People browse through Santhali books at a stall at the Jamshedpur Book Fair. Picture by Bhola Prasad

Jamshedpur, Nov. 16: Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger and Amitabha Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies are high in demand at Jamshedpur Book Fair, but bookworms are flooding the Santhali kiosk, too.

Especially, a poetry compilation called Guru Gomke Hillar by Raghunath Murmu, often considered as the father of Santhali, is hogging the limelight.

The kiosk, set up by Aadim, an organisation promoting Santhali for long now, has been a boon for Santhali people and for those interested in indigenous works. Though smaller in size when compared to the rest of the stalls at the fair, it offers an impressive array of writing from poetry, prose to articles and compilations.

For those not quite die-hard fan of fiction, but interested in the indigenous nonetheless, there are reference books on the tribal populace, English to Santhali dictionary and an encyclopaedia on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

“There has been a definite rise in the number of people interested in Santhali. Nowadays tribal people have a greater sense of themselves and are proud of their culture. Books in Ol Chiki scripts are selling like hot cakes this year. The graph started rising ever since the inception of the state,” said Mangal Mahji Murmu, the stall proprietor.

As he points out that though he has been setting up his stall for the past 12 years, he has been receiving this positive response for the past few years.

“When I first started there were hardly any takers for the kind of books that I sold. Now there are more readers and a majority of them (readers) are researchers studying both the language and the people,” he said with a satisfied glance at his clientele.

For those planning to check out the kiosk, here is an interesting detail — charts of Ol Chiki scripts and posters demanding the second language status for the widely-spoken language.

Though there are no formal publishing houses for Santhali, authors publish it at personal-level. Some of the writers who are available at the fair are Rameshwar Murmu, Bhogla Soren, Kherwar Soren, Ramchandra Murmu and Jadumuni Besra.

Some families have been making a beeline for the Learn Santhali for the second generation.

“My son is in an English-medium school, where the exposure to his mother tongue is minimal. I picked this book up because I want him to be proud of who he is,” said Jaipal Murmu, a visitor.

The fair that entered its 24th year in 2008 has 72 stalls. Pradeep Narayan Ghosh, the vice-chancellor of Jadavpur University, Calcutta, inaugurated the fair, on Friday. Ghosh told the reporters that despite the Internet books are still people’s best friends.

Ashis Chowdhury, the secretary of Tagore Society, the fair organisers, said: “We have taken care to ensure that all sorts of books are available here.”