[01] Mashiur Rahman Akan, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social Scinece, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi, Bangladesh. [02] Md Abdullah Al Mamun, Department of Folklore, Faculty of Social Scinece, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi, Bangladesh. [03] Tahmina Naznin, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social Scinece, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi, Bangladesh. [04] Muha Abdullah Al Pavel, Water Resources Development, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh; Department of Forestry and Environmental Science, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh. [05] Lubna Yasmin, Department of Folklore, Faculty of Social Scinece, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi, Bangladesh. [06] Syed Ajijur Rahman, Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography, Bangor University, Bangor, UK; Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia.

This paper is an investigation of life style of Santal community, one of the largest tribal communities in Bangladesh. Participatory rural appraisal (PRA), participant observation, focus group discussions (FGD), and informal and semi-structured interviews were used to collect information. Santals are the descendants of Austric-speaking Proto-Australoid race, and worship the supernatural powers. Village as a territorial unit, a collection of some homesteads form an administrative unit where they also tightly bond to a kinship. Even they are very sincere in abiding the rules and regulations of their own society, social problems i.e., poverty, inequality, resource scarcity, illiteracy, maladjustment are more severe. Respecting the national constitution, Bangladesh should generate a multi-ethnic leadership to bring glory and protect Santal from all sorts of hazards and discriminations.

Ethnic Minority, Lifestyle, Institutions, Inequality, Woman

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