Shifting cultivation
Also called: Slash and burn, Jhum · Topic: Peasant and Tribal Resistance under Company Rule · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Colonialism and the Countryside"
Meaning
Shifting cultivation is a way of farming without settling in one place. Farmers clear a patch of forest by cutting bushes and burning the undergrowth. The ash makes the soil richer. They grow crops there for a while, then move to a new patch and leave the old one fallow (unused) so that it can recover. It needs plenty of forest land and only light tools such as the hoe.
Example
The Paharias of the Rajmahal hills in the eighteenth century grew pulses and millets this way. They only scratched the ground lightly with hoes. When Santhal settlers who farmed with the plough took over the fertile lower slopes, the Paharias were left with the barren upper hills. Their way of farming broke down there.
Don't confuse with
- Settled plough agriculture: farming the same fixed fields every year with a plough. This is what the Santhals practised and what the British encouraged, because it brought steady land revenue.
Related concepts
- Paharia
- Rajmahal hills
- Augustus Cleveland
- Paharia pacification policy
- Stipendiary chief
- William Hodges
- Aquatint
- Picturesque