Most of the people in the country remain most of the time unaware of the plain land indigenous communities. These people draw attention whenever there is an incident of physical assault or grabbing of lands belonging to them. The oppressions have long been perpetrated by the influential quarters of the mainstream population. Due to their being in the national spotlight for over the last four decades, the indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region are widely taken for the country's aborigine segment. They too have their grievances, with unrest gripping them for a long time. However, socio-economic advancements have visited the educated pockets of the area. Side by side with passing through deprivations, the CHT indigenous people have also tasted progress of varied types.
Compared to them, the plain land aborigines could be regarded as virtual pariahs in society. Nobody in the mainstream communities cares about them. The poor Santal farmers in two villages in the south-western Gaibandha district got locked in an old clash with a nearby sugar mill last week over their ancestral crop lands. At one point, workers from the sugar mill, allegedly along with police, swooped down on them. In the melee that followed, the Santal houses in the two villages were set afire with three aborigines allegedly succumbing to their injuries. Discovering their helplessness, most of the Santal families fled their villages and took shelter in open spaces or under trees. Those staying back shut themselves inside their huts. They were found passing their days in extreme misery. A number of them reached the point of starvation, and their panicked children were not going to school. In short, a disaster just out of the blue struck them. To the incredulity of many in the majority population, nobody in the two villages has been found ready to explain what has led to this ordeal of the Santals. Many of them feigned ignorance or drew a blank.
The bitter truth is assaults on the Santals or other plain land aborigines have long been normal occurrences in the country. Grabbing of lands occupies a dominant place in these assaults. Protests go in vain, as the local administrations are found to be skewed towards the mainlanders in land-related disputes. In the meantime, the tribal people fall victim to unabated harassments. They have few places to go to escape persecution. Ironically, of all the indigenous groups, the Santals are considered relatively advanced in the fields of social position, cultural refinement and heritage.
In the making of Bengalees as an ethnic group, the Santals are given a major place by anthropologists. They are viewed as one of the earliest groups to inhabit large swathes of land in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. That the Bengalee race has evolved from the proto-Australoid group of man with mixture of the ancient people of the land, the Santals in particular, is now an established fact. The Bangla language is not free of Santal influences. Many Bangla words, especially those related to numbers and counting, come from Santal vocabulary. The Santal language has originated from the Munda sub-family of Austro-Asiatic languages. The language boasts of a written form. The Santals in Bangladesh have reasons to take pride in their rich past.
Perhaps Santals are the only indigenous group in the land which rebelled against the British rule in eastern India on June 30, 1855. Against the fire-power of the British soldiers, the Santals fought bravely. Their weapons included bows & arrows, spears etc. They also formed a parallel government. Although the rebellion was crushed ruthlessly, the heroes of the revolt --- Sidhu, Kanhu and Murmu, have carved out their names in history.
The Santals in Bangladesh do not deserve the shabby treatment that is meted out to them. The plain land people and the administration ought to consider their grievances with utmost sympathy.
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