Demography of santhals

The santhal population is mainly concentrated in the four states namely Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and Assam. A significant number of santhali speaking population also lives in Bangladesh and Nepal( jhappa, morang and sunsari districts).  After looking onto a number of sites I finally found this on the most obvious one the wikipedia and the 2001 population census. 

 I BIHAR                     total population     santhals    percentage

  DEOGARH            9,33,113   NA                      

  DHANBAD            26,74,651  2,40,718   9

  DUMKA              14,95,709  5,68,370  38

  GIRIDIH            22,25,480  3,56,077  16

  GODDA               8,61,182  1,20,565  14

  HAZARIBAGH         16,01,576    64,063   4

  KATIHAR            18,25,380  1,09,522   6

  KODARMA             6,29,264    37,755   6

  PASCHIM SINGHBHUM  17,87,955  1,78,795  10

  PURBI SINGHBHUM    16,13,088    NA  

  PURNIA             18,78,885    93,944   5

  SAHIBGANJ           7,36,835  3,09,471  42

        

II ORISSA

 BALASORE            16,96,583  1,69,658  10

 BHADRAK             11,05,834    33,175   3 

 CUTTACK                  NA  

 DHENKANAL                NA  

 KEONJHAR            13,37,026     NA  

 KHURDA                   NA  

 MAYURBHANJ          18,84,580  5,67,282  28

 SUNDARGARH               NA  

        

III TRIPURA*

 TRIPURA                           2,200 

IV WEST BENGAL

 BANKURA             28,05,065  3,36,607  12

 BARDHAMAN           60,50,605  3,63,036   6

 BIRBHUM              25,55,66  1,53,340   6

 WEST(N&S)DINAJPUR   12,00,924  1,80,138  15

 JALPAIGURI          28,00,543     NA  

 MALDAH              26,37,032  1,84,592   7

 MEDINIPUR           83,31,919  13,33,107 16

 PURULIA             22,24,577  3,33,686  15

V ASSAM

 ASSAM                 NA       2,00,000

It shows that the total population of santhals is 60,50,000.

The total population of santhal in west Bengal in percentage with respect to the total ST population is 51.6%(2001 census). Total literacy rate is 42.2% while the male and female is 57% and 27%.

Living tongue

Started by a few Americans this NGO's prime focus is to document, revitalize and maintain the endangered languages.  There website sates the current situation of languages today.

"Minority languages are being increasingly replaced by various politically, economically, or socio-culturally dominant ones. Every two weeks the last fluent speaker of a language passes on and with him/her goes literally hundreds of generations of traditional knowledge encoded in these ancestral tongues. Nearly half of the world’s languages are likely to vanish in the next 100 years"

The organisation is involved in documenting  Munda languages also. According to them the Munda languages of India are among the most poorly known of the world’s languages. Spoken by so-called ‘tribals’ primarily in the eastern and central India states of Jharkhand and Orissa, with enclaves in adjacent states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal. Despite representing the oldest known layer of population in India, predating the Dravidian and Indo-Aryan peoples that dominate the area today, the linguistic relatives of the Munda in the large Austroasiatic language family are to be found in remote mountainous regions scattered across southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, southern China, in addition to the far eastern Indian regions of Meghalaya and the Nicobar Islands), as well as the national languages of Cambodia and Vietnam.

their link: www.livingtongues.org