Tag: tribals, dikus and the vision of a golden age

Bengal indigo was very popular all over the world.  Indigo planting became more and more commercially profitable because of the demand for blue dye in Europe which was made from the indigo plant. These dyes were very expensive and only the Roman Emperors and the very wealthy could afford them. In 1810, 95% of indigo imported in Britain was from India.

Coorg is a hill station in the Karnataka State of India. It is very famous for its tea and coffee plantations in India. Along with that, it is also known for its exotic greenery and natural beauty.

Jhum cultivation is the practice of clearing vegetative/forest cover on land/slopes of hills, drying and burning it before onset of monsoon and cropping on it thereafter. It is a primitive practice of cultivation in States of North Eastern Hill Region of India. Land is often cleared by slash-and-burn methods. The ashes add potash to the soil.

From the late nineteenth century, tea plantations started coming up and mining became an important industry. Tribals were recruited in large numbers to work the tea plantations of Assam and the coal mines of Jharkhand. They were recruited through contractors who paid them miserably low wages and prevented them from returning home. Hence, Option A is correct.

In the early 1820s, the British East India Company began large-scale production of tea in Assam, India, of a tea variety traditionally brewed by the Singpho people. In 1826, the British East India Company took over the region from the Ahom kings through the Yandaboo Treaty. In 1837, the first English tea garden was established at Chabua in Upper Assam; in 1840, the Assam Tea Company began the commercial production of tea in the region, run by indentured servitude of the local inhabitants^. Beginning in the 1850s, the tea industry rapidly expanded, consuming vast tracts of land for tea plantations. By the turn of the century, Assam became the leading tea producing region in the world.

Zamindari System was introduced by Lord Cornwallis in 1793 through Permanent Settlement Act. It was introduced in provinces of Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Varanasi. Also known as Permanent Settlement System. Zamindars were recognized as owner of the lands. Zamindars were given the rights to collect the rent from the peasants.

Zamindari Association, The reckoned to be the first political association of modern India. Formally launched in Calcutta in March 1838, it was renamed the Landholders' Society shortly afterwards. Landed magnates like Raja radhakant dev, dwarkanath tagore, Prasanna Kumar Tagore, Rajkamal Sen and Bhabani Charan Mitra were its leading members. The promotion of landholders' interests through petitions to government and discreet persuasion of the bureaucracy was its professed object. Among its aims were securing a halt to the resumption of rent-free tenures and an extension of the permanent settlement of land all over India, including the grant of lease of waste land to their occupants. The demand for reform of the judiciary, the police and the revenue departments was also on its agenda.

The Onge are one of the Andamanese indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands. Traditionally hunter-gatherers, they are a designated Scheduled Tribe of India.

The Kisan Sabha movement started in Bihar under the leadership of Sahajanand Saraswati who had formed in 1929 the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha (BPKS) in order to mobilise peasant grievances against the zamindari attacks on their occupancy rights, and thus sparking the farmers' movements in India.