Educating the indigenous: Formal schooling of the santals of Birbhum in West Bengal

Amelioration of the social status and living conditions of the Scheduled Tribes, the most marginalized group holding 8.08 percent(census, 2001) of the total population of the country, has been one of the crucial areas of concern since independence. Formal education, in this context, is considered an important contributory factor as an agent of social mobility and a means for the socio-economic development of the tribals. In this background, the paper is based on a field study conducted in an urban tribal village, “Mahisdal”, in the Birbhum district of West Bengal. The study intends to capture the social context of education of the Santal tribe residing in Mahisdal. Central to the paper is the argument that while the Santals look for educational opportunities as means to find a position in the wider world, they face a deep sense of alienation and cultural loss as they engage with formal systems of learning. The focus is thus on reflecting the inter-play of various factors in different learning contexts of the Santali children within the socio-economic and cultural milieu of their community in general and their family in particular. An attempt has also been made to identify the deep-rooted inter-linkages between the school and the home factors and their cumulative impact on the overall processes of schooling. The paper therefore seeks to negotiate the delicate terrain between loss of cultural identity through intrusion of modernity and the need to “mainstream” them who are widely believed to be on the margins of the modern Indian state.