State's 1st Santhali Book Fair to be held at Jhargram

KOLKATA: The state's first ever five-day Santhali Book Fair will be held at Jhargram between December 7 and 11.

It will be held at Rabindra Park. The fair will remain open from 2pm to 8pm.

At the fair, Caste Certificates will be distributed among the applicants. There will be 25 book stalls. Other stalls will be set up by the Self Help Groups run by the tribals. There will be stalls to exhibit and sell the products by the artisans associated with the Self Help Groups. There will be food courts, selling tribal food. Tribal food has become very popular and a restaurant selling them has been opened at the Eco Park in New Town.

The state Tribal Development department through a memo dated December 1, 2022 asked the SDO Jhargram to make necessary arrangements to organise the fair. R Arjun, Special Secretary, Tribal Development department will visit Jhargram to oversee the arrangements on December 6, a day ahead of the programme. There will be cultural programme to showcase tribal culture and music.

After coming to power in 2011, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee gave special drives to issue caste certificates and fairs across the state had been held to issue the same. Earlier, people had to run from pillar to the post to get caste certificates. To showcase folk culture of the tribal people, musical instruments had been given to them and regular programmes are held in different fairs that are being organised by different state government departments.

A tri-lingual dictionary in Santhali, English and Bengali has been published by the backward Classes Welfare department and Alchiki script has been given recognition by the state government as one of the official language.