The History of Hills: the voice of the past

Abstract

The tribal world is eco-centric and the mutual relationship between the two has continued since the ancient past. The evolutionary trend of the homo genus centred around the changing pattern in the biosphere and the climate. The importance of natural resources for survivability during the early lithic period was more dominating than in the later lithic period when human started to dominate the resources as per their convenience. This changing notion was an outcome of the cognitive domain to think and to imagine brought domestication of both floral and faunal species. As per Darwin’s theory of adaptation, heterogeneous tribal communities emerged as per their ecosystem and this group got further divided into subgroups mainly for resource accessibility, and availability. For instance in Jharkhand, only more than 32 tribal communities emerged. However, some remain nomadic pastoralists while some settled agriculturalists like Santhals and Mundas. Most of the tribal communities remained aloof from the ecosystem outside and thus remained comparatively primitive in their tools and weapons. Since the area of their settlement is full of resources that are important for a state to meet their expenses and to build a surplus brought them frequent confrontations with the official references of which are available from the Mauryan period and became extensive under the cupidity of the British government in India and in the Westminster. The highly valued timber and other resources of India attracted the interest of the government and using their political and military might displaced tribes, projected them as non-eco-friendly, criminals, Thuggees and were forced peasantised. However, the alien rule on India brought several changes impacts of which can be felt even today. The advent of missionaries and the process of proselytization started with the Portuguese. Still, they became far-reaching during the British rule thus justifying the three main G’s of their expeditions- Gold, God and Glory. Mostly destitute, downtrodden, tribals and other depressed or underprivileged sections took this opportunity and evangelized. Many laws were appropriated that boosted the process and this became a main reason for mass-scale upheaval during the 1857 revolt and in post 1857 uprisings. Many communities protested against the dictates of the outsiders and fought to protect their homeland and mother nature. Many bloodshed conflicts became part of historical studies including the Santhal Rebellion and the Mundas. Some of the protests brought fruitful results like in the Santhal Pargana region on protective measures to tribal land or Post Champaran satyagraha protection to farmers against the imposed production of Indigo. British Industrialisation brought urbanisation, peasantisation of tribes and commercial farming like the production of cash crops. The farming community were mostly attracted to produce commercial crops to earn more but this eventually benefitted a few big zamindars, and the moneylenders and this gave rise to a new dominant social group in the state. Many of the policies formulated between 1857 and 1947 even continued in post- 1947 India with mutatis mutandis including forest laws and criminal tribal legislations. However, nationalist scholars in the recent past have given due impetus to the tribes as an important part of rebuilding the Indian history as a true history.