How far is it correct to say that the 19th century tribal uprisings are a part of subaltern nationalism?

Answer:

Nineteenth-century tribal risings were undoubtedly resistance to colonial rule and its agents, and Subaltern Studies has read them as autonomous popular politics. Whether they constitute nationalism, however, depends on what one takes that word to mean.

The character of the uprisings

• The Kol insurrection of 1831-32, Santhal Hool of 1855-56 and Birsa Munda's ulgulan of 1899-1900 are the principal examples.
• They resisted the loss of tribal land to outsiders, the dikus.
• Moneylenders, contractors, revenue officials and police were their targets.
• Colonial forest and revenue law had destroyed customary tenures.
• Millenarian religious appeals often supplied the idiom of revolt.

The case for calling them subaltern nationalism

• They were directed ultimately against colonial authority and its agents.
• Ranajit Guha argued they represented an autonomous domain of popular politics.
• Leaders such as Birsa Munda explicitly proclaimed the end of British rule.
• They demonstrated a consciousness of collective identity and grievance.
• They preceded and were independent of elite nationalist organisation.

The case against

• Their aims were local, seeking restoration of custom rather than a nation-state.
• They had no conception of India as a political community.
• The immediate enemy was the outsider, whether Indian or British.
• Millenarian and religious aims sit awkwardly with modern nationalism.
• They made no connection with contemporaneous elite political activity.

A balanced view

• Guha and the Subaltern school insist on their autonomy from elite politics.
• Bipan Chandra treats them as pre-national resistance rather than nationalism proper.
• Their memory was later absorbed into the nationalist narrative.
• Their significance lies in showing that resistance was never confined to the elite.

Colonial response

• Special legislation created Scheduled Districts and non-regulation areas.
• The Chotanagpur Tenancy Act of 1908 followed Birsa Munda's rising.
• Such concessions acknowledged the force of tribal resistance.
• The Fifth Schedule of the Constitution inherited this special administrative tradition.

It is therefore correct to call them subaltern resistance but only loosely nationalism. As Ranajit Guha's work established, these risings represented an autonomous politics of the oppressed directed against colonial authority, yet their horizons were local and restorative, so they are best understood as the popular prehistory of Indian nationalism rather than as its early expression.