The Kol Rebellion of 1831–32 was one of the earliest large-scale tribal (adivasi) uprisings against British colonial rule and its allied intermediaries. It broke out in the Chotanagpur Plateau region, which lies in present-day Jharkhand, and involved the Kol tribes — chiefly the Munda and Ho communities.

The revolt was driven by deep grievances over land and dignity:

• Traditional tribal chiefs (Mundas and Mankis) were being displaced, and their lands were being transferred to outsiders — moneylenders, merchants and zamindars (collectively called dikus).
• The new colonial land-revenue and judicial system imposed heavy rents, forced labour and unfamiliar laws that dispossessed the tribals and destroyed their customary self-governance.

Although the British eventually suppressed the rising with military force, it exposed the depth of tribal discontent in the region and set a precedent for later, better-known movements in the same belt, including the Santhal Hool (1855–56) and Birsa Munda's Ulgulan (1899–1900).

The other plateaus are geographically and historically unconnected to this revolt: the Malwa Plateau lies in west-central India (Madhya Pradesh/Rajasthan), the Deccan Plateau covers the large peninsular interior of southern India, and the Meghalaya Plateau is in the north-east — none of these was the theatre of the Kol Rebellion, which was specifically centred on Chotanagpur.