RANCHI: The smouldering embers of a forgotten, 40-year-old movement for a separate Kolhan nation in the southern, tribal-dominated parts of Jharkhand have resurfaced, taking the state government by surprise.
When pamphlets, posters and signboards cropped up in many tribal hamlets of West Singbhum district announcing a new, nation called ‘Kolhan’, an alert district administration moved swiftly.
A proposed massive gathering of people from the Ho tribe from nearly 100 villages, to be held at Bindibasa village on December 18, was foiled by police deployment and imposition of Section 144 of CrPC in the area.
Ramo Birua, an 80-year-old retired BDO and leader of the underground movement, was scheduled to declare three districts — West Singbhum, East Singbhum and Seraikela-Kharsawan — as a territory separate from the Republic of India at this gathering, said police. The three districts constitute Kolhan division in Jharkhand.
Police raids in the forest-encased areas failed to trace Birua and his main associates. Cops managed to arrest only one of his supporters, Munna Ban Singh, and registered cases of sedition and criminal activities against Birua and 45 other people active in his campaign.
“Birua has been portraying himself as the de facto administrator or Khewatdar of Kolhan and inciting hatred against the Government of India among tribal villagers. These acts are clearly in violation of the law. He will be arrested soon,” said West Singbhum SP Anish Gupta.
Organised campaigns for a separate Kolhan nation for the Ho tribe date back to late 1970s. The separatist tendencies were spurred mainly due to continued repression of the tribal people by non-tribals and erosion of the Kolhan tribals’ traditional village administration system of Manki-Munda, which existed for centuries and had got official sanction from the British rulers.
Calls for an independent republic called ‘Kolhanistan’ first caught national attention in the early 1980s and even went international briefly around the same time when the violent movement for Khalistan roiled Punjab. On March 30, 1981, Kolhan movement leader Narayan Jonko had declared that the area would be a separate nation by the yearend.
In 1982, leaders of Kolhan Raksha Sangh shot a letter signed by Jonko as “chief, Government of Kolhan” to the Commonwealth headquarters in London seeking approval. “Kolhan owes allegiance to the Crown and the Commonwealth countries,” said the letter that also invited all heads of state to meet in Chaibasa and condemn “Indian aggression” against Kolhan people.
With clashes between police and the movement’s supporters growing, then Union minister of state Ramdulari Sinha had accepted in July 1984 that a separatist movement was in full swing.
West Singbhum deputy commissioner Arava Rajkamal said the administration is keeping a close watch on the “separatist and thoroughly illegal activities” of the Kolhan leaders and would take suitable steps to restrain them as per law.
The Kolhan separatist voice is decades old
Calls for an independent republic called ‘Kolhanistan’ first caught national attention in the early 1980s and even went international briefly around the same time when the violent movement for Khalistan roiled Punjab. On March 30, 1981, Kolhan movement leader Narayan Jonko had declared that the area would be a separate nation by the year end.