Gram Bikash Kendra (GBK) is a local-level, non-profit development organization working in the Northwest Region of Bangladesh. Since 1992, GBK has worked as an enabling force for vulnerable section of the community. In particular, GBK's work focuses on women, children and indigenous people. We have strong links with National and international organizations, including HEKS - Switzerland, ICCO - Netherlands, PKSF - Bangladesh, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), Nayantara Communications-Bangladesh and Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO).
Santal Revolution Day 2007
Santal revolution day (usually called “Santal”) is one of the red letter days in the life of the indigenous people, especially for the Santal communities. There is a history of struggle behind the day.
More than one hundred and fifty years ago, the indigenous people were lived by cleaning nearby jungle and produce food crops on that land. The British ruler and their local representatives (zamindars) imposed money lending with very high interest on the poor indigenous people. Their unbearable torture killed thousands of indigenous people.
Afterwards, the indigenous people were united and fought with the British and with the Zamindar government police. Shidhu, Kanu, Chnad and Bhairob-the four brothers were the leaders of the movement. That is why; the movement is also known/observed as Shidhu-Kanu day in Bangladesh. This incident happened in 1855 in Santal Pargana of the present West Bengal of India.
On 30th June 1855, thousands of indigenous people were killed by the British police. From that time, the 30th June is observed by the indigenous people, especially by the Santal community people as a revolution day of their history. In the northwest Bangladesh, there live a huge number of Santal people-who are inspired from this glorious history. Being an independent country, each and every citizen of this country is supposed to enjoy their own rights and social dignity.
However, the cruel reality is, the indigenous people are still suffering a lot, in-terms of their human rights, social justice and dignity. Still, they are tortured, evicted from their land, harassed in many ways, their women are tortured and are living in an inhuman condition. The Santal revolution day inspires them to being united and protest against any injustice.
Gram Bikash Kendra (GBK) is observing the Santal revolution day in the ten upazila of Dinajpur district.
June 30th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Hi Salim,
I went in and edited this posting a bit–you didn’t check the “Code” tab and when you pasted the text it added code we don’t want. I’ll be watching for more changes as you make them—when you add a photo make sure the code tab says something like this:
<img src=”http://www.gbk-bd.org/images/sidu.jpg” alt=”sidu” class=”alignright” border=”1″ />
Also, please remove any other tags other than
and
… I’ll call to see if you know what I mean!