Santhali Paintings of Jharkhand

Regarded as among the earliest inhabitants of the Chotanagpur Plateau and the Santhal Parganas, the Santhals constitute one of the largest tribal communities in India, with a population estimated in the millions. Their principal geographical concentration lies in present-day Jharkhand and parts of Bengal, although patterns of labour migration—particularly to northern Bengal, Assam, and other industrial regions—have long shaped their social landscape. While many Santhals are engaged in plantation and industrial work, especially in tea gardens, the community continues to strive to sustain distinctive cultural and social practices rooted in village life.

Linguistically, the Santhals belong to the Austro-Asiatic language family, speaking Santhali, a Munda language within the broader Austric group. At the same time, sustained interaction with neighbouring populations and changing socio-economic conditions have led to widespread multilingualism across the region.

Santhal society may be broadly characterised as totemistic, drawing sustained inspiration from the natural world and its resources. Livelihoods are diverse and adaptive, combining settled agriculture with forest-based activities such as hunting, fishing, and the collection of fruits, berries, sabai grass, and medicinal plants. Agricultural production varies by crop and locality, with rice, millet, and maize forming the principal staples. Hunting assumes particular significance from mid-April onwards, marking an important seasonal activity.

Village organisation traditionally centres on a headman, whose authority extends across everyday social and administrative matters. While the Santhals are recognised for their skill in clearing forest land for cultivation, agricultural practices tend to be extensive rather than intensive, with limited emphasis on long-term land improvement once productivity declines.

Within Jharkhand, Santhal communities are commonly distinguished between those of the Chotanagpur Plateau and those of the Santhal Parganas. This geographical differentiation has given rise to notable variations in social organisation, economic life, and visual culture. Santhal paintings from the Santhal Parganas retain a strong adherence to older forms and symbolic coherence, whereas those from the Chotanagpur region more visibly reflect the influences of contemporary change.

Distinct from other tribal communities of Jharkhand, the Santhals possess a highly recognisable visual language in both art and craft. Yet, like other indigenous traditions, their creative practices are conceived as an extension of lived experience—drawn from what is often described as the “soul” of the community—and sustained through uninterrupted intergenerational transmission. Santhal visual culture is closely interwoven with a worldview that values celebration, vitality, and collective joy.

Sohrai, the post-harvest festival celebrated in October–November following Diwali, occupies a central place in Santhal ritual and artistic life. Marking a pause from the labour of the agricultural cycle, Sohrai provides the primary occasion for wall painting and domestic renewal. In the days leading up to the festival, women undertake the repair and replastering of house walls using mud and related materials, preparing surfaces specifically for painted decoration. The planning of motifs and compositions is undertaken in advance, underscoring the deliberateness of what might otherwise appear spontaneous.

In the Santhal Parganas—particularly in districts such as Dumka and Deoghar—this preparatory process often includes the creation of low-relief surfaces, where wet walls are scraped and modelled to produce raised forms of one to two inches. Paint is then applied over these sculpted grounds, resulting in a distinctive three-dimensional effect. By contrast, Santhal paintings in the Chotanagpur region are predominantly two-dimensional, with designs outlined first and colours filled in at a later stage, without any relief modelling.

Across both regions, pigments are applied in fluid washes to heighten chromatic intensity. Colours are derived largely from natural sources, including earth, stones, flowers, and leaves. While Santhal Pargana paintings typically employ a more restrained palette dominated by white, black, blue, and red, those from the Chotanagpur Plateau display a broader chromatic range, incorporating yellows and newly mixed hues alongside the traditional colours. Together, these regional variations reveal a shared aesthetic framework shaped by place, material practice, and evolving cultural contexts.

Santhali painters articulate a distinctive approach to creativity, expressed through a repertoire of symbols that draws closely on both the natural world and abstract form. Common motifs include flowering plants and trees, peacocks, fish and other fauna, alongside an extensive use of geometric shapes and varied border patterns. Floral imagery is often organised in a structured vertical scheme: plants are shown emerging from vases positioned at the lower edge of the wall, from which rhythmic stems rise upward, flanked by stylised leaves. The upper registers of walls and doorways are frequently filled with dense clusters of blossoms, above which pairs of peacocks are placed in poised symmetry.

Bird imagery, particularly that of peacocks, is rendered with notable vitality and clarity, standing apart from the more schematic treatment of other animals. Fish, typically shown in pairs, recur as an important motif, reinforcing ideas of balance and abundance. Floral forms tend towards geometric stylisation, often composed of circular petals numbering three or four. Among the most recognisable of these is the Kamalban motif, distinguished by its precisely ordered circular petals, usually six to eight in number.

Doors serve as especially prominent sites for such imagery, where flowers and flowering plants function as visual gestures of welcome, mediating between domestic interiors and the outside world. Alongside vegetal and animal forms, Santhali painters employ a wide range of geometric patterns, including squares, circles, and linear elements—straight, curved, or rhythmically repeated. These geometric devices operate simultaneously as decorative elements and as carriers of symbolic meaning.

As one of the oldest communities in the region, the Santhals are thus associated with a visual tradition that combines inherited relief-based techniques with an enduring capacity for creative reinvention, resulting in paintings that balance formal continuity with expressive vitality.