Bihar Quiz: Peasant and Tribal Movements in Bihar

Shukla was a cultivator of Champaran who followed Gandhi from the Lucknow session of the Congress in 1916 until he agreed to see the indigo districts for himself.

Twenty kathas made a bigha, so the tenant had to put about a seventh of his holding under indigo for the European planter, on terms the planter fixed, and pay a string of illegal cesses besides.

The Santhals of the Damin-i-Koh, pressed by moneylenders, revenue farmers and the railway contractors, rose under the brothers Sidhu and Kanhu, with Chand and Bhairav beside them, and declared an end to Company rule in their country in 1855.

The word means a great tumult or upheaval in Mundari, and it is the name given to Birsa Munda's rising of 1899 and 1900 against landlords, contractors and missionaries, and above all against the destruction of the khuntkatti system under which Munda families held land collectively.

A sanyasi turned organiser, he built the Bihar Pradesh Kisan Sabha in 1929 to press tenants' claims against the zamindars, and the body became the model for the All India Kisan Sabha founded at Lucknow in April 1936, of which he was the first president with N. G. Ranga as…

The peasant organisations of the provinces came together at Lucknow in April 1936 as the All India Kisan Sabha, and the Bihar leader Sahajanand Saraswati was chosen its first president, with N. G. Ranga of Andhra as general secretary.

Bakasht was land that zamindars had taken into their own cultivation after evicting occupancy tenants during the depression, and the Kisan Sabha fought to get it restored to the tenants.

Jatra Oraon, also called Jatra Bhagat, preached among the Oraons of the Gumla and Ranchi country that they should give up liquor, animal sacrifice and work for landlords, and refuse to pay rent to outsiders.

The rising of 1899 and 1900 forced the administration to look at the loss of tribal land, and the Act of 1908 recognised the khuntkatti right by which Munda families held land collectively, restricted its transfer to outsiders and ended the forced labour known as beth begari.

The Kols of Chotanagpur rose when their lands were given over to outsiders, called dikus, as farms and leases, and the rising under Buddho Bhagat spread through Ranchi, Hazaribagh, Palamu and Singhbhum before troops put it down.

After Gandhi recorded the statements of thousands of cultivators and sat on the official enquiry committee, the government accepted that the indigo obligation and the illegal cesses had to go, and the Act of 1918 abolished tinkathia and ordered the refund of a part of the money extorted from tenants.