The purpose of this article is to question the overarching notion of ‘millenarianism’ as well as its applicability to various ‘tribal’ rebellions and social movements in British India. I do so by carefully re-reading the colonial archives and secondary sources concerning the Birsaite uprising afresh in order to rethink how certain forest-dwelling groups who came to be defined as ‘tribes’ in colonial times actually encountered the modern state as well as Christianity in the late nineteenth century. Why did the Birsaites take up arms? Who rebelled? Against whom? What was the role of religion in their uprising? In answering these questions, I follow the Subalternist’s injunction to take the lifeworlds of the marginal and oppressed seriously in their own terms without imposing, in a vanguardist manner, the pre-existing conceptual order of ‘millenarianism’. Yet I also intend to be faithful to the social historian’s desire to uncover and examine the social location, aims and methods of Birsa and his followers.
AdasM.Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order, Chapel Hill, 1979.
2.
AlleeM. A.Law and Local Society in Late Imperial China: Northern Taiwan in the Nineteenth Century, Palo Alto, 1995.
3.
ArnoldD.‘Rebellious Hillmen: The Gudem-Rampa Risings, 1839–1924’, in GuhaRanajit, ed., Subaltern Studies I, New Delhi, 1982, pp. 88–142.
4.
AslanR.Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, New York, 2013.
5.
Aung-ThwinM.The Return of the Galon King: History, Law, and Rebellion in Colonial Burma, Athens, 2010.
6.
BateB.Tamil Oratory and the Dravidian Aesthetic: Democratic Practice in South India, New York, 2009.
7.
BowenF. J.Father Constant Lievens, S.J.: The Apostle of Chota-Nagpur, St. Louis, 1936.
8.
BurridgeK.New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities, New York, 1969.
9.
CarrinM. and Tambs-LycheH., An Encounter of Peripheries: Santals, Missionaries, and Their Changing Worlds, 1867–1900, New Delhi, 2008.
10.
CederlöfG.Landscapes and the Law: Environmental Politics, Regional Histories, and Contests over Nature, Ranikhet, 2008.
11.
ChandraU.‘Liberalism and its Other: The Politics of Primitivism in Colonial and Postcolonial Indian Law’, Law & Society Review, Vol. 47 (1), 2013, pp. 135–68.
12.
ChandraU.‘Negotiating Leviathan: Statemaking and Resistance in the Margins of Modern India’, PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2013.
CohnN.The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, New York, 1970.
15.
ComaroffJ. and ComaroffJ. L., Of Revelation and Revolution, Chicago, 1991.
16.
de SaF.Crisis in Chota Nagpur: With Special Reference to the Judicial Conflict between Jesuit Missionaries and British Government Officials, November 1889-March 1890, Bangalore, 1975.
17.
DasguptaSangeeta. ‘Reordering of Tribal Worlds: Tana Bhagats, Missionaries and the Raj’, PhD dissertation, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 1999.
18.
DasguptaSwapan‘Adivasi Politics in Midnapur, c. 1760–1924’, in GuhaRanajit, ed., Subaltern Studies IV, New Delhi, 1985, pp. 100–35.
19.
DattaK. K.The Santal Insurrection of 1855–1857, Calcutta, 1940.
20.
DesrocheH.The Sociology of Hope, London, 1979.
21.
ElbourneE.Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853, Montreal and Kingston, 2002.
22.
FieldD.Rebels in the Name of the Tsar, Boston, 1976.
23.
FuchsS.Godmen on the Warpath: A Study of Messianic Movements in India, New Delhi, 1992.
24.
GoswamiM.‘Partha Chatterjee’, Public Culture, Vol. 25 (1), pp. 177–89.
25.
GuhaR.Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Durham, 1999.
26.
HaynesD. and PrakashG.‘Introduction: The Entanglement of Power and Resistance’, in HaynesD. and PrakashG., eds, Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia, Berkeley, 1992.
27.
HillC.The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, London, 1972.
28.
HobsbawmE. J.Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries, New York, 1959.
29.
HunterW. W.A Statistical Account of Bengal: Districts of Hazáribágh and Lohárdagá, London, 1877.
30.
India Office Records (IOR), British Library, London.
31.
KarlssonB. G.Unruly Hills: A Political Ecology of India’s Northeast, New York, 2011.
32.
LanternariV.The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults, New York, 1963.
33.
LindenfeldD. F. and RichardsonM., eds, Beyond Conversion and Syncretism: Indigenous Encounters with Missionary Christianity, 1800–2000, New York, 2011.
34.
LorenzenD. N.‘Warrior Ascetics in Indian History’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 98 (1), 1978, pp. 61–75.
35.
MacDougallJ.Land or Religion? The Sardar and Kherwar Movements in Bihar, 1858–1895, New Delhi, 1985.
36.
MahtoS.Hundred Years of Christian Missions in Chotanagpur since 1845, Ranchi, 1971.
37.
MohapatraP. P.‘Class Conflict and Agrarian Regimes in Chotanagpur, 1860–1950’, Indian Economic Social History Review, Vol. 28 (1), 1991, pp. 1–42.
38.
National Archives of India (NAI), New Delhi: Foreign and Home (Public) Proceedings.
39.
NovetzkeC. L.‘The Subaltern Numen: Making History in the Name of God’, History of Religions, Vol. 46 (2), 2006, pp. 99–126.
40.
O’BrienK. J.‘Rightful Resistance’, World Politics, Vol. 49 (1), 1996, pp. 31–55.
41.
Papers Relating to Chotanagpur Agrarian Disputes (PCAD), Vol. I, Calcutta, 1891.
42.
PinchW. R.Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires, Cambridge, 2006.
43.
PonetteP.The Dawn of Ranchi Mission, 1869–1885, Ranchi, 1992.
44.
RobertsN.‘Is Conversion a Colonization of Consciousness?’, Anthropology and Theory, Vol. 12 (3), 2012, pp. 271–94.
45.
RosnerV.‘Munda Worship and Witchcraft’, unpublished manuscript, Ranchi, n.d.
46.
SarkarT.‘Jitu Santal’s Movement in Malda, 1924–1932: A Study in Tribal Protest’, in GuhaRanajit, ed., Subaltern Studies IV, New Delhi, 1985, pp. 136–64.
47.
ScottJ. C.The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, New Haven, 2009.
48.
ShahA.‘Religion and the Secular Left: Subaltern Studies, Birsa Munda and Maoists’, Anthropology of this Century, Vol. 9, 2014, http://aotcpress.com/articles/religion-secular-left-subaltern-studies-birsa-munda-maoists/
49.
ShahA.In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism, and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India, Durham, 2010.
50.
SinghK. S.The Dust-Storm and the Hanging Mist: A Study of Birsa Munda and His Movement in Chhotanagpur, 1874–1901, Calcutta, 1966.
51.
SinghK. S.‘The Munda Land System’, in PonettePierre, ed., The Munda World, Ranchi, 1978, pp. 29–35.
52.
SinhaS. P.Life and Times of Birsa Bhagwan, Ranchi, 1964.
53.
SpenceJ. D.God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan, New York, 1997.
54.
SpivakG. C.‘Can the subaltern speak?’ in NelsonCary and GrossbergLawrence, eds, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana, 1988, pp. 271–316.
55.
StrikwerdaC.A House Divided: Catholics, Socialists, and Flemish Nationalists in Nineteenth-century Belgium, Lanham, 1997.
56.
TeteP., ed., Constant Lievens and the History of the Catholic Church in Chotanagpur, Ranchi, 1993.
57.
ThruppS., ed., Millennial Dreams in Action: Studies in Revolutionary Religious Movements, New York, 1970.
58.
TillyC., TillyL., and TillyR., The Rebellious Century, 1830–1930, Cambridge, 1975.
59.
ToscanoA.Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea, London, 2010.
60.
TurnerV.The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Chicago, 1969.
61.
UnderdownD.Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660, Oxford, 1985.
62.
West Bengal State Archives (WBSA), Kolkata: Bengal Revenue Proceedings (BRP), Bengal Revenue Collections (BRC), Bengal Revenue Miscellaneous Proceedings (BRMP), Annual Reports for the Chota Nagpur Division (ARCND).
63.
WilsonB. R.Magic and the Millennium: A Sociological Study of Religions Movements of Protest among Tribal and Third-World Peoples, London, 1973.
64.
ZolbergA. R.‘Moments of Madness’, Politics & Society, Vol. 2 (2), 1972, pp. 183–207.
