Jalpaiduri- A Passage to Natural Beauty.

Tea Garden- Jalpaiguri

Bengal has two parts, one is West Bengal and next one is North Bengal. Jalpaiguri is a commercially busiest city of North Bengal. This is situated at the Southern part of Himalaya as Tarai or plain land.  It is situated on the bank of the Teesta River and this Teesta River is second largest river in Bengal after the river Ganges. Another river Karla is also flowing within the the city. Locally this river Karla is called “Tames river of Jalpaiguri”.

Another attraction of this district is Kanchanjanga Mountain. This is a famous and third highest mountain peak in the world. It can be found very clearly in broad day light when the sky is free from clouds.

Climatically, Jalpaiguri is not pleasant the whole of  the year. The temperature in summer reach approximate 40+ degrees with tough humidity. In rainy day, huge rainfall is taken place at this district. In winter also, temperature comes down to a minimum degree.

Jalpaiguri is unique source of natural beauty. Here have Tea gardens which is called Duars’ Tea gardens. Since from the British Raj, India is one of the largest Tea producers in the world market. Here has beautiful forest with adventurous wildlife. Sceneries of this place is very amazing and most of the tourists love this place.

Jalpaiguri-this name probably come from “Jalpai” or Olive; it is myth that this place was largest producer of Olive and “Guri” is equal to land and all together it is land of Olive or Jalpaiguri. This place is an international border which connects the neighbor country Bangladesh and also Bhutan; moreover, this place connects also Assam and Darjeeling.

Most of the people of this place is migrated from various parts of the country and as well as from Bangladesh. Rajbanshi people are original inhabitants of this place. All the groups of people have their own culture and customs and a common trend is to accept to each other.
  
According to the history, Huien Tsang, the famous Chinese tourist had come there on feet via Tibet. His aim was to take lesson of Buddhism. Then this place was the part of  the Kamrupa kingdom. 

Jalpaiguri is entirely called “Duars”; Duars mean doors or passages which would use Bhutanese for their business with plain lands. Earlier this place was in the map of Bhutan and Cooch Behar. In the year 1864, British Raj was captured this place on the command of the captain Hedyet Ali. Thereafter this place was divided into two parts, the Eastern part was merged with Assam through Gowalpara and second part which called Western part of Tarai was independent. Lastly, in the year1869, one separate district was born, Jalpaiguri.

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.