An insightful look into how the penetration of the colonial market economy transformed Chotanagpur and Santhal Pargana. Explore the rise of the ‘Diku’, the commercialization of ancestral tribal lands through exploitative instruments like Sudposgi and Kewala, and how usurious debt traps and agrarian displacement triggered forced migration to the tea gardens of Assam—reshaping the region’s land, labour, and resistance.