Johar . Welcome to the charming World of Santals !

The Santals are the largest homogenous tribal group of India who are considered to be the absolute originals of the land. With a population of over 10 million , they are concentrated in the Indian states of Jharkhand, West Bengal and Assam. They are also sprodically located in the neighbouring countries of Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan in Asia. Being one of the oldest Adivasi (Indigenous} communities, Santals have their own socio-political, economic and cultural systems for which they have sentimental and emotional links and they practice their rituals relgiously even today. They are endowed with rich and glorious historical, cultural and political heritages. Basic human values, which are the essence of a primary human society like simplicity, truthfulness, respect for elders, caring and sharing, co-operation, communitarian life-styles, subsistence economy, human spirituality, collective joy etc. are still visible in their Society.Mercifully they are still considered to be a large group of homogenous people who abhor the materialistic world and resultantly the mad race for it." Raska" - meaning joy and happiness is the keyword, which truly gets reflected in every spheres of their life. Being joyous and contented even in the worst materialistic situations, they continue to live blessed with their own simplistic and happy world.
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All India Santal Welfare and Cultural Society (AISWACS) is an Adivasi (Tribal) organisation involved in activities related to the Santals and allied Adivasi Communities for their empowerment in totality for a firm foundation for Socio-political, cultural and economic strength.
^TOP^ BOTTOM The Constitutional scheduling of the tribes for administrative purposes encompasses the entire group into a calibrating system with notional theory of shuffling around the circle of idioms in terms of their poverty and backwardness in formal education. Logically therefore a transition in outlook of the State deserves priority over transformation of the state of affairs of the tribals and their ideologies. AISWACS believes that the root causes of the poverty is the exploitative tendency and inadequate socio-political and economic structures; and consequent dispossession from their basic life sustaining resources comprising of land, forests, water,

their cultures and values. Experts (Bhattachatya/Tribes in India; Process of Transitiuon/2003} believe that most studies on tribes have a cross-cultural perspective since the academicians generally belong to a cultural strait, which has a non-tribal ambience and always being conscious of it. As such parameters used to define the tribal world are more or less corrupted idioms, which are distant from objectivity, somehow. The tribes' worldover therefore consolidate on a horrifying belief that they are guineapigs in the anthropological laboratory of the enlightened classes of human beings with terms like ' backwardness, primitiveness or ancient in their practices' stamped on their existence. Their cultural strengths, the brevity of their traditional institutions and purity of existence in a shallowed world never finds mention in the glare of the limelight. The world needs to learn their charasteristic positive outlook as a single source of a stubborn strength and strategy that they have been practicing in maneovering and carving out a peaceful life either among themselves or in connection to their non-tribal meighbours. Presently AISWACS is involved among the Adivasis in the States of Jharkhand and adjoining areas of Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa. Strategically, AISWACS believes in facilitating movements to attain social transformation for the holistic upliftment of the entire community.
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