Marginalisation, Exclusion and Identity of Santals

Abstract

Santals, being a tribal community, have faced the consequences of economic backwardness. Therefore, they have migrated to different areas in order to search for jobs. This paper focuses on the Santals in the age group of 20 and above who live in Rakshitpur village of Kanksa block in Burdwan district of West Bengal. In order to facilitate communication with the dominant community, they have taken up Bangla as their language of communication. Now a significant difference is observed in Bangla as spoken by Santals and that spoken by the Bengali community. This difference is in use of second person pronouns to indicate tu-vous (T/V) distinction. This tu-vous (T/V) distinction is a marker of power-distinction and solidarity prevalent within the society. While in other variations of Bangla there are three distinct terms ‘tui-tumi-aapni’ to indicate this distinction, Santals use only/tui/as a second person pronoun which is a tu (T) form. Thus, the migration of Santals has led to their social exclusion which finally resulted in their marginalisation. Apparently, Santals have left their linguistic identity as one of the consequences of marginalisation. However, a deeper analysis will reveal that they have retained their linguistic identity through certain subtle usages. This paper attempts to analyse how the particular usage of ‘tui’ by Santals has affected the solidarity-power distinction between the Santal and Bengali communities and also how this particular usage becomes a marker of the identity of the Santals.