Notes

Some of the most important tribal movements in India are as follows:
1. The Santhal Insurrection
2. The Munda Rebellion
3. The Bodo Movement
4. Jharkhand Movement.

1. The Santhal Insurrection:
The Santhals are an agricultural tribal group who are mainly concentrated in Bihar. The first peasant insurrection took place in 1855-1856, which arose due to the establishment of the Permanent Land Settlement of 1793. Following this settlement the Britishers took away all the lands from the Santhals. The zamindars took these lands on auction from the Britishers and gave them to the peasants for cultivation. The zamindars, the money­lenders, and the government officers hiked the land tax and also oppressed and exploited the common peasants. Though the Santhals tolerated the injustices to some extent, later on they decided to raise in revolt against the zamindars, moneylenders, and traders.
2. The Munda Rebellion:
One of the prominent revolts of nineteenth century tribal rebellions in the Indian subcontinent was the Munda Rebellion. This rebellion was led by Birsa Munda in the south of Ranchi in the year 1899. The “Great Tumult” aimed to establish Munda raj and independence. Traditionally, the Mundas enjoyed a preferential rent rate known as the khuntkattidar, which meant the original clearer of the forest. However, in course of time, the Mundas realized that this system of khuntkattidar is being corroded by the jagirdars and thikadars who came as moneylenders and as traders.
3. The Bodo Movement:
Bodoland is the name given by the Bodo nationalists in Assam, India, to represent their homeland. The Bodos exercise a complete control over the Bodoland. The major objective of the All Bodo Students Union and Bodo Liberation Tigers Force is to have a separate state of their own. The present demarcation of the Bodoland is the Bodoland Territorial Areas District (BTAD) which is administered by an autonomous body known as Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC).
The official movement of the Bodos for an independent state of Bodoland started under the leadership of Upendranath Brahma of All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU) on 2 March 1987. In fact, the call for the separate tribal homeland is not new in Assam. The Plains Tribal Council of Assam (PTCA) had raised their voice to have a separate home­land called “Udayachal”.
4. Jharkhand Movement:
The term “Jharkhand” refers to a “forest region” and the term dates back to the sixteenth century. The forest region applies to the forested mountainous plateau region in eastern India, west of Gangas delta in Bangladesh, and south of Indo-Gangetic plain.
The area of Jharkhand consists of seven districts in Bihar, three in West Bengal, four in Orissa, and two in Madhya Pradesh. Around 90 per cent of the tribals in Jharkhand region live in Bihar districts. The two groups of tribals who were the main agitators of the movement were the Chotanagpurs and the Santhals.












The Chipko movement or Chipko Andolan, was a forest conservation movement in India. It began in 1970s in Uttarakhand, then a part of Uttar Pradesh (at the foothills of Himalayas) and went on to become a rallying point for many future environmental movements all over the world. Chipko Movement, started in 1970's, was a non violent movement aimed at protection and conservation of trees and forests from being destroyed. The name of the Chipko moment originated from the word 'embrace' as the villagers used to hug the trees and protect them from wood cutters from cutting them. In 1731, the king of Jodhpur in Rajasthan asked one of his ministers to arrange wood for constructing a new palace. The minister and workers went to a forest near a village, inhabited by Bishnois, to cut down trees. A Bishnoi woman Amrita Devi showed exemplary courage by hugging a tree and daring king’s men to cut her first before cutting the tree. The tree mattered much more to her than her own life. Sadly, the king’s men did not heed to her pleas, and cut down the tree along with Amrita Devi. Her three daughters and hundreds of other Bishnois followed her, and thus lost their lives saving trees. The incident inspired the several other rural women, who launched such similar movements in different parts of India. The Chipko Movement gained momentum under Sunderlal Bahuguna, an activist, who spent his whole life persuading and educating the villagers, to protest against the destruction of the forests and the Himalayan mountains by the government. The chipko protests achieved a major victory in 1980 with a 15 years ban on tree felling in the Himalayan forests of the state by the order of Mrs. Indira Gandhi.



As defined by social theorists and political scientists, relative deprivation theory suggests that people who feel they are being deprived of something considered essential in their society (e.g. money, rights, political voice, status) will organize or join social movements dedicated to obtaining the things of which they feel deprived. For example, relative deprivation has been cited as one of the causes of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, which was rooted in black Americans' struggle to gain social and legal equality with white Americans. Similarly, many gay people joined the same-sex marriage movement in order to acquire the same legal recognition of their marriages enjoyed by straight people.
In some cases, relative deprivation has been cited as a factor driving incidents of social disorder like rioting, looting, terrorism, and civil wars. In this nature, social movements and their associated disorderly acts can often be attributed to the grievances of people who feel they are being denied resources to which they are entitled. Development of the concept of relative deprivation is often attributed to American sociologist Robert K. Merton, whose study of American soldiers during World War II revealed that soldiers in the Military Police were far less satisfied with their opportunities for promotion than regular GIs.
In proposing one the first formal definitions of relative deprivation, British statesman and sociologist Walter Runciman listed four required conditions:
A person does not have something.
That person knows other people who have the thing.
That person wants to have the thing.
That person believes they have a reasonable chance of getting the thing.
Runciman also drew a distinction between “egoistic” and “fraternalistic” relative deprivation. According to Runciman, egoistic relative deprivation is driven by an individual’s feelings of being treated unfairly compared to others in their group. For example, an employee who feels they should have gotten a promotion that went to another employee may feel egoistically relatively deprived. Fraternalistic relative deprivation is more often associated with massive group social movements like the Civil Rights Movement.



A social movement is a large group of people who are organized to promote or resist some social change. A social movement is typically based upon two factors - first, whom the movement is trying to change, and second, how much change a movement is advocating. Social movements can occur at the individual level or at the societal level, and they can advocate for either minor or radical changes. In 1966, cultural anthropologist David F. Aberle identified four kinds of social movements: alternative, redemptive, reformative, and revolutionary. In this lesson, we will discuss these social movements in terms of promoting social change.
a.Alternative Social Movements
Alternative movements are do-it-yourself efforts that seek to change some aspects of an individual's behavior.AT&T's 'It Can Wait' public awareness campaign is an example of an alternative social movement. It is focused on a simple message: no text is worth dying for. This is a nationwide movement that has tremendous support. For example, AT&T, its employees, National Organizations for Youth Safety (NOYS), Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD), Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), and government agencies, such as the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), are all calling on all drivers to go to www.itcanwait.com to take the no-texting-and-driving pledge and then share their promise with others via Twitter (#itcanwait) and Facebook. The pledge effort is part of the company's public awareness campaign aimed directly at stopping the dangerous practice of texting while driving.
b. Redemptive Social Movement
A redemptive social movement is one that seeks total personal transformation and is typically religious in nature. The spread of Christianity is a prime example of a redemptive social movement.
Missionaries have spread Christianity since the days of the Roman Empire. By the time Rome fell in 476 CE, much of Europe was Christian. Missionaries from the Byzantine Empire brought Orthodox Christianity to Russia. In Asia, medieval missionaries made converts as far away as India and China. With the founding of America, Christianity began to spread beyond Europe and Asia. Among the early missionaries were Catholics who journeyed to Central and South America seeking to convert native peoples.
During the period between about 1500 and 1750, Christianity became the first religion to spread around the world, and by the 1900s, Christianity had spread to every continent on the globe. Today, the Christian missionary work continues.
c. Reformative Social Movement
Reformative social movement is a social movement that seeks to change only some specific aspects of how society functions. Reformative Movements seek partial social change — they seek partial change in social systems. An example would be the Women’s Suffrage Movement, the movement for women to gain the right to vote. They merely wanted to change a part of the system — they wanted to have equal voting rights, the same as men.
d. Transformative Movements
Transformative Movements seek total social change — a total change in social systems. Revolutions fall into the category of transformative social movements.
An easy way to determine between transformative and reformative is that the people that are involved in a reformative movement usually want to be included equally within the current system. So the Women’s Suffrage Movement, they wanted equal rights, equal to men, but within the current system.
Transformative movements, revolutions, typically seek to somehow change or destroy the current system altogether rather than merely being included equally within it.





The term “Dalit” has different meanings for different people. The most common use of the term is to define people who were once known as “untouchables”, seperated from the rest of society by the caste system. Navsarjan redefines the ideological context of the word to mean three things:
Someone who believes in equality
Practices equality in his or her life, and
Protests inequality wherever he or she sees it
This redefinition challenges Dalits to be more egalitarian in their own lives, both in terms of inter sub-caste discrimination and sexism; allows for the inclusion of Dalits from different religious backgrounds (Dalits who have converted to a different religion, but still suffer discrimination); and allows for the inclusion of people who are not from the “untouchable” castes, but still believe in values of equality.
A past passive participle of the Sanskrit root dal that means to crack or split, the word Dalit is today common across most Indian languages, meaning poor and oppressed people. As it refers to those who have been broken, ground down by those above them in a deliberate way, there is also clearly an inherent denial of pollution, karma and justified caste hierarchy to the word itself. Though use of the term Dalit in public discourse is of relatively recent origin – the 1960s – it is supposed to have been used first by Jotirao Phule (1827-1890) in his attempt to work for dalituthan, that is, the uplifting of the exploited sections of society.
While Dr. Ambedkar did not popularize the word Dalit, his philosophy has remained a key source in its emergence and popularity. Marathi literary figures and neo-Buddhists began to use the word in their writings and contributed to the literary initiatives in replacing Harijan (man of God) and achchuta (untouchable) with Dalit, in the 1970s. They expressed their anger, protest and aspiration through this new word, rejecting the Hindu caste system and objecting to Gandhi’s belief that caste Hindus’ “charitable spirit” would be enough to overcome Untouchability.
While the word “Dalit” stems from opposition to terms bestowed upon Dalits by the non-Dalits—terms that legitimised their discrimination and deprivation—it has today essentially emerged as a political category. Dalits in legal parlance are called Scheduled Castes (SCs), and are identified as such by the President of India under Article 341 of the Constitution.
This constitutional identity, however, is exclusive and fails to capture the true picture. Dalits who have converted from Hinduism to another religion no longer qualify as SCs, although their status in society often remains the same. Moreover, Dalit movements in contemporary India are not uniform and each articulates a particular identity, be they Christian Dalits, Neo-Buddhists or Muslim Dalits. Hence, Dalit should not be seen as a term just describing a caste community. Rather, it should be viewed as a symbol of change and liberation, as a progressive ideology, helping the Dalit movement to achieve its end results. Increasingly used as a suffix, Dalit is a part of the identity of a person that holds certain values—those pertaining to equality and humanism.
Dalit is one who believes in equality, who practices equality and who combats inequality.