Populations Where Regionally Relevant Adivasi history enters a history of Mithila, Vajji and Anga unevenly. The plains core of Mithila and Vajji cannot be represented as a continuous forest-tribal zone, while the eastern and south-eastern borderlands of Anga have long been connected to Santal, Paharia and other Adivasi histories through settlement, labour, forest margins, colonial administration and the former Bhagalpur-Santal Parganas geography. Modern district boundaries further complicate the picture: communities, markets and kin networks cross Bihar- Jharkhand and India-Nepal borders that were drawn after many of the relevant social relations had formed. This chapter therefore uses three distinctions throughout. First, Scheduled Tribe is a constitutional and state-specific legal category, not a timeless ethnographic label. Second, forest-connected livelihood does not by itself establish Scheduled-Tribe identity; many non-ST households also depend on commons, grazing, fuelwood, bamboo, river margins and seasonal forest labour. Third, “Adivasi” is a political-historical vocabulary whose meaning can overlap with, but is not identical to, official schedules. The task is to recover the regionally relevant histories without projecting a single tribal frontier across all of Mithila, Vajji and Anga. 89.1 Regional relevance must be demonstrated rather than assumed The demographic and historical weight of Scheduled-Tribe communities varies sharply across the study area. In the central Mithila-Vajji plains, ST populations are generally small and dispersed. In the eastern districts and the Bihar-Jharkhand borderlands, however, Adivasi histories become much more visible. Bhagalpur and Banka are especially important because the nineteenth-century Bhagalpur district once extended into areas later separated as the Santal Parganas, while Purnia and Katihar formed part of a wider eastern frontier of migration, cultivation and labour. A regional history should therefore use a graded map of relevance: strong where settlement and institutions make Adivasi experience structurally important, and restrained where the evidence shows only small or recent populations. 89.2 Scheduled Tribe is a constitutional category with a specific legal history The Constitution of India did not simply rename an ancient social block. Scheduled Tribes are communities specified through constitutional orders for particular states and union territories, with later amendments altering names and coverage. Bihar’s current notified list includes Santal, Munda, Oraon, Mal Paharia, Sauria Paharia, Kharia, Kharwar, Ho, Gond, Asur, Birhor and numerous other communities. The list is legally decisive for reservation and welfare eligibility, but historical writing must still ask where each community lived, how it arrived or expanded, which languages and institutions it maintained, and how colonial and postcolonial administrations classified it. 89.3 Bihar’s Scheduled-Tribe population is significant at state scale but highly concentrated geographically Census 2011 recorded 1,336,573 Scheduled-Tribe persons in Bihar, about 1.3 per cent of the state population. The aggregate conceals major spatial concentration. West Champaran and the southern or south-eastern districts contain large shares, while eastern districts such as Purnia, Katihar, Bhagalpur and Banka also contain historically important communities. In the Mithila-Vajji core, district shares are much smaller. This pattern is methodologically important: statewide percentages cannot be used to infer village- HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II level presence, and a low regional share does not erase locally dense settlements. District and subdistrict tables must therefore be read alongside settlement histories. 89.4 The Anga-eastern Bihar borderland is the principal Adivasi zone within this volume’s core geography Bhagalpur and Banka connect the Gangetic plain to the Rajmahal and Chotanagpur-facing uplands. Their social history cannot be separated cleanly from the adjoining Santal Parganas simply because the latter now lie in Jharkhand. The official history of Bhagalpur records that Santal Pargana was carved out as a separate district in 1855-56; Banka, created from Bhagalpur in 1991, retains the same borderland orientation. This is the clearest place within the volume where Adivasi settlement, forest-edge cultivation, colonial frontier policy and modern ST welfare belong inside the main narrative rather than in a marginal note. Figure 352 — Institutional thresholds in Adivasi and forest-rights history 89.5 Bhagalpur’s older administrative geography linked the plains directly to the Santal frontier Before the mid-nineteenth-century territorial reorganisation, Bhagalpur administration covered a much larger south-eastern tract. The Santal Parganas were created after the 1855 uprising, and even the new arrangement retained administrative ties with Bhagalpur for a time. This older geography matters because colonial policing, revenue, markets, jails, roads and officials connected the hill and forest frontier to Bhagalpur town. Historical actors moved through these networks long before the Bihar-Jharkhand boundary of 2000. Anga’s social history therefore includes a frontier relationship as well as a riverine and urban one. 89.6 Santal settlement expanded through a frontier economy of clearing, cultivation and rent Official and colonial accounts describe Santal migration into the Rajmahal-Santal Parganas zone from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Landholders and officials valued Santal cultivators for clearing and extending cultivation, but the same process exposed settlers to rent claims, debt, merchant credit and administrative coercion. The frontier was therefore not an empty forest transformed by isolated pioneers. It was a political economy in which cultivators, hill communities, zamindars, moneylenders, police and state officers competed over land, labour and revenue. Those relations shaped the borderland adjoining Bhagalpur and Banka. 901901 GAJENDRA THAKUR 89.7 The Santal Hul of 1855 was a crisis of land, debt, administration and sovereignty The Hul led by Sidhu, Kanhu, Chand and Bhairav cannot be reduced to spontaneous “tribal unrest.” Grievances centred on moneylenders, rent, police and the corruption or remoteness of colonial authority. Thousands assembled at Bhognadih in June 1855, and the rebellion spread across a zone administratively linked to Bhagalpur and neighbouring districts. Its suppression was violent, but its institutional consequence was equally important: Act XXXVII of 1855 created a special non-regulation arrangement for the Santal Parganas. The episode demonstrates how Adivasi political action could force the colonial state to redraw territorial and legal arrangements. 89.8 Adivasi political history includes institutions of village authority, not only rebellion Santal village organisation historically included offices such as manjhi and other community functionaries, while different Adivasi peoples maintained distinct councils, ritual authorities and kinship institutions. Colonial officials often described these arrangements as survivals outside the state, but in practice village authority interacted continuously with landlords, police, courts, markets and revenue institutions. The historical question is therefore not whether Adivasi communities were “inside” or “outside” state society. It is how layered authorities negotiated disputes, marriage, land, ritual, labour and collective responsibility under changing regimes. 89.9 Paharia histories warn against treating all hill and forest peoples as one population The Rajmahal hills and adjoining tracts were also associated with Mal Paharia, Sauria Paharia and other Paharia communities whose histories differed from those of Santal cultivators. Colonial policy alternated between military coercion, allowances, indirect supervision and schemes of “pacification.” Later Santal expansion changed the demographic and agrarian balance of the hills. For a history centred on Mithila-Vajji- Anga, the key point is comparative: the eastern frontier contained multiple communities with distinct languages, settlement systems and political histories, not a single “tribe” occupying a uniform ecological niche. 89.10 Banka makes the forest-borderland connection visible inside present-day Bihar Banka’s eastern and southern boundaries meet Jharkhand, and its official district history explicitly connects the district to the history of old Bhagalpur and the formation of the Santal Parganas after 1855. Contemporary welfare programmes also identify Banka as a district with PVTG-targeted interventions. The district therefore illustrates continuity across a major administrative rupture: older mobility and settlement routes survive even though the modern state boundary separates Bihar from Jharkhand. Development, schooling, markets and labour migration continue to operate across that boundary. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Figure 353 — Uneven regional relevance across Mithila, Vajji, Anga and the eastern borderlands 89.11 Purnia and Katihar belong to a different eastern frontier of mobility and agrarian labour Purnia and Katihar sit between north Bihar, Bengal and the north-eastern corridor. Their Scheduled- Tribe populations are smaller than those of Bihar’s principal tribal districts but historically meaningful. Migration, estate agriculture, railway construction, floodplain cultivation and labour circulation created mixed settlements in which Santal, Oraon, Munda and other communities could appear far from older homelands. Such mobility makes “tribal area” a poor substitute for household and migration history. A person enumerated in Katihar may belong to a community whose wider institutional network crosses several states. 89.12 The Mithila-Vajji core requires restraint because forest history and Adivasi history are not synonymous Madhubani, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Vaishali and nearby districts contain Scheduled-Tribe residents, but their social history is not organised around a continuous tribal forest frontier. Plains households of many castes historically used groves, riverbanks, grazing land, reeds, bamboo and fuelwood. Treating every forest- connected livelihood as “tribal” would erase both Adivasi specificity and the multi-caste ecology of the plains. In this core zone, the stronger questions are migration, scattered settlement, labour-market incorporation, educational access and the visibility or invisibility of small ST populations within institutions designed around larger caste blocs. 89.13 Forest-connected livelihoods form an economic relation, not a legal identity Fuelwood, leaf litter, bamboo, fodder, grazing, fruits, fibres, lac, medicinal plants and seasonal forest labour can contribute to household reproduction without determining caste or tribe. Similarly, a legally recognised Scheduled-Tribe household may earn mainly from wage labour, migration, salaried employment or cultivation rather than forest produce. Historical analysis therefore needs two separate variables: resource dependence and legal-community identity. Their overlap can be important, especially in upland and border districts, but it must be shown empirically rather than assumed from stereotypes. 903903 GAJENDRA THAKUR 89.14 Colonial revenue expansion converted ecological margins into taxable property The late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century expansion of settled cultivation altered access to forest, grazing and shifting-use landscapes across eastern India. Revenue states preferred measurable fields, rent- paying tenants and bounded estates; local practices often depended on seasonal movement, shared use and flexible claims. The resulting friction did not affect every community in the same way. Groups with weak documentary title or limited access to courts faced particular risks. In the Bhagalpur-Santal borderland, agrarian expansion, debt and administrative change became part of the same historical process. 89.15 Colonial ethnography created durable community labels while flattening internal diversity Gazetteers, censuses and ethnographic surveys provide indispensable information on settlement, language and occupation, yet they also translated fluid identities into ranked and bounded categories. Officials frequently described communities through racial typologies, civilisational hierarchies or assumptions about “primitive” custom. Those texts must be read against the grain. A census name can document state recognition without proving timeless self-identification; an occupational description can show administrative perception without proving that every household practised that occupation. 89.16 Language and ritual institutions preserved community continuity across migration Migration did not necessarily dissolve Adivasi identity. Santal language and ritual practice, community festivals, clan rules, village authority and collective performance could travel with settlements and be renewed in new environments. At the same time, multilingualism expanded through contact with Hindi, Angika, Maithili, Bengali, Urdu and market languages. Language shift therefore should not be treated automatically as “assimilation.” Households could maintain ritual and kin institutions while using regional languages in schools, markets and administration. 89.17 Women’s labour linked household subsistence, agriculture, commons and migration Adivasi and forest-connected women’s work is under-recorded when statistics privilege the principal male occupation. Women could combine agricultural labour, weeding, harvesting, livestock care, collection of fuel or leaves, household processing, market sale and seasonal migration. Their access to land, forest produce and public programmes could differ from men’s because documentation, mobility, safety and household authority were gendered. Any account of changing livelihood therefore has to ask who actually collected, cultivated, sold, migrated and controlled income. 89.18 Markets could widen choice while deepening dependence on traders and credit Forest produce, livestock, grain, labour and craft goods connected villages to weekly markets and larger trading centres. Market access could raise the value of produce and enable cash income, yet asymmetries in weighing, credit, transport and information could shift gains to intermediaries. Debt also linked consumption shocks to future labour. The historical pattern resembles other agrarian relationships in Bihar HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II but with additional dependence on remoteness and resource access. Roads and mobile connectivity change these bargaining conditions without automatically eliminating them. 89.19 Education transformed the institutional horizon but distance remained a structural cost Census 2011 recorded ST literacy in Bihar below the state average, with a marked gender gap. Schools may be formally open yet difficult to use when settlements are distant, transport is weak, instruction is in an unfamiliar language or first-generation learners lack support. Scholarships, hostels and residential schools therefore matter not only as welfare transfers but as institutions that reduce distance. Their effects, however, depend on staffing, safety, continuity between school stages and the ability of families to absorb the opportunity cost of children’s work. 89.20 Migration created new livelihoods and new forms of vulnerability Scheduled-Tribe migration tables show that Bihar’s Adivasi population is not territorially static. Men and women move for marriage, work, education and family reasons, while seasonal labour creates additional circulation that census residence may only partly capture. Migration can loosen dependence on a single landlord, trader or forest edge, but it can also move workers into construction, brick kilns, domestic work or informal urban employment with weak social protection. The relevant historical shift is from constrained local choice to a wider but still unequal labour geography. Figure 354 — Distinguishing forest-connected livelihood from Scheduled-Tribe legal status 89.21 The Forest Rights Act created a rights framework whose Bihar implementation has been limited The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 sought to correct historical injustice by recognising individual and community forest rights under specified conditions. Ministry of Tribal Affairs monitoring reported that Bihar had received 8,022 claims and distributed only 121 titles by 31 January 2025, with no community titles recorded in that return. These figures should not be read as proof that only 121 households had legitimate historical connections to forest land. They show instead the narrow administrative outcome of a claims process shaped by evidence, institutional capacity, eligibility rules and local implementation. 905905 GAJENDRA THAKUR 89.22 PVTG policy makes extreme deprivation a separate administrative object India identifies a subset of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups for specially targeted interventions. The Bihar-Jharkhand historical list includes Asur, Birhor, Birjia, Hill Kharia, Korwa, Mal Paharia, Parhaiya, Sauria Paharia and Savar. Because the historical notification predates the creation of Jharkhand, current programme geography must be checked district by district rather than inferred from the old combined list. PVTG policy is therefore best understood as a contemporary administrative response to severe demographic, educational and livelihood disadvantage, not as a timeless anthropological hierarchy among Adivasi peoples. 89.23 PM-JANMAN shows that contemporary tribal policy now operates through household-level infrastructure By 30 June 2026, Union government reporting on PM-JANMAN in Bihar listed interventions in Banka, Bhagalpur, Katihar, Purnia, Madhepura, Supaul and several other districts. The reported components included sanctioned housing, drinking-water village saturation, hostels and anganwadi centres. Bhagalpur alone had 336 PMAY-G houses sanctioned in the district table, while Banka, Katihar, Purnia and other eastern districts also appeared. The historical significance is the shift from broad “tribal development” rhetoric toward household and settlement infrastructure that can be geographically monitored. 89.24 Education policy increasingly combines scholarships, hostels and residential institutions Contemporary policy includes pre-matric and post-matric scholarships, hostels and Eklavya Model Residential Schools. Bihar’s functional EMRS institutions reported by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs are concentrated outside the central Mithila-Vajji core, reflecting the geography of larger ST populations. For students from smaller dispersed populations, ordinary district schools, hostels and scholarship administration may therefore matter more than a dedicated tribal school. The institutional problem is one of scale: programmes designed for concentrated populations do not always fit scattered households. 89.25 Political representation converted demographic classification into public office Scheduled-Tribe reservation in legislatures and local bodies links population classification to representation. Where ST populations are small, reserved constituencies may be geographically distant, and local panchayat reservation can become the more immediate arena of office-holding. Representation does not mechanically transfer economic power, but it changes the public legitimacy of claim-making. A community member can approach the state not only as a beneficiary but as an elected representative, party worker, teacher, welfare intermediary or rights activist. 89.26 Identity claims and demands for ST inclusion reveal that official lists are politically consequential Because Scheduled-Tribe status carries constitutional entitlements, demands for inclusion or modification are politically charged. Government procedure requires proposals to move through the state government, the Registrar General of India, the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes and Parliament. Such claims should not be treated either as self-evident proof of “tribal origin” or as mere opportunism. They are modern struggles over historical recognition, disadvantage and access to state institutions, and they often mobilise ethnography, genealogy, occupation and regional memory as evidence. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 89.27 Cultural continuity is produced through public performance as well as household practice Festivals, songs, dance, oral narratives, community associations and language publications create public forms of Adivasi identity beyond the village. Migration can intensify such practices because urban or dispersed communities organise associations to reproduce festivals and mutual support. At the same time, state-sponsored cultural display can detach performance from land and livelihood questions. Historical writing should therefore connect cultural visibility to the material institutions that sustain communities rather than presenting performance as a self-contained “tribal culture.” 89.28 Development can reduce isolation while increasing pressure on land and resources Roads, electrification, mobile networks, schools and markets can lower the cost of health care, education and migration. They can also raise land values, accelerate extraction, intensify commercial agriculture and make previously remote resources easier for outsiders to reach. The same road may therefore expand opportunity and dispossession risk. The outcome depends on title, bargaining power, collective organisation and the terms under which infrastructure is built. This dual effect is especially important in border districts where forest-edge villages are integrated rapidly into larger markets. 89.29 Nepal-side Mithila requires a different legal vocabulary of caste, ethnicity and Adivasi Janajati The Nepal census and constitutional order do not reproduce India’s state-wise Scheduled-Tribe schedule. Nepal uses caste/ethnicity classifications and a separate policy vocabulary of Adivasi Janajati. Madhesh Province contains a complex plains population and is connected to Bihar through marriage, labour and markets, but the distribution of Janajati communities varies across the Tarai; Tharu populations, for example, are especially important farther west as well as in parts of the plains. A connected history must therefore compare institutions without treating “ST” and “Janajati” as interchangeable legal categories. Figure 355 — Institutional pathways from marginal location to public claim-making 907907 GAJENDRA THAKUR 89.30 Adivasi history in this volume is a history of borderlands, mobility, rights and uneven visibility The central conclusion is deliberately regional. Mithila and Vajji should not be retrospectively imagined as tribal forest societies, while Anga’s eastern and south-eastern borderlands cannot be understood without Adivasi histories. The old Bhagalpur-Santal Parganas connection, Santal settlement and the Hul, Paharia histories, eastern Bihar migration, modern ST classification, limited forest-rights implementation and recent PVTG infrastructure programmes all belong to one long transformation. The strongest continuity is not isolation but negotiation: over land, debt, labour, language, schools, markets, welfare documentation and political voice. Forest-connected livelihoods remain important, but they must be analysed independently from legal community status. That distinction makes it possible to recognise both Adivasi specificity and the multi-community ecology of the wider region. Table 89.1 — Regional arenas of Adivasi and forest-connected history Arena Historical significance Principal evidence Interpretive caution Bhagalpur- Old Bhagalpur-Santal District histories, Modern Bihar- Banka frontier; settlement, Hul, gazetteers, Census ST Jharkhand boundary is borderland mobility tables later than many social networks Purnia-Katihar Migration, agrarian labour Census district tables, Do not infer one origin and eastern corridor migration tables, or occupation for all ST settlement welfare records households Mithila-Vajji Small/dispersed ST Census, district Forest dependence is core populations; forest- handbooks, local not equivalent to ST connected livelihoods studies identity among many communities Forest rights Claims to MoTA FRA monthly Administrative titles are individual/community progress reports not a complete measure rights under FRA 2006 of historical use PVTG policy Targeted housing, water, PM-JANMAN / Historical Bihar- hostels, anganwadis and MoTA reporting Jharkhand PVTG list livelihood support requires current geographic checking Education and Mobility beyond village and Census Access and completion migration forest-edge economies literacy/migration; differ by gender, scholarships and distance and hostels documentation Nepal-side Cross-border comparison of Nepal census and Indian ST and Nepal Mithila caste/ethnicity and Janajati indigenous- Janajati are not categories nationality interchangeable legal institutions categories