Jharkhand means the Land of Forests. It literally is that. Go on a train journey through this area (e.g. Kolkata to Ranchi and then onwards to Bhubaneswar) and you will know what I mean. It has always remained the land of forests / bushes with abundant wildlife and other natural resources including water and minerals below the ground. Centuries of forests have led to vast deposits of coal and other minerals in this area…but we will come to that later.
So by any wildest imagination, what do you expect a small tribe staying in a forest during the medieval period to be doing? Want help with imagination? Think of an Animal Planet episode on behavior of a pride of Lions in the jungle.
They will surely be hunting for food with metal weapons. They will also be very carefully guarding their women and children from other marauding tribes since that’s what a person in a jungle does. They will be fighting very very aggressively for every small piece of land which they will again guard since they will have a direct claim to the game which is available on that land. Since most of their life is dependent on land, they will by nature have to be aggressive in behavior. (I am sure the guys who were not so domineering found themselves demoted to somewhere lower down the hierarchy.) These “heroes” of the tribe will get the best of the women and the lion’s share of the food. They will possibly also get power to become leaders or elect leaders, take decisions regarding main events in the tribe, attack other tribes if required (predominantly for land I am sure)… This feeling of mine has also been reflected in a study on tribes done by a CountryStudies group1.
Now extrapolate this nature over many centuries and what do you get? Small to medium sized tribes which have learnt to fend for themselves while living with their natural surroundings which are forests. They also surely love their forests since these forests are the ones which give them food and shelter.
Thus safe to say that right from the period of Peopling of India2 till around the 16th century when the Mughals invaded India, these tribes (or adivasis in hindi) were living in complete harmony with nature….and among themselves? They really didn’t care for anyone outside the realm of their area which was as small or as big as they wanted depending on possibly just one thing and that was the availability of food. Simple life. Truly…
And how do these tribes behave now? Exactly in the same way as they have behaved for the last 50-60 thousand years! The Gods they worship, the culture they follow, the food they eat (and even how they procure it and cook it)……nothing seems to have changed drastically in so many thousand years.
Some more historical facts:
1. The early Indian dynasties – Mauryas, Guptas and others did not bother the tribals. They allowed these to live the life that they liked and the entire relationship was very symbiotic. The famous Swami Valmiki is actually known to be an adivasi.
2. Mughals were the first who truly tried to usurp the lands belonging to these tribes. I could not find anything much on how that went for either the mughals or the tribals. Numerous references do exist to the use of Mughal architecture in tribal areas.
3. From the beginning of the British rule in India, the British had a very difficult time trying to keep the land which they had claimed under the Jagirdari system where they appointed a Jagirdar for the land and asked the tribes to pay taxes. The revolts of all these tribes3 led to some of the bloodiest revolts against British rule. Though not as famous as the 1857 uprising, each of these was difficult for the British to suppress. (Hindsight: If only the tribes had learnt to live together instead of fighting each other, they would probably never have been controlled by the British.)
Clearly, can we assume that if their land or livelihood were threatened, these tribes would take up arms and fight till death? Of course, that is what they have been taught by their ancestors…just like we have been taught to earn our livelihood and support our family by taking care of the basic requirements as well as some luxuries if possible.
Some links referred to in this part:
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