The Santal is one of the officially declared 50 ethnic groups in Bangladesh. They live mainly northern part of Bangladesh—either greater Rajshahi or Dinajpur.
Published in Chapter:
Santals, Sal, and Forest Policy of Bangladesh: Reminiscence of Ethnographic Experience
Copyright: © 2024
|Pages: 16
DOI: 10.4018/979-8-3693-1742-6.ch018
Abstract
This chapter reflects on the Ph.D. journey within the Santals of Bangladesh, followed by an ethnographic method at Birganj in Dinajpur, Bangladesh. The Government of Bangladesh formulated diverse forest policies, acts, and rules and either ratified or approved international treaties/documents to preserve, guide, and nurture the forests. However, when the author entered the remote Santals hamlet, they talked about their grief regarding the Sal Forest. Before starting the academic journey, the first author was born and developed in a village where the Indigenous research methodology was embedded informally in his mind as a consciousness part; moreover, as a student spent with Santals neighbours in the agri-field, school, colleges, and even the common playground in the countryside. As a result, it is decorated with field experiences and deals with the “capability approach” while the PhD candidate stayed in the research field for a long time and observed an intricate relationship between Santals and the international legal frameworks to ratify in Bangladesh.