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The legendary surrealist Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory represents the fluidity and the mutability of dreams, where time is a malleable and social construct.

Dreams provided the underlying inspiration for two rebellions, separated by a period of four decades, in Jharkhand (at the time a part of Bengal) to free its people from the shackles of colonialism in Jharkhand.

These dreams, both metaphorically and physically, were informed by religiosity, and underpinned the moral legitimacy of the rebels to undo prevailing wrongs — Santal leaders Sido and Kanhu Murmu, and later, another tribal icon, Birsa Munda, received divine command of the Thacoor (God) to fight against injustice, and for independence.

So powerful were their clarion calls that both the Santal Hul and the Munda Ulgulan (the ‘Great Tumult’) ushered in large-scale changes in the revenue administration and justice system.

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The records of Kanhu’s interrogation establish that it was Thacoor’s call that inspired Sido and Kanhu to take up arms against oppressive zamindars, rapacious mahajans, and negligent administrators, and strive for self-rule or Santal Raj. Being “possessed” by Bonga (Santali deities) was not uncommon among the Santals, and resulted in swift action by the community as per the deity’s wishes.

Likewise, in the case of Birsa Munda, God’s message for liberation provided course-changing vigor, and helped raise a platform of last resort to the oppressed. The ethical and moral courage of Birsa in standing against the mighty Empire, and his “vision”, have been duly recognized.

However, a careful examination of the literature on these tribal rebellions reveals that while Sido-Kanhu and Birsa were united by the same dream of freedom, the former has suffered from relative neglect.

Unlike the Ulgulan, which is framed as a rebellion against the Raj, discussions of the Hul ignore the role of the British as oppressors. They also discount the condign retribution which followed the Hul’s suppression. The paternalistic narrations of the Raj cavil about the ways and means of the rebels.

Yet the widespread changes to the administrative system following the Hul stands as a testimony to both its merits and necessity. These changes, in a way, vindicated the cause of Sido and Kanhu. That being said, even though the British attempted to disguise these changes as “reforms”, their actions helped “the same dikus (outsiders) against whom [the Santals] had taken up arms”. In pretending to give attention to the Santals, the British stripped them of the memory of their leaders and rebellion.

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The Hul and their heroes fell in the “blindspot of historiography”. To the subaltern historian Ranajit Guha, “their [Santals’] will and reason, often ignored by the historiographers, constituted the praxis of rebellion”. This neglect is not restricted to the lack of literature alone.

There was also a lesser acceptance of Sido and Kanhu as political revolutionaries by their contemporary intelligentsia, primarily on account of the violence associated with the Hul. This is despite the fact that working communities like blacksmiths and agriculturalists were supportive of the Hul. As pointed out by historian Peter Stanley: “Santal metal tools and weapons… were made by Bengali smiths living in their villages” (Hul! Hul!: The Suppression of the Santal Rebellion in Bengal, 1855).

This demotion of Sidu-Kanho’s revolutionary status is due to the social position of those who wrote their history — British administrators, or wealthy upper caste Indians in the service of the Empire.

As Guha explained in his highly influential “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency”, historians who have written about subaltern movements in India have rarely accounted for the rebels’ own consciousness, and in fact projected their own consciousness onto the subject they are investigating. Thus, “blind spots” mark different kinds of historical discourse.

In the case of the Hul, ‘primary discourses’ comprise official and unofficial communications of soldiers and magistrates, which refer to Sido and Kanhu in fairly adversarial terms. ‘Secondary discourses’, largely from British missionaries and administrators cast them into deliberate oblivion, glorifying instead the British efforts to mainstream or ‘domesticate’ the ‘savage’ Santals.

None of these discourses could reconcile the personal positions of their authors to the violent methods of the Hul. This had a cascading effect on the subsequent historiography.

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Sido and Kanhu have not been adequately represented in the secondary discourses of colonial administrators like EG Mann (author of Sonthalia and the Sonthals), WW Hunter (renowned for his Imperial Gazetteer of India and other works), R Carstairs, and the missionaries.

For example, Mann wrote a chapter on the rebellion in his book without naming Sido and Kanhu, and Carstairs wrote a 404-page book, Little World of an Indian District Officer, without taking a meaningful view of the Hul. The void becomes glaring when compared with the material available on the Ulgulan.

The selectiveness and ‘presumed neutrality’ of colonial historiography is also demonstrated in their dichotomous view of Santal rebels. On one hand, the Santals are painted as simpletons, simply “incapable of lying”. At the same time, primary sources also refer to the so-called “Santal dodge” — an attempt by the rebels to deceive the army by acting loyal in their presence, and plundering in their absence. This only further shows that actors of the Hul were deliberately invisibilised to mask the colonial powers’ failure in containing the rebellion.

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Another reason for the Hul being relegated in public memory may be the relative positions of the actors of Hul and Ulgulan.

The Santals were migrants in modern-day Jharkhand, who were pushed westwards from Birbhum (in present-day West Bengal) by particularly bad famines in the late 18th century. In comparison, the Munda tribes already had prior tenancy rights on their land, where they were settled for ages. This area, just south of Ranchi, was also more centrally located than the Santal Pargana, which lay in the periphery. Moreover, Sido-Kanhu’s rebellion was also short-lived when compared to Birsa’s wider social movement, which lasted years until he died in prison in 1900.

Crucially, Birsa also found local champions to build his narrative, with his legend rightly benefitting from the writings of the historian-administrator Kumar Suresh Singh, and noted author Mahasweta Devi. All these factors, put together, distinguished, although artificially, Birsa Munda as ‘Adivasi leader’ and Sido-Kanhu as ‘Santal leaders’, relegating the latter to relative obscurity.

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To return to Dali, the ‘interior world’ of Sido-Kanhu’s dream resonates in the ideas of liberty, justice, equality, fraternity, and socialism manifested in the preamble to the Constitution of India.

However, one must not lose sight of the present-day ‘the exterior world’ too where their fellow tribes still continue to labor in various infrastructural projects and other public and private works, often in inaccessible and inhospitable situations.

The author is a 2012-batch IAS officer in the Jharkhand cadre. During his tenure as the Deputy Commissioner of Dumka district, he initiated State Library Literature Festivals which celebrated Santali literature, culture, tradition, and indigeneity.