating land on the grounds that this inflicted
cruelty on cattle or 'Lachmi'. Cattle were let loose, stores of rice and paddy were
~-~
thrown away by Sibu's followers. God would feed the Oraons, Sibu proclaimed. 40
IV
The story ofT ana protest reflects a complex of seeemingly contradictory pressures
that co-existed within the movement. On the one hand, Tanas were against the
zamindars and bania,, and the exactions imposed by them; their demand was for
'raiyati' rights. At the same time, they opposed a plough agricultural society and the
hierarchies that it sustained. To comprehend the Tana vision of the past, their
terrain of Chhotanagpur, analyse the control of zamindars, thikadars and bania~ over
land and resources, and examine the changes introduced in the region by the colonial
state.
193
Of the four categories defined by the settlement report - occupancy ryots, ryots
having khuntkatti rights, non-occupancy ryots and undcr-ryots 41 -the Tanas belonged
to the last two. Sibu's profile in this context is illustr;J'\e. A mere lad of twenty, he
was the son of Riba Oraon who had for his cultivation only I 1/2 rwwa, of land.
Formerly, he had worked as a dlwngar in village Batkuri and Supa 42 The agitation
of Tana 'tenants' of the Kairo estate against Baldeo Das Birl~ was the result of
The 'raiyati land' or the 'regular rent-paying tenancies' which the Tanas occupied
were included in the rojhm that comprised the ullakar, challisa, murile chattisa,
ma<>war and korkar. Uttakar on lowlands (don) were denied the rights of occupancy.
Cultivators on the chat11sa lands that included don and uplands (tanr), enjoyed on the
paying money rent and various cesses, the 'tenants' on chattisa were expected to assist
the landlord in the cultivation of his man;hiha<> and perfonn hegari. On the murile
chat lisa, chatlisa rents were to be paid, but cesses were exempted. Maswar lands were
/(D'Ir lands held in addition to the challisa: no rights of occupancy could accrue on such
land, rent was payable in kind and only for the year in which a crop was cultivated.
The don prepared from the tanr by the individual exertions of the cultivators was
41. F.A.B. Taylor, Final Report on Revisional Survey and Settlement in Ranchi
1927 -35 (Patna 1938), p. 42.
42. Bihar and Orissa Government, Political Department, Special Section, File No.
86 of 1919.
43. Taylor, Final Report on Revisional Survey and Settlement, p. 54.
194
tenned korlwr. Those who had created korlwr could not be ejected under any
circumstance. Korkar land was exempted from rent for the first three years, after
which a half-rent was charged. So landlords continually sought to convert k, kar into
ullakar. 44
rents that were to be paid, ryots had to perfonn customary praedial services. Tana
grievances centred around these two issues. They asserted that rents would not be paid
there was a variety of rent payments and praedial services. Several forms of produce
rent prevailed: the saika, the ma,war or kar, and the adhhataia or sajha. The saika,
levied on the zamindar's manjhiha'l and kha'l lands, was the most lucrative from the
landlord's point of view. A fixed amount of the produce was payable by ryots under
this system. On tanr land, the common form of payment was the mm'War, according
seed sown by him. The adhhataia, the most acceptable by ryots, required that half tlic
payments in kind and miscellaneous cesses or ahwahs. A fixed quota of the produce
of the tanr, included in each tenancy, was charged as a kind of produce rent. 46 A
variety of abwahs- dami, hatia-bhatta, ra'lid-likhai, dak musharo, neg, bardoch, sarai
44. Letter, dated the 8th April1875, Ranchee, from G.K. Webster, Manager of the
Chota Nagpore Estate, to the Deputy Commissioner of Lohardugga, CNAD, Vol.
I, pp. 43-44. Refer also to Reid, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement
Operations, pp. 95-96.
45. Reid, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations, p. 91.
46. The most common kind of rakumats payable in kind were urid, sarguja, kapas,
gundli, dhan, straw and kher Ibid, p. 87.
chaul or nawa khani, and danr pancha - were gtven to the landlord on vanous
occasions and for different purposes: in support of his agent or the hlwndan and for
the maintenance of village officials like the Maharajah's Record Keeper, his dewan,
the Brahmin and the village police; at the time of his visits to the village for the
collection of rent; during festivals like the Dashera and the Dasai or on auspicious
Begari consisted of a number of days' labour given by the ryots to the landlord,
either for the cultivation of his khao; lands or as personal service. The incidence of
hegari was discriminatory. Certain privileged castes were ordinarily exempted from
hegari; some peasant communities like the Kurmis rendered services for a period
shorter than that for tribal communities. In a typical village in the district of Ranchi,
and hethkheta lands, belonging to the zamindars or lessee of the village. For the
cultivation of the manjhiha\ khar;, the zamindar was entitled to get help from his ryots.
Such help consisted usually of three days ploughing and three days cutting.
Alternatively, under the saika agreement, the land could be cultivated by ryots who
196
gave the ryot any right on mmyhihm kluL\'. Hethkheta lands, set apart for service, were
48
granted to villagers who cultivated these individually or collcctivcly.
('pqfcntious relations between the zamindars and the ryots, reflected in the Tana
movement, had however a long history. In their perceived history, the Oraons and
Mundas were the proprietors of the soil who had gradually lost their lands to
outsiders. Their anger was directed particularly against the Muslims, Sikhs and others
who came to Chhotanagpur from the 1820s as horse-dealers, shawl and brocade
Bhimans - granted land to them as convenient forms of payment for goods or for
services rendered. Rents, ahwahs and salami, imposed by this group on the ryots, were
much resented by the latter. 49 Enhancement of rents and rakumats were usually
effected by three methods: by subletting the villages to the thikadars with the sole
the revenue courts against ryots for arrears of rent, and later suing them at these
enhanced rates; and through private arrangements with ryots whereby the latter were
The newly established courts in Chhotanagpur became pliant tools in the hands
Lawyers who faced a diversity of peoples, languages and institutions were ill-informed
about local conditions and the history of Chhotanagpur. Pleaders, agents or ministerial
197
officers were often contemptuous of the communities whom they represented. The
remoteness of the courts and the lack of an effective communication system debarred
the ryots from attending court proceedings. 'It is the e\ .:ption for a raiyat who is
illegally dispossessed from his lands to complain', wrote Slacke and Lister:
In British perception, these 'zamindars' and 'raiyats' who constituted the two-tiered
oppressed victims of the landlords' wrath. Nolan from the Revenue Department wrote,
' ... the spirit of antagonism between landlord and tenant is so strong, and so generally
diffused throughout the district, that it may at any time cause ;1 breach of the peace
on a large scale, while it entirely destroys the amity which should subsist between
classes closely connected by the ties of interest and neighbourhood ' 53 The 'Kol
insurrection' of I 832, and conflicts between landlords and their Christian tenants in
51. 'Report on the grievances of Mundas in other than intact Khuntkatti villages in
the Ranchi District', by F.A. Slacke, Commissioner, Chota Nagpur Division, and
E. Lister, Settlement Officer, Selections from Ranchi Settlement Papers, pp.
91-92.
52. 'Note' by Rai Charan Ghose, Personal Assistant to Commissioner, Ranchi, 15th
March 1890, Papers Relating to Chota Nagpur Agrarian Disputes, Volll
(hereafter CNAD, Vol.ll], Unpublished, p. 43
53 Letter No.1258-491 L R , dated the 7th April 1890, Calcutta, from P Nolan,
Secretary to the Government of Bengal, Revenue Department, to the
Commissioner of the Chota Nagpore Division, CNAD, Vol. II, p. 48.
198
generalized animosity between zamindars and ryots. Only an enquiry into the land
structure and the settlement of rents and disputes could reverse Chhotanagpur's history
in this part of the country will be impracticable until the rights of the people have
been authoritatively recorded and steps have been taken to secure them in the
British intervention thereafter took the fonn of enactments of legislative acts. The
Bhuinhari Act II (B.C.) of 1869 and the surveys that followed between 1869 and 1880
were the first major steps in this direction. The Act had intended to settle disputes that
were attributable to encroachments on the part of the landlord as well as of the tenant,
to bhuinhari claims of tenants that were denied by landlords, and to the exaction of
non-customary services from the tenants. 55 The Act hoped to solve land disputes and
agitations, protect the Oraons from the oppression of landlords, and ensure the rights
of zamindars. As Rakhal Das Haldar, Special Commissioner under the Chota Nagpore
The most unfriendly critic will probably admit that this undertaking
has been worthy of the great British Government; for the land
dispute in Chota Nagpore may be described as merely a continuation
of the ancient struggle for land between the aborigines and Hindus
and no Government anterior to the British had ever intended to
settle such disputes, extending over large tracts of country, with
justice fairness and impartiality. 56
54. Letter, dated 29th August 1839, from Davidson to Ouseley, in Roy,
'Ethnographical investigation', p. 11.
55. Letter No. T/15J, dated the 30th November 1889, Camp Hazaribagh, from W H
Grimley, Commissioner of the Chota Nagpore Division, to the Chief Secretary
to the Government of Bengal, CNAD, Vol. I, p. 140
56. Letter No 11, dated the 22nd May 1880, Ranchi, from Rakhal Das Haldar,
Special Commissioner under the Chota Nagpore Tenures Act, to the Deputy
Commissioner, Lohardugga, CNAD, Vol. I, p. 84.
199
Of limited success however, this Act failed to afford security to the holders of
raJhm and did not demand the commutation of praedial services and hegari into
money payments. Further, the rights of the hhuinhar.. were made saleable, no
restrictions being placed either on mortgaging or leasing of hhuinhari land. The survey
and settlement operations in Ranchi that extended from 1902 to 1910, and the Chota
Nagpur Tenancy Act of 1908 were British attempts to address these issues. The
settlement operations sought to finalize a record of rights in order to settle the long
debated questions of praedial dues and services. The Act perfonned two functions: on
the one hand, by securing and granting occupancy rights to the vast majority of
tenants and protecting them from arbitrary rent enhancements and ejections at will by
landlords, it accepted individual property rights on land and thereby, widened the base
of the land market; at the same time, by disallowing the sale or penn anent transfer of
tenurial and tenancy rights, it sought to create a secure but unsalable right in the
raiyati land. 57 The implementation of the Act resulted, on the one hand, in a rise in
the price of land, an increase in the volume of land transactions and a greater number
of registered mortgages (hhugat handha and ::arpeshgi); on the other hand, a change
in the mode of landlord exaction. Once enhancement of rent was declared illegal, a
Mahajans, sahus and hania'i, zamindars, intennediate tenure holders and ryots,
lawyers and petty traders, entered the credit, tenurial and tenancy markets. While
zamindars had always been prominent in the land market, the class that emerged as
the single most important group in the land and credit markets comprised the sahus
57. Prabhu Prasad Mohapatra, 'Land and credit market in Chotanagpur, 1880
-1950', Studies in History, 6, 2 n.s., 1990, p. 166.
200
and hania,, the professional moneylenders and the village merchants. What attracted
this group to the land market was the social prestige attached to zamindari, control
over credit, and the importance of land as an area of profitable investment. There were
in the tenancy markets, a point that will be elaborated upon later. The following tables
noted, are problematic. The categories of 'mahajans' and 'zamindars and intermediate
tenure holders' are not mutually exclusive. Many included in the group of 'zamindars'
significant.
Source: Annual Repon of A dministnition of Registrotion Department of Bengal, for the relevant years.
Note: Excluding years 1889,1892,1895,1898, 1899,1900, 1901,1904,1907,1908 59
58. Ibid.
201
Distnct-wisc Distribution of Social Groups who Bought Tenures Chotanagpur 188'\-lllll
Hazaribagh 7,363 40 2 .j 4
Ran chi 3,350 22 IS 53 10
Pal am au 320 15.9 19.7 56 8.4
Singhbhum 1,914 9.6 2.4 78 10
Manbhum 43,393 17.5 1.5 78.5 2.5
.-
Source: Annual Report on Administration of the Registration Department of Bengal, for the relevant
62
years
Note: The figures for Hazaribagh are years 1881 to 1903. Ranchi figures are from 1884 to 1903; they
include till 1891 figures for Pal am au also. Pal am au figures are for 1891, 1893-94, 1896-97 and 1903.
Manbhum figures are for 1881-88, 1890-91, 1893-94, 1903, 1905-06, 1908-09. Singhbhum figures are
for the period as Manbhum excepting the last four years.
62. Ibid
202
As has been mentioned before, as a consequence of the Act of I 908, landlords
began to increasingly claim salami. Salami, recognised by custom, was a premium that
was taken by zamindars from ryots for the settlement of their hakmht lands;
alternatively, it was charged for the reclamation of jungles and wastelands in those
villages where the zamindar's prior permission was necessary for reclamation purposes.
The amount paid as salami depended partly on the position and advantages of the land
in question, but more importantly, on the sum that the tenant was willing to pay in his
eagerness to settle the land. While tenants did attempt to evade the payment of salami,
particularly in the second case, such payments were usually accepted by tenants in
high rates of sa/ami allowed outsiders to acquire control over land that could be
the almost universal custom that residents of the village had the first preference during
Officer, directly led to agrarian unrest and movements like those of the Tana
Bhagats. 64
The rights to the jungle was yet another contested domain between the zamindar
and the ryot, and between the Tana and his landlord. As under-ryots, Tanas were
opposed, at one level, to settled agriculture; their utopia was a return to a past of
forest dwellings and shifting cultivation. Under the circumstances, the attachment of
the Oraons to the forest, the integral role of the jungle in the rhythm of their life,
203
The rise in population, the multiplication of tenures, and the opening up of the
country by roads and later railways had already led to the partial disappearance of
fo: ~st area. As timber became a marketable commodity, landlords began to press their
rights as proprietors and imposed fees on the villagers- the hankaror hankati- for the
exercise of their customary rights. 65 The already latent conflict between the zamindars
and the thikadars on the one hand, and the ryots on the other, was aggravated with the
recording the customary rights of the landlords and the villagers to the jungle.
assets were to be protected and nurtured. The policy to be adopted was thus one of
conservation. The ultimate aim of the British in Chhotanagpur was to convert non-
culturable jungle into the exclusive preserve of the State. Settlement Officer Reid
recommended that the State should acquire compulsorily about three hundred square
miles of non-culturable jungle, and entrust the same to the forest department to
timber would also be used by the villagers for fuel and agricultural purposes. In these
reserved forests, all existing customary rights should be extinguished, Reid suggested;
care would be taken to ensure a portion of jungle for the supply of fuel and wood and
for grazing purposes to village communities who had once enjoyed rights of the user
in the forests so acquired. With regard to the remaining non-culturable jungles, the
65. Letter No. 1348, dated the 3rd/6th February 1908, Ranchi, from John Reid,
Settlement Officer of Chota Nagpur, to the Director of Land Records, Bengal,
Selections from Ranchi Settlement Papers, p. 120.
204
Deputy Commissioner would be empowered, on the application of the landlord or a
The first task befort the administrators was however to record the customary
rights of the zam indars and the ryots. They referred to English Jaw and to the 'rights
of common' called in Nonnan French 'Estowers' and in Saxon 'botes'; 67 they debated
69
in forests 'a mere easement' that could be extinguished altogether by two years'
prevention', or were these rights based on 'immemorial custom' that required not less
than twelve years prevention before they could be scrapped? Were the fees imposed
by the zamindars on the villagers for the exercise of their rights legalised, and did the
payment of a fee indicate the abandonment of such rights on the part of the ryots?
What then were the respective rights of landlords and tenants to village-jungles
as delineated by colonial authorities? Reid wrote as follows. The landlord had the right
to take wood for his necessary uses and sell surplus trees after leaving sufficient for
the present and future needs of the tenants; he also held the right to reclaim lands by
66. Retd, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations, p. 134.
67. No 28B, 'Advocate-General's opinion' by S.P. Sinha, dated the 28th May 1908,
Selections from Ranchi Settlement Papers, p. 126.
68. Refer to the following documents in Selections from Ranchi Settlement Papers:
No. 25, Letter No. 1348, dated the 3rd/6th February 1908, Ranchi, from John
Reid, Settlement Officer of Chota Nagpur, to the Director of the Department of
Land Records, Bengal, pp. 119-120; No. 26, Letter No. 1504-D.S., dated the
21st March 1908, Ranchi, from John Reid, Settlement Officer of Chota Nagpur,
to the Director of the Department of Land Records, Bengal, p. 121; 'Copy of the
Ranchi Government Pleader's Opinion' by R.G. Chaudhury, for Government
Pleader, dated the 25th February, 1908, pp. 121-122; No. 28 A, 'Legal
Remembrancer's Opinion', by EP. Chapman, dated the 18th May 1908, pp.
123-125; No 28B, 'Advocate-Gener.al's opinion' by SP Sinha, dated the 28th
May 1908, pp. 125-126
69. Letter No. 1348, dated the 3rd/6th February 1908, Ranchi, from John Reid,
Settlement Officer of Chota Nagpur, to the Director of Land Records, Bengal,
Selections from Ranchi Settlement Papers, p. 120.
205
cutting down jungle trees. The tenant, on the other hand, enjoyed the right to cut and
take wood, thatching-grass and bamboos, free of cost, for the present and future needs
of his family, for fuel, agricultural implements, building, repairing and thc :('ncing of
houses and fields; he could collect fruits from jungle trees and gather various other
kinds of forest produce for bona fide domestic purposes; he could cut down jungle
trees to reclaim culturable lands, he could exercise the rights ofjhumin~. of grazing
his cattle in the village jungles, and of firing the jungles situated on the top or slopes
of hills in order to improve the grazing and fertilization of the fields below? 0 While
the exercise of these 'customary' rights was seen to have contributed to a general
depletion of the forest cover, the leasing of forests by zamindars to contractors was
Despite acknowledging the fact that tenants had 'joint interest in the jungles' with
the landlords, 72 the settlement authorities were unwilling to codify these rights. The
record of rights entered the jungles as gainnaJaroa khas of the landlord and recording
the customary rights of tenants only in the jungle khatiyan or khatiyan part II. Roy in
70. Reid, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations, pp 126-127.
71. Ibid, p. 127.
72. Ibid., p. 133.
206
a comprehensive report presented before the House on the 'deforestation of Chota-
Nagpur' discussed the consequences of British action.n Once jungles were recorded
as y,uir nuy(mllw kha, and the wood cutting rights of tenants were recorded in k lwtiyan
part 11, tenants could exercise these rights only so long as the landlords chose to keep
the jungle standing. Moreover, the landlords were free to sell the jungle or give
unrestricted jungle cutting leases to timber merchants and others, without any regard
to the recorded rights of tenants. The arena of conflict between landlords and ryots
Repeated incidents occurred that expressed the overt defiance of the Oraons and the
control the the demarcation of rights chalked out by British administrators, it was
argued that:
The mala fides of the cutting under discussion is evident from the
fact that it was in wild excess for any reasonable requirements or of
any customary right known. In fact it was in pursuance of a
concerted movement to establish a right or rather to create evidence
of a right to the only remaining jungle in the village in view of the
73. This thirty-five page report by Roy, which contains detailed references to other
reports on deforestation in Chhotanagpur as well, is found among RPP, Mil,
Ranchi.
74 Ibid.
75. Refer to 'Jaigi Uraon and others vs. Ervperor', AI/ India Reporter, Patna Series,
1929.
207
approaching revisional settlement proceedings that the petitioners
and the other villagers deliberately defied the law 76
v
TANAS AGAINST BHUINHARS
The opposition to za_mindars and hania.\ tied the Oraons together as a community;
the conflict around hhuinhari rights split them apart. Tanas, as non-hhuinlwrs, tumed
against the hhuinhar Oraons. Who, then, were these hhuinhars whom the Tanas had
opposed, but never explicitly? What was the nature of conflict that arose within the
differentiation that occurred in Oraon society with the intervention of the British in
Chhotanagpur. The support extended to the hhuinhari community by the British, and
the codification and implementation of the Bhuinhari Act of 1869 had deepened not
only the conflict between the hhuinlwrs and the illaquadars, but had also created
differences between the hhuinhars and non-hhuinhars in Oraon society. The Tanas, as
non..:hhuinhars, now opposed the Bhuinhari settlement and those who were recognized
hhuinhari lands, were a community that the British regarded as significant. Apart from
the 'tenures' of the zamindars (manjhihav) and the 'tenancies' of the ryots, the officials
Bhuinhari rights, it was argued, were exercised by descendants of the original clearers
of the soil. Bhuinhari was held rent-free with only services attached to it, or at a quit-
76. Ibid.
208
rent. In this category were also included the hhutkhcta, dalikatari, pahnm and mahtor
tenures. Hhutkhcta, dedicated to the worship of spirits, was held by a hhuinhari khunt
(clan) for the propitiation of the family spirit, or by the pu',m, on behalf of the village
community, for the propitiation of village spirits. The dalikatan and pahnai lands were
also held by the pahan for the same purpose. Mahtoi lands were service tenures held
For the British who were accustomed to classifying the rural population into
'landlords' and 'tenants', understanding 'the peculiar land tenures' of Chota Nagpur' 78
and categorizing these was problematic, particularly since there operated in this region
older customary and community rights over land. Yet, for the administrators, even
what was customary, was to be fitted into their understanding of tenurial and tenancy
classifications. Hence, along with the privileged lands of the landlords, hhuinhari was,
Settlement Officer, wrote: 'They [the hhuinhari] are tenures under the law; but, for
Bhuinhari rights entered the perceived realm of custom that the British had
intended to recognize, contend with and preserve; those who exercised these rights
77. Reid, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations, pp. 96-97.
78. Letter No. 11, dated the 22nd May 1880, Ranchi, from Rakhal Das Haldar,
Special Commissioner under the Chota Nagpur Tenures Act, to the Deputy
Commissioner, Lohardugga, Selections from Ranchi Settlement Papers, p. 42.
79 Reid, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations, p. 121
80. lbid,p.118.
81. Ibid, p. 96.
209
Chhotanagpur were trying to detennine and uphold rental obligations and occupancy
rights based on custom, here was a community that symbolized the prevalence of
customary laws in Chhotanagpur. In keeping with this special positioll .n.:corded to the
hhuinhars, it was their voice that the administrators chose to hear. Hhuinlwrs were
viewed as the representatives of the 'Kols'~ a redressal of their grievances was seen as
a step towards amicable relations between zamindars and ryots. The premise of British
community among the Oraon ryots, was based on a link that the administrators had
est.ablished between claims to land, blood and family, and a history of migrations and
involvement with tribal communities gave to official argument a sanction and support.
credibility. The history and claims to land were perceived in the following manner:
the pioneer families - nuclear or extended - who had cleared the jungles were the
hhuinhars who held rent free land; the descendants of these original reclaimers of the
soil held privileged tenures and had a social precedence over later Oraon settlers; the
whether they were earlier or later settlers. 83 History, perceived thus, authenticated a
hierarchical structure in tribal society and emphasized the need to know about
hhuinhari rights. Davidson's report of 1839 discussed in detail the customary rights
surrounding hhuinhari, the attachment of hhuinhars to their lands, and the need for
82. Neeladri Bhattacharya has shown in the context of Panjab how the codification
of customary law had consolidated a coparcenary community. Refer to his
'Remaking custom: the discourse and practice of colonial codification'.
83. Roy, The Oraons of Chota Nagpur, pp. 66-68.
210
investigating cases conceming the dispossession of such lands. 84 The 'Kol insurrection'
of 1832, directed against the enhancement of rent and hegari by lllikadar. and
mahajans was followed by the reinstating of the mankis and mundas - inevitahly
hhuinhar:~ - in their respective villages on reduced rentals. The 'great mass' of the
agricultural 'Kol' population was left largely unaffected by the reforms that followed
and register the rights, privileges, immunities, and liabilities affecting the holders of
hhuinhari, to prevent the encroachment of landlords on such lands, and to restore their
property to hhuinhars wh? had been dispossessed of their lands within a period of
Upholding primarily the interests of the hhuinhars or the 'original cultivators or their
heirs', 86 over those of the 'Gaura (cultivators holding only Rajhas)' 87 who held 'an
inferior title', 88 the missionaries argued that 'the Koles, especially the Bhooinhars, and
not only the Native Christians' were 'fearfully oppressed and wronged in different
pergunnahs by many of the jagheerdars and theekadars.' 89 As the first settlers and in
consonance with their consequent position in society, the hhuinhars could thus claim,
individually or collectively, rights over the sama\, some portions of the jungles or
84. Dated the 29th August 1839, from Davidson to Ouseley, in Roy, 'Ethnographical
investigation in official records', p. 11.
85. 'Note' by Rai Charan Ghose, Personal Assistant to Commissioner, Ranchi, dated
the 15th March, 1890, CNAD, Vol. II, p. 43.
86. An Inquiry into the Causes of the Land-Question in Chutia Nag pur, p. 10
87 Ibid., p. 11.
88. Ibid., p 10
89. Letter dated the 15th November 1867, Ranchee, from Reverend F. Batsch,
Senior of the Chota Nagpore Mission, to the Deputy Commissioner, Lohardugga,
CNAD, Vol. I, p. 11.
211
paltrm, lands set apart for the growth of thatching grass, the patra\ or topes of mango
or other trees, the haf"Rari and masna, the partiadid and pwtrkadun lands, their
homesteads, kitchen gardens and the haris or uplands closet. the homesteads. 90 Most
of the cases cited in missionary pamphlets and memoranda, and discussed in their
meetings and conferences, inevitably centred around the hhuinhars and their
grievances. 91 Significantly, the SinJar agitation that followed the hhuinhari s-ettlement
was initiated by a section of Christian hhuinhars who were members of the German
Lutheran Mission. 92 Commenting on the link between the hhuinhars and their
one of this favoured family of bhuinhars seized others. The next step was to profess
Christianity, and going up to Ranchi to the mission, they returned with their hair
puritanically cropped and ready to assert their rights and defy their landlords ..93
Constructed myths and the reality of British intervention thus vested on the
hhuinhars a unique position in Oraon society. At a time when land was becoming
space and the consequent struggle over forest-land, the hhuinhars attempted to control
lands in order to counteract their economic insecurities. British policy helped in their
90. An Inquiry into the Causes of the Land-Question in Chutia Nagpore, pp. 24-27.
91. Refer to 'Memorandum of a discussion with certain representative ryots held on
15th March 1890', CNAD, Vol. II, p. 37, and An Inquiry into the Causes of the
Land Question in Chutia Nagpur, pp. 19-21.
92. No. I, T-J, 'Agitation among a Section of the Christian Kols of Lohardugga and
Singbhoom', dated the 19th November 1887, Camp Purulia, from C C. Stevens,
Commissioner of the Chota Nagpore Division, to the Chief Secretary to the
Government of Bengal, CNAD, Vol. I, p 129
93. Letter No.70, dated the 25th March 1859, from Captain ET Dalton,
Commissioner of Chota Nagpore, to the Secretary to the Government of Bengal,
CNAD, Vol.l, p. 1.
212
endeavours. As infonnants of local custom, they could reaffirm their dominance in
Oraon society, and at the same time, contest the rights of the zamindars to land
conflict between the hhuinhars, and the zamindars and illaquadars, one between the
hhuinhars and non-hhuinhars, the privileged and the unprivileged, in Oraon society.
In the assertion of their rights, these hhuinhars were in a position to deprive the under-
ryots of their lands. The Tana Bhagat movement expressed, therefore, not only a
protest of Oraons against non-Oraons; it was as much a response to the tensions and
hierarchizations that arose within Oraon society. The Tanas, as non-hhuinhars, resented
the support extended to the hhuinhari community by the colonial State and its allies,
the missionaries; they were opposed to the Act of 1869 and to those who were
recognized as exercising these bhuinhari rights. The protest was however not always
overtly expressed. At one level, bhuinhars came together with the rest of the Oraon
The Bhuinhari Survey had set out to place 'the entire relations between illaquadars
convert the hhuinhari into a contentious realm between the two. It was not uncommon
for hhuinhars to combine and take forcible possession of lands to which, according to
their rights, they were entitled, and thereafter withhold the payment of all rents. While
criminal courts, illaquadars who were incompetent or poor, found themselves ousted
94. Letter No. 298-R., dated the 18th June 1860, Ranchi, from AWB Power,
Deputy Commissioner of Lohardugga, to the Commissioner of the Chota Nagpur
Division, Selections from Ranchi Settlement Papers, p. 34.
213
by such combinations. Even when hhuinlum cases came to an end, the struggle for
rcffhas commenced.
As claim. and counterclaims were made, and memoranda and petitions that
. d . ,9'i
contained 'rarnblmg statements, Kol genealogies, an vague asserttons were
submitted, Hal dar referred to the 'imaginary' and often exaggerated pleas of the
.. .it is these men that have always been the most outrageous in their
demands about lands. They want nothing short of a revolution of a
state of things which had existed in Chota Nagpur certainly since
long before the country came under the British government, and it
seems as if they can only be convinced of the good intention of the
Government and their officers -if the Hindus were totally expelled
from the plateau of Chota Nagpur. .. It cannot be very far from the
truth when I say that, if all the lands claimed were added together,
the amount would probably exceed the total quantity of cultivated
and culturable lands within the pargana of the estate that were
brought under the operation of the Act. 96
It is, no doubt, true that the oldest bhuinhari tenancies were created before
the landlords established themselves in the country; but, it is certain that a
considerable proportion of the bhuinhari lands was reclaimed from the jungle
after . that event, and the proprietary right, therefore, cannot be said
historically to have ever belonged to these bhuinhars, and many of them
make no such claim save in the sense that all aborigines regard themselves
97
as owners of all the lands, which they or their ancestor reclaimed.
not undifferentiated. The claims to land by the bhuinhars had also resulted in a
conflict within the community itself. While some among the bhuinhars were unable
214
to face the extortions by illaquada~. there were others who were successful in
claiming their lands. As a privileged group with landed property, this section was in
a position to counter the powers, if , .. Jiy to a limited extent, of the zamindars and the
hanias. These were the sections that had wielded power and social authority in Oraon
society. It may be suggested that these well-off hhuinlwrs were included within the
category of 'raiyats' who had entered into the tenurial, tenancy and credit markets of
98
Chhotanagpur. In the post-1908 period. these ryots, as moneylenders, consolidated
their control over the land market. The Revisional Survey of Ranchi brought out the
decisive significance of the emergence of this section of the tribal community: tribai
Enquiry Committee's investigators had found, in village Tungaon, 'All the loans
excepting two have been taken from the munda or pahan roiyats or hhuinhars of the
village.' 99
While I do not have any direct reference to conflicts within the hhuinhar
community, the following extract that discusses the claims by Mundari khuntkallidars
holding an analogous position within the Munda tribe may be cited. This is an extract
from the tour diary of the Sub-divisional Officer, Ranchi, on the subject of the
_.. grounds, lands and genealogical trees by the Settlement Department'. 100
215
The purpose of this insertion is to point to the problems faced by British officials
as they sought to detennine customary law, believed to exist from 'time immemorial',
and for which no evidence that was legally irrefutable could he found.
101. Extract from the tour diary of the Sub-divisional Officer of Khunti for the month
of April 1929, Selections from Revisional Settlement Papers, p. 430-31.
216
I would like to suggest in this context that such cases would find parallels during
the Bhuinhari settlement of 1869, and during later settlement operations. At a time
within the community itself was simultaneously taking place. A privileged group was
privileged status and the settlement operations to stake a claim as an upwardly mobile
What could be the results of such a development for the other sections of the
Oraon community? Once land moved into the possession of the hhuinhars from the
hands of'outsiders', the already prevalent hierarchies within the tribal community, the
distinctions between the hhuinhars and the other ryots, were intensified. Land, in a
rural economy, was not merely a material asset but also a source of power and
belonged, were in a particularly vulnerable position because they now came under the
social and economic control of select hhuinhars, and faced, in addition, the threat of
ejection. Bhuinhars, who participated directly in the cultivation of their lands, often
chose to replace these sections by members of their own families. Conflicts between
the privileged and the marginalized sections of the Oraon community, therefore,
was not only at the level of wealth and control over resources, but also one of social
217
VI
While the Ta11as publicly critiqued the privileges of the 'outsiders', their opposition
to the sources of authority within the Oraon society needs to be constructed from a
careful analysis of their tenets, practices and ideology. The Tanas questioned the
supremacy of the pahan, panhham and mahto; they rejected the spirit world,
witchcraft, sacrifices and festivity; their search was for a past that predated a settled
agricultural economy. These facets, different and yet interlinked, were expressions of
an integrated Tana protest against social relations and hierarchy that were based on
The world of spirits was a primary focus of Tana attack. The blame for having
failed to alleviate the socio-economic conditions of the tribe was attributed to these
'powerless entities.JOZ who had been regularly propitiated by the Oraons. For the
Tanas, while the spirit world continued to be a reality, the attitude towards it had
changed. All spirits were considered to be evil, notwithstanding the former Oraon
hierarchization of these into beneficent and maleficent, powerful and the less powerful.
Spirits were therefore to be ousted from the Tana faith and the Oraon land. 'For the
men of the good and true religion, there are no spirits or hhuts', 103 the Tan as asserted.
218
and worshipped ...
They will be driven away to
the banks of the Ganges; they
will be tied up in golden and
silver chains ...
. .. they will be utterly
ruined, they will be cast down
and swept away ...
Beyond the hills and mountains
they wi II be entrapped
in snares and they will enter
into gates and cages.
For ever and ever, 0 Father,
they will be tied up, they will
104
be shut up.
Matiao (ghost-finding) and the belief in hhuts were forbidden by Jatra who stated
that Dhannes had instructed him to cleanse the world of evil. By 1915, spirit-ousting
was a regular ritual practice. The ghosts and spirits specifically mentioned by the Tana
believers were the following: the pachhalar or the ancestor-spirits, Chala Pachcho or
the Old Lady of the Sacred Grove, the khunt- hhuts or tutelary spirits of the hhuinhari
khunts, the household-hhuts, Chandi, the m ua, malech, churil and ulatgurio hhuts, and
finally, the familiar hhuts of the dains and hishahis. The significance of these spirits
can be understood only by locating them within the belief system of the Oraons. In
the narrative that follows, I intend to focus upon the dual nature of the spirits and the
powers that they usually exercised, the retribution that was to follow when they were
Detailing and categorizing the constituents of the Oraon world of deota<i, hhuts,
and bonga'i are problematic. The narratives of our primary informants - the
who hierarchized the deota\ and spirits according to their powers and functions,
219
c:- d t I1ese as t I1e ' ru d e' an d ' prnmttve
c Iasstlle . . . ' rca Im of. 'magtc ' toe;
. ' an d ' pscu d o-sc1ence.
.
Dehon of the Roman Catholic Mission, on the other hand, divided the 'invisible world
of parasites in which the Uraons are living' into 'household-/- 11ils, sept hhuts, village
hhuts village devtas, wandering hhuts and common dev/a\"'. 106 Dehon, then, had
classified the hhuts in tenns of the social units to which they were attached: the
individual, the household, the sept, or the entire village. For Hahn of the GEL
Mission, the 'demonology of the Kols.tO? included hon~a, that were always
maleficent: those that caused cholera, plague, delirium, and madness, those that
dimitlished the fertility of the soil, prevented rain ~nd helped caterpillars and wonns;
and those that were less hannful and caused bad dreams, fear, and sneezing. 108 For
protection against spirits, one invoked the 'forces of a higher nature' or the 'symbols
of God'. 109
Oraons believed that 'the earth is full of spirits [as] the tree is full of leaves'. 110
powers not available to the living. The spirit world was sharply differentiated: the
more important spirits that could bring disease and death were regularly propitiated
by the Oraons in annual and important rituals; the others they appeased only under
105. Ibid., p. 1.
106. P. Dehon, 'Religion and customs of the Uraons', Memoirs of the Royal Asiatic
Society of Bengal, Vol. 1, No. 9, 1906, p. 138.
107. Ferdinand Hahn, Einfuhrung in das Gebiet der Kols-Mission [An Introduction to
the territory of the Kols-Mission] (Guttersloh: 1907), p 94.
108. Ibid , p. 96.
109. lbid,p.89.
110. Roy, The Oraons of Chota Nagpur, p. 107.
220
bound' 111 to the Oraons in a relationship of reciprocity and mutual interdependence.
While thepowcrful spirits were regarded as protectors of the community, these spirits,
in tum, depended on the Oraons for food and sustenance through the medium of
sacrifices. Unless propitiated and appeased, they caused disease, misfortune or death.
The spirit world thus combined in itself benevolent and malevolent traits.
of spirits. It was believed that the souls of deceased Oraons (except those who had
died unnatural deaths) entered into the community of ancestors on the annual Koha
Binja ('great marriqge') or Harbora ('bone drowning') festival. On this occasion, the
bones of the dead were ceremonially deposited in the clan kundi, sacrifices of fowl
and pigs accompanying the event. The welfare of their descendants and kinsmen was
the special concern of the pachhalar who possessed extraordinary powers. As a token
of gratitude, the Oraons propitiated these spirits at every feast and on every suitable
occasiOn. The pachhalar, along with their living descendants and kinsmen, were
regarded as constituting a united family or clan group; they were believed to live in
an underground settlement of their own near the village. The living and the spirit
worlds were thus not disparate, but organically bound together in a relationship of
interdependence and reciprocity. Death represented, not a break or an end, but only
a transformation of form; it freed the ekh or soul from jia or physical life.
I have been told by some Oraon school boys that when they told
their illiterate parents and other village-elders that Geography
teaches them that down below (meaning, in the antipodes) there is
a continent inhabited by human beings they expressed no surprise
111. Hahn, Einfuhrung in das Gebiet der Kols-Mission [An Introduction to the territory
of the Kols-Mission), p. 96.
221
but merely corrected their school-going children by giving them the
further infom1ation that there are villages just like their own in the
nether regions below their feet, but only the houses there are more
substantial than those here on earth and that there are no :amindar:\
(alien landlords) there but the hakris (manorial houses) and garh,
(forts or palace) arc occupied by their own dead relatives. 112
inequality in which their present was situated. Their ancestors, powerful as they were,
could thus live in a world free of zamindars and had, in fact, appropriated elements
that defined the zamindars' superior status: they lived in hakris and Rarhs, exercised
In contrast to the ancestor spirits were the spirits of those who had died unnatural
deaths. The mua and the ma/ech were the spirits of those persons who had died of
hunger, starvation, strangulation, hanging or of some other violent cause; the churil
or ulatguria was the hhut of a woman who had died during pregnancy or childbirth,
or within a few days of it; the haghouts were the ghosts of those who had been bitten
I<) death by tigers. These hhuts were essentially malevolent; they needed to be ousted
by the mali, ojha or deonra. Unnatural deaths, as uncontrolled events, were believed
to have brought about an unexpected break in the natural cycle of life, death and
regeneration; these spirits were thus treated with disdain. For example, the churil was
believed to be hankering after a mate. Oraons proclaimed that this spirit carried a load
of coal on its head, imagining it to be its baby, and pursued any man passing by its
grave. It was with the object of preventing such spirits from moving about that the
feet of women dying at the time of childbirth were broken, turned backwards and
222
Besides the hhuts of the dead, there were in the Oraon pantheon of spirits
different categories of deotas and hhuts. /)colas like Chala Pachcho or Sama Burhia,
and r.f111ts like Darha and Deswali comprised the tutelary deities and spirits of the
Oraon village, to whom periodical sacrifices were offered by the pahan on behalf of
the village community. _!he most important ritual at the annual spring festival of
Khaddi or Sarhul was in honour of Chala Pachcho; fowl, sheep, goats and pigs were
offered as sacrifices to her. The sama or the grove of sal trees in every village was
considered to be the sacred spot of Chala Pachcho; after the Sarhul festival, the
village-priest inserted sal blossoms into the thatches of the houses in the village ~o
that every family would be blessed with an abundance of foodgrains in the coming
year. The attributes and functions of Chala Pachcho clearly indicated that she was in
Darha-Deswali were believed to guard and protect the village from incursions of
spirits from outside; their seat was 011 or near the boundary of every Oraon village.
These spirits required elaborate and expensive sacrifices for propitiation; if not
provided with the appropriate sacrifices at the appointed time, men and cattle were
The khunt-hhuts or clan spirits of each different branch or khunt of the bhuinhars
- comprised yet another group of spirits that the Tan as sought to oust. The bhuinha~
believed that clearing the jungles for establishing villages involved a disturbance of
the spirits residing there. These spirits therefore needed to be propitiated by the
hhuinhari families. Occasionally, the pahan was also asked to offer sacrifices. The
khunt-hhuts looked after the health, crops and other belongings of their k hunts; in case
223
The non-hhuinlwr Oroans had in place of the khunt-hhuts their own guardian
spirits to which each family provided offerings, even if it was separated from the
parent family. Included within this group of spirits '' rc Bamda Pachcho or Bar
Chandi, a female deity invoked by young Oraon bachelors, was propitiated for
success in hunting and war. On a full moon day during the month of Magh, the young
bachelors assembled along with the pahan and his wife at the akhro by the side of
their dhumkuria, in order to elect for the puja of Chandi the bachelors' pahan. Other
ceremonies were also performed by the bachelors' pahan for propitiating the deity.
Pugri hhuts and dain kuri hhuts were spirits adopted by individuals for a specific
purpose; the votary secretly made periodical sacrifices to the spirit. Dains or hishahi.,
who were believed to have been bom with the 'evil eye' (nqjar gt~jar) and 'evil mouth'
(hai-hhak or hhak-nisan), or were said to have acquired their art through a secret
course of training, adopted pugri hhuts called hishahi nad or dain kuri hhuts, the
Oraons argued. To counteract the dain-bishahi, the Oraon appealed to.a mali, deonro
It was this spirit world that the Tanas sought to oust through their chants and
invocations. The spirits were not seen as a part of a system that sustained the rules
and norms of the community, and protected it from evil. Dharmes had emerged as the
sole protector, only he could ensure prosperity and abundance. The nature of the spirit
world, as the Oraons had perceived it, was thus transformed by the Tanas who denied
its dual nature of beneficence and malevolence, and denounced it as wholly evil. By
denying the relationship of reciprocity between the 'living' and the 'dead', the Tanas
224
The Tana ousting of spirits was accompanied by extensive campaigns of witch-
hunting, and a rejection of the mali, f~jha and deonm. Since Oraon society associated
the lowest category of hhuts with dain-hishahis and malis, the Tana rcnunciatio1 of
the spirit world led also to the rejection of the latter. Living in a world of witchcraft,
the Oraons feared dains, submitted to the power of dains, but also, at the same time,
sought to restrict this power by purging their society of these Jains. The Tanas played
upon this widespread fear of, and anger against, Jains. In 1915, the district of Ranchi
recorded no less than twelve cases of the murder of persons suspected of practising
witchcraft. It was reported that 'the Bhagats coerced the non-Bhagats by declaring their
women to be witches'; 'in Chainpur, they have declared one woman in each non-
follows:
... a meeting of Uraons was in progress at which mantras were being recited
and considerable religious excitement prevailed. The deceased who had
previously been charged with practising witchcraft, was beaten to death in her
house in the presence of her husband. The culprits when they joined the
assembly were seen to be carrying pieces of the woman's brain which they
licked from time to time. 114
The role of the mali in Oraon society, it needs to be pointed out, was not always
approach the mali to conduct sacrifices in order to ward off disease, witches and
maleficent spirits.
113. Bihar and Orissa Government, Political Department, Special Section, File No.
1165of1916.
114. R. T. Dundas, Report on the Administration of Police in the Province of Bihar
and Orissa for the year 1915 (Patna: 1916), p. 12.
225
Sacrifices, usually elaborate affairs, were an integral part of Oraon worship.
Amidst long chants and prayers, when liquor was offered and fowl, pigs, goats, oxen
and buffaloes sacrificed, the pahan, hhaRal or mali propitiated the deities or spirits on
behalf of the village, clan, family or an individual. The sacrificial blood, along with
vermilion and oil, was sprinkled on the stone or on other visible symbols of
affirmed a bond between the spirits or the deities on the one hand, and the Oraon
The Tana faith forbade this practice. Whetting a knife or an axe for sacrificial
purposes was censured and the Tanas were asked not to take life for sacrificial or
dietary purposes. The colour red that reminded one of vermilion or blood was
abhorred, and children were prevented from being vaccinated. Alcohol used for ritual
disapproved of. Fven the f)anda-katta ceremony that was dedicated to Dharmes,
. officiated by the mali and declared in the Oraon legend of genesis as being prescribed
by Dharmes himself, was rejected by the Tanas. The Danda-katta ceremony had
formed an essential part of the Oraon ceremonies of birth, marriage and death, and of
their hunting and agricultural festivals. Further, Oraon customs and ceremonies with
regard to name-giving, ear-piercing and eating the first rice, along with important
festivals like Sarhul, Kharia, Phagua, Khaddi, Karam and Sohrai were forbidden by
Tana gurus. They opposed, in addition, sexual union outside the bonds of marriage,
dancing and singing at the akhra, the playing of musical instruments, the holding of
.Jalra,, and bedecking the self with jewellery, tattoo marks and clothes with coloured
borders.
226
VII
Dur:11g the propitiation of the spirit world through sacrifices, and in the arena of
festivals, Jatms and ritual celebrations, the pahan or hai}{a, the hhandari or pujar and
the mahto were the central figures. The pahan was responsible for making periodical
sacrifices to the hhuts, nads and Jeota'l on behalf of the Oraons. The pu.Jar or panhham
helped the pahan in the exercise of his official duties. The mahto was the
representative of the village in its dealings with the landlord, the government
authorities and other non-Oraon elements. 115 These offices were necessarily the
exclusive preserve of the members of the hhuinhari khunts. While the pahan ordinarily
belonged to the pahan khunt, the pujar almost always to the p14ar khunt and the mahto
to the mahto khunt, in villages where these khunts were small, hhuinhars of other
khunts were also known to have been elected to these posts. Even the majority of the
spirits were believed to belong only to members of the hhuinhari khunts. The khunt-
hhuts were the spirits displaced from the land during the reclamation of soil by the
early hhuinhars and could therefore be propitiated only by them. The Harhom
also were the rituals dedicated to Chala Pachcho, Darha and Deswali. 116 Chandi was
. invoked during the election of the pahan and was appeased to strengthen his office.
the presence of the pahan. Inherent in the Tana opposition to Oraon popular practices
227
implicit Tana antagonism towards hlminlwrs assumes an added significance when we
consider that their movement occurred around the time of settlement operations, during
which the hhuinhars were accorded a privileged status over "1c later Oraon settlers;
and the pahan, p19ar and mahto, regarded as the natural leaders of the people, had
tradition had accorded to the mahto and pahan the joint right to settle vacant ryoti
lands, 117 and this further aggravated the conflicting interests of the hhuinlwrs and non-
hhuinhars. The Tana irreverence towards rites and ceremonies that aimed at ensuring
safety at important moments of an individual's life and at each stage of the economic
authority which had upheld the structure of the Oraon agrarian and settled economy.
A similar refrain was expressed in the Tana refusal to accept the jurisdiction of the
~
panch that was constituted by hhuinlwrs. Their disputes and differences were required
abiding by the decisions of the mandali were excommunicated. 11 x The pahan and
mahto were as much against the movement that had sought to challenge and dismantle
their authority. It was reported, ' ... the mahtos and pahans of the village affected did
not join, and disapproved of the attitude of the younger men; they were afterwards
What had distinguished the Tana Bhagats from the pahans,pujars and mahtos was
their unexceptional and obscure socio-economic backgrounds: Jatra was a mali, Sibu
228
a dhangar, as were the Bhagats of village Panchadoomer in Palamau. 120 To claim
hierarchy in Oraon society. The link with Dham1es or Bhagwan had legitimized th
authority of the Tan a gurus and enabled them to appropriate extraordinary powers for
themselves. Jatra, who claimed that he had received a divine massage from Dharrnes,
appropriated for himself the status of a deity; he would obey none other than
Dharrnes; 121 he claimed miraculous powers to cure fever, sore eyes and other diseases.
Particularly significant was the retribution that would follow if his orders were
disobeyed: those who did not join him would be struck dumb. 122 This claim to
authority from Dharmes, and the consequent arrogation of divinity, was more
prominent under Sibu: Bhagwan was said to be communicating with him through
letters. Pieces of foolscap were produced; inscribed on these pages were the Divine
Orders. Sibu was destined to be the leader of the world, the Raj would retum to the
Oraons, and a change in the order of things would commence with the approaching
festival of Holi. God had instructed Sibu to leave his family, tour the world and
reform the people; he had become a bhagwan after the death of Sukra, an event which
he had predicted. 123 Sibu assigned to himself greater powers than Jatra did. While
God was to intervene on behalf of Jatra, Sibu as the ultimate dispenser of justice,
threatened to cut off the hands and legs of all except the Oraons. 124 A greater
229
n1ilitancy was thus sanctified by a more vigorous claim to the source of the
community's strength -a link and communication with Dhannes. Jatra and Sibu thus
combined in themselves the roles of a preacher who could reveal the true path, a
healer who could cure disease, a prophet who could exercise divine powers and a
deliverer who would be the harbinger of a new age. Their places of stay became
pilgrimage spots flocked by the followers of the faith. Their belief that their movement
was authorized by God gave it a spiritual justification. Threats and murders, refusals
to pay rent and taxes, the cutting of crops, the demolition of the symbols of authority,
and public proclamations of the intents of the dissidents were part of a campaign that
A similar claim to Dhannes' intervention took place in one of the villages in the
tea-estates of Jalpaiguri: a sheet of paper found in a house was taken to indicate that
one of its residents had been 'chosen' as a preacher of the new faith. The paper was
the cover of a catalngue of Messrs. R.E. Dietz and Co. of Greenwich, Laight Street,
New York, U.S.A. 125 Written messages as graphic evidence of divine support
indicated also the generalization of a new sensibility. Writing was the preserve of the
socially privileged. For a non-literate society that was not cognizant with writing as
an art, but was acquainted with the importance of education in mission schools, the
lenders, and the importance of written appeals in law-courts, the written word was an
expression of power, sacred and magicai. 126 Writing, as a symbol of dominance, was
230
thus appropriated by the Tanas as a tool of empowerment. The link of the word with
The austerity of the camps set up by Tana leaders added to the aura of religiosity
that distinguished the Bhagat leaders from their followers, and from the rest of the
Oraons. Most huts in Sibu's camps were whitewashed and a white flag was planted
in front of his house. Flags, usually coloured, were Oraon 'totemic symbols' to which
the pahan offered sacrifices. 127 The Tana selection of white as a colour indicated an
affinity with Dharmes. 128 Maya's residence was surrounded by a plastered ground,
about three feet wide. Some huts were erected and white-washed, and about a
thousand earthen pots and chulha'l in a neighbouring grove, provided for the seven
hundred odd Tanas who had gathered there from several thana\ in the district, to
worship their guru. Dhonwa Oraon of Gamhara, Burmu, yet another local Tana guru,
In yet another display of his authority, Sibu adopted a practice new amongst his
people. He chose to be carried on his jahaj - 'a cot over which bamboos had been
twisted to form a kind of canopy'. 129 Sibu thus patterned himself on the zamindar who
embodied in his person and actions power over his subordinates. Thus, even as he
resisted the zamindar, Sibu had appropriated the practices of his Hindu overlords. The
logic of a cultural system that had relegated him to the margins of society was
231
having a bath twice a day, 110 of wearing the .Janeu, 111 or of keeping Oraon women
inadvertently stepped on the shadows of non-Hind --., 1:1:1 were reflections of a similar
process. Yet, the meaning of the shared practice or symbol could have had entirely
different implications for the two communities. For example, when Tanas began
wearing the sacred thread, they uttered the name of Dharmes; there was no
The response of the followers to their Bhagat leaders was in confom1ity with
notions surrounding the 'worship of the worthies' in rural India. The deification of the
'worthies' was based, among other things, on the purity of the life they had led and on
130. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Hazaribagh, 22nd January, 1916.
131. Roy, Oraon Religion and Customs, p. 399.
132. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, 24th June, 1916.
133. Bihar and Orissa Government. Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, 27th May, 1916.
134. Roy, Oraon Religion and Customs, p. 399.
For the relevance and critique of the concept of Sanskritization in the context of
the Tana Bhagat movement, and for related issues like the spread of
Vaishnavism and Brahmanical influences in Chhotanagpur, refer to my M. Phil
Dissertation, 'Reordering a World: The Tana Bhagat movement in Chotanagpur
(1914-22)', Jawahartal Nehru University, 1992. The literature that may be
referred to is as follows: Kunal Chakrabarti, 'Anthropological models of cultural
interaction and the study of religious process', Studies in History, 8, 1, n.s.,
1992; David Hardiman, The Coming of the Devi (Delhi: 1987); Hermann Kulka,
'Ksatriyaization and social change: a study in the Orissa setting' in his Kings and
Cults: State Formation and Legitimation in India and Southeast Asia (Delhi:
1993); Robert Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago 1956); Surajit
Sinha, 'State formation and Rajput myth in tribal Central India', Man in India, 42,
1962; M. N. Srinivas, Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India
(London: 1965); M. N. Srinivas, Social Change in Modern India (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: 1966); McKim Marriot, 'Little communities in an indigenous
civilization', in his Village India (Chicago: 1955).
232
tI1e1r . powers.' 11 "
. ' approve d tI1aumaturg1c sb ' pre d.1ct10n
1 us . o f .Sukra ' s dcat I1
corroborated his claims to extraordinary powers; this had detennined his acceptance
among the Tanas. No force could challenge his authority, or confine h1.o~ in prison
against his will. It was believed by the Tanas that Sibu 'will return to them and that
the world belongs to him, and the British Govcmment will give the Raj up to him' . 136
British administrators were quick to recognize the dangers of such a belief The
Deputy Inspector General, Crimes and Railways, reported in April 1919, 'On being
asked what they were doing, the Oraons only pointed to their leaders, Maya Oraon and
Sibu Oraon ... unless the movement receives a check and the followers are made to
realise that their so-called leaders are not Bhagwans (Gods) and incapable of being
punished, I fear a serious spread of the movement.' 137 So strong was the Tana faith
in the leadership that after Sibu's arrest, the Tana congregation that awaited his return
The Tan a movement had developed by 1919 an organizational and institut; 0nal
network. While the arrest of Jatra in 1914 had led to the temporary withdrawa of the .
movement, the arrests of Sibu and Maya were followed by a new group of leaders
taking over: Naya Oraon of Murma, Sukra Oraon of Kuru and Singha and Debia
135. William Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India (london:
1896), pp. 183-96. Refer to Shahid Amin, 'Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur
District, Eastern UP, 1921-22' in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies Ill (Delhi
1989), p. 29.
136 Ibid.
137. Bihar and Orissa Government, Political Department, Special Section, File No.
86 of 1919.
233
Oraons of Mandar. 118 By October 1919, a Tana encampment was set up at Tikri under
the leadership of Turia who claimed to be a follower of Sibu. 119 The hierarchical and
pyram ida I structure of authority that had developed enabled Sibu, after his release, to
once again regain the mantle of control. Jatra, despite the welcome accorded to him
could never be rigid. The Tana preceptors were hardly ever prominent members of the
Oraon community; their influence rested on their charismatic appeal and the dreams
that they held out for the deprived sections of the community. When promises
remained unfulfilled, many of the Tanas left the faith; but there were others who
joined the movement hoping for their Raj. Disputes often occurred between the new
and the old members. Threats were issued to those who wished to revert to old
practices; and non-Bhagats were coerced into accepting the tenets of Tanaism. In
1916, in the Ghaghra jurisdiction of Ranchi where the movement had started in 1915,
the Oraons returned to their old customs; 140 in Garhwa, Bhandaria and Latehar in
Palamau, they began to drink again; 141 in Bhanderpur, they were reported to be
buying pigs and fowl again. 142 Santhal chaukidars from the Doars noted that in about
six weeks of the outbreak of the movement there, Tanas had relapsed into their old
138. Ibid.
139. Ibid.
140. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Ranchi, 22nd January, 1916.
141. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol
V, Palamau, 5th September, 1916.
142. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Extract, Bengal Abstract, 13th May, 1916.
234
habits. 143 In Bcro, it was recorded that about twenty-five Oraons, former Tanas, had
initiated an anti-Bhagwani movement 144 and that disputes had arisen between the
sympathizers and non-sympathizers of the Bhagwanis. 145 Even Tanas, who had
remained within the fold of the faith, were divided into conflicting groups. The
Superintendent of Police, Jalpaiguri, reported that while the 'new party' denied
knowh!dge of any mantra in which the word 'Gennan' had occurred, the men of the
'old party' said that they did sing such mantras. 146 Evidently, when the 'Gennan Baba'
had failed to deliver the goods, converts who had joined later decided to invoke a new
set of gods.
detection, and to mark their distance from non-believers, that the Tanas debarred
outsiders from attending their meetings. They gathered in jungles or lonely fields at
night, offered prayers from midnight to dawn, and sang songs in their own
language. 147 Sentries !,'tiarded their meeting places, and no one was allowed to
approach 'within sight or hearing ..! 48 The local chaukidar was instructed not to come
143. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Extract, Bengal Abstract, 24th June, 1916.
144. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Ranchi, 10th April, 1916.
145. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Ranchi, 17th June, 1916.
146. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Extract, Bengal Abstract, 3rd June, 1916.
147. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Extract, Bengal Abstract, 15th May, 1916.
148. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol
V, Extract, Bengal Abstract, 27th May, 1916.
149. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol
V, Palamau, 15th May, 1916.
235
And yet it was necessary to expand the frontiers of the faith. For a movement that
lacked social sanction among many in the Oraon community, coercion was one of the
methods adopted to bring members to the 1.1ith. Those who did not comply with the
regulations of the Tana faith were forbidden the use of wells, their wives were
declared to be witches, 150 their fowl and pigs were killed. 151 In an incident that
occurred at Mithapukur, Sana Oraon who had refused to join the movement, even after
having been threatened with assault, was attacked by Nathu under the orders of Samra
152
Oraon of Baldipukur. The power of Tana threats is revealed by the case of one
Charua Oraon who killed his wife and attempted to commit suicide. The Tanas had
warned him that the Germans were henceforth to rule the country and if he did not
recite the name of the German Raj, their God would take away his life. Charua, who
did not recite this mantra, was constantly abused, and he, therefore, decided upon the
stated action. 153 What was particularly resented was the renunciation of faith by
erstwhile Tanas who now chose to revert to their fanner customs. When K;lll_ji Oraon
wished to withdraw from the movement after join1ng it, the Tanas filled up his well
and threatened to kill him . 154 The Sub-Inspector of Latehar reported that the Oraons
of Hutar, Satang and other villages had decided to consult their guru in village
150. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Palamau, 11th April, 1916.
151. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Palamau, 15th May, 1916.
152. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Extract, Bengal Abstract, 27th May, 1916.
153. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Bihar S. B., 19th February, 1916, and 'Die Aufstandsbewegung unter den
Uraos in Chota Nagpur und Bhutan'(The rebellious movements among the Uraos
in Chota Nagpur and Bhutan], Allgemeine Missions Zeitschrift, Book 8, August,
1916.
154. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, 15th April, 1916.
236
Jhinkichatti, Lohardagga, in order to complain against the Oraons who were going to
drink liquor prepared by the .mtuils (hanias). 155 Interestingly, the Tanas were in turn
regarded as unclean and refused the use of wells by the non-Ora< . " 156
every stage, the participation of the Oraons of several villages, and an increasing
number of Oraons came to be bound by the Tana faith. At Palamau, dallim were seen
to bring a few leaves from a karam tree which they would leave at a village, after
which they would move on to the next village on being given fresh leaves. 157 Often
Tanas in their mode of visual and aural transmission: Sibu moved about in the village
mobilization. Rumours that predicted imaginary battles between Gods and men in
which the Oraons would be victorious because the gods would fight for them, and the
hopes that propitiated goats would tum into deliverers, shifted reality to utopia. While
discussing the patterns for the communication of ideas, tile Superintendent of Police,
Jalpaiguri, reported that the Tana doctrine was being taught by Oraon bead-sellers as
ordinary preachers were afraid of the police. These bead-sellers visited different hats,
155. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Palamau, 12th March, 1916.
156. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Extract, Bengal Abstract, 1st April, 1916.
157 Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol.
V, Palamau, 16th January, 1916.
158. Bihar and Orissa Government, Political Department, Special Section, File No.
86 of 1919.
237
villages and tea-gardens, and under the pretence of selling beads, explained the new
doctrines. 159 The hut or the market place was the focal point for cconom ic
transactions and social interaction; tea-gardens were niches where migrant labourers
flocked. Such spots were ideal for verbal exchanges and for the dissemination and
transference of information.
What is striking about Tana operations is the element of ritual performance. This
was an important medium through which the objectives of the movement were
transmitted among the followers, and communal ties strengthened. The vigorous
the ritual of choosing an article as an emblem of the hhul and transferring this emblem
beyond the boundaries of the village, the discarding of utensils, tools and ornaments
as signifying the expelling of negative forces - these were the visual signs of the
'transmission of insurgency'. 160 Similarly, the hymns sung by the Bhagat leaders in
the form of questions, answers, stories and injunctions were part of the Tana mode of
performative pedagogy.
The programmatic thrust of the Tana Bhagat movement was marked by references
to Oraon cultural traditions and history, and yet by an opposition to the bhuinhu~ and
their practices. It was also marked bv a conflict with non-Oraons who had entered
their country and a simultaneous appropriation and adaptation of those practices that
had reached them through a process of interaction with different cultures. These two
trends were of course interlinked. Even as the Tanas drew upon the Oraon and other
159. Bihar and Orissa Government, Police Department, Abstract of Intelligence, Vol
V, Extract, Bengal Abstract, 3rd June, 1916.
160. Ranajit Guha discusses the different methods of the 'transmission' of
'insurgency' in a tribal society. Refer to Guha, Elementary Aspects in Peasant
Insurgency, pp. 220-77.
238
worlds, the practices and traditions that were appropriated were inevitably transformed,
since it was the present, in conjunction with their heritage, that mediated Tana actions.
Thus, even when they disavowed and negated select1 ~ Oraon practices, the break with
their past could never be complete. Spirit-worship and the role of the mali, for
example, were denounced by the Tanas. Paradoxically, the procedure adopted by the
Tanas to expel the hhuls was an adaptation of the traditional methods of spirit-ousting
in Oraon society. At their nightly meetings in 1915, the Tanas would sweep the
ground and brush each stone and bush with their tamarind twigs in order to drive out
the hhuts. 161 This action was akin to that of a mali who passed a broom over the
patient's body several times from head to foot, and then on all sides, to get rid of a
a grave near the encampment at Tiko and the Bhagats pour water on this daily,
alleging that it is the grave of an Oraon who was killed in a massacre of Oraons b'
zamindars hundred years ago and they are now receiving the spirit of their
forefathers.' 163 Invoking ancestor spirits was a hallowed Oraon practice that the Tanas
had renounced. Yet, invoking only those ancestors who had been a part of a history
of resistance to the zamindars, was an act that indicated the imbricated realms of the
239