Santali Katha
Date: 30 April – 10 May 2026
Time: 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM
Venue: KCC, 1st Floor & 4th Floor
Entry: Open to all
Kolkata Centre for Creativity, in collaboration with Ila Pal Choudhury Foundation, presents Santali Katha, a multidisciplinary exhibition and seminar exploring the evolving identity of the Santal community.
The symposia Santali Katha brings together research, documentation, and contemporary perspectives to examine continuity, change, and cultural self–definition within one of South Asia’s largest indigenous communities.
The Santals inhabit regions across the Chotanagpur plateau, North Bengal, Assam, and parts of Bangladesh. Known for their strong oral traditions, social structures, and expressive cultural forms, they have been the subject of extensive documentation – from early missionary records by P. O. Bodding and Reverend Skrefsrud to later works such as W. G. Archer’s Hills of Flutes.
While often perceived as culturally static, the Santal community reflects a more complex reality shaped by transition and adaptation. A key moment in this trajectory was the development of the Ol Chiki script by Raghunath Murmu in 1926, followed by the inclusion of Santali in the Eighth Schedule of the Government of India. These shifts mark a movement from oral to written traditions, opening new avenues for literary, academic, and cultural engagement.
At the same time, core elements of Santal life – language, music, ritual, and collective practices – continue to sustain a strong sense of continuity. This duality forms the basis of the exhibition and its associated symposium.
Through talks, discussions, and presentations by practitioners and scholars across anthropology, agriculture, medicine, social work, development studies, design, and activism, the programme offers a 360–degree perspective on a community negotiating both rootedness and change.
The exhibition invites audiences to move beyond simplified or romanticised views, and instead engage with the Santals as a dynamic, evolving society shaped by history, knowledge systems, and contemporary realities.
