Place · Santhal rebellion village · India
Bhognadih
The village of Bhognadih in Sahibganj district, Jharkhand, the birthplace of the Murmu brothers Sidhu, Kanhu, Chand and Bhairav who led the 1855 Santhal Hul — the first major tribal uprising against the British East India Company in eastern India. On 30 June 1855 a gathering of about 30,000 Santhals at Bhognadih under the four Murmu brothers declared war on the British zamindar-moneylender system that had reduced the Santhals to debt bondage. The six-month rebellion spread across 1,000 villages and was crushed by British troops with over 10,000 Santhal killed. Sidhu and Kanhu were hanged in 1856. The Bhognadih memorial and the annual Hul Divas (30 June) commemorate the uprising. The 1855 Hul and the Munda Ulgulan of 1899-1900 together establish the Chota Nagpur tribal resistance narrative.
- Date
- 1855–1856
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Condition
- living memorial landscape
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 24.510, 87.440
Connections (3)
- Adivasi anti-colonial historyUlihatu / Khunti
Bhognadih in the Santhal Parganas and Ulihatu in Chotanagpur are the memorial centres of two Adivasi risings forty years apart — the Santhal Hul of 1855 under Sidhu and Kanhu, and Birsa Munda's Ulgulan of 1899. Neither was organised with the other and they belonged to different peoples, but both were against the same combination of revenue demand, moneylending and the conversion of collective land into tenancy, and both produced legislation.
- AnalogueBirsa Munda
The Santhal Hul of 1855 at Bhognadih and Birsa's Ulgulan of 1899 at Khunti are the two great Adivasi risings of the Chotanagpur plateau, forty-four years apart, and both were against the same combination — revenue demand, moneylenders, outsider tenancy and the courts that enforced all three. Each produced legislation afterwards, the Santhal Parganas Tenancy Act and the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, which remain the basic land law of Jharkhand.
- CampaignSidhu Murmu
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.
On these journeys
Sources
Ministry of Tribal Affairs repository and Bhuria Committee report; colonial records and modern histories of the Santhal Hul.
Open Bhognadih in the repository →