The indigenous inhabitants of a forest in India are forced out of their land by greedy landlords protected by politicians. They can’t endure the injustice anymore and decide to fight back. The ensuing war leads to horrific massacres.
Sounds like the Maoist insurrection led by indigenous people that is ravaging Jharkhand state of present-day India. But more than 160 years ago, the same region saw the Santhal tribe rise up against local upper caste zamindars and British colonial troops.
The 1855 uprising was crushed with between 30-50,000 members of this aboriginal group killed by British troops in brutal massacres. The bows and arrows of the Santhals were no match for the British canons and muskets. The rebellion preceded the Sepoy Mutiny by three years
and the Naxalite movement by about a century.
Now, Indian author Sanjay Bahadur has written a historical novel, HUL Cry Rebel! centred on this little-known historical uprising which could be taken straight out of present-day Jharkhand. Fictionalised characters meet real-life protagonists from the British colonial administration, the rebel leadership and the injustices that forced the Santhals to rise up when their hunter-gatherer lifestyle was threatened by land grabbers.
HUL Cry Rebel!
Sanjay Bahadur
Roli Books
New Delhi 2013
Rs 800 soft cover
416 pages
Sanjay Bahadur worked for the Indian Revenue Service and was assigned to Jharkhand’s mineral rich coal mining towns, and spent time learning about the Santhal way of life and the tribe’s tragic and bloody history. During his research, Bahadur realised that these areas of India, that includes
Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh, have seen uprisings by local indigenous people every few decades. Today, the region is once more wracked by violence as the Indian state, big companies and multinationals are drawn by the enormous mineral wealth of a region populated by forest-dwelling
indigenous groups who are the original inhabitants of India. It is still a David vs Goliath fight that pits hunter-gatherers against a resource hungry globalised juggernaut.
Among Sanjay Bahadur’s fictional characters, not all the bad guys are bad and not all the good guys are good.
The story revolves around Shibani, a young English-educated widow in a Bengali landlord’s household and Lt James Davies who understands that the Santhals have their backs against the wall. Both share concerns about the plight of the tribe, and in the process of helping them are also drawn to each other. The book also follows the saga of three generations of Santhals who find themselves reluctantly in the middle of a war they initially didn’t want to be a part of.
One such generation of Santhal rebels follows Bikram, who is forced to struggle nearly single-handedly against injustice. The author says Bikram’s character was inspired by the story of Chief Seattle who lived and also fought colonial invasion of native American lands at about the same time as the Santhals in India. Bikram struggles against the savage forces of ‘civilisation’ that threaten to devour his culture, while coming to terms with love and betrayal in his own personal life.
As you turn the pages in the book, you are reminded of the uneasy balance today in Jharkhand and elsewhere around the world between natural resource exploitation needed to fuel economic growth and the identity and the cultural bonds of indigenous people to the land.
In an interview Sanjay Bahadur has said: “All I can say is we are condemned to repeat mistakes if we don’t learn from history...as a fiction writer, I wanted to remind and inform thinking readers about a forgotten fragment of our history that still casts a grim shadow on our present.”
Sanjay Bahadur takes his novel to a riveting climax, but as you can imagine, it just cannot be a happy ending for the adivasis of India.
Kunda Dixit