Peasant, Tribal & Religious Reform Movements

The British had settled Santhals in the Damin-i-Koh — the forested foothills of the Rajmahal hills — hoping they would clear land and pay revenue quietly. Instead, the Santhals found themselves at the mercy of Bengali and Bihari mahajans, grasping zamindars and corrupt police. Grain lent at sowing time was recovered at harvest at ruinous rates; a small debt could swallow a family's land and even its cattle and children's labour.

On 30 June 1855, at Bhognadih, four brothers — Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu, with Chand and Bhairav — gathered thousands of Santhals. They declared an end to the rule of dikus and the Company, proclaimed self-rule, and marched with bows and battle-axes. Moneylenders' houses were attacked, records of debt burnt, and for months large parts of the region were out of British control. This armed rebellion is remembered as the "Hul" (revolution).

But the Hul was not wasted. The government realised ordinary laws had failed the Santhals. It carved out a separate district — the Santhal Parganas (1855–56) — a "non-regulation" area where normal laws did not automatically apply, and gave special tenancy protections so that Santhal land could not easily pass to outsiders. This principle — tribal land needs special legal protection — echoes in tribal law to this day.

Birsa Munda was born in the Chotanagpur region in 1875. In his short life he became for his people "Bhagwan Birsa" and "Dharti Aba" — Father of the Earth. The Mundas' pain was specific: their ancient khuntkatti system (joint ownership of land by the clan that first cleared it) was being destroyed as zamindars and dikus turned free Mundas into rent-paying tenants, while beth begari (forced, unpaid labour) humiliated them and missionary activity pressed on their faith and identity.

Birsa's movement was religious before it was political. He preached a purified faith — his followers, the Birsaits, gave up liquor and superstition and worshipped one God — and he declared that the rule of the Queen was over and the rule of the Mundas had begun. This blend of religious revival + agrarian anger + political self-rule made the Ulgulan ("Great Tumult") of 1899–1900 far more organised than a spontaneous riot.

In the last days of December 1899 the Birsaits rose, attacking police stations, churches and symbols of diku power around the Ranchi region. The British hunted the movement down; Birsa was captured in early 1900 and died in Ranchi jail on 9 June 1900 — the official cause recorded as cholera. He was barely 25.

The Ulgulan too forced reform: the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908 recognised khuntkatti rights and restricted the transfer of tribal land to non-tribals. Like the Santhal Parganas protections, the CNT Act survives (in Jharkhand) as living law — one of the clearest cases in Indian history of a tribal revolt directly producing protective legislation.

The Wahabi (Walliullahi) movement was begun by Syed Ahmad of Rae Bareli (1786–1831), inspired by the teachings of Shah Waliullah of Delhi. He declared India under foreign rule to be dar-ul-harb and called for its liberation, setting up a base at Sittana on the north-west frontier. Syed Ahmad died fighting the Sikhs at the Battle of Balakot (1831) — but the movement did not die with him.

Here is the fact the paper loves: the movement's real organising centre in India was PATNA. From the Sadiqpur locality of Patna, the brothers Vilayat Ali and Enayat Ali ran a remarkable all-India network — collecting funds, recruiting volunteers and sending men and money up to the frontier camp for decades. Patna's Sadiqpur family kept the anti-British jihad alive long after 1831.

After 1857 the British turned on the Wahabis with full force. A series of state trials in the 1860s–70s — at Ambala (1864), Patna (1865) and later at Malda and Rajmahal — sent leaders to prison and the Andamans. By the early 1870s the movement was effectively crushed, though its long defiance had rattled the Raj.

The Santhal and Munda risings were the biggest, but not alone. A chain of revolts ran through the 19th century, each triggered by the same poison — land passing to outsiders and unbearable revenue demands.

• Kol Uprising (1831–32): the Kols of Chotanagpur, led by Buddho Bhagat, rose when their headmen's lands were handed to outsider (diku) farmers. Suppressed only by large military operations.
• Bhumij Revolt (1832–33): led by Ganga Narain in the Barabhum/Jungle Mahals area against new revenue burdens — often called "Ganga Narain's hangama".
• Kherwar / Sapha Har Movement (1870s): Bhagirath Manjhi led Santhals of the Santhal Parganas in a movement mixing monotheistic religious reform with refusal of the new revenue settlement.
• Indigo cultivators' resistance (1859–60): ryots of Bengal refused to sow indigo for European planters; Dinabandhu Mitra's play "Nil Darpan" (1860) exposed planter atrocities, and the Indigo Commission (1860) followed. In north Bihar the planters' oppressive system survived — until Champaran, 1917 (see the freedom-struggle chapter).

In the 20th century, peasant anger found an organiser: Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, a sanyasi who settled at the Sitaram Ashram, Bihta (near Patna) and made it the headquarters of peasant India. He founded the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha in 1929 — the first strong provincial peasant organisation in the country — demanding relief from rent, illegal cesses and zamindari oppression.

The Bihar experiment went national: at the Lucknow session in April 1936, the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) was founded, and Sahajanand Saraswati became its first president. His slogan grew steadily sharper — from tenancy reform to the outright cry "how shall zamindari be destroyed?" — decades before the law caught up.

The late 1930s saw the bakasht struggles: zamindars had ejected occupancy tenants from bakasht (self-cultivated) lands during the Depression, and the Kisan Sabha fought to restore them. Karyanand Sharma led the famous struggle in the Munger region (Barahiya Tal), and leaders like Yadunandan (Jubba) Sahay carried the movement across Bihar. These struggles fed directly into zamindari abolition after independence — Bihar was the first state to legislate it (see the post-independence chapter).

The great reform movements of the 19th century reached Bihar chiefly through education. The Arya Samaj (founded by Swami Dayanand Saraswati, 1875) spread in Bihar through its network of DAV (Dayanand Anglo-Vedic) schools, promoting Vedic learning, widow remarriage and opposition to caste rigidity — quietly training a generation of nationalist-minded students.

Reform and peasant politics met at the Sitaram Ashram at Bihta — Sahajanand's base combined a sanyasi's social-reform authority with hard agrarian organisation, which is exactly why zamindars found him so difficult to dismiss.

In the 1930s, social assertion took a caste form too: the Triveni Sangh, organised in the Shahabad region, brought together three backward castes — Yadav, Kurmi and Koeri — to demand dignity, education and a political voice against upper-caste and zamindari dominance. It is an early landmark of backward-caste mobilisation in Bihar.