A homeland for ‘tribal’ subjects. Revisiting British colonial experimentations in the Kolhan Government Estate

The interplay between local and imperial perceptions was a driving force behind the gradual evolution of the Indian empire. An important contribution to the full understanding of this process may come from enquiries into the nature of the British administrative policies, along with their inspiring ideologies and notions, in connection with the tribal community of the Hos of Singhbhum, a district in the erstwhile Chotanagpur Division of Bengal Presidency.The changing notions of rule and subjecthood naturally had a distinct impact upon the adivasi people. Right from the inception of the Kolhan government estate in 1837, colonial authorities were attempting to weave together two inherently contradictory notions, i.e., regional particularism on the one hand, and universalist principles on the other, in order to frame a tribal policy for Singhbhum. In course of the 19th century, this contradiction widened in practice with the integration of the Hos within the Empire. While there was a fine-tuning of exclusiveness as based on the idea of primitivism, the development of colonial society and economy in the region made it more and more difficult to retain Kolhan as a Ho reserve with specific laws privileging the tribal subject over the non-tribals.