BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 53 of 142

Correct — A, Ranchi. Birsa Munda's Ulgulan — the word means Great Tumult — was fought in the Munda heartland of the Chota Nagpur plateau, and every place-name in the record sits inside what was then Ranchi district. Birsa was born on 15 November 1875 at Ulihatu in Ranchi district of the Bengal Presidency. The rising itself is documented as concentrated in the Munda belt of Khunti, Tamar, Sarwada and Bandgaon; about seven thousand men and women gathered around Christmas 1899 to herald the Ulgulan, and it spread through Khunti, Tamar, Basia and Ranchi. On Christmas Eve 1899 Birsaits attacked churches in Ranchi and Singhbhum; on 5 January 1900 two constables were killed at Etkedih; on 7 January the Khunti police station was attacked; and the Deputy Commissioner and Commissioner brought 150 men to Khunti to put the rising down. Birsa was taken in the Jamkopai forest near Chakradharpur on 3 February 1900 and died in Ranchi jail on 9 June 1900, aged twenty-four. Khunti, where most of the fighting happened, was itself carved out of Ranchi district only on 12 September 2007 — a full century later — so at the time of the revolt, and for the whole period any exam question can mean, Khunti was Ranchi. That is why UPSC, matching this same revolt to a region in 1997, keyed it to Bihar: Chota Nagpur was part of Bihar until Jharkhand was created on 15 November 2000, on Birsa's own birth anniversary.

• (b)Champaran — Champaran in north-west Bihar is the site of Gandhi's indigo satyagraha of 1917 — his first in India — against the tinkathia system under which peasants had to plant indigo on three kathas of every bigha. It has no connection with Birsa Munda, and it belongs to a different century, a different community and a different method of struggle. It is on the option list because it is the most famous protest site in Bihar.
• (c)Ballia — Ballia is in eastern Uttar Pradesh, on the far side of the Ganga from Bihar. Its two claims on Indian history are Mangal Pandey, born at Nagwa in the district, and the 'Ballia Republic' of August 1942, when Chittu Pandey's Quit India volunteers held the district free of British control for about a week. Neither has anything to do with the Munda country.
• (d)None of the above — The only argument for this escape is that the fighting centred on Khunti, and Khunti is a district in its own right today — but it became one only in 2007, and in 1899-1900 it was part of Ranchi district, where Birsa was born, tried and died. A 'none of the above' option is correct only when each of the other three can be shown to fail, and here the first one does not.

The Ulgulan was the last and the most political of nineteenth-century India's tribal risings, and it had three grievances stacked on one another. The first was land: the traditional khuntkatti system, under which the clan that cleared the forest held the land collectively, was being dissolved by outside landlords and moneylenders — the dikus — who converted Munda cultivators into rent-paying tenants. The second was forced labour, beth-begari, exacted by those same landlords. The third was cultural: Birsa, who had studied at a mission school, turned against the missions and preached a purified faith of his own, so his followers called him Dharti Aaba, Father of the Earth, and his movement was millenarian as much as agrarian. Two years of attacks on police posts, landlords and mission stations followed his call at Christmas 1899. The state won the fight and lost the argument: in 1908 the colonial government passed the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, which barred the transfer of tribal land to non-tribals — the single most durable protection Adivasi landholding in the region has, and still in force in Jharkhand today.

Two of the three named places can be struck off on geography alone: Champaran and Ballia are plains districts of the Bihar-UP Bhojpuri belt, and the Munda are a Chota Nagpur plateau people. That leaves Ranchi, and the only doubt a careful candidate might raise is the modern district map, on which Birsa's birthplace Ulihatu and the revolt's centre Khunti are in Khunti district, not Ranchi. Resist it: the district was created in 2007, more than a century after the events, and no exam is asking you to re-plot a colonial revolt onto a twenty-first-century boundary. The larger reason this question sits on a Bihar paper at all is that until 15 November 2000 the whole of Chota Nagpur was Bihar, so Birsa Munda is part of Bihar's own history syllabus even though his country is now Jharkhand — which is exactly why UPSC's 1997 match-the-pairs keyed the Birsa Munda revolt to Bihar and would have to key it differently today.

• Birsa Munda: born 15 November 1875 at Ulihatu, Ranchi district, Bengal Presidency (now Khunti district, Jharkhand); died in Ranchi jail on 9 June 1900.
• The Ulgulan was concentrated in the Munda belt of Khunti, Tamar, Sarwada and Bandgaon; around 7,000 people assembled at Christmas 1899, and the rising ran through Khunti, Tamar, Basia and Ranchi.
• Key dates of the rising: churches attacked on Christmas Eve 1899; two constables killed at Etkedih on 5 January 1900; Khunti police station attacked on 7 January 1900; Birsa arrested in the Jamkopai forest near Chakradharpur on 3 February 1900.
• The Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908, passed eight years after the revolt, prohibits the transfer of tribal land to non-tribals — the movement's most lasting legal outcome.
• Jharkhand was carved out of south Bihar's Chota Nagpur and Santhal Pargana divisions on 15 November 2000, Birsa's birth anniversary; the Union Cabinet declared 15 November as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas on 10 November 2021.

• Placing the revolt in modern Khunti district and concluding that Ranchi is wrong. Khunti was carved out of Ranchi on 12 September 2007, over a century after the events.
• Confusing Birsa's Ulgulan (1899-1900, Munda, Chota Nagpur) with the Santhal Hul (1855-56, Sidhu and Kanhu, Santhal Pargana). Both are Adivasi risings in what was then Bihar, four decades apart.
• Treating this as a Jharkhand question and dismissing it on a Bihar paper. Chota Nagpur was Bihar until 15 November 2000, which is why the fact still belongs to Bihar's history syllabus.

BPSC asks Birsa Munda directly and plainly — a place, a date, a title — because the Ulgulan is part of undivided Bihar's history and the Commission expects it cold. UPSC prefers to bury the same fact inside a match-the-pairs table of revolts and regions, or to ask about the movement's outcome, such as the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, rather than its geography.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908, which followed Birsa Munda's Ulgulan, is chiefly remembered for

  • (a)Abolishing the zamindari system in Chota Nagpur
  • (b)Prohibiting the transfer of tribal land to non-tribals
  • (c)Creating a separate province of Jharkhand
  • (d)Introducing permanent settlement in the plateau districts

  Answer(b) Prohibiting the transfer of tribal land to non-tribals — the enduring legal outcome of the Munda rising, still in force in Jharkhand.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Santhal rebellion (Hul) of 1855-56 was led by

  • (a)Birsa Munda
  • (b)Sidhu and Kanhu
  • (c)Tilka Manjhi
  • (d)Jatra Bhagat

  Answer(b) Sidhu and Kanhu — the Murmu brothers who led the Santhal Hul in the Rajmahal hills in 1855-56, four decades before Birsa Munda's Ulgulan of 1899-1900.