Cultural mosaic: Fascinating mixture of diverse ingredient

A.U.M. Fakhruddin

Synthesis of various elements has shaped the culture of the Bangladeshi people. Indeed, the cultural mosaic of the country is characterized by a fascinating assortment of diverse ingredients of the patterns of life of ethnic groups from different regions of the East and the West.

No wonder, contacts with diverse peoples of far and near - Aryan, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Central Asian and European stocks - have contributed to the enrichment of our culture and its blending into a composite one.

The fascinating diversity of the Bangladeshi culture is perceptible in the language, literature, music, painting, the performing arts, intellectual expressions, ideas, codes, institutions, folklore, customs, festivals, pastimes, beliefs, rituals and ceremonies, taboos, food habits, dress and what not.

Some of the cultural features of the country - namely religious festivals like Eid-ul-Fitr, Eid-ul-Azha, Shab-e-Barat and Ashura - are distinctly different from that of the adjoining Indian state of West Bengal as the great majority (86 percent) of the people of Bangladesh are Muslims. In this country, Hindus celebrate Durga Puja, Luxmi Puja, Kali Puja, Saraswati Puja and Janmastami or the birthday of Sri Krishna; while Baradin or Xmas is the main Christian religious festival, and Boishakhi Purnima is the main Buddhist festival. and Again, though Bangla is spoken in West Bengal too, yet dialectal peculiarities have marked difference broadly in the eastern parts of Bangladesh. The great Bengali poets Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam are the two National Poets of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh witnessed the settlement of dark proto-Australoids, Mediterranean Caucasoid white people, also known as Aryans, Armenoids (of Indo-European stock) etc. ; and the process known as Aryanization began about 3,000 years ago. Muslims came in the 8th century AD and people of Arab, Persian, and Turkish origin moved in large numbers to the subcontinent and gradually entered what is now Bangladesh. So the notion that Bengali Muslims are all descended from lower caste Hindus who were converted to Islam is incorrect; a substantial proportion of them are the descendants of the Muslims.

Like in other developing countries, in Bangladesh too the culture has two faces, urban and rural. Though it is true that Bangladesh lives in villages where the majority of the people live and earn a modest income from farming, fishing, weaving and other agricultural and agro-based activities, the rural culture of folk music, the Yatra or folk theater and other folk elements of culture do not have a strong presence. This is because of the overwhelming and ubiquitous dominance of the radio, the television, movies, video films and audiocassettes that come from the capital city and reach even the remote villages where electricity is yet to arrive. It is true that only the well-off villagers can afford these means of entertainment; but inexpensive portable radio sets - catering programs produced mostly by the urban middle class people - have become affordable these days even for the common villagers.

No other people have as much love of their language as do the people of Bangladesh have in that it is the Bangladeshis who sacrificed their life for the legitimate recognition of their mother tongue, Bangla or Bengali, as a state language back in the year 1952.

Bengali is the mother tongue of almost 99 percent of the people. Tribal peoples have their own district dialects, some of which are related to the Tibeto-Burman group of languages.

Immigrants who came to Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, from Bihar State in northeastern India in the wake of the partition in 1947, generally speak Urdu. English is an important means of communication with the outside world.

Literary Bengali is the same all over Bangladesh, while there are slight dialectal differences from region to region. The dialects of the districts of Sylhet, Noakhali, and Chittagong are the most markedly different. Bengali contains a large number of loan-words from Portuguese, English, Arabic, Persian, and Hindi.

Words derived either directly or indirectly from Sanskrit, however, predominate in the literary idiom.

Bangladesh can boast of her treasury of music which has a wide variety of folk songs, namely, the general Lokasangeet or folk songs, Bhatiyali, Bhawaiya, Gambhira, Baul, Kabiyal, Jarigan, Patua, Jhumur, Bhadu, Ghatu, wedding songs, songs sung in groups by oarsmen during a boat-race, songs of farm workers, construction workers and so on sung to the accompaniment of musical instruments, such as one-stringed Ektara, two-stringed Dotara, prototype of violin Sharinda, Mondira or cymbals, and Tabla, Mridanga, Khol etc. for beat or rhythm. Infatuation, love, anguish of separation from sweetheart form the themes of traditional songs. Folk dances are performed by the tribal people, such as the Santals, the Garos, the Chakmas, the Manipuris and so on.

Speaking about sculpture, five hundred years preceding the Muslim conquest of Bengal in 1201 can be regarded as the golden age of the Pre-AIslamic art, when, besides the flowering of her traditional art of terra-cotta, exquisite woodcarving, metal casting, the sculptural art on fine-grained black basalt stone is astonishing.

The artistic excellence of some of these specimens may very well be compared with many Classical masterpieces of the world.

Sung in the last three days and the first month of Bangladesh calendar in different parts of north-western Bangladesh, the Gambhira is unique in that it offers social criticism with sarcastic humor. Performed to the accompaniment of traditional musical instruments like the Dotara, bamboo flute and Tabla, it has a peculiar refrain, namely, "Nana hey," meaning, "Oh grandpa". The main two singers dance wearing Nupur or Ghungur (ankle-bells) while they perform.

In no other songs universality of Man and his soul in relation to the Supreme High is so profound and explicit as it is in the songs of the Baul cult who can be both Muslims and Hindus, but they do not go by religious rites and rituals. The overwhelming strength of the mystic songs of Fakir Lalan Shah had perceptible influence on poet Rabindranath Tagore. The Kabiyals are singers who can compose extempore songs based on Hindu mythology with Dhol or big drum accompaniment and Kanshi or cymbals. These songs, which begin at 10 pm and last for about 12 to 14 hours, are poetical fight between two parties of two poets.

The Jarigan is sung in the month of Muharram of the Islamic calendar to commemorate the tragic events of Karbala on the bank of the Euphrates where Hazrat Imam Hussain was killed by his treacherous opponents. Mention must be made of a large body of Muslim devotional songs including Qawwali invoking the blessing of Almighty Allah, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), the great Caliphs, Hazrat Imam Hussain who was martyred at Karbala in Iraq, great saints like Bara Pir Sahib, Khwaza Baba and other major saints of Bangladesh, namely, Hazrat Shah Jalal, Hazrat Maijbhandari and so on. Similarly, Bhajan, Sri Krishna Kirtan, Shyama Sangeet etc are the Hindu devotional songs. Mention must be made of Bangladeshi Rock bands which number over a dozen.

There are four main types of music- classical, light classical, devotional, and popular. Classical music has many forms, of which Dhrupad - Hindustani, devotional songs, and Kheyal, a blending of the Perso-Arab and Indian musical systems, are the best known. The Thumri and Tappa forms belong to the light classical variety. These forms are part of the musical heritage of the subcontinent. Music in Bengal made great advances during the period of the independent Muslim rulers.

Sultan Ghiyas-ud Din Azam Shah, who ruled in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, was a great patron of music, as was Alaud- Din Husayn Shah, who ruled from 1493 to 1518. In the Mughal period, constant cultural contact was maintained between northern India, the seat of classical music, and Bengal, and eminent musicians accompanied the Mughal viceroys to Bengal, and classical music flourished in the region through the centuries.

Between the rigid and formal classical music and free modern songs are found the songs called Rabindrasangeet. The other significant form of modern Bengali music is the Nazrulgeeti most of which is based on the Ragas of the classical music.

Bangladesh has evolved highly original indigenous dances. The best known forms are the Dhali, Baul, Manipuri, and snake dances, each of which expresses a particular aspect of tribal or communal life and is danced on particular occasions.

Painting in Bangladesh is a recently introduced art form. The main figure behind the art movement was Zainul Abedin, whose sketches of the Bengal famine of 1943 first attracted attention. He was able, after 1947, to gather around him a school of artists who experimented with various forms, both orthodox and original.

Speaking about Bangladeshi literature, over centuries and ages Bangladesh has gone through phases and absorbed many influences, while the language and literature took in and incorporated striking marks of these stages. Hindu myths and legends, the religious values of Islam, the ethical teachings of Gautama Buddha, and Western thoughts exerted diverse influences on the growth of the literature of Bangladesh which took a noticeable turn in 1947 when the subcontinent was partitioned and Bangladesh became a part of Pakistan.

The writers of Bangladesh have inherited a cultural heritage and secular Bengali tradition shared by the two major communities living here, the Hindus and the Muslims. The contemporary literature is characterised by a refreshing vigour and verve.

The mass movements of the 1960s and the 1970s, the 1971 Liberation War have inspired our poets, novelists, short story writers, playwrights and essayists to treat the societal and national issues.

It goes without saying that the artistic heritage of Bangladesh is very old, with its rich tradition of painting and terra-cotta art. The Bengal Patua painting and the old mythological scrolls constitute a part of the painting heritage of Bangladesh; and the discovery of the figurines in Mahasthangarh and the terra-cotta plaques and stone sculptures at Paharpur and Mainamati testify to the artistic temperament and skill of the early people, centuries ago. Modern art in Bangladesh had its beginning in 1948 when the Government College of Art was set up in Dhaka.

Following the political upheavals and social developments of the forties painters began real life studies. When Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin created his famous famine sketches in 1944, those heralded the advent of realism, and clearly indicated that an artist's commitment to society and life can enable him to quest for and explore into the realm of great art of social relevance.

However, the influence of the West is evident in the early works of our first generation of painters and artists of the later decades.

Yatra, the folk theatre or opera with its simple stories of the yearning for the beloved, romantic agony, pangs of separation from the sweetheart, didactic themes like respect for the elders, filial affection etc. amuse the villagers. Contrarily, influenced, nurtured and nourished by Western concepts, the urban, mostly Dhaka-based, modern theatre offers dramas having complex social themes of conflicts and struggles for existence, staged by dozens of group theatres among which a few troupes have earned acclaim at home and abroad.

The cinema in Bangladesh is not too young an industry which began its journey in 1956 with the film Mookh O Mookhosh. Today the mainstream commercial moviedom is a big business producing over a dozen motion pictures a year. Among the serious genre of films Surja Dighal Bari was the first to win an award at the Mannheim Film Festival in 1980. Over the years some more films have received recognition abroad.

The spirit of the universal brotherhood of man has been succinctly emphasised in the following folksong of Bangladesh: "Nanan boron gaabhiray tor ekoi boron doodh, /Jagat Bharamiya, dekhlam ekoi maayer poot." [The cow's skin may take many hues but its milk is white everywhere, / All men and women are offspring of the same Mother Eve].

The writer is a lyricist, columnist, author of books and Assistant Editor of The Independent, an English daily published from Dhaka.