Subject: munda village chief

Culture: Kol

Setting: Chota Nagpur 19thc

Evolution:

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

* Mishra/Devi/Singh/Kumar 2025 p15-17

"In 1822, after the death of Raja Govind Deo, his nineteen year old son, Raja Jagannath Sahi Deo became the Raja of Chota Nagpur. Cuthbert, the officiating Collector, rightly predicted, on this occasion that 'the young Raja probably like his father will be a mere cipher in his Raj'. Raja Jagannath incurred huge debts to the Sikh horse dealers and Mohammedan cloth merchants, and so was obliged to lease out villages to collect taxes for a specified time. These came to be known as thekedars, who practiced extortion on the villagers by violence and fraud. They always tried to squeeze as much as possible from the ryots in the shape of rents, abwabs and salamis. The tribals had too much to endure. The result was the general revolt in 1831-32.

"The immediate reason was the following. The brother of Maharaja Jagannath Sahi Deo made grants of villages in Sonepur to certain Mohammedans, Sikhs and Hindus; and so the mundas and mankis (village headmen) not only lost their ancestral villages but the foreigners seduced their women and sisters. The Mundas could not bear this type of oppression and so they decided to 'burn, plunder, murder and loot' their oppressors.

"The insurrection started on 11th December 1831, when a party of Kols carried out about two hundred heads of cattle from a small village Kochang of Sonepur. The movement spread from the present district of Ranchi to Singhbhum, Manbhum, Hazaribagh and Palamau. Captain Impey went to quell the uprising and Sir Thomas Wilkinson followed him later on.

"There was a Government inquiry into the insurrection. Major Sutherland, the private Secretary to the Vice President in Council, in a report of the year 1832 gave the following reasons. The tribals hated the Hindus and Mohammedans. The Hindus were mostly traders and moneylenders who made enormous profits while the Mohammedans levied usurious interests. The tribals were hardly able to get out of the clutches of either because the 'interlopers' were backed by the police and the court.

"Mr. Blunt, who had lived in Chota Nagpur (1805) and was later a member of Governor-General's Council, wrote in his minutes a detailed account of the cases of the insurrection. He pointed out that dispossession of the mankis and mundas of Sonepur, Tamar, Sillie, Bundu and the adjacent Parganas from the hereditary land was the cause of unrest. To restore and permanently secure tranquility it was necessary, he said, to reinstate the hereditary proprietors who have been dispossessed from their land in Chota Nagpur.

"The rising of the Kols in 1831-32 has been variously described by different writers. O'Malley calls it the 'Kol rebellion' in which the Mundas and the Oraons 'rose en masse' and were joined by the Hos, the Cheros and the Kharwars. On the other hand, Bradley Birt refers to it as 'the Kol Mutiny'. Thornton described the risings as an orgy of mutual slaughter in which 'the hand of every man is against his neighbour'. J.C. Jha calls the disturbances as the 'Kol Insurrection'. J. Reid also gives the same title in this explosion.

"Therefore, the Kol rebellion was against the agrarian system, debt laws and the new judicial and revenue regulations (e.g. excise duties, tributary payments) etc. and the influx of hordes of middlemen. This rising made the government aware of 'the necessity of radical reforms in the administration and after the suppression of the revolt every cause of discontent of the Adivasis was sought to be removed by the reforms in administrative, judicial, police, revenue and debt laws and restrictions were imposed on transfer or mortgage of landed property to avoid fraud by middlemen.' A big administrative change from Regulation to Non-Regulation system of government took place after the insurrection was suppressed."

Costume