differentiate the lifestyle of paharias and santhalas?
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Answer:
Paharias were a hill tribe community who lived in the Rajmahal hills of Jharkhand, erstwhile falling in undivided Bengal during colonial times, an impenetrable zone inhabited by hostile people as described by Francis Buchanan. The forest was their veritable home providing them their food, shelter and a sense of identity. The mango trees’ shade was their abode of rest and the tamarind groves their habitat where they lived in small hutments. They subsisted on forest produce and practiced shifting cultivation. They cleared patches of forest by cutting bushes and burning the undergrowth. Pulses and millets of different varieties were grown on these patches for sustenance. They did not use plough but scratched the ground lightly by hoes, cultivating the cleared land for a few years and then left it fallow so that it could recover its fertility, and moved to a new area.
They gathered mahua ( a flower ) for consumption from the forests, silk cocoons and resin for sale and wood for charcoal production. The land left fallow would be covered with grass after a while and thus served as grazing area for their cattle. Their life was thus dearly connected to the forest.
During years of scarcity, the Paharias led by their chiefs raided the plains where settled agriculturists lived. This was essential for their survival.
The Santhals were a nomadic clan present in the areas of present day West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand. They were master cultivators who were adept at extending the frontiers of cultivation by clearing forest land and transforming it into agricultural fields, ploughing it with extraordinary vigor. They were hired by the Zamindars in the 1780s to clear the foothills of Rajmahal hills which brought them into direct confrontation with the Paharias as the Santhals soon replaced them in the area.
The British recognised the Santhals as ideal settlers as compared to the unruly and savage Paharias. By 1832, a widespread land area in the Rajmahal foothills were declared to be the land of Santhals, an area demarcated as Damin-i-koh, literally translated to be ‘ in the lap of hills ‘. The Santhals dealt directly with traders and moneylenders as they grew a large range of commercial crops to be sold in the market. They gave up their past life of constant mobility to lead a settled life.
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