Bewar is a term used in Madhya Pradesh for shifting cultivation. In Magh, shifts were made to new bewars and hunting-gathering was the main subsistence activity.

Shifting cultivators were found in the hilly and forested tracts of north-east and central India, mainly in Central India and North east states.

The Khonds were such a community living in the forests of Orissa. They regularly went out on collective hunts and then divided the meat amongst themselves.

People talked of a golden age when the Mundas had been free of the oppression of dikus, and said there would be a time when the ancestral right of the community would be restored.

Hazaribagh, in present-day Jharkhand, was an area where the Santhals reared cocoons. The traders dealing in silk sent in their agents who gave loans to the tribal people and collected the cocoons.

Tribal was recruited in large numbers to work the tea plantations of Assam and the coal mines of Jharkhand. They were recruited through contractors who paid them miserably low wages, and prevented them from returning home.

The Baigas of central India were reluctant to do work for others. The Baigas saw themselves as people of the forest, who could only live on the produce of the forest.

The Khonds were such a community living in the forests of Orissa. They regularly went out on collective hunts and then divided the meat amongst themselves.

The local weavers and leather workers turned to the Khonds when they needed supplies of kusum and palash flowers to colour their clothes and leather.

The political aim of the Birsa movement was that it wanted to drive out missionaries, moneylenders, Hindu landlords, and the government and set up a Munda Raj with Birsa at its head.