Tracing the journey of tribal resilience and women’s leadership from the Great Uprising to the nation’s highest constitutional office.
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Abstract
This research reinterprets the legacy of Dharti Aaba Birsa Munda and the Ulgulan (1899–1900) through an integrated interdisciplinary and gender lens that focuses the vital yet marginalised role of Janajati women. While Ulgulan has long been framed as a male-led anti-colonial revolt, oral histories, ritual archives, and ethnographic memory reveal that women served as its strategic organisers, ecological custodians, ritual anchors, and political mobilisers. By engaging gender theory, ecofeminism, constructivist identity, critiques of Orientalism, and the resource curse framework, this article highlights how women shaped not only the ideological substance of resistance but also its logistical, ecological, and cultural foundations. This historical arc finds contemporary resonance in the rise of Hon’ble President Droupadi Murmu and the wide-ranging tribal empowerment initiatives of the past decade. The article argues that Janajati women have always been central to indigenous self-rule, ecological ethics, community resilience, and the living legacy of Birsa Munda.
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The 150th birth anniversary of Dharti Aaba Birsa Munda (1875–1900) in 2025 marks a profoundly significant national milestone and offers an opportunity to revisit the long, complex, and inspiring journey of tribal resistance, social reform, and cultural self-assertion. At the centre of this historical narrative stands a truth often overlooked: Janajati women have been the steady, courageous, and creative force sustaining this 150-year journey. The Ulgulan (1899–1900), remembered as the Great Tumult, is usually recounted through accounts of male leaders and armed confrontation. Yet the deeper lifeblood of the movement—its emotional strength, cultural unity, spiritual conviction, and everyday organisation—was carried forward by women whose contributions were recorded not in colonial documents but in songs, rituals, oral histories, and community memory. Restoring their role to the heart of Birsa Munda’s legacy is essential for understanding the true nature of indigenous resistance and the enduring strength of Janajati society.
Janajati societies across eastern India—including the Munda, Santhal, Ho, Oraon, and Birhor communities—developed within cultural systems that granted women mobility, responsibility, and ritual presence beyond the constraints of caste-bound hierarchies. Women’s labour sustained farming cycles, forest-based livelihoods, seed preservation, household production, and community rituals. Their social location in an ecosystem of shared labour, clan-based governance, sacred groves, and collective decision-making produced a cultural milieu in which gender complementarity—rather than rigid patriarchy—structured everyday life. When colonial encroachment intensified through forest laws in 1865, 1878, and 1894, missionary interference, taxation, and landlord exploitation, women bore the greatest burden of ecological disruption and were among the earliest to resist it.
The Ulgulan must therefore be understood not as a militarised uprising alone but as an expansive socio-cultural reorganisation in which women emerged as indispensable agents. Sali, Birsa’s companion, played a vital organisational role by gathering women disciples, spreading Birsa’s teachings, and providing shelter, food, and moral support to fighters; oral narratives emphasise her attempt to shield Birsa during his arrest on 3 February 1900. Another towering figure, Maki Munda—the wife of Gaya Munda—led women armed with tangis and lathis during the clashes at Sail Rakab and Etkedih in December 1899. Her daughters Thigi, Nagi, and Lembu carried coded messages across forest routes, prepared herbal medicine, supplied grain, and cared for wounded fighters before being sentenced to imprisonment by the British. Sugi Munda’s home became a strategic meeting point for Birsait followers. The wives and daughters of many rebels died in confrontations but survived in ritual memory and clan genealogies, revealing the gendered fabric of resistance that colonial archives sought to erase.
These women reconfigured domestic spaces into political arenas—courtyards became planning centres, ritual gatherings turned into community assemblies, and songs transformed into systems of encoded communication. Their ecological knowledge sustained mobility; their spiritual authority preserved unity; their emotional labour held the insurgency together. Through them, Ulgulan became a civilisational assertion of identity rather than a series of battles alone.
To appreciate this fully, the movement must be interpreted through an interdisciplinary theoretical framework. Gender theory helps reveal how women’s agency was constructed through kinship relations, ecological labour, ritual authority, and community norms rather than through Western notions of individual autonomy. Ecofeminism highlights how women’s identity as custodians of forests, seeds, water systems, and herbal knowledge shaped their resistance to exploitative colonial policies and contemporary extractive industries. Constructivist identity approaches illuminate how women transmitted Birsait consciousness—through songs, storytelling, ritual observance, and spiritual guidance—ensuring that resistance became an intergenerational cultural identity. A critique of Orientalism uncovers the archival silences that marginalised women by privileging male actors, military engagements, and property disputes. Meanwhile, the resource curse framework explains how mineral abundance in the Chotanagpur–Odisha belt intensified displacement and environmental degradation, placing heavier burdens on women and consequently strengthening their ecological and political agency.
Women’s leadership extended beyond Ulgulan into broader historical movements. In the Santhal Hul (1855–56), women served as protectors, healers, and intelligence providers. In the Tana Bhagat movement (1914–1920), Oraon women reinforced indigenous ethics of non-violence well before Gandhian influence reached the region. Throughout Singhbhum, Koraput, Mayurbhanj, and Sundargarh, women sustained forest-protection initiatives, fought against mining-induced displacement, maintained sacred groves, and negotiated customary rights long before the legal recognition provided by the Forest Rights Act (2006). These trajectories constitute a long-standing indigenous feminist tradition rooted in eco-spirituality, communal reciprocity, and intergenerational stewardship.
This continuum finds remarkable expression today in the rise of Her Highness Hon’ble President Smt. Droupadi Murmu, the first tribal woman to assume India’s highest constitutional office in 2022. Born in Uparbeda village in Mayurbhanj, Odisha, her journey—from teacher to MLA, minister, Governor of Jharkhand, and ultimately President—embodies the moral resilience, cultural rootedness, and leadership values traditionally associated with Janajati women. Her ascent, supported by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), represents a moment of national recognition for indigenous leadership and the culmination of a century and a half of women’s contributions to India’s democratic and cultural evolution. Her presidency symbolises a civilisational continuity between the women of Ulgulan and the women shaping today’s governance, development, and public life.
Equally significant is the institutional transformation that has unfolded over the past decade. The Government of India’s Development Action Plan for Scheduled Tribes (DAPST) mandates 42 ministries to allocate targeted funds for tribal welfare. Eleven Tribal Freedom Fighter Museums—including the Bhagwan Birsa Munda Memorial Park-cum-Museum in Ranchi—restore tribal narratives to public consciousness. The Pradhan Mantri Janajati Janajati Nyaya Maha Abhiyan (PM-JANMAN, 2023) provides intensive development support to Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs). The expansion of Eklavya Model Residential Schools enhances educational opportunities for tribal girls; strengthened FRA and PESA frameworks empower communities in land and forest governance; women-led Self-Help Groups (SHGs) under the National Rural Livelihood Mission promote financial autonomy; and Van Dhan Vikas Kendras, with nearly 70 percent women participation, have created micro-enterprise opportunities across forest economies. These initiatives collectively mark a shift from welfare to empowerment, from marginalisation to national visibility, and from cultural neglect to civilisational affirmation.
Complementing state-led measures, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliate organisations—including the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and the Ekal Vidyalaya movement—have played a significant role in grassroots empowerment through education, nutrition campaigns, de-addiction drives, anti-trafficking interventions, livelihood training, cultural revival, and promotion of tribal languages and sports. Their work in Jharkhand and surrounding regions has strengthened local leadership and supported indigenous women as educators, cultural custodians, and community organisers.
Together, these developments form a broad indigenous feminist framework distinct from mainstream feminist theories. Janajati women articulate leadership as community care rather than individual assertion, ecological responsibility rather than adversarial power, and cultural preservation rather than institutional occupation. Their agency is intergenerational, land-centred, and community-rooted, emerging from Sarna sacred traditions, agricultural rhythms, cosmological knowledge, and the ethics of jal–jangal–jameen.
The lived experience of Janajati women is therefore not an appendix to India’s freedom struggle but its philosophical and cultural backbone. Their courage sustained Ulgulan; their collective wisdom preserved identity; their labour supported the economy; their rituals nurtured social cohesion; and their ecological knowledge preserved the forests that form the heart of Janajati life. Today, their leadership shapes policy, governance, ecological activism, cultural revival, and national politics. From the forested courtyards of Chotanagpur to the highest constitutional position of India at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the journey of Janajati women reflects a 150-year continuum of strength, renewal, and renaissance. The living legacy of Birsa Munda endures most profoundly in the voices and leadership of Janajati women who continue to transform India with dignity, justice, inclusivity, and moral courage.
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Dr. Maheep is currently the Principal Investigator of a national project on India’s Soft Power Diplomacy. He has over a decade of teaching and research experience in Indian Politics and International Relations, and contributes regularly on issues shaping national and global affairs.
The analyses and conclusions expressed in this article/paper reflect the author’s independent scholarly perspective.