Sylheti Language Row: Identity, Politics, and Partition Legacy

There has been a flare up of controversy with a letter of Delhi Police describing Bengali as the national language of Bangladesh. Amit Malviya, a BJP leader, defended the reference by saying that Sylheti was a dialect that was almost unintelligible to the Indian Bengalis implying an association with the Bangladeshi immigrants. It has caused a backlash in the Barak Valley of Assam where Sylheti is an extremely common language, and this has ignited language and identity issues.

Context

What is Sylheti?

• Sylheti is a local speech variant, which is spoken in:

  • Division of Bangladesh.

  • Barak Valley (Assam), western Tripura and Meghalaya in India.

Linguistic Debate:

• Mutual intelligibility makes some linguists group it as a dialect of Bengali.

• It is further claimed by some others that Sylheti has its own phonetics, lexicon and even a recording history (Sylhet-Nagri), which warrants the classification of Sylheti as an independent language.

• Diglossia: Standard Bengali is spoken mainly in education whereas in the regions Sylheti is implemented informally.

Historical Background

Colonial Era:

• In 1874, Sylhet separated Bengal and was added to Assam to enhance the revenue base of this province.

• Sylhet region was incorporated into the Assam region but preserved the Bengali culture between 1874-1947.

Partition 1947:

• In July 1947, Sylhet was determined in a referendum.

• Most of Sylhet became a part of East Pakistan (current Bangladesh) and Karimganj retained part of itself on the Indian side.

• Led to the influx of Sylheti Hindu refugees to the Barak Valley and the rest of Assam and Tripura.

Cultural identity of speakers of Sylheti

• The biggest percentage of the Sylheti speakers in India consider themselves Bengal and not a speaker of a foreign language or one in Bangladesh.

• They speak a different local form, but linguistics, culture, and history also have links with Bengal.

• Sylhetis have served in the public life of Assamese since the colonial times; and in administration and education.

Outrage and politics aftermath

• Trigger: Bengali also refers to Bangladesh by Delhi Police and Sylheti is considered a short form of Bangladesh immigration according to Amit Malviya.

• Barak Valley Reaction:

  • Blocking of the BJP local leaders and civil life.

  • One of the leading BJP leaders and former Silchar MP, Rajdeep Roy, said that:

  • More than 7 million Indians speak Sylheti.

  • Sylheti is Indian and Bengali, not foreign.

• Scholarly Perspective: Scholars such as Tapodhir Bhattacharjee maintain that Sylheti is only phonetically distinct amongst the Bengali language, and considered not by syntax and morphology as a unique language.

Why the Controversy Matters

Conclusion

The Sylheti problem indicates the interconnections between language, identity, movement and politics within the component of Northeast India. Although Sylheti was different from Standard Bengali, it is a language spoken by millions of Indians, who have historical background before the Partition. Any initiative to label it as foreign by stigmatising it can create an adverse effect of alienating an otherwise rich linguistically and culturally diverse community and destabilising the linguistic diversity of India.