This is Nikos Likomitros, a Greek Wikimedian. In my first Wikimania, I met many people, and decided among many other things to conduct some interviews with Wikimedians from minority languages. So I elected to interview Ramjit Tudu for this purpose, one of the most active Wikimedians in Santali language, thus having a good knowledge of the project and its qualities.
Having been aware of this interesting community, which gave birth to the very first Wikipedia in an Adivasi language in India, I asked him some questions to learn more about the project. This is by far the fourth interview of a Wikimedian that I am publishing on Diff, and I am planning to do more in this and the next years. For my interviews I give a strong emphasis on minority languages and other communities that have done interesting things, yet they aren’t very well known. Below is the transcript of the interview.
Ramjit explains, that the project began in 2012, and they decided to accelerate the creation of the project in 2017. The project went live in 2018. So I asked: How you connected and formed a team? Ramjit tells me, that he was very far from his team. So he engaged with them and helped them with editing and then, they established contact with the Odia community which provided them support. Then they did their first workshop, and introduced people in to the movement.
After the approval, Ramjit explained that they embarked on a strategy to promote the Santali language through relevant places such as social media, and people began to be interested in contributing on it. Some partnerships were able to be made and the community started to consolidate. The Santali Wikimedians have a user group, that the Wikimedia Foundation recognizes. They are doing various programs, and they receive support from CIS-A2K (editor’s note: it’s an organization that provides multifaceted support to Indic communities). The community, given that the language is spread among multiple countries and not within a united geographic area, and thus social media play a significant role in the cohesion of the community.
Afterward, I asked Ramjit about the public presence of the Santali community, and the outreach activities. They have conducted outreach to universities, and also they have been in touch with Santali language writers through various events to promote the Santali language. In general, the presence of the Santali language on the internet is not very good, because of a low amount of speakers, and the fact that it coexists with other bigger languages in its locales like Bangla or Hindi, however, Santali is taught as a lesson in university. The Wikipedia in Santali language is struggling, but they are also active in event organising and they have approximately 10 active members which conduct various activities. In the future, they are aspiring to collaborate with universities where Santali is taught, as there is a large potential to bring new users in the community.
The Santali community, as we can see, has managed to build a solid community, and the potential is high for sure. The interview was taken in August, however I published it now, as my university-related liabilities didn’t allow me to do it earlier.
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