15th November is celebrated as 'Janjatiya Gaurav Divas' in honour of birth of which tribal leader?

Question

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Correct — C, Bhagwan Birsa Munda. He was born on 15 November 1875 at Ulihatu in the Chotanagpur plateau (Khunti district of present-day Jharkhand), and in November 2021 the Union Cabinet declared his birth anniversary a national day — Janjatiya Gaurav Divas — to honour the tribal contribution to the freedom struggle. Birsa led the Ulgulan or 'Great Tumult' of 1899–1900 against the colonial land settlement, the dikus (outsider landlords and moneylenders) and forced labour, was revered by his followers as 'Dharti Aaba' (Father of the Earth) and as Bhagwan, and died in Ranchi jail on 9 June 1900 while barely 25. The agitation he led fed directly into the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908, which restricted the transfer of tribal land to non-tribals.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Tantya Bhil, affectionately 'Tantya Mama', is a genuine Bhil hero of the Nimar region of Madhya Pradesh who was hanged by the British in 1889, and Madhya Pradesh honours him with a self-employment scheme in his name. But the national day of 15 November is tied specifically to Birsa Munda's birth anniversary, not to Tantya Bhil.  (b) A 16th-century Gond queen of Garha-Katanga who died fighting Akbar's army in 1564 — a towering tribal icon of Madhya Pradesh, but from the medieval period, not the colonial freedom struggle. Her birth anniversary falls on 5 October, not 15 November.  (d) A local Kol figure of regional memory. Whatever the exact identity intended by the booklet, the Cabinet's 2021 notification names one person alone — Birsa Munda — as the leader whose birth anniversary Janjatiya Gaurav Divas commemorates.

Concept: Janjatiya Gaurav Divas is a national observance, approved by the Union Cabinet in November 2021 and first held on 15 November 2021, that fixes the tribal contribution to India's freedom struggle on the calendar. The date is Birsa Munda's birthday. Birsa was a Munda of the Chotanagpur plateau who fused a religious reform movement (the Birsait faith) with an armed agrarian revolt: his Ulgulan of 1899–1900 demanded the restoration of the khuntkatti communal-tenure system that colonial land settlements and immigrant landlords had eroded.

State PCS 2025 Q81 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q81 — History PYQ with Answer