Audio | Storytelling and Adivasi songs by school kids in the Gudalur valley in the Nilgiri mountains – Tamil Nadu

Friday, April 4th, 2014 [excerpts] Hello friends! Today the kids from 7th standard are telling you about their villages,we hope you have fun reading their comments! I like that in my village there are many flowers. I have many friends in the village and I play with them. I don’t like any other village, I like only … Read more

“Project Equals”: Committed to spreading knowledge of India’s tribal and breaking the shackles that have held back tribal folk music: Anahad Foundation – New Delhi

Folk music is an indelible part of India’s storied oral tradition. Songs emanating from the tribal folk tradition are critical fragments of this country’s vast cultural diversity. Based on simple instruments and arrangements, articulated by voices of the soil, and set across different geographical locations and cultural contexts, these songs are a celebration of nature … Read more

The depiction of Santal culture in modern art: Jamini Roy (National Gallery of Modern Art) – New Delhi

Jamini Roy was one of the earliest and most significant modernists of twentieth century Indian art. From 1920 onwards his search for the essence of form led him to experiment with dramatically different visual style. His career spanning over nearly six decades had many significant turning points and his works collectively speak of the nature … Read more

Jamini Roy’s Santal Drummers

Two sought after paintings by Rabindranath Tagore which the British collector, W.G. Archer, acquired while working in pre-independence India as a civil servant, are being offered for sale in London. […] Another five paintings by Jamini Roy (1887-1972), with reserve prices of up to £12,000 (Rs 9.5 lakh), from Archer’s extensive collection are also included … Read more

Usage of ‘tribe’ traceable to colonial census authorities

The term ‘tribe’, as is widely known, subsumes enormous complexities—both anthropological and historical. However, the British India Censuses used to enumerate tribes as Animists until the 1931 Census, in which they were categorised as those practicing ‘Tribal Religion’. Thus, up to the 1941 Census, the criterion of primitive or tribal religion enabled the British census … Read more