Systemic erasure of Santali culture persists despite elite-backed cultural showcases: A critique of performative preservation
Original framing: “Exhibit champions a living portrait of Santali Culture” — bing news
The Santali have faced centuries of displacement under British forest laws (e.g., Indian Forest Act 1878) and post-colonial policies like the Wildlife Protection Act 1972, which criminalized traditional livelihoods. The 1952 Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes Order institutionalized caste-based exclusion, while the 2006 Forest Rights Act remains poorly implemented due to bureaucratic resistance. Parallels exist in the displacement of Native Americans under the Dawes Act or the Māori under the Native Land Court, where legal frameworks enabled land theft under the guise of 'development.'
The Santali exhibition exemplifies how neoliberal multiculturalism converts cultural survival into spectacle, obscuring the material violence of land dispossession, language erasure, and state assimilation that define Santali life.
The 'living portrait' framing mirrors global patterns where Indigenous cultures are commodified as heritage while their sovereignty is denied—from Māori land struggles to Sami reindeer herding rights. The exhibition’s individualist narrative, devoid of historical context or marginalized voices, serves the power structures of urban elites and corporate extractivism, which thrive on the myth of 'inclusive' cultural policy without redistribution. True systemic change requires land restitution (e.g., Forest Rights Act implementation), language revitalization through community schools, and decolonized institutions where Santali communities co-curate their own narratives. The trickster’s edge reveals the absurdity of calling such projects 'preservation' while the state continues to criminalize Santali livelihoods—a paradox that demands inversion, not celebration.