Janjatiya Gaurav Divas: Who Was Birsa Munda, and Why India Marks November 15

In June 1900, a 25-year-old man died in the jail at Ranchi, in what is now the Indian state of Jharkhand. His followers called him Dharti Aba, “father of the earth,” and tribal communities across India still revere him as Bhagwan. His name was Birsa Munda, and the uprising he led against British rule and the loss of tribal land is remembered by a single word: Ulgulan.

Since 2021, his birthday has been a national day in India: Janjatiya Gaurav Divas. This year it falls on Sunday, November 15, 2026, the sixth time it has been marked.

This guide walks through who Birsa Munda was, what the Ulgulan was about, who India’s Scheduled Tribes are today by the official numbers, and how to learn about their cultures and festivals with care, not just curiosity. Every figure here comes from a government, census, university or encyclopedia source, listed at the end.

On 10 November 2021, India’s Union Cabinet approved declaring November 15 as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas, to be celebrated every year. The official release ties the day to the memory of tribal freedom fighters. It names the movements of the Santhals, Tamars, Kols, Bhils, Khasis and Mizos among those that shaped India’s freedom struggle, and it notes that the wider public knows little about them.

November 15 was chosen because it is Birsa Munda’s birth anniversary. In the first year, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs held a week of events from November 15 to 22, 2021. On November 15 that year, a memorial park and freedom fighter museum in his name opened in Ranchi, the city where he spent his last days in jail. The Cabinet’s release also noted that 10 tribal freedom fighter museums had been sanctioned around the country.

In 2024 the day carried extra weight. Celebrations of Birsa Munda’s 150th birth anniversary began on November 15, 2024, at Jamui in Bihar, with a commemorative coin and postage stamp.

It is worth holding a government observance lightly. The people the day honors are not one community but hundreds, with their own languages, histories and ways of remembering. The best way to mark it is to learn about specific peoples, by name, and in their own terms.

Birsa Munda was born on 15 November 1875 in Ulihatu village, then part of the Ranchi district, to Sugna Munda. He left school around 1890, at about 15. He was Munda, a people of the Chota Nagpur Plateau and nearby hill districts who speak Munda languages of the Austroasiatic family. Britannica describes most Munda as farmers and notes that they have tended to preserve their own culture.

His world was under pressure. In the Munda country south of Ranchi, an older system called khuntkatti had given Munda families favorable rents as the original clearers of the forest. By the late nineteenth century, according to Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia of Bangladesh, that system was being eroded by jagirdars and thikadars, often merchants and moneylenders. Forced labor, called beth begari, was increasing, and contractors were recruiting people from the region as indentured labor.

Birsa began as a religious reformer. In 1895 he said he had received a divine vision, and he urged his followers to give up superstition, animal sacrifice and intoxicants. He was jailed that same year. Over time his teaching joined with demands about land and rule, and with the hope of a Munda Raj, Munda self-rule.

The rising came around Christmas 1899, when rebels attacked police stations and churches. It is remembered as the Ulgulan, the Great Tumult. The rebels were defeated on 9 January 1900. Birsa was arrested and died in the Ranchi jail on 9 June 1900, aged 25. Of nearly 350 Mundas put on trial, three were hanged and 44 were transported for life.

His struggle did not end with him. After survey and settlement work from 1902 to 1910, the Chhotanagpur Tenancy Act of 1908 recognized khuntkatti rights to a degree and banned beth begari. Government material on Janjatiya Gaurav Divas credits his struggle with leading to the Act, which restricted the transfer of tribal land to non-tribal owners.

Scheduled Tribes is a legal category. India’s 1950 constitution listed most Adivasi groups as targets for social and economic development, and since then they have officially been known as Scheduled Tribes. Britannica describes Adivasi as ethnic groups considered to be the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent. Many people prefer the name of their own people to any umbrella term, so when in doubt, use the name a person uses.

The most recent full count is the 2011 Census. It found 10.42 crore people, about 104 million, notified as Scheduled Tribes: 8.6 percent of India’s population and 11.3 percent of its rural population. Only about 1.04 crore lived in urban areas. The Census counted 705 ethnic groups notified as Scheduled Tribes across the country. Among them, the government recognizes 75 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups living in 18 states and one union territory.

In absolute numbers, central India leads. Madhya Pradesh alone is home to 14.7 percent of India’s Scheduled Tribe population, followed by Maharashtra (10.1), Odisha (9.2), Rajasthan (8.8), Gujarat (8.5), Jharkhand (8.3) and Chhattisgarh (7.5). Together those seven states hold about two-thirds of the total.

The picture flips if you ask what share of a state’s own people are Scheduled Tribes. In much of the northeast they are the large majority: 94.4 percent in Mizoram, 86.5 percent in Nagaland, 86.1 percent in Meghalaya and 68.8 percent in Arunachal Pradesh. Lakshadweep, a union territory of islands, is at 94.8 percent.

It is easy to talk about “tribal culture” as if it were one thing. It is not. India’s Scheduled Tribes speak languages from at least four major families. A course on tribal India from e-PG Pathshala, India’s national postgraduate learning program, groups them this way: the Bhil speak an Indo-European language; the Gond, Oraon and Toda speak Dravidian languages; the Santal, Munda and Ho speak Austroasiatic languages; and many Himalayan and northeastern peoples speak Sino-Tibetan languages.

Size varies enormously too. In the 2001 Census, the most recent with published counts for individual tribes in our sources, the Bhil numbered about 12.7 million and the Gond about 10.9 million, the two largest. The Santal numbered about 5.8 million, the Munda about 1.9 million, and the peoples grouped as “Naga etc.” about 1.8 million.

A few short portraits, each one only a doorway:

• Santal. Speakers of Santali, an Austroasiatic language spoken widely across Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam and Bihar. In 1925 Pandit Raghunath Murmu created Ol Chiki, a 30-letter script designed for Santali, and in 2003 Santali was added to the Eighth Schedule of India’s Constitution. The Santhal Hul of 1855 to 1856 was a six-month rising against colonial rule.

• Gond. Among the largest tribal peoples of central India, speaking Dravidian languages. Britannica’s survey of India’s forest societies names the Santhal, Gonds and Baiga as forest peoples of central and eastern India.

• Bhil. The most populous Scheduled Tribe in the 2001 Census, and one of the peoples whose movements the 2021 Cabinet decision names as part of India’s freedom struggle.

• Munda. Birsa’s own people, of the Chota Nagpur Plateau and nearby hill districts, who speak Munda languages of the Austroasiatic family.

• Naga peoples. Not one people but many. Nagaland is home to 17 major tribes, and Scheduled Tribes make up 86.5 percent of the state’s population.

Festivals are where many people first meet tribal cultures, often through photographs. They are also living religious and community occasions, so it helps to know what they mean before treating them as a backdrop. Here is how official sources describe a few of them:

• Sarhul. Jharkhand’s state government calls Sarhul the main festival of the state’s tribal population. Its name refers to worship of the sal tree, seen as the home of Goddess Sarna, who protects villages. India’s official festival portal describes it as tree worship begun by the Oraon, Munda and Ho, held in spring on the third day of the moon in Chaitra.

• Karma. Held on the 11th day of the moon in the month of Bhadra, for Karam devta. Young people gather wood, fruits and flowers from the forest for the puja, and groups sing and dance.

• Sohrai. Held right after Diwali, on the new moon. It centers on the care of cattle and buffaloes: earthen lamps in the evening, and the next day animals are washed, marked and garlanded.

• Tusu Parab. A winter harvest festival on the last day of Poush, known for its songs, in which girls offer a decorated frame to a nearby river.

• Hornbill Festival. Held every year from December 1 to 10 at the Heritage Village of Kisama in Nagaland, where 17 houses each represent a different tribe. It was conceived in 2000 and named after the hornbill, a bird that stands for boldness and grandeur in Naga folklore.

A few habits make learning respectful. Ask before photographing people or rituals. Use the name of the people and the festival instead of a generic “tribal.” Treat dress, ornaments and sacred objects as belonging to the people who wear them, not as costume. And if you buy craft, buy from the makers or their own cooperatives.

Learn one people’s story, by name, and tell it to one person you care about. It takes an evening.

1. Pick one people. Choose one of the communities in this guide, or look up the official list of Scheduled Tribes for a state you have a connection to. Write the name down the way the community writes it.

2. Read one careful source. A government or university page, a museum, or the community’s own writing. For Birsa Munda, the memorial park and freedom fighter museum in Ranchi is a good place to start, in person or through its published material.

3. Learn one word or one letter. If you chose the Santal, look at the Ol Chiki alphabet and find the letters of one word. If you chose another people, learn how to say their name correctly.

4. Tell one person. Over dinner, on a call or in a message, share one thing you learned and where you learned it. Then ask what they know.

Birsa Munda lived 25 years. Learning his name, and the names of the peoples who still tell his story, is a small and fitting way to spend November 15.

Ritual OS

Practices from the world's traditions,named and placed.

Ritual OS matches you with short practices from the world's traditions, each named with its tradition and where it comes from, and adapts them week by week. Use it alone or with the people close to you.

A practice is a doorway, never a costume.

Named and placed

Kithmark

Keep the people you learn withclose.

Kithmark gives each person in your life their own page. The People map shows where everyone is, with their local time, and you keep a private record of how things stand, in plain words, never scores, encrypted on your phone.

Free in the iPhone beta. Android coming soon.

Free iPhone beta

How our apps help

Ritual OS matches you with short practices from the world’s traditions, each named with its tradition and where it comes from, and adapts them week by week, alone or with people close to you. Kithmark gives each person in your life their own page, shows where everyone is on the People map with their local time, and keeps a private record of how things stand in plain words, encrypted on your phone. On a day about remembering, one helps you keep a practice, and the other helps you keep the people you share it with.