Santal Community in Bangladesh: A Socio-historical Analysis

Abstract

The Santals are one of the most ancient indigenous communities in Bangladesh. Many historians denote them as the earliest settlers in greater Bengal. They mainly belong to Austro-Asiatic group of pre-Aryan settlers. Being the indigenous community of the country, they should have been more influential and developed. But the reality is different. Santals are deprived of stately rights and privileges in many aspects. It has a historical legacy of isolation and clash. As Santals live isolated from mainland people, proper attention was never given to them. Rather they were tortured and oppressed both by colonial and post-colonial rulers, which led them to launch many resistances. But ultimately those resistances could not completely stop the deprivation. In spite of all these challenges, Santals are still struggling to uphold their socio-cultural tradition. The absence of written document in Santal society created a paucity of information in the reconstruction of their history. Therefore, secondary source was mainly used in this research. This study tries to explore the social customs, livelihood and cultural features of Santal community keeping a special focus on the historical development. It indicates that they have historically been deprived in many ways, but they are still able to uphold their distinct cultural features in most of the cases.