Person · Oraon religious reformer
Jatra Bhagat
Also known as Jatra Oraon
Jatra Bhagat (c.1888 - 1917), the Oraon tribal religious reformer who founded the 1914-1917 Tana Bhagat movement in Chota Nagpur Plateau's Oraon tribal community. The movement combined Gandhian non-violence with a return to monotheistic Oraon Dharmes worship, rejection of alcohol-and-meat, boycott of landlord-zamindar systems, and refusal to pay land tax to the British. Jatra Bhagat was arrested by the British in 1914 and died in Chota Nagpur jail custody around 1917. The movement he founded continued under his successors; the Tana Bhagats later became prominent participants in Gandhi's Non-Cooperation (1920) and Dandi March (1930). The 2016 Jharkhand government's Tana Bhagat Memorial at Vishunpur village honours his legacy.
- Date
- 1888–1917
- Function
- Social reform & movement
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Connections (1)
- AnalogueKomaram Bheem
Jatra Bhagat's 1914-1917 Tana Bhagat movement in Chota Nagpur Plateau's Oraon tribal community paralleled Komaram Bheem's 1928-1940 Adilabad Gond rebellion in both demand (ancestral tribal land rights) and in combination of religious reform with anti-colonial resistance. Both leaders built tribal mass movements rooted in indigenous religious reform (Tana Bhagat Dharma for the Oraons, Vedic reform for the Gonds) against the British-Nizam land-and-forest regimes.
Sources
Standard biography; regional historiography.
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