Person · Santhal rebel leader · India
Sidhu Murmu
Also known as Sidhu, Sidhu Murmu, Sido Murmu, Santhal Hul
A Santhal of Bhognadih who, with his brother Kanhu, declared in June 1855 that the Thakur had instructed them to end the rule of the moneylenders, the police and the revenue officials. Some ten thousand Santhals assembled, and the rising took the Company six months and martial law to suppress.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 24.680, 87.250
Worth knowing
He was hanged at Bhognadih. The Hul's result was the Santhal Parganas Tenancy Act and a separate non-regulation district in which Santhal land could not be sold to outsiders — the first protective legislation of its kind in India, conceded after the rebellion that demanded it.
About the place
Placed at Bhognadih in the Santhal Parganas, where the rising was declared in June 1855 and where he was hanged.
Connections (5)
- In the same set asKanhu Murmu
The Hul is remembered as Sidhu-Kanhu, one name for two brothers, and the repository keeps them as two entries because they were two people with different roles: Sidhu made the declaration and carried the religious authority, Kanhu commanded in the field and kept the rising alive after the first defeats. Both were hanged at Bhognadih, and two more brothers were killed in the fighting.
- CampaignBhognadih
The declaration at Bhognadih on 30 June 1855 named the enemy precisely: the mahajan lending at compound interest, the daroga who enforced his decrees, and the amla who recorded the land. Ten thousand Santhals assembled and marched on Bhagalpur. Martial law was declared, and the rising was put down with artillery against bows over roughly six months.
- PrecursorBirsa Munda
Forty years and two hundred kilometres separate the Hul from the Ulgulan, and the mechanism was the same in both: land held by clearing right, moneylenders and landlords inserted over it by a revenue system that only recognised individual title, and a religious idiom in which the resistance was expressed. Each produced a protective tenancy act, and each act came only after the rising.
- Shared sacred geographyLugu Buru
Lugu Buru is where Santhal tradition places the origin of Santhal religion and social order, and Bhognadih is where Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu declared the Hul in 1855. The January assembly at Lugu Buru now passes resolutions on language, script and land, so the same community has a named origin place, a rebellion memorial and an annual parliament within a hundred kilometres.
- CampaignRajmahal Hills
The Rajmahal Hills and the Damin-i-koh country below them were the heartland of the Santal Hul rebellion of 30 June 1855 to January 1856, led by the brothers Sidhu, Kanhu, Chand and Bhairav Murmu against the sahukars (moneylenders), the zamindars and the East India Company. Sidhu Murmu called the rising at Bhognadih in Sahibganj district on 30 June 1855, mobilised about ten thousand Santal villagers from the hills, and marched on Barhait and Pakur before being overrun by Major-General Lloyd's troops near Panchkathia; he was hanged publicly in Barhait that August.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu”. The Calcutta Review's contemporary account of the Santhal insurrection (1856); Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (1983).
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