The Paharias of the Rajmahal hills

The Paharias lived in the Rajmahal hills, in present-day Jharkhand. They practised shifting cultivation: they cleared patches of forest by cutting bushes and burning them, and grew pulses and millets using hoes on the ash-enriched soil. After a few years, they moved to a new patch, letting the old one recover.

They also collected mahua flowers for food, silk cocoons and resin for sale, and wood for charcoal. The forest was their identity and their home.

They often raided the settled peoples of the plains, especially in times of scarcity. To keep peace, zamindars paid them tribute, and traders paid them tolls to use the passes.

The British first tried to exterminate them, in the 1770s. Then, in the 1780s, Augustus Cleveland, the Collector of Bhagalpur, proposed pacification: Paharia chiefs were given annual allowances in return for keeping their men in order.

Views differed. William Hodges, an artist who travelled with Cleveland, painted the hills as picturesque, peaceful idylls; British officials, by contrast, saw the hills as wild and dangerous. For the Paharias, the forest was home, not wilderness.