Mohammad Nurul Huda :
The identity of a people is nowhere better reflected than in their inalienable cultural expressions created since antiquity. These expressions were handed down from one generation to another following oral tradition and imitation in the main. Before language was discovered in a disciplined manner, primitive people had definitely felt something significant for themselves and thereafter uttered sounds that subsequently carried their targeted meaning in some form or other. Eventually, symmetrical utterances among a group of people belonging to a given territory got recognised by almost all the individuals in it, and such utterances became vehicle of communication among them. This is how at one stage of their societal progress, these utterances were converted into meaningful words. Interestingly, majority of such words were neither linear nor homogenous, rather full of vibrant diversities in tune and approach that made them musical and rhythmical in most cases, an easy device to memorise things as of now. Communities with their distinctive identities seemed to have flourished in the wake of such expressive ventures at different turns of human history.
Besides verbal and musical expressions, they also learned how to communicate with signs, actions and display, holding or making of tangible things within their reach. Since clans or homogenous groups under such communicative variations began to develop their collective entity, they also discovered means of their livelihood from such efforts. The reason is not far to seek, since our primitive predecessors made their existence worthwhile through a host of composite activities that mitigated their demand for both delight and appetite. All their activities were characterised by similar double connotations interspersing illusion with reality.
Such an instance is the cow-killing festival by the Mro people, a tribal group of Chittagong Hill Tracts. At least once a year they kill the cow, dancing and singing and blowing horns and playing on other traditional musical instruments in a ceremonial gathering of all the members irrespective of age and gender. This festival, though brutal and cruel in the common parlance, is a delightful occasion for all the members of the clan who can avail themselves of a sacred occasion to forget all the differences that may have prevailed before this ritualistic performance. It also reminds us of the belief of crucifixion of Jesus Christ, whose sacrificial blood shall ensure salvation of his devoted followers. In fact, sacrifice is the key instrument in all human thoughts for purifying both the individual and collective souls. Instances of sacrificing animals ritually on special days as performed in the major religions, both monotheistic . and pagan, may be cited. In fact, this is the natural way of enriching the cycle of life, since sacrifice of a singular soul is considered to be the inspiring essence for the collective society they build together.
It is also perceivable that individuals may wither, irrespective of their corporeal or incorporeal existence, but their essence is never lost; rather it is regenerated in their offspring as an undying binding force. This is what we call tradition and it is constantly being built and rebuilt with the earliest essence remaining in the very core, the starting point of a particular clan or race or community. Culture in a traditional society is the expression of that primitive essence, enriched by all subsequent generations who have refined it by adding their acquired knowledge, wisdom, intuition, hearsay, distinctive style and mode of presentation. This how traditional culture is an unbroken bridge over a period of time that is being perpetuated with every new generation heralding their joyous existence. So tradition and culture are inseparable and there is nothing ominous that can disintegrate the solidarity of individual entities but for an unwanted misrepresentation of an invented tradition that has no chronological continuity with its source-community. Invented cultures are imposed cultures in most cases and they have elements of disintegration that we may hardly trace in a traditional culture with homogenous continuity despite the fact that it does not abide by the concept of fixation. All traditional cultural expressions have an evolving nature and they uphold the underlying ethos of the people they represent since the very inception of their collective journey in the remote past.
Traditional cultural expressions of Bangladesh have also evolved over the ages on the hills and mountains, plains and marshes, rivers and seas that have formed a fertile territory called the great Ganges delta. It is one of the oldest habitats of human race. Here we can identify the generous gift of nature including a phenomenal variety of food-grains, flora and fauna that have rendered life both comfortable and easy-flowing, like a huge traditional Mayurpankhi, or a peacock shaped vessel with puffed sails meant for a trade relation with distant places across the rivers and oceans. This is how the stories of seven vessels and their owners like Chandsadagar or Amirsadhu have crept up in our tales, legends and ballads. Both Chandsadagar and Amirsadhu are merchants of great stature and they move from one port to another in search of fortune and riches, but their hearts are anchored in their source-community, waiting for them in the guise of Behula or Velua. The verbal expressions of our traditional culture mostly deal with such narratives, both in prose and verse and they uphold affirmative attributes such as love, affection, friendship and fraternity mostly. A major bulk of our ballads are collected in ‘Mymesingh Geetika’ or ‘Purbabanga Geetika’ and these verse narratives, despite the presence of some satanic villains, who are destined to embrace a final defeat, dwell upon the victory of good over the evil. Communities are presented here as peace-loving with no cruel games played on seemingly ignoble matters. Rather it is the harmonious cohabitation of people that has appeared as the oft-recurrent theme of these folk narratives.
This is also true of our history, which bears ample evidence to the fact that the sons and daughters of this soil have never entered into violent clashes among themselves despite their differences in faiths and traits. On the contrary, it is the savage outsiders with blood-thirsty weapons that invaded our territory coming from outside the subcontinent and plundered our legitimate rights and ancestral properties. However, the magnanimity of the souls of our folk philosophers is much greater than those indiscreet invaders.
The peace-loving people of this soil have always forgiven their attackers and preached the eternal message of humanity : ‘cows are different, but their milk is of same colour/roaming the whole world I have seen the sons of same mother’.
Most of our folk poets, who had developed their philosophic commitment as well, upheld this great tolerance in the past and they have not deviated from their stand as of now. This is why a twentieth century folk poet-cum singer says: ‘Hindu and Muslim, we are two flowers in the same stem; / we place our breasts together to resist storms and typhoons.’
Apart from our verbal literary expressions including puthi, rhymes, pathkavita, proverbs, riddles etc, our musical expressions are also gifted with aesthetic diversity and vivacity. Such expressions are Alkap, Baul songs, Bhatiali songs, Bhawaiya songs, Jari songs, Sari songs, Maizbhandari songs, Wedding songs, Gazir geet, Kirton, regional songs, tribal songs and mystic songs of various kinds. Among expressions by action are games and contests, folk dances, periodical celebrations or festivals, folk dramas or jatra etc.
Our tangible traditional expressions depict our clay-works, folk art-painting-sculpture, terracotta, pottery, handicrafts, textile-handloom-weaving, Nakshikantha, Jamdani, Muslin, Tangail sari, metal works, musical instruments, agricultural instruments, fishing equipments, architectural patterns and a huge variety of boats and sampans still sailing in our mighty rivers and their tributaries. Our ethnic, indigenous and localised communities out of an aesthetic urge or bare necessity of life have created most of our tangible and intangible cultural expressions. They may belong to some particular religion, caste, creed or tribe, but they are accessible to all other communities in the country.
A plough made by a Hindu blacksmith or a fishing net made by a Rakhine woman is being used by Muslim and other communities without questioning the religious identity of its maker.
There is nothing called untouchable in our folk norm. In fact, folk people and their creations in Bangladesh are the expressions of one mankind, one mother and one earth. That is why, a Baishabi festival, organised by the tribal people of greater Chittagong hill tracts, is participated by numerous people from various faiths and traits in Bangladesh. They all assemble and pray for the better harvest in the next year. It is the village fairs in winter and such other festivals in the convenient period of the year that we notice the interaction of all our people belonging to diverse origins and communities. In their social life, they also live side by side as good neighbours. This harmonious co-existence of our people is best reflected in our folk plays and other dramatic presentations.
Such an expression is Kobigan. It is a wonderful poetic debate between two contending folk poets. At times they pretend to enter into scholarly debate on the supremacy of one faith over another, but at the end of the night’s performance both the poets embrace each other and agree with the fact that each religion is unique and sacred and equally important for its followers. This is the universal outlook of our ethnic people who never get detached from their roots.
We must remember our great folk philosophers· and poets who have preached the message of humanity above all beliefs that have defined man according to different sects and communities. Fakir Lalon Shah, the most representative poet in our folk tradition has asked : ‘Shall ever such a time emerge/when Hindu Muslim Buddha Christian shall converge?’ It is indeed a utopia and only a folk poet like Lalon, completely detached from the mundane, worldly life, can dream of a civilisation of this kind. Lalon’s dream is not a fancy, rather it is his meditated verdict, since he knows fully well that there is a unique jewel inside every individual, and it is the sacred duty of every individual entity to discover it. This is how a man can attain the status of a superman. Lalon asserts, ‘Human life like this will never be repeated.! Recognise this jewel of a man before your time is up.’ So Lalon’s longing is based on his philosophical quest; he knows that an individual does not live forever, but the jewel in him is imperishable.
And Lalon makes a humble reply to them who wants to know his caste, ‘Everyone inquires about the caste of Lalon.! Lalon replies he cannot differentiate one caste from another.! ….. Throughout boasting of one’s caste/And vaunting its uniqueness! Lalon says all talk is inconsequential! And evaporate like steam : This is the rationale of Baul cult, the guiding principle of all our traditional beliefs and expressions. There lies the reason why harmonious cohabitation of all men and women, otherwise known as manushratan (human jewel) is the allpervasive lesson we have learned from our traditional cultural expressions and their illustrious stakeholders. Culture makes a man great and it is the cultural harmony of our people that has made us a great nation.
The identity of a people is nowhere better reflected than in their inalienable cultural expressions created since antiquity. These expressions were handed down from one generation to another following oral tradition and imitation in the main. Before language was discovered in a disciplined manner, primitive people had definitely felt something significant for themselves and thereafter uttered sounds that subsequently carried their targeted meaning in some form or other. Eventually, symmetrical utterances among a group of people belonging to a given territory got recognised by almost all the individuals in it, and such utterances became vehicle of communication among them. This is how at one stage of their societal progress, these utterances were converted into meaningful words. Interestingly, majority of such words were neither linear nor homogenous, rather full of vibrant diversities in tune and approach that made them musical and rhythmical in most cases, an easy device to memorise things as of now. Communities with their distinctive identities seemed to have flourished in the wake of such expressive ventures at different turns of human history.
Besides verbal and musical expressions, they also learned how to communicate with signs, actions and display, holding or making of tangible things within their reach. Since clans or homogenous groups under such communicative variations began to develop their collective entity, they also discovered means of their livelihood from such efforts. The reason is not far to seek, since our primitive predecessors made their existence worthwhile through a host of composite activities that mitigated their demand for both delight and appetite. All their activities were characterised by similar double connotations interspersing illusion with reality.
Such an instance is the cow-killing festival by the Mro people, a tribal group of Chittagong Hill Tracts. At least once a year they kill the cow, dancing and singing and blowing horns and playing on other traditional musical instruments in a ceremonial gathering of all the members irrespective of age and gender. This festival, though brutal and cruel in the common parlance, is a delightful occasion for all the members of the clan who can avail themselves of a sacred occasion to forget all the differences that may have prevailed before this ritualistic performance. It also reminds us of the belief of crucifixion of Jesus Christ, whose sacrificial blood shall ensure salvation of his devoted followers. In fact, sacrifice is the key instrument in all human thoughts for purifying both the individual and collective souls. Instances of sacrificing animals ritually on special days as performed in the major religions, both monotheistic . and pagan, may be cited. In fact, this is the natural way of enriching the cycle of life, since sacrifice of a singular soul is considered to be the inspiring essence for the collective society they build together.
It is also perceivable that individuals may wither, irrespective of their corporeal or incorporeal existence, but their essence is never lost; rather it is regenerated in their offspring as an undying binding force. This is what we call tradition and it is constantly being built and rebuilt with the earliest essence remaining in the very core, the starting point of a particular clan or race or community. Culture in a traditional society is the expression of that primitive essence, enriched by all subsequent generations who have refined it by adding their acquired knowledge, wisdom, intuition, hearsay, distinctive style and mode of presentation. This how traditional culture is an unbroken bridge over a period of time that is being perpetuated with every new generation heralding their joyous existence. So tradition and culture are inseparable and there is nothing ominous that can disintegrate the solidarity of individual entities but for an unwanted misrepresentation of an invented tradition that has no chronological continuity with its source-community. Invented cultures are imposed cultures in most cases and they have elements of disintegration that we may hardly trace in a traditional culture with homogenous continuity despite the fact that it does not abide by the concept of fixation. All traditional cultural expressions have an evolving nature and they uphold the underlying ethos of the people they represent since the very inception of their collective journey in the remote past.
Traditional cultural expressions of Bangladesh have also evolved over the ages on the hills and mountains, plains and marshes, rivers and seas that have formed a fertile territory called the great Ganges delta. It is one of the oldest habitats of human race. Here we can identify the generous gift of nature including a phenomenal variety of food-grains, flora and fauna that have rendered life both comfortable and easy-flowing, like a huge traditional Mayurpankhi, or a peacock shaped vessel with puffed sails meant for a trade relation with distant places across the rivers and oceans. This is how the stories of seven vessels and their owners like Chandsadagar or Amirsadhu have crept up in our tales, legends and ballads. Both Chandsadagar and Amirsadhu are merchants of great stature and they move from one port to another in search of fortune and riches, but their hearts are anchored in their source-community, waiting for them in the guise of Behula or Velua. The verbal expressions of our traditional culture mostly deal with such narratives, both in prose and verse and they uphold affirmative attributes such as love, affection, friendship and fraternity mostly. A major bulk of our ballads are collected in ‘Mymesingh Geetika’ or ‘Purbabanga Geetika’ and these verse narratives, despite the presence of some satanic villains, who are destined to embrace a final defeat, dwell upon the victory of good over the evil. Communities are presented here as peace-loving with no cruel games played on seemingly ignoble matters. Rather it is the harmonious cohabitation of people that has appeared as the oft-recurrent theme of these folk narratives.
This is also true of our history, which bears ample evidence to the fact that the sons and daughters of this soil have never entered into violent clashes among themselves despite their differences in faiths and traits. On the contrary, it is the savage outsiders with blood-thirsty weapons that invaded our territory coming from outside the subcontinent and plundered our legitimate rights and ancestral properties. However, the magnanimity of the souls of our folk philosophers is much greater than those indiscreet invaders.
The peace-loving people of this soil have always forgiven their attackers and preached the eternal message of humanity : ‘cows are different, but their milk is of same colour/roaming the whole world I have seen the sons of same mother’.
Most of our folk poets, who had developed their philosophic commitment as well, upheld this great tolerance in the past and they have not deviated from their stand as of now. This is why a twentieth century folk poet-cum singer says: ‘Hindu and Muslim, we are two flowers in the same stem; / we place our breasts together to resist storms and typhoons.’
Apart from our verbal literary expressions including puthi, rhymes, pathkavita, proverbs, riddles etc, our musical expressions are also gifted with aesthetic diversity and vivacity. Such expressions are Alkap, Baul songs, Bhatiali songs, Bhawaiya songs, Jari songs, Sari songs, Maizbhandari songs, Wedding songs, Gazir geet, Kirton, regional songs, tribal songs and mystic songs of various kinds. Among expressions by action are games and contests, folk dances, periodical celebrations or festivals, folk dramas or jatra etc.
Our tangible traditional expressions depict our clay-works, folk art-painting-sculpture, terracotta, pottery, handicrafts, textile-handloom-weaving, Nakshikantha, Jamdani, Muslin, Tangail sari, metal works, musical instruments, agricultural instruments, fishing equipments, architectural patterns and a huge variety of boats and sampans still sailing in our mighty rivers and their tributaries. Our ethnic, indigenous and localised communities out of an aesthetic urge or bare necessity of life have created most of our tangible and intangible cultural expressions. They may belong to some particular religion, caste, creed or tribe, but they are accessible to all other communities in the country.
A plough made by a Hindu blacksmith or a fishing net made by a Rakhine woman is being used by Muslim and other communities without questioning the religious identity of its maker.
There is nothing called untouchable in our folk norm. In fact, folk people and their creations in Bangladesh are the expressions of one mankind, one mother and one earth. That is why, a Baishabi festival, organised by the tribal people of greater Chittagong hill tracts, is participated by numerous people from various faiths and traits in Bangladesh. They all assemble and pray for the better harvest in the next year. It is the village fairs in winter and such other festivals in the convenient period of the year that we notice the interaction of all our people belonging to diverse origins and communities. In their social life, they also live side by side as good neighbours. This harmonious co-existence of our people is best reflected in our folk plays and other dramatic presentations.
Such an expression is Kobigan. It is a wonderful poetic debate between two contending folk poets. At times they pretend to enter into scholarly debate on the supremacy of one faith over another, but at the end of the night’s performance both the poets embrace each other and agree with the fact that each religion is unique and sacred and equally important for its followers. This is the universal outlook of our ethnic people who never get detached from their roots.
We must remember our great folk philosophers· and poets who have preached the message of humanity above all beliefs that have defined man according to different sects and communities. Fakir Lalon Shah, the most representative poet in our folk tradition has asked : ‘Shall ever such a time emerge/when Hindu Muslim Buddha Christian shall converge?’ It is indeed a utopia and only a folk poet like Lalon, completely detached from the mundane, worldly life, can dream of a civilisation of this kind. Lalon’s dream is not a fancy, rather it is his meditated verdict, since he knows fully well that there is a unique jewel inside every individual, and it is the sacred duty of every individual entity to discover it. This is how a man can attain the status of a superman. Lalon asserts, ‘Human life like this will never be repeated.! Recognise this jewel of a man before your time is up.’ So Lalon’s longing is based on his philosophical quest; he knows that an individual does not live forever, but the jewel in him is imperishable.
And Lalon makes a humble reply to them who wants to know his caste, ‘Everyone inquires about the caste of Lalon.! Lalon replies he cannot differentiate one caste from another.! ….. Throughout boasting of one’s caste/And vaunting its uniqueness! Lalon says all talk is inconsequential! And evaporate like steam : This is the rationale of Baul cult, the guiding principle of all our traditional beliefs and expressions. There lies the reason why harmonious cohabitation of all men and women, otherwise known as manushratan (human jewel) is the allpervasive lesson we have learned from our traditional cultural expressions and their illustrious stakeholders. Culture makes a man great and it is the cultural harmony of our people that has made us a great nation.
