Jangal Santhal

He was from Hatighisa village,[1] Darjeeling district in north West Bengal, was one of the founders of the Naxalite movement[2] (along with Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal).

Santhal was a well-respected figure among the Adivasi sharecroppers, peasants and tea labourers of the hill and tarai areas of Darjeeling district.

After his release from prison a second time in 1977, he tried to reignite his vision for the Naxalite movement and India's communist parties, but soon became disillusioned at what they had become, sinking into a depression and turning towards alcoholism.

His legacy and reputation is very divisive and contentious, as differing factions within the Naxalite movement and Communist groups within India in general seek to propagate their own ideologies and visions.

During the Naxalite movement, the police warned landowners not to offer any job to his wives in any tea garden so that they as well as their children would starve and die in the long run.

[3] Kisan Sabha was a peasants front of the Communist Party of India which Santhal was a member of in 1952 and where he gained basic knowledge of politics.

Even though Santhal was a President of the Kishan Sabha of Naxalbari-Hatighisha region at the time he still protested against them because he could not welcome the land issue or its distribution among the landless as a way to capture power.

[3] According to his comrade Kanu Sanyal this protest was what brought Santhal into the public eye as a peasant leader as well as the origin that started the Naxalbari uprising.

[1] While a tenant farmer in 1951, Santhal met Comrade Chunilal Gowala, a milkman who inspired him to become a member of the undivided Communist Party of India.

What he learned from Gowala would continue to stay with Santhal, becoming the backbone of his ideological thinkings and help inspire him to organize and lead the Naxalbari uprising and the greater Naxalite movement afterwards.

In 1952 Santhal had a conflict with jotedar, Serket Sing of Hatighisa, about the tebhaga issue (movement to reduce the landlord share of land to one third).

[5] The landholders refused to accept the terms dictated by their tenants and called in police causing many of the tebhaga activists arrested and jailed.

[6] Leaders like Santhal continued to organize peasants and tea garden workers urging them grab excess land and revolt against exploitations by the landlords.

Tea garden workers were exploited and tortured by joetedars on various occasions and Santhal helped to search for illegal land of the jotedars.

[8] On 18 March 1967, Santhal was part of a Peasants' Council in the Darjeeling district that resolved to re-distribute the land to the sharecroppers and prepare for an armed struggle against landlords.

[8] This led to peasants across the area gradually rising up against their oppressive landlords and establishing their own revolutionary committees, thereby giving themselves political power.

The response to this was that sharecroppers and peasants across the region started violently and forcibly take back their land; Jangal Santhal the primary leader and organizer of this uprising.

[8] When a police party headed by inspector Sonam Wangdi arrived to arrest some peasant leaders, they were ambushed by Santhal's group armed with bows and arrows.

[1] The Communist Party of India (M-L) was initially led by Charu Mazumdar, until his murder by the police in a torture prison in Kolkata (Calcutta) in 1972.

[1] Kanu Sanyal wanted to blame Comrade Charu Mazumdar for the failure of the Naxalbari uprising, but Santhal did support this idea.

In the 1950s when Santhal was badly beaten in the movement demanding tebhaga in the land of landlord Sherket Singh, he became more determined to organize peasants in the terai region.

[3] According to Comrade Souren Basu, one of the prominent figures of Naxalbari movement, Santhal always showed what knowledge and wisdom stand for in the way that the steps and principles he used were based on reality and not on any theory.

[18] Although many praise Jangal Santhal for his work and focus on peasant tribal movements as they try to carve out a voice for themselves, this also plays into the reason why he is so often forgotten, as well as his dislike of unnecessary violence.

[19] Due to that, memorials and the like around India, and Naxalbari specifically, for people like Jangal Santhal and his comrade Kanu Sanyal are non-existent, and their history has been largely forgotten.