West Medinipur- Tribal Communities-2

Munda Tribal Festival Dance

Munda Tribal Group-These kind of tribal communities is Non-Aryan and are the original inhabitants of ancient India. According to history, their origin was from Jharkhand and thereafter they were spared in various parts of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa and also other parts of the country.

The Munda tribal community had great contributions to India's independence.At the time of India's freedom movement, entire Munda tribal group were involved indirectly in such freedom movement and some of them were took direct part in freedom movement;Birsa Munda was one of them. In Munda tribal groups, Birsa Munda is a respected name as they worship him as their god. In 1900 Birsa Mundas had died in Ranchi Jain suspiciously; then his was nearly 25 years. He had dedicated his life for India's independence. His dedication is still acknowledged with honor not only by the Munda people but also by the Government of India.

Munda Women Wearing Colorful Dresses

Munda group has their own religion called Singbonga; Singobonga means Sun God. They fully rely and believe that Singbonga is the supreme power and such Singbonga is always protecting them from all evils' power and also give punishment of their sins. After established of British rule for India, most of the Christian Missionaries were come to India and they mostly started their work to do well for common people and converted mostly poor people and tribal class to Christianity; thus the major portion of the Munda group is to christens.

The cultural side of this tribal group is very strong. They have their own dance form and songs by which they can be identify separately. The Nupur dance is one most popular form of dance of them; they wear Nupur in their ankles and dance in various festivals of joy.

The work culture of this tribal group is also similar like Santali tribal group . It is the fact that the occupational life of the tribal communities is majorly depending upon the forest. Since from the ancient time, tribal communities' lives was nature dependent. Since from the ancient time they are collecting woods from the forest and selling those woods in the local market and earn money which leads their families. As the time passed, their work culture is changed like earth cutting, labor works at various construction sites, and also land cultivations.

Earlier they had no enough knowledge of cultivation as their food habit was very peculiar; they are generally animal flesh eaters; as per their need they would go forest and haunt animal and arrange their food. Thereafter, in the long run, government preserved forests and separated them from their nature-life and rehabilitated them in other places with some cultivation lands with knowhow of cultivation.

The society of Munda community has their own identical arrangement; there has sub-group of Munda tribe community and the name of those sub-groups is Patar, Mahali, Kampat etc. among those sub-groups, some subjects are common; Gotiora- is common in every Munda village, where the traditional cultural songs, dance and also music are practiced by the young Mundas under the guidance of experienced seniors. Another common thing is Panchayat heading of a surpanch or group of surpanch who controlled the entire society and every villager is bound to obey the decision of the Panchyat. Another common thing is Akhra ; this kind of Akhra is the place of entertainment of Munda tribes. All festivals of the Munda tribes are celebrated together. 

West Medinipur-Tribal Communities-1

View of Santali Traditional Dance

One of the main characteristics of the West Medinipur district is that this district has a major portion of tribal inhabitants. This tribal communities are divided between various names;

Santali-This tribal class is most popular in Bengal and also in India.This tribal group is generally lives at the north and western part of this district which is mostly hilly area.This tribal group was first find-out by Walter Hamilton in 1820.There is different opinion about the name of this tribal;some opinion which is very near to believe is that this name had come from smanta or may be saont; because this place was known as samanatbhum. It was also the opinion that this tribal class belongs to this region.

View of Santali Festival Dance

Historically, it can be said that Santali group was mostly found in Jhargram and nearest parts of the Medinipur district. Forest is closely attached to their daily life; they collect Sal-tree- leaf from for nearest forest for making plates which are mostly used for different ceremonies of our Bengali people, they do agricultural works surrounding the plain area of the forest and now most of them come to town area and do digging of earth work for the foundation of buildings, well, etc., for their such digging works, they use to call in local name Mita.

Santali Women-Welcome Mood

After discovered them, the American Baptist Foreign Mission had especially taken care to improve their lifestyle and tried to bring them in mainstream of development of the society. But the main mission of that mission was to convert them to their religion; in spite of this, the mission had tried to give them proper education. On the inspiration to this Christian mission, namely, Rev. J Philips, Rev. G Kennan and also Rev. L.C. Kitchen had struggled much to know the origin of this tribal group and as per his strong effort, the entire world came to know about Santali language,Olchiki.This is the mother language of Santal.

Rev Philip had first time published Santali songs and poems in Bengali language in the year nearly 1845. He first took initiative to start school for them at Jaleswar. Rev Philips had done huge research on Santali Language and wrote most famous two books; Santali Bhasa Siksha in 1850 and another book Santali Language in the year 1852 where he included grammar and more than 5000 words of the Santali language. This is great work undoubtedly and he deserved thanks from this group of the tribe.

This tribal group had strong participation in India's freedom movement. Some eminent personalities of this tribe had directly involved in India's freedom movement and they were fully inspired the non-cooperation movement towards Mahatma Gandhi and controlled common Santali people for not paying taxes and revenues to the colonial British rulers. In the long run they got direct involvement in confrontation with colonial British rulers.
Santali has their own songs and dance form for their different occasions and festivals which give them separate identity in the world.