The Great Tribal Warriors Of Bharat: New Book: Free Chapter

The Robinhood of Jungle TerryIn the winter of 1783, 29-year-old Augustus Cleveland, the collector of Bhagalpur, was preparing to lead a force of armed sepoys to quell some disturbance that had erupted in the area. From what he had gathered, this was just a case of a group of hill men expressing their displeasure, albeit in an exaggerated manner, over some petty issue. Cleveland would have preferred the mode of conciliation, though. This was his style of administration, and where his talent lay as an efficient civil servant of the Bengal Civil Service. He had brought about several positive changes and his bosses in Calcutta were in awe of the results he had produced. The revolting hill men, however, had a different point of view. So, Cleveland rode out of Tilha Kothi, a large building of Italian design situated atop a hill by the Ganges, battle-ready and armed with intelligence of the guerrilla warfare that awaited him, fully confident of conquest. Riding out at full charge, he passed by a dense clump of trees that momentarily caused him to slow down. As he worked to find his way ahead, he felt a piercing pain seize him. He looked down and saw an arrow protruding from his chest. It was one of the poison-loaded arrows used by the hill men during war. He realized at once that only one of the hill men would have had the courage to do this—the Santhal chief with bloodshot eyes, Tilka Manjhi, who, thus, unwittingly became the first Adivasi leader from the Santhal community to take up arms against the British.

A divine right to ruleTilka and the Santhals were used to equality and justice through self-governance. They considered the dominating presence of the white men—the dikus1—unwarranted and wanted them evicted. Cleveland, on the other hand, considered himself a just dispenser of the law. He wanted the Santhals to comply with the British administration. The problems created by this scenario had no resolution in sight. This wasn’t the kind of fiasco Cleveland had anticipated in his already successful career. Neither was this the kind of fate that Tilka had envisioned for his people when he had taken over the reins of chiefdom from his father, a divine honour reserved only for the 12 totemic clans among the Santhals.Born on 11 February 1750, Sundara Murmu’s (also known as Chundra) heir grew up much like the youth of his age while also preparing for his future as the manjhi—the chief of the clan. Every Santhal hamlet has a manjhi hanan, who is considered the father of the community.

The manjhi hanan receives divine powers through prayers and passes them on to a subsequent descendant, who is referred to as the manjhi.Santhal tradition requires the manjhi to become adept at archery and wrestling—skills that would prove his physical prowess as the chief. As for the wisdom to maintain peace and prosperity in the community, it is bestowed by the Marang Buru, the Santhal supreme deity, at their sacred grove, when the time is right. While being groomed to be the manjhi, the young Tilka acted as the jog-manjhi, the chief of all the children of the hamlet, akin to a crown prince.Around the same time, halfway across the globe, a young British man, Augustus Cleveland had applied to the East India Company to be deployed as a civil servant. He was born into a wealthy and distinguished family that had served the Royal Navy Admiralty for many generations. After graduating in writing, arithmetic and mercantile accounts, the 17-year-old Augustus arrived in India as a writer for the Company in 1771.

Robert Clive had signed the Treaty of Allahabad with Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II and secured the right to collect revenue from Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and present-day Jharkhand. He had little inkling of what to expect from the province he was sent to tax, except to generate huge profits for the Company. Much of these newly acquired territories came under Jungle Terry or Jungle Terai—the forested lowlands that lay to the west of present-day Bhagalpur and covered large parts of West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand. It included Rajmahal Hills in present-day Jharkhand, surrounded by Kharagpur, Munger, Birbhum and Jamui. Rich in timber, tasar silk, coal and iron ore, this was a tract of land that had never been subjugated, even during the time of Akbar. The people here had never owed allegiance to either the Mughals or the nawabs of Bengal. They were self-governed and sustained the economy on their own terms through cultivation and hunting. Taxation was an alien concept to them. So, to find their property confiscated upon failing to pay taxes was beyond their comprehension.As the village headman, getting the British administration to revoke the taxation policy became Tilka’s first challenge. This issue was yet unaddressed, when the next misfortune struck— he crops failed in 1768 due to a failure of the monsoon. The situation was aggravated further, and, by 1770, famine had set in. Tilka led his kinsmen out of Jungle Terry in search of food and hope for a life without the burden of tax. But such a place could not be found. What irked Tilka was that, even in such a situation, the British government was more concerned about their revenue collection target not being met. While the Company officials calculated a revised, higher tax rate, Tilka and his fellow manjhis saw their people die of hunger and sell their cattle, seeds, tools, implements and even children, to pay their taxes. Those who survived ate leaves and grass, while the government sold whatever grains were procured at high rates elsewhere. Later that year, the rains did come. But instead of providing relief, the monsoon unleashed an epidemic of smallpox.

In 1771, the province was a dismal picture of barren lands and a glaring absence of people.Augustus started his career under these circumstances. His influential connections—most notably the one with Sir John Shore (later Baron John Teignmouth)—ensured that he was rapidly promoted to the assistant collectorship of Bhagalpur and Rajmahal Hills in 1776, eventually becoming the collector of the region in 1779.

Unlike Augustus, Tilka’s lineage of mystical origins was rooted in steep morals, which meant having to constantly fight for justice.Conciliation vs guerrilla actionThe lack of any initiative by the government to improve the economic condition of the people infuriated Tilka. In 1778, he issued the call to end diku raj. He acted swiftly, creating the Mukti Dal, a group of youngsters trained by Tilka that successfully drove out the Company’s army from the Ramgarh camp near Bhagalpur. Tilka led from the front, looting the government treasury and giving away the money to the needy. The masses followed suit by unleashing a host of disruptive activities like looting the dak services and residences of government officials. This event marked the onset of guerrilla warfare that would last for long.While people focused on pushing out the Company rule, the government busied itself with the zamindars—they were encouraged to lure villagers into tilling their lands. This led to a group of Santhals migrating to the Rajmahal Hills, where the Paharias lived. The Paharias were a race of hill tribes who hunted and plundered. All attempts by the British to turn them into settled cultivators had failed, due to which the fertile lands of the hills lay barren. To the British, this amounted to the loss of revenue.

The arrival of the Santhals was, thus, a boon to the government.However, the Santhals soon discovered that through a policy of conciliation laid down by Captains Browne and Brooke between 1772 and 1779, the British had converted Rajmahal Hills into a safe haven for the Paharias called the Damin-i-Koh. As the collector, Cleveland intensified these efforts, which included providing lifelong pensions and rent-free land to the Paharia chiefs, establishing Hill Assemblies and bazaars for bartering their goods, raising a corps of hill archers and even building a school for the children. To Tilka, it seemed as if Cleveland was using a two-pronged approach of subjugation of the Santhals and conciliation towards the Pahariasat the same time. He vehemently opposed this and, from 1780 onwards, he embarked on a quest to ensure that either the Santhals received the same conciliatory treatment as the Paharias or Cleveland and his system were evicted. Openly at war against the British now, Tilka and the Santhals lost no opportunity to attack Cleveland.

Tilka Manjhi’s attack on Cleveland on a winter morning of 1783 left the latter bedridden for three months, after which he was advised to proceed to the Cape of Good Hope for recuperation. In early January 1784, he boarded the Atlas Indiaman in the company of Marian Hastings—the wife of Warren Hastings.3However, by the time the vessel reached the mouth of the Hooghly, he had died. His body was put in a barrel of spirits and brought back to be buried in the South Park Street cemetery in Calcutta. A huge monument was erected by the Court of Directors of the East India Company in honour and recognition of his service. Given Cleveland’s proximity to the powers that were at Fort William, the attack on him was regarded as an attack on the authorities. Already harsh with their economic policies, the British authorities became even more brutal with the desire to avenge Cleveland’s death. A massive manhunt was launched for Tilka, and he was to be brought in dead or alive.It took the Company army another year to track and nab the Santhal chief. After trying every trick in the book to isolate him in the mountainous tracks and offering a few villagers luxurious items that tempted them to give away Tilka’s whereabouts, he was finally caught on 12January 1785. Upon capture, the British soldiers tied Tilka to four horses and dragged him all the way to the collector’s residence at Bhagalpur. His body was soaked in blood, yet he was alive. The next day, he was publicly hanged from a banyan tree. Today, the site is the residence of the superintendent of police of Bhagalpur. On the contrary, the Tilha Kothi went on to be a temporary residence to Rabindranath Tagore, where he is believed to have written a portion of his Nobel Prize-winning work, Gitanjali.4 Today, it houses the Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology of the Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University. However, written records have a different story to tell. While Cleveland remained fresh in the minds of the Paharias as ‘Chilmil Saheb’ 160 years after his death, in stark contrast, as Sir John Houlton ICS found out, there were no references to Tilka Manjhi. In fact, the records even state that the cause for Cleveland’s death was his poor health due to the harsh climatic conditions as well as the stress of being a civil servant. Consequently, history tends to question if Tilka Manjhi was a myth or a reality.

In truth, Tilka Manjhi’s uprising was no flash in the pan. It partially kept in check the exploitative and avariciously expanding British Empire that had, until then, been unresisted in reaching newer far-flung territories. Thus, Tilka Manjhi had, in his own way, set the stage for the many revolts yet to spring in the region, most notable of which were the Munda uprising and the Santhal hul.