Friday 17 June 2011

Water mark on Paper made from Bamboo Leaf,Fuldanga Village Santiniketan

"A watermark is a recognizable image or pattern in paper that appears as various shades of lightness/darkness when viewed by transmitted light (or when viewed by reflected light, atop a dark background), caused by thickness or density variations in the paper.Watermarks are often used as security features of banknotes, passports, postage stamps, and other documents to prevent counterfeiting."
                                                                      From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In this present project of making paper from Bamboo leaf together with the santali people of Santiniketan,water mark will not be used for prevention of counterfeiting, it will be practiced to document the cultural memory and knowledge of different generation of santali community living around Santiniketan.Santniketan have considerably affected the life of the santali community in villages like,Fuldanga, Pearson Palli, Bagan Para,Balipara and so on in multiple ways.Many of the Santals are now working as permanent employee of Visva Bharati University.More over many of the santali young boys and girla are now getting higher education the university and naturally the social life in these villages are more urbanised. As Baidyanath would put it  educated santals today feels alienated from the Santali village life and are starting to make efforts to participate in the mainstream Santali life.
Through writing and design exercises on the deckel of the paper making structure the water Mark technique will be practised to explore different signs and symbols that are existing in the minds of the Santal society in these villages.
Some A3 sized deckel were given to the families who participated in the initial bamboo leaf paper making workshop.The ladies from the families made some designs from their memory on the netted part of the deckel.Then papers were made with them.Documents of first few exercises of Water Mark on paper made from bamboo leaf.







Monday 13 June 2011

Mud Wall and Santali Women

Final layering of the mud wall in the workshop space of Pearson Palli,Santiniketan.It is a general tradition that the women from the Santal community will prepare the final layers of the walls of the building.Men are generally assigned with job of making the roofs.

 Santali women are central to the economy of their society. They take part in agricultural production, gather forest produce, do wage labour where available (from government or forest department works, tendu leaf and road contractors etc) and almost single handedly bear the whole burden of domestic work, child-rearing, rearing of cattle/livestock, going to markets to sell their produce, do the marketing for their families etc. In one word, except those tasks which are a taboo for them, they do all the work.
There seems to be fairly firmly defined and gender-based division of house maintenance tasks. Men repair the roof, but women are in charge of wall maintenance. Close female relatives often work together. Walls are plastered with mud and rice or wheat straw twice a year. Every five to eight years, women demolish part of the house and rebuild it with new walls. Women are also in charge of making tiles. This type of work is usually done in June, before the onset of the monsoon and prior to peak times in agriculture.
Importantly, however, in most of the regions, in most of the tribes Santhali women have no property rights over land. While adivasi families survive predominantly on account of women’s work, it is primarily men who have full usufructory and other rights over land and other resources. But customary law has allowed women usufructory rights to some extent. According to a report prepared by the British ruler Gautzer on the Santhal Paraganas during 1922 to 1935, called the Gautzer’s settlement Report, in Santhali Adivasi Law only males can inherit land, where sons jointly succeed their father. An unmarried daughter has no right in the immovable property. A widow has no claim on her deceased husband’s property if there are male relatives. If a widow does not remarry, then her rights to maintenance will continue. There is no uniform customary law for Santhal adivasis and it often varies across villages and could be significantly different between areas.
Educated Santhali women are moving out of the shackles of their community laws and are bringing things to light in respect to the laws of Indian penal court .They are putting up cases against multiple marriage by male, torcher in the name of witch hunting and general physical torture against women as wife.

Sunday 12 June 2011

Paper making workshop from natural fibre in Pearson Palli

THE BAMBOO LEAF PAPER MAKING WORKSHOP IN PEARSON PALLI,SANTINIKETAN
The bamboo paper making workshop in Pearson Palli had to be delayed because of the west Bengal assembly elections. The sandals villages in Birbhum like other places of West Bengal have also been affected .It have gone to such extremes where a whole village has been divided into two halves in reference to political color. Strangely political colour has replaced their community identity. So although initially before the elections the collection of the dry bamboo leaves which are seasonal was completed, to start the workshop myself and Borhan Hansda who was my other collaborator in this project thought that it will be wise if we can initiate it once the election results were out and the village life will return to normalcy.
So  once the elections were over and the results were out we approached the village older generation and shared our interest in initiating a bamboo paper making workshop. The community members were quite eager and provided us an old broken house previously meant for a ritualistic site. But because of the Visva Bharati university boundary walls that ritualistic site had to be shifted so that mud house was never reutilized for further cultural activities. It was an appropriate site for the workshop just opposite to the University construction site. A group of young members from the village were provided who took up the initial responsibility of supervising the workshop space. Musoi Hemram, Shib were some of the more active members who participated in the initial preparation.
For a period of two weeks together with the support of the villagers we repaired the house and finally beginning of June it was ready for conducting the workshop.









Initially we once again had a meeting to share the information about making paper with natural fiber. Then on 3rd of June we invited the community members to participate in the paper making workshop



Friday 10 June 2011

Wall Mural by children of Pearson palli

Mud Wall Mural in Pearson Palli
Once the workshop space was repaired and became ready for the Bamboo paper making workshop,to initiate a general interest among the community a mud wall mural was planned.Children from the village in pearson palli were invited to participate in the activity to paint their own environment directly on the wall.In this respect Musoi Hemram a young enthusiast from the village ,pearson palli played a major role in coordinating the workshop together with Baidyanath Murmu who( has been collaborating with me in this project) conducted the mural workshop























Thursday 9 June 2011

Making of the wall of a Santal House

Finishing of the surface of the wall of the workshop space in Pearson Palli,Santiniketan
Final coating of red clay on the surface of the wall

Monday 6 June 2011

preperation of mud wall in Santal village

Preperation of Mud wall in the workshop space in Pearson Palli,Santiniketan


PREPERATION OF THE WORKSHOP SITE IN PEARSON PALLI

Preperation of the workshop site for Bamboo Leaf Paper making Workshop in Pearson Palli



Repairing of the wall of the abondoned Mud house provided for preperation of the workshop site
 


Vedio of the prepration of the clay for the first layer of repairing a mud wall

INITIATION OF THE BAMBOO PAPER MAKING WORKSHOP IN PEARSON PALLI,SANTINKETAN

Images of Pearson Palli Village,Santiniketan


Pearson Palli,Santiniketan
After completion of the 1st phase of bamboo leaf paper making workshop in Fuldanga, the plan was to start a process of workshop based interaction in Pearson palli another santal village but which is literally more inside the Visva Bharati University campus and so called Santiniketan zone as demarcated by the heritage outer circle. In fact Pearson Palli named after Willie Pearson a social activist and teacher who participated with Tagore in the twenties in his work of rural development in Santiniketan, reflects Tagore’s attempt to form an educational system which will have a close access to the simple life of Santals and its evolution.
But the work in Pearson Palli took us sometime to start because of the state election that was underway during the early part of May. 
It will be interesting to note that even these small santal villages are not outside the political turmoil that is existent at the moment in Bengal. Although they are not part of the Jungle Mahal,the so called backward section of the Bengal Civic society who has received very less infrastructure in the name of development, these villages around Santiniketan are not also in a better situation. Although it is true that being close to Visva Bharati many of them are employed in the university and many of the young Santals are now educated in the university and are independently thinking about their own development, the basic infrastructure in these villages remain the same with very low electrical power, lack of proper drinking water and most importantly no planning for drainage system. Traditionally a Santal house would have their own private arrangements for drainage of waste waters which will be collected in a section of the house inside the individual boundary and which will later become space for feeding the goose and boars. But with the introduction of the concrete houses the waste water is no more collected inside the house but like any other city houses is projected outside to be drained. But since there is no planning for drainage the water gets accumulated on the road side. So a santal village which earlier used to be clean from both outside and inside presently is in a state of chaos and confusion both environmentally and socially.
 Pearson Palli is one such village which has been very regularly introduced to the influences of urban culture and is in a state of transition both socially, culturally and politically. The present political state has also affected the cultural life of the village and we had to wait for the election to end just to make things little relaxed for a bamboo paper making workshop and later to be followed by a joint exploration of the transforming cultural memories of the village in relation to its environment and the social life.
Workshop activity in Pearson Palli,Santal village ,Santiniketan

Old abondoned  Mud Hut was provided by the villagers of Pearson for the preparation of the Workshop site

Once the election was over, I together with Borhan Hansda who is again one of the collaborators of the project Aakil Aarsi sat for a meeting with the men in Pearson Palli. Initially there were concerns about the output of the workshop, but we could convince that working together on this workshop will generate possibilities for future. I also communicated my intentions of research and they whole heartedly agreed to provide me support for the workshop.
The abandoned , broken club house inside the village was selected for the workshop site, which meant we had to repair and transform the small mud house into a proper site for Bamboo paper making workshop with required infrastructure and tools.
Visva Bharati University wall just opposite to the workshop site