SANTINIKETAN AND SANTALI VILLAGES

SANTINIKETAN AND SANTALI VILLAGES

Gurudev Rabindrantha Tagore founded a alternative school in Birbhum in his father’s land in search of an academics that will be in close contact with nature and where knowledge will be acquired through living and observing everyday way of life in nature and the simple life of the local tribals, the santals.

In 1937,14^th August,Tagore planted a tree in Pearson Palli  neighbouring as part of the Vriksharopan festival(tree planting festival in Santiniketan initiated by Tagore regularly  in 1936 and since then it is being continued as ritual of Santiniketan).In the same event he referred to the importance of  participation and sharing of knowledge rather that trying to teach them how to modernize.

As such in the early days of Santiniketan the community that started living in Santiniketan developed a cordial relationship with the neighbouring Santal villages like balipara and ,Baganpara,Pearson Palli ,Kaliganja and so on. Infact the name of Pearson Palli was after Willie Pearson who came from England and got inspired by Tagore’s mission stayed back in Santiniketan and participated in many developmental activity in the neighbouring villages and also the santal villages.

Chidanada Dasgupta, renowned filmmaker and writer who presently resides in Santiniketan recently referred that the map of Santiniketan is not a straight line but is quite zigzag and irregular. He refers the reason behind this to Tagore’s attempt to accommodate the the neighboring Santals villages and not exclude them by acquiring their lands during the formation of the early boundaries of Santiniketan.

Since then Santiniketan has grown in size and character. It has transformed from a small school to a huge university(Visva Bharati) and after the death of Tagore in 1941 in early 50’s it has been accepted as a UGC funded university. With the growth of the university the community living around Santiniketan has also grown. In the post independence period Santiniketan has been projected has heritage site. This lead to a huge influx of tourists and today Santiniketan stands as a major tourist attraction and draws a quite good number of tourist everyday. So on one hand it is a heritage site and on the other a central Government University.

Interestingly all these years University of Visva Bharati accommodated the Santal villages very well within its territories and there has been a cordial understanding and interest between both the communities. As such the Santal community also participated in the works of Visva Bharati.In the process the neighbouring Santal villages like Pearson,Balipara have been in close proximity to the life and cultural evolution of the University life .It was also well reflected in the works of the students of Kala Bhavana of old Santniketan ans also works of its teachers like Nandalal Bose, Binode Behari Mukherjee,Ramkinkar Baiz.

But in the recent years there was a demand from the Central authority of UGC to define the boundaries of the university as a central university.So the university of Visva Bharati which is part of Santiniketan started giving wall to locate its campass area.The land of Santniketan was never planned as central university plot and it is quite irregular in the sense that there were santal villages that were inside the university campuss.So once the walls came up it totally change the demography of the landscape and also the changed the social gesture of the institute started by Tagore .

Earlier whenever a wall was made it was a netted wall that generated a transparency of intent.But the recent culture of walling has been extremely solid and a continuous role of concrete scroll of obstruction.

It is true that the family strength of the sandals have also grown and grown the number of houses in the santal communities living in the villages inside Santniketan.But culturally Santals are a care free community whose life style in very much connected to the land they live in.There is general practice in a Santal village that the village would expand horizonatally.Now with the making of the walls by the university the villages that shared the land of the university for their cattle breeding for their everyday use suddenly found a that horizontal expansion being cut off drastically,which has necessarity generated a psychological impact on the community.Moreover,as a social gesture the university which was part of the social space has now become an outsider.