The Environmetal Crisis in the Jungle-terai of Santhal Parganas, Jharkhand.

Ajay Pratap

India has many eco-systems that were utterly transformed during the `Raj’. The Indo-Gangetic plains were no exception. To the historians of ecologies falls the task of reconstructing some of these disappeared or disappearing eco-systems to understand the processes by which these clusters of thriving forests, mangroves, and, marshes, were transformed either into wasteland or relatively denuded countryside (See Ramachandra Guha - The Unquiet Woods -,Madhav Gadgil - This Fissured Land).

At a layman's estimate, the total population of the Indian subcontinent, in the 17th and 18th centuries, was 250 million people. However, the growth of population, in about 200 odd years, is over 400%! This is surely a greatly accelerated rate of growth, in a historically very short time span.As a consequence a lot of of forest, and related natural resources, in the time-period mentioned have all but disappeared.

Thus the study of the degradation of Indian forests must start from Mughal period. Why? Most of the texts on this subject, suggest, that the Mughal system did not interfere very much with the native systems of politics, society and economics. This was, as long as, they were able to retain their political and economic control. It is, however, suggested, side by side, that there was a great extension of agriculture in the Mughal period. It is then natural to ask if deforestation was or was not a corollary to this expanding agricultural system?

Students of history, particularly, will be aware that in the erstwhile state of Bengal, the colonial government introduced the rent settlement, called The permanent settlement. Bengal, at that time, included, all of the `new’ Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. Although these states of mughal period must have contained much hilly lands, in plains areas, particularly, there existed substantial forests, which had not been exploited commercially until onset of the Raj. In the district of Santal Parganas, created after the Santhal `Hul’ (uprising) of 1855-6, such lands were known as Jungle-terry or Terai. Buchana Hamilton report of 1810 records that the Santhals,originally settled in the birbhum disrict of Bengal, were in 1810-11,found to be moving into the Damin area in droves and setting up their villages and clearing forests forcultivation ofpaddy. Subsequent to Buchanan's report the Company agreed to invite these migrants further into the Damin and gave them Khuntkatee Raiyyatee, which was a land tenure system for the bandobast of these very marginal and subaltern of farmers who were nevertheless very adpet at rice-paddies and were therefore granted settlement and cultivation rights under this tenure. thus in a short timespan, say, between, 1810-1830 hundreds of santhal vilages had cropped-up in the Damin area and some of these new settlers of the Damin moved right-up the highlands and established villages right inside the erstwhile Paharia domains. Unfortunately, the British, in the 18th century, did not, understand that shifting cultivation system requires a fallow to cultivated land at the ratio of 1:10. That is to say, that, for every acre under shifting cultivation, at least 9 acres must be kept fallow, to allow the rotation of cultivated plots (see Bose, S. Carrying capacity of land under shifting cultivation). the fallow forests in this ratio also serve the purpose of buffer-areas, are used for hunting for animal protein, collecting of wild fruits, tubers, woods and fuel etc. thus santhal incursion into Paharia territory rang enormous bells of alarm.

as is well known the cutcherrie and courts of the 18th and 19th (first -part) century providely scarcely any recompense or alleviation to subaltern in this district - the santhal hul of 1855-6 was a direct result of this. thus between 1810-30 the British used the leverage of incursive santhals, to strong-arm the Paharia into settlement (or bandobast) of their lands, as well.

Terai lands surrounded the Rajmahal Hills, which formed the backbone of the district.

These hills were marginally populated since the Mughal period by a small group of people called the Paharia or Maler who practised shifting cultivation. However, the area was properly populated only towards the early 19th century when the British encouraged the immigration of the paddy-cultivating group called the Santhals. Francis Buchanan, in his diary (of tour through Bhagalpur and Monghyr districts) in 1810 has produced a map that shows that portions of the hills of Damin-i-Koh were divided and subsumed under Tappas and Turufs of lowland Zamindars.

This must lead us to the conclusion that even in the Mughal period some measure of fiscal arrangement, means of extracting revenues from these hilly lands was existing. The word Pargana, as in Santhal Pargana, although given as the suffix to the name of this district was done by the British. However, that the term pargana existed as a Mughal fiscal or revenue term is not in doubt.

Prior to this settlement, old British records speak of luscious forests, which abounded in various types of flora and fauna. A number of travellers also traversed this tract throughout the 18th and 19th centuries confirmed this ecological scenario. The French traveller Tavernier who crossed this area, much before the British, spoke of a number of species of fish as well as mammals thriving in the river. These included fresh water dolphins and crocodiles, to say nothing of the varieties birds, fowls and other species that usually thrive near sources of water. The traveller William Hodges, who passed by this tract, late 18th century, records in his Travels in India that wild elephants, the rhino, buffalo, as well as predatory species and various types of deer were to be found in this area. However, all this existed here in the period preceding the Santhal immigration.

The governments plan to convert the forested lands to cultivation attracted other than the Santal, many others to the district as well. Although the timber thus felled was utilised constructively (such as in construction of railway etc.) this process did destroyed much of the bio-diversity characterising the area. A realisation that a green cover was important dawned on the British only towards the end of the 19th century.

At that time Forest Acts were enacted, proscribing the felling of timber by all except the government itself. Indeed this century as indeed the next one were to see a spate of legislation to stop forest felling, as the administration had come to realise the value of timber. So what is the ecological picture available to the observer of this area today?

A modern visitor to the area will now not any longer see luxurious forests with its denizens, described vividly by the travellers in the early period of colonial rule. The plains around the Rajmahal hills are largely denuded and converted to rice lands. The only trees standing are fruit-trees and the occasional date palm. The population here is mostly santhal or a mixed rural one. A consequence of this felling in the plains, as indeed in the hills, is that run-off from the hills inflates the volume of the ganges every year, with resultant flooding in the plains. The absence of tree-cover in the plains has several consequences with which we are only too familiar. Today there is a great scarcity of fuelwood in the plains, and such forests as remain in the Rajmahals, are the site of continuous and repeated depradations, by plainsmen. Forestry and various Governmental Development Programmes are running, however, the paucity of local hospitals, roads, schools and such bare necessities of life are very evident.

W.S. Sherwill's Statement of Expenditure on account of the the Damin-i-Koh, or, The Rajmahal Hills, 1851. Source: Sherwill, Col. T. 1852. A tour through the Rajmahal Hills. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 267(889), 544-606.