Previous Year Question

Option (d) is correct. The tribal insurrections of the nineteenth century occurred in different regions and their immediate causes were not always identical. However, they shared a wider underlying process—the disruption of the traditional system of land, agriculture and resources of tribal society under colonial rule.

Colonial land-revenue arrangements altered traditional communal land rights and local power relations in many tribal regions. According to IGNOU, in regions such as Chotanagpur, the replacement of the traditional khuntkatti arrangement by the zamindari system created new categories of zamindars and ryots and resulted in eviction from land, enhanced rents and forms of forced labour such as begar.

At the same time, moneylenders, traders, revenue farmers and other outsiders—often described as ‘dikus’ in tribal regions—penetrated these areas increasingly. The growing cash economy and the demand for revenue/rent increased tribal dependence on moneylenders; high interest and indebtedness contributed to further loss of land rights. IGNOU directly connects colonial intrusion with the erosion of traditional rights over land, forests and the tribal social order.

Colonial forest policies widened this disruption further. Forests on which tribal communities depended for cultivation, hunting, grazing and forest produce increasingly came under colonial control. Forest reservation restricted customary access and regulated or prohibited several traditional practices such as shifting cultivation. NCERT's Tribals, Dikus and the Vision of a Golden Age similarly places forest laws, traders-moneylenders and changing livelihoods in the background of tribal resistance.

Thus, the factors mentioned in options (a), (b) and (c) were important in particular regions or particular uprisings, but they were not present with exactly the same force in every tribal movement. Missionary influence, for example, was not equally significant in all tribal regions. In contrast, colonial intervention in land relations, resources and the traditional agrarian order provides the wider common factor encompassing these different changes.

New revenue arrangements — one component of the wider disruption
Missionary influence — significant in some regions
Moneylenders/traders/revenue farmers — an important component of the wider disruption
Complete disruption of the old agrarian order — the broadest common factor