The aim of the course aims to outline the importance of a distinct Santhali language which is widely spoken by the Santhali tribe. As the Santhalis are the third-largest tribes of India and are inhabited in Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, and Jharkhand. Santhals did not have a written language until the twentieth century and hence the script used now combining features of both the Indic and Roman scripts.
As the Santhals are very conscious about their identity and heritage, this course provides a brief account of the language script of the Santhals, which was developed by Dr Raghunath Murmu in 1925. It is called Olchiki. It is alphabetic and does not share any of the syllabic properties of the other Indic scripts such as Devanagari. It uses 30 letters and five basic diacritics. It has 6 basic vowels and three additional vowels, generated using the Gahla Tudag.