Santhal Tribe: India’s Largest Adivasi Community, Culture, and the 1855 Rebellion

The Santhal tribe is the largest Scheduled Tribe in India, numbering around 7.4 million people, mainly in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, and Assam. They are an Austroasiatic-speaking community whose language, Santhali, was added to the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution in 2003. The Santhal tribe is best known to history students for the Hool of 1855, one of the earliest and most widespread armed uprisings against the colonial state, led by the brothers Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu.

For UPSC GS-I and GS-II, the Santhal story sits at the intersection of culture, land, and rebellion. It explains how a non-Hindu, forest-based agrarian society survived colonial revenue extraction, missionary contact, and post-independence industrialisation while keeping its language, script, and Sarna religion intact. The community’s twin demands today are a separate religion code in the Census and full protection of land under tenancy laws like the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act.

This piece reads the Santhal tribe in five layers: who they are, where they live, what they believe, how they fought 1855, and what they are asking of the Indian state in the 2020s.

Who Are the Santhals?

The Santhals (also written as Santal or Sonthal) are an Adivasi community of eastern India, classified as a Scheduled Tribe in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, and Assam. Per the 2011 Census, they numbered around 6.5 million; current estimates place the figure near 7.4 million. They are the third-largest Adivasi group in South Asia after counting their populations in Nepal and Bangladesh.

The Santhal tribe belongs to the Austroasiatic family, distinct from the Dravidian Gonds and the Indo-Aryan-influenced communities of the Gangetic plain. Anthropologically, the Santhals are part of a wider Munda-speaking grouping that also includes the Mundas, Hos, and Birhors of Chotanagpur.

Traditionally, the Santhals were settled cultivators rather than shifting cultivators. They cleared dense sal forests in the Damin-i-Koh region of the Rajmahal hills in the early nineteenth century at the invitation of colonial revenue officials. That settlement laid the ground for both the agrarian economy of present-day Santhal Pargana and the social conflicts that produced the Hool of 1855.

Geography: Where the Santhals Live

The Santhal heartland is the Chotanagpur–Santhal Pargana plateau. Within India, their main concentrations are:

• Jharkhand: Dumka, Sahibganj, Pakur, Godda, Deoghar, Jamtara, East Singhbhum (the Santhal Pargana division was named after them in 1855).
• West Bengal: Birbhum, Purulia, Bankura, Paschim Medinipur, and parts of Murshidabad.
• Odisha: Mayurbhanj, Balasore, Keonjhar.
• Bihar: Bhagalpur, Banka, Katihar.
• Assam: Sonitpur, Udalguri, and other tea-belt districts where Santhals were taken as indentured labour from the mid-nineteenth century. These communities are officially listed as Adivasi rather than Scheduled Tribe in Assam, a long-standing political demand.

A diaspora of about 2.5 million Santhals lives in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan, descended from the same Damin-i-Koh resettlement and later tea-garden migration.

Santhali Language and the Ol Chiki Script

Santhali is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India, added to the Eighth Schedule by the 92nd Constitutional Amendment in 2003. It is the only Austroasiatic language with this status. The 2011 Census recorded around 7.4 million Santhali speakers in India, making it the most widely spoken Munda language.

For centuries, Santhali had no script of its own. Bengali, Devanagari, Odia, and Roman were all used in different regions, often pulling speakers towards the dominant local language. The decisive break came with Pandit Raghunath Murmu, a Santhal teacher from Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, who designed the Ol Chiki script between 1925 and the early 1940s. Ol Chiki has 30 letters, with each character shape derived from natural objects, and is read left to right.

Ol Chiki is now the official script for Santhali in Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Odisha. Government school textbooks, dictionaries, and university programmes in Santhali use Ol Chiki, and the script has Unicode support since 2008. Raghunath Murmu is honoured as Guru Gomke, the great teacher of the Santhal tribe.

Religion: Sarna and the Census Question

The Santhals follow Sarna Dharma, a nature-based faith centred on the sacred grove (sarna sthal), the deity Marang Buru (Great Mountain), and ancestor spirits. Worship is conducted by the village priest (naeke) under sal trees in the sacred grove. Sarna is not Hinduism and not animism in any technical sense; it is a coherent religious tradition with its own cosmology, life-cycle rites, and clergy.

The political demand of the Santhal tribe and other Adivasi groups is a separate Sarna religion code in the decennial Census. At present, the Census recognises six religions and groups all other faiths under “Other Religions and Persuasions” or “Religion Not Stated”. Jharkhand passed a resolution in 2020 calling on the Union government to create a Sarna code in Census 2021. The demand remains pending and is now linked to Census 2027.

Christian missions, particularly Lutheran and Catholic, made inroads from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. A significant minority of Santhals today identify as Christian while keeping many Sarna social practices.

Sohrai, Karam, and the Santhal Festival Calendar

The Santhal festival calendar follows the agricultural year and the moods of the forest. The main festivals include:

• Sohrai: A harvest and cattle festival in October–November. Cattle are bathed, decorated, and worshipped; mud walls of houses are painted with the famous Sohrai art, a tradition now also documented in Hazaribagh as a Geographical Indication.
• Karam: A monsoon festival in August–September honouring the karam tree (Adina cordifolia), tied to fertility and the well-being of the village.
• Baha: A spring flower festival celebrating new sal and mahua blooms, conducted in the sacred grove.
• Maghe: The new year festival, held in January after the rice harvest.
• Erok Sim, Hariar Sim, and Janthar: Sowing, weeding, and first-harvest rituals.

Sohrai art, with its bold red, white, and black motifs of birds, animals, and the tree of life, is now sold internationally and forms part of Jharkhand’s tribal cultural branding.

The Santhal Rebellion of 1855: Hool

The Santhal Rebellion of 1855, called the Hool in Santhali, is one of the earliest mass uprisings against the East India Company, predating the Revolt of 1857 by two years. On 30 June 1855, around 10,000 Santhals gathered at Bhognadih village in present-day Sahibganj district and declared themselves free of Company rule.

The rebellion was led by four brothers, Sidhu, Kanhu, Chand, and Bhairav Murmu, and their sisters Phulo and Jhano. The trigger was a familiar mix of grievances: extortionate moneylenders (dikus), corrupt zamindars, abusive police, and Company revenue officials. Santhals who had been settled in Damin-i-Koh in the 1830s found themselves losing their cleared lands to outsiders within a generation, with no legal recourse and no language to plead in.

At its peak, the Hool involved an estimated 60,000 Santhals across a wide arc from Bhagalpur to Birbhum. Armed mainly with bows, arrows, and axes, they attacked Company outposts, moneylenders’ houses, and railway construction camps. The Company responded with regular army units, declared martial law, and crushed the rebellion by January 1856 at a cost of around 15,000–20,000 Santhal lives. Sidhu was hanged; Kanhu was captured and killed in 1856.

The administrative aftermath was, however, significant. The Company carved out the new Santhal Pargana district in 1855, removed it from the regular regulation, and eventually passed the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act, 1876 (later 1949) to prevent the alienation of tribal land to non-tribals. This Act remains one of the strongest legal protections for tribal land in India today. The Hool is commemorated annually on 30 June as Hul Diwas and Sidhu-Kanhu are honoured in school textbooks, statues, and university names across Jharkhand.

Social Structure, Economy, and Indicators

Santhal society is organised into twelve patrilineal exogamous clans (paris) such as Hansda, Murmu, Marndi, Soren, Tudu, Hembrom, Kisku, Baskey, Besra, Pauria, Chore, and Bedea. Marriage within the clan is taboo. The village (atu) is governed by a council of headmen including the manjhi (headman), paranik (deputy), jog manjhi (moral guardian), and naeke (priest).

The Santhal tribe today is overwhelmingly agrarian. Paddy is the main crop, supplemented by mahua, tendu leaves, sal seed, and forest produce. Migration for work to brick kilns of West Bengal, tea gardens of Assam, and construction sites of metro cities is now part of the household economy in most Santhal villages.

Socio-economic indicators tell a mixed story. Literacy among Santhals rose from around 24% in 1991 to about 56% in the 2011 Census, but female literacy lags at around 41%. Infant mortality, maternal anaemia, and stunting among Santhal children are above the national average. Land alienation, despite the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act, continues through fraudulent transfers, debt traps, and benami holdings; civil society groups estimate that 22% of tribal land in Santhal Pargana has changed hands since 1949.

The Pathalgadi movement of 2017–18 in Jharkhand, where villages installed stone plaques declaring gram sabha sovereignty under the Fifth Schedule, was driven in large part by Santhal and Munda communities asserting PESA-style self-rule against state land-acquisition pressures.

The Santhal Tribe in Indian Politics and Letters

The Santhal tribe has produced national-level political and cultural figures. Droupadi Murmu, who became the President of India in July 2022, is the first Santhal and first Adivasi to hold the office. She is from Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, the same district that produced Ol Chiki creator Raghunath Murmu.

In literature, Santhali writers like Sarada Prasad Kisku, Damayanti Beshra, and Aditya Kumar Mandi have built a body of modern Santhali fiction and poetry in Ol Chiki. Sahitya Akademi awards for Santhali have been given annually since 2004. Santhali cinema, songs, and theatre flourish in Jharkhand and West Bengal, often centred on Hool memory and contemporary land struggles.

Contemporary Issues and Demands

Four issues dominate Santhal tribal politics today.

1. Sarna religion code in the Census, with Jharkhand’s 2020 resolution still pending Union approval.
2. Inclusion of Assam Santhals as Scheduled Tribes, a demand since the 1990s linked to indentured tea-garden migration.
3. Full implementation of the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act, including digitisation of land records and removal of illegal non-tribal holdings.
4. Recognition of community forest rights and habitat rights under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, which the Santhal Pargana districts have implemented unevenly.

The Santhal tribe also overlaps with the wider Adivasi movement: tribal land protection, opposition to large mining projects in Jharkhand and Odisha, and the long-running debate on the tribal movements of India from the Tana Bhagat to the Birsa Munda to the contemporary Pathalgadi.

The Santhal story is not primarily one of victimhood. It is the story of a community that built a literate, political, and cultural identity from a forest base, survived colonial extraction, produced a President of India, and continues to negotiate hard with the Indian state over land, language, and faith.

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