CDS (II) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 78 of 120

Correct — B, Monotheism and internal social reform. The Kherwar movement of the 1870s, also called Sapha Har, was a movement of purification among the Santals of what is now the Santal Parganas region, associated with the leadership of Bhagirath Manjhi. Its two names carry its programme. Kherwar is the Santals' own ancestral self-description, so the movement was addressed to the community as a community; and Sapha Har means the clean or pure people, which is what its followers set out to become. In practice that meant turning away from the many bongas or spirits and from the animal sacrifices offered to them, worshipping a single supreme being instead, and reforming conduct within Santal society. Both halves of option (b) therefore describe it. The movement later took a political turn when its leader claimed a Santal raj, and the colonial authorities arrested him.

• (a)Acceptance of the Hindu pantheonic order — The movement did not set out to fit the Santals into a Hindu hierarchy. Its energy went into purifying Santal practice from within, and a movement that took its name from the community's own ancestral title was not seeking a place in someone else's order.
• (c)Philosophy of Yoga and Mimansa — Yoga and Mimamsa are schools of Brahmanical philosophy debated in Sanskrit texts. They have no connection with a Santal purification movement in the hills of eastern India.
• (d)Polytheism — Polytheism is what the movement moved away from. Its followers were urged to give up offerings to the many bongas in favour of one supreme deity, which is the opposite of what this option says.

Nineteenth-century tribal India produced two kinds of response to colonial rule and to the outsiders the revenue system brought with it. One was armed revolt — the Santal hool of 1855, Birsa Munda's ulgulan of 1899-1900. The other was reformist and religious: a leader emerges, often claiming a message from a deity, and calls the community to purify its worship and its conduct, on the reasoning that the community's misfortunes follow from its own condition. The Kherwar or Sapha Har movement is the second kind, arising in the same country as the hool two decades later.

The four options are really four labels for a type of movement, and the question is asking which type this one was. Two things in the stem itself point the way, and both are checkable without knowing the history in detail: the words Kherwar and Sapha Har are Santali, and Sapha carries the sense of clean or pure — which fits reform, not accommodation to another tradition. It is worth being candid that this movement is thinly served by easily available sources: it is discussed in the scholarly literature on the Santal Parganas, where it is dated to about 1870-71 and read as a purification movement under Bhagirath Manjhi that later demanded a Santal raj, but there is little primary material a student can go to directly. The safest ground is the meaning of the names and the pattern of the movement type, and the answer sits squarely on both.

• The Kherwar or Sapha Har movement arose among the Santals in the 1870s.
• Kherwar is the Santals' own ancestral self-designation; Sapha Har carries the sense of the clean or pure people.
• The movement urged worship of a single supreme being in place of offerings to the many bongas, and reform of conduct within the community.
• It is associated with Bhagirath Manjhi, whose later demand for a Santal raj brought him into conflict with the colonial authorities.
• It arose in the same country as the Santal hool of 1855-56, which had led to the creation of the Santal Parganas district.

• Assuming any nineteenth-century tribal movement must have been an armed rebellion; several were reformist and religious.
• Reading a movement that turns towards one god as therefore turning towards Hinduism.
• Confusing the Kherwar movement of the 1870s with the Santal hool of 1855-56.

As a movement-to-idea identification, as a movement-to-decade item, or as a match between tribal risings and their leaders.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Santal hool, the great Santal rebellion against moneylenders and the colonial administration, broke out in which one of the following years?

  • (a)1831
  • (b)1855
  • (c)1875
  • (d)1899

  Answer(b) 1855 — the rising led to the creation of the Santal Parganas as a separately administered district.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The term ulgulan, meaning the great tumult, is associated with the movement led by which one of the following?

  • (a)Sidhu and Kanhu
  • (b)Birsa Munda
  • (c)Bhagirath Manjhi
  • (d)Alluri Sitarama Raju

  Answer(b) Birsa Munda — the Munda rising of 1899-1900 in the Chhotanagpur region.