Class 8 History Chapter 4 Extra Questions and Answers Tribals, Dikus and the Vision of a Golden Age

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Tribals, Dikus and the Vision of a Golden Age Class 8 Extra Questions History Chapter 4

Question 1.
To which tribes did Birsa belong?
Answer:
Munda tribe.

Question 2.
Where did Munda people live?
Answer:
Munda people lived in Chhotanagpur region of the present-day state of Jharkhand.

Question 3.
Name two other tribes who were the followers of Birsa.
Answer:
Santhals and Oraons.

Question 4.
Who were called dikus?
Answer:
The outsiders were called dikus by the tribes.

Question 5.
Where were the shifting cultivators found?
Answer:
Shifting cultivators were found in the hilly and forested tracts of northeast and central India.

Question 6.
Where did the Khonds live?
Answer:
The Khond people lived in the forests of Orissa.

Question 7.
How did Khond people obtain their livelihood?
Answer:
The Khond people obtain their livelihood by hunting and food-gathering.

Question 8.
How did the forest people obtain things that they did not produce in the forests?
Answer:
They mostly exchanged goods to fulfil their need of things they did not produce.

Question 9.
What did the forest people do when supplies of forest produce shrank?
Answer:
They wandered around in search of work as labourers.

Question 10.
Name any two tribes who lived by herding and rearing animals.
Answer:
Van Gujjars and Gaddis.

Question 11.
Where did the Baiga people live?
Answer:
The Baiga people lived in the forests in Central India.

Question 12.
Name any two settled tribal groups.
Answer:
Gonds and Santhals.

Question 13.
What did the British officials think about settled tribal groups?
Answer:
The British officials thought them to be more civilised than hunter-gatherers.

Question 14.
With which tribal groups the British were uncomfortable?
Answer:
The British were uncomfortable with those tribal groups who moved about and did not have a fixed home.

Question 15.
Why did the British want tribes to become peasant cultivators?
Answer:
This was because peasants were easier to control and administer than people who were always on move.

Question 16.
What were the Reserve Forests?
Answer:
They were the forests which produced timbers. The tribal people were not allowed to enter these forests.

Question 17.
Why were the forest villages established?
Answer:
The forest villages were established to ensure a regular supply of cheap labour for cutting trees for railway sleepers.

Question 18.
When and where did the revolt of Sonogram Sangma take place?
Answer:
The Sonogram Sangma revolt took place in 1906 in Assam.

Question 19.
When and where did the Forest Satyagraha take place?
Answer:
The Forest Satyagraha took place in the 1930s in the Central Provinces.

Question 20.
Name the tribe which reared cocoons.
Answer:
Santhals of Hazaribagh.

Question 21.
Where did tribes work as labourers in the late nineteenth century?
Answer:
They worked in tea plantations of Assam and coal mines of Jharkhand.

Question 22.
What was the aim of Birsa’s movement?
Answer:
His movement aimed at reforming tribal society and take it out of the hands of dikus.

Question 23.
What did people think about Birsa? What did Birsa proclaim about himself?
Answer:

• People believed that Birsa could cure all diseases and multiply grains.
• Birsa proclaimed about himself that God has appointed him to save his people from trouble and free them from the slavery of dikus.

Question 24.
Why were the Munda and other tribal people of the region unhappy with the British rule?
Answer:

• They were unhappy with the changes they were experiencing and the problems they were facing under the British rule.
• Their ways of life seemed to be disappearing, their livelihoods were under threat, and their religion appeared to be in danger.

Question 25.
Comment on tribal societies.
Answer:

• Most tribes had customs and rituals different from those laid down by Brahmins.
• The tribal societies did not have the same social divisions that were characteristics of caste societies.
• People who belonged to the same tribe thought of themselves as sharing common ties of kinship.

Question 26.
How did the shifting cultivators live their lives?
Answer:

• The lives of the shifting cultivators depended on free movement within the forest.
• Their lives depended on being able to use the land and forests for growing their crops.

Question 27.
What did the tribal people do when supplies of forest produce shrank?
Answer:

• Some of the tribal people did odd jobs in the villages.
• They carried load or got jobs in building roads.
• Some people laboured in the fields of peasants and farmers.

Question 28.
Why were Baiga people reluctant to do works for others?
Answer:

• The Baigas saw themselves as people of the forest, who could only live on the produce of the forest.
• The Baiga people considered it to be below the dignity of a Baiga to become a labourer.

Question 29.
Why did tribal people become dependent on traders and moneylenders?
Answer:
Following were the reasons of their dependence :

• The tribal people often needed to sell and buy goods in order to be able to get those goods which were not produced in their locality.
• Traders came around with things for sale. Money-lenders gave loans with which the tribals could meet their cash needs.

Question 30.
Why did the tribal people see moneylenders and traders as evil outsiders?
Answer:

• The traders sold them things at high prices and purchased goods from them at low prices.
• The moneylenders charged high-interest rates on the loans which they provided to the tribal people.
  This led to indebtedness and poverty among the tribal people. This was because they saw them as evil outsiders.

Question 31.
Discuss some herders and animal rearing tribal people.
Answer:

• The Van Gujjars of the Punjab hills and the Labadie of Andhra Pradesh were cattle herders.
• The Gaddis of Kulu were shepherds.
• The Bakarwals of Kashmir reared goats.

Question 32.
Discuss the state of rights of the land among Mundas.
Answer:

• Among Mundas, the land belonged to the Clan as a whole.
• All members of the Clan were regarded as descendants of the original settlers, who has first cleared the land. Therefore, all of them had the rights on land.

Question 33.
What happened to the British effort to settle jhum cultivators?
Answer:

• This effort was not very successful.
• Settled plough cultivation was not easy in the areas where water was scarce and the soil was dry.
• Jhum cultivators who undertook the plough cultivation often suffered, since their fields did not produce good yields. People started protesting settled ploughing.

Question 34.
Explain the reformist ideas of Birsa.
Answer:

• Birsa asked people to give up drinking liquor which was devastating people’s personal, family and social life.
• He urged people to clean their village and stop believing in witchcraft and sorcery.

Question 35.
What were the political aims of Birsa movement?
Answer:

• Birsa wanted to drive out missionaries, money-lenders, Hindu landlords and the government.
• This movement wanted to set up a Munda Raj with Birsa as its head.

Question 36.
Why did Munda people consider dikes as the cause of their misery and sufferings?
Answer:

• They felt that the land policies of the British were destroying their traditional land system.
• They saw that Hindu landlords and moneylenders were taking over their land.
• They saw that the missionaries were criticising their traditional culture.

Question 37.
What is colonial rules?
Answer:
When the powerful country has been administration the land and resource of a country it is called colonial rules.

Question 38.
What were the two main systems of indigo cultivation?
Answer:

1. NIJ-cultivation on planter’s own land.
2. ryoti-cultivation on ryot’s land.

Question 39.
Explain jhum cultivation.
Answer:

• This was done on small patches of land, mostly in the forest.
• The cultivators cut the trees and burnt the vegetation to clear the land for cultivation.
• They spread ash throughout the land. They did not plough the land.
• They broadcasted the seeds.
• Once the crop was ready and harvested, they moved to another field to follow the same process.
  This is because this is also known as shifting cultivation.

Question. 40.
Discuss the hunting and gathering amongst the Khonds.
Answer:

• The Khonds lived in the forests of Orissa. They were hunters and gatherers.
• They regularly went out on collective hunts and then divided the meat amongst themselves.
• They ate fruits and roots they collected from forests. They also cooked foods using oil extracted from the seeds of sal and mahua.
• They collected medicinal herbs and shrubs from the forest and sold them in the local market.
• They collected Kusum and Palash flowers from the forests and supplied them to the local weavers and leather workers.

Question 41.
What was the status of tribal chiefs before the arrival of the British?
Answer:

• In many areas, tribal chiefs were important people.
• They enjoyed a certain amount of economic power and had the right to administer and control their territories.
• In some places, they had their own police and decided on the local rules of land and forest management.

Question 42.
How was the tribal life affected by the forest laws?
Answer:

• The British extended their control over all forests and declared that forests were state property.
• Some forests were classified as Reserved Forests.
• In these forests, people were not allowed to move freely.
• They were prevented from practising jhum cultivation, collecting fruits or hunting animals in these forests.

Question 43.
In what ways was the Birsa movement important?
Answer:
This movement was important in the following two ways :

1. It forced the colonial government to introduce land laws in favour of the tribal people so that the dikus could not easily take over tribal lands.
2. It showed once again that the tribal people had the capacity to protest against injustice. They were able to express their anger against the exploitative and oppressive colonial rule.

Question 44.
What problems did shifting cultivators face under the British rule.
Answer:

• The Jhum cultivators who took to plough cultivation as per the British model often suffered.
• The fields did not produce good yields.
• Cultivators had to pay revenue fixed by the British.
• They wanted to shift back to the Jhum cultivation.
• Finally, they had to protest this new method.

Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)

1. Birsa was born in a family of a tribal group that lived in Chhotanagpur in Bihar.
(a) Mundas
(b) Santhal
(c) Orion
(d) Gonds.
Answer:
(a) Mundas.

2. Tick the correct pair in the following.
(а) Fallow-field is cultivated every year.
(b) Khonds – Gujarat.
(c) Baigas – Rajasthan.
(d) Jhum cultivation – shifting cultivation.
Answer:
(d) Jhum cultivation – shifting cultivation.

3. Which statement is not correct in the following?
(a) The Bakarwals of Kulu were shepherds.
(b) Shifting cultivators were found in the hilly and forested tracts of northeast and central India.
(c) The Van Gujjars of the Punjab hills were cattle herders.
(d) It was below the dignity of a Baiga to become a labourer.
Answer:
(c) The Van Gujjars of the Punjab hills were cattle herders.

4. Which is not a correct statement in the following?
(а) Verrier Elwin was a British anthropologist who lived among the Baigas and Khonds of Central India for many years.
(b) Among the Mundas of Chhota- Nagpur, the land belonged to the clan as a whole.
(c) Under the British rule, the functions and powers of the tribal chiefs changed considerably.
(d) The British officials saw shifting cultivators as more civilised than the Gonds and the Santhals.
Answer:
(d) The British officials saw shifting cultivators as more civilised than the Gonds and the Santhals.

5. How did Birsa Munda die in 1900?
(a) Died of plague
(b) Died of cholera
(c) He was hanged
(d) He was shot dead.
Answer:
(b) Died of cholera.

Glossary:

→ Fallow -A field left uncultivated for a while so that the soil recovers fertility.

→ Sal – A tree.

→ Mahua -A flower that is eaten or used to make alcohol.

→ Beware – A term used in Madhya Pradesh for shifting cultivation.

→ Sleeper – The horizontal planks of wood on which railway lines are laid.

→ ‘ Vaishnav-Worshippers of Lord Vishnu.

Extra Questions for Class 8 Social Science