Tana Bhagat Movement- Jharkhand

 Introduction :- 

Tana Bhagat Movement (1914-1919) was a tribal uprising of a section of the Tana Bhagats and Oraons under the leadership of Jatra Oraon occurring during the late colonial period in the Chhotanagpur region of Bihar, India.

Just like the Birsa’s religious movement among the Mundas, a similar religious movement gained among the Oraon known as Tana Bhagat movement or in its earlier phase it was called as Kurukh Dharam (literally the Original religion of the Kurukh or Oraons).

The Tana Bhagats opposed the taxes imposed on them by the British and they staged a Satyagraha (civil disobedience movement) even before Gandhi's satyagraha movement. They opposed the zamindars, the banias (moneylenders), the missionaries, the Muslims and the British state. Tana Bhagats are followers of Mahatma Gandhi, and believes in Ahimsa (Non-violence

Tana Bhagat Movement is a kind of Sanskritisation Movement.

Causes for Movement :- 

The Kurukh Dharam Movement was apparently initiated in 1914 by a young Oraon tribes man known as Jatra Oraon who declared that in a dream Dharmes (the Supreme God) told him to give up Matia (ghost-finding and exorcism) and the belief in spirits, to abjure all animal sacrifices, animal food and liquor, and to give up ploughing their fields which entailed cruelty to cows and oxen; but failed to save the tribe from famine and poverty, and no more to work as coolies or laborer under men of other castes and tribes.

Like Birsa Bhagwan, Jatra proclaimed that a new day was drawing near, and those who did not count themselves among his followers would be destroyed. Dharmes had further ordered Jatra to teach his people the mantras, or songs and incantations and thereby to cure their diseases and other afflictions

Course of the Revolt :- 

What constituted the initial strength of the new faith and contributed to its phenomenal success in the beginning was the combination of a strong desire for delivery from the bondage of capricious and blood-thirsty tribal spirits with perhaps a still stronger desire for delivery from the burden of what they regarded as an oppressive and inequitable land-system and land laws.

Indeed what appeared to be most appealing to the people was the promise held out by the originators of the movements that through Bhakti to Bhagwan (God) they would be able to raise the present degraded social position of their community to the higher level occupied by the Hindus and Christian converts among their fellow and obtain relief from their long standing agrarian grievances and the present wretchedness of their economic position.

The leader of this movement maintained that the tribal spirits and deities whom they had been worshiping were not helping them to alleviate the social and economic ills to which they had fallen victims, and indeed affirmed that these deities were responsible for the present state of degradation.

Proceeding according to the rationale that those gods were in reality not Oraon; but alien deities that had been imported from Munda religion, the originators of the Tana Bhagat movement embarked on a programme of proselytization and agitation for the exorcism of the foreign spirits.

The cult emphasized a return to the original or real Oraon religion as in its early appellation of Kurukh Dharam.

The leader of this movement maintained that the tribal spirits and deities whom they had been worshiping were not helping them to alleviate the social and economic ills to which they had fallen victims, and indeed affirmed that these deities were responsible for the present state of degradation.

Proceeding according to the rationale that those gods were in reality not Oraon; but alien deities that had been imported from Munda religion, the originators of the Tana Bhagat movement embarked on a programme of proselytization and agitation for the exorcism of the foreign spirits. The cult emphasized a return to the original or real Oraon religion as in its early appellation of Kurukh Dharam.

The leader of this movement maintained that the tribal spirits and deities whom they had been worshiping were not helping them to alleviate the social and economic ills to which they had fallen victims, and indeed affirmed that these deities were responsible for the present state of degradation. Proceeding according to the rationale that those gods were in reality not Oraon; but alien deities that had been imported from Munda religion, the originators of the Tana Bhagat movement embarked on a programme of proselytization and agitation for the exorcism of the foreign spirits. The cult emphasized a return to the original or real Oraon religion as in its early appellation of Kurukh Dharam.

By: Shashank Shekhar