Isolated Yet Living and Working among others during COVID-19 – Santals of Birbhum in India

This article addresses the living pattern of the Santal Scheduled Tribe in India, a group of more than 6 million people, but here described on the basis of a few villages in Birbhum, West Bengal. The aim is to document how far a typical settlement and living pattern of rural Santals of West Bengal in India led to a lesser dissemination than among so many other Indian communities. In this way the article, accepts the general argument forwarded by Prof. A.B. Ota on the Scheduled Tribes in Odisha, but aims at adding content to the inner Santal perspective to his observations from outside. In this way the pandemic and the closedowns become a prism breaking the evidence regarding isolation in ways which makes implicit knowledge of integration evident.