This book examines the socially segregated Santals, a tribal community that migrated from various parts of Bengal and its neighbouring states of Bihar, Orissa, and Jharkhand to Kolkata, a city currently driven by capitalist-consumerist forces that pose a challenge in terms of the community’s inclusion and accommodation. As residents of Kolkata for more than four decades, the Santal migrants have experienced multiple unique challenges in adapting to modern, urban life.
The book maps the political economy of social change around the globe and in India to understand how such marginalised tribes have coped with attempts to assimilate. By pursuing an ethnographic account and exploring the lived realities of the Santals as they negotiate the socio-cultural world of the city, the book attempts to deconstruct notions of ‘pristine’ tribal cultures and the need to ‘mainstream’ tribes, thus conveying a sense of the multiple discourses on the tribal question emerging from within the tribal community. In turn, it critically addresses the tension concerning the theory-practice divide in researching marginality. Combining theoretical insights with empirical discussions and thematic analyses of the qualitative data, the book offers researchers, scholars, students, and policymakers an interesting read on marginality in the context of globalizing urban spaces.