Torn between heritage and the pull of city life

Ruchira Das’s book City, Marginality and Education: Tribal Migrants in Kolkata brings to the centre the social world of the tribal migrants as it is lived, and that attempt is indicative of a minor position in a Deleuzian sense, which doesn’t refer to adopting a position of lesser value, instead alludes to the one that has the potentiality to dispel the popular, conventional tropes of understanding.

If scholarship has often found recluse in broader terminological divisions of nature/culture, modernity/tradition, for and against development to talk about the tribal population, Das’s study unsettles exactly these arbitrary distinctions. This stands as an invaluable work in social sciences for bringing to the fore the life world of tribal population that settled in as a migrant on the outskirts of a city.      

The book explores the space of Santragachi, locality that is on the fringes of metropolis – seven kms away from the main city of Kolkata. Being at an appropriate distance from the city, this space has always attracted migrants from the neighbouring states taking shape of a ghetto. In 1960 around 1300 Santal families migrated here from the tribal and the forest belt of the interior of West Bengal. The rich data of Das emerges from this population, as she explores the relationship of a migrant santal tribal to city and to the dominant bhadralok (the urbane, educated, refined behavior) category and how has that constituted this space as well as their cultural practices. 

 We know that if cities are spaces for domination and distress, then they are also the site of opportunities and emulation. Das demonstrates this tension in the everyday life of a Santal by bringing forth the category of native/urbanite. The merit of the book lies in tracing the intergenerational differences within Santals vis a vis the city and the dominant bhadralok Bengali culture. If the first-generation migrants felt their allegiance to the Santal lives and practices, and wished to preserve it, the second generation felt tempted to emulate the city life and leave the earlier world.

The paradoxes and contradictions inherent in this division become a fulcrum to understand the differences that lie in the choice of schooling and in the questions of language and script. These questions as well as the site of education is examined not in a tight knit manner but become a way to explore the larger contradiction that they experience vis a vis the city life. 

Santals are divided between preserving their own native roots and in emulating the larger global world that is represented by the dominant bhadraloks.  Das delicately demonstrates the lure of the global, urban world as against the sense of security and camaraderie that the space of Santragachi can provide to a Santal. This paradox becomes significant in understanding their complex social world; however, do these oppositions replace the earlier one that Das has deftly unsettled is a question that asks for inquiry. Does it run the risk of becoming another opposition that might make these lives inaccessible to us?

While the book has explored the ways in which Santal migrants negotiate with bhadarloks and city, her further work can explore these categories; after all, bhadralok and city are not frozen categories and are bound to go through their own transformations, and it would be significant to see if Santals have played a role in shaping the shifting urban sensibility.

Overall, by positioning herself at the site of margins, Das has presented brilliant work that is grounded on a rich data documenting the everyday struggles of a tribal migrant as they negotiate with a city, making it a must read for social scientists.  

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