01Dharti Aba
He was born at Ulihatu, in today’s Khunti district of Jharkhand, to a poor Munda family. He studied at the German Mission school at Chaibasa, where the family had become Christian, and then left the mission. He spent time with a Vaishnava teacher, Anand Panre, and learnt from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. From about 1895 he began to preach: one Bhagwan, no liquor, no animal sacrifice to spirits, clean living, and the sacred thread for his followers. Thousands came to hear him at Chalkad. They called him Dharti Aba, father of the earth. He told them the land belonged to the Mundas, not to the dikus, the outside landlords and moneylenders.
02The Ulgulan
The British arrested him in August 1895 and he spent two years in jail. In December 1899 the Ulgulan, the great tumult, broke out: police stations, mission stations and the houses of landlords in the Khunti and Tamar country were attacked with arrows and fire. On 9 January 1900 troops attacked the Mundas gathered on Dombari Buru hill and many were killed. Birsa was captured in the Jamkopai forest on 3 February 1900 and died in Ranchi jail on 9 June; the jail recorded cholera. In 1908 the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act restricted the transfer of tribal land. Jharkhand was formed on his birth anniversary, 15 November 2000, and since 2021 that day is kept as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas.
