ABSTRACT
The Chota Nagpur plateau, which is today the state of Jharkhand in eastern India, is one of the oldest regions of the world with the richest concentration of mineral resources and natural vegetation in the country. The region, mainly inhabited by aboriginal tribes, has however remained one of the most backward and marginalized areas of the country. Since the beginning of the 19th century these simple tribal people have been caught in the vortex of contesting claims over them which have had lasting repercussions on their socio-economic development and on their sense of identity and belongingness. Christian missionaries of various denominations had a huge stake in these people, and their active evangelization resulted in a sizeable tribal population adopting Christianity. This chapter examines the attempts of the British administrators and German missionaries to ‘civilize’ this region by introducing Western education among the tribal people in the mid-19th century. The introduction of formal schools by the missionaries and their attempt to retrieve the tribal peoples from a ‘primitive’ stage of development and integrate them into mainstream civilization has resulted in a series of complicated entanglements between the adivasis (original inhabitants) and the dikus (outsiders). An overview of the contributions of the German missionaries, the Gossner Lutherans in particular, and the British colonialists, and their rapid incursion into the lives of the adivasis will bring to light the appropriation of contesting claims over these people, and the extent to which missionaries and colonialists were agents for the re-formation of indigenous society.
