Snehangshu Shekhar Chanda, Ayesha Khatun
Chief Editorial Adviser
Professor Dr. K. M. Mohsin, Department of History, University of Dhaka
Vice-chancellor, DIU, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Adviser
Professor Dr. Kamrul Alam Khan, Jagannath University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Chief Editor
Professor Md. Fazlur Rahman, Department of Language Education, IER, DU
Board of Editors
Professor Dr. Md. Abu Zafor, Jagannath University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Professor Dr. Tazul Islam Chowdhury, SAU, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Professor Dr. Mohammed Salim Bhuyan, UGV, Barishal, Bangladesh
Professor Dr. Saeed Mahmud Ullah, Department of EEE, DU, Bangladesh
Professor Dr. Snehangshu Shekhar Chanda, SAU, Sylhet, Bangladesh
Md. ShahazahanSeraj Bhuiyan, Head of English, MIST, Mirpur Cantonment
Dr. Abdullah Al Manzur Hussain, Associate Professor of Law, PU, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Md. Abu Bakar Siddique, Associate Professor& Head of Education, RUD, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Dr. Issac Paul, Assistant Professor, Govt. College of Teacher Education, Kerala, India
Dr. Md. Kamrul Islam Khan, SAE, BINA, Mymensingh, Bangladesh
Dr. Md. Obaidullah, Assistant Professor, MIU, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Dr. Md. Mashiusjaman, Government Homeopathy Medical College, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Allen Joseph Gomes, PhD (Fellow) & CEO, ANTIOCH Bangladesh
Chief Executive Editor& Patron
Md. Shah Alam Chowdhury, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of English, DIU, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Founder and CEO, Bangladesh Center for Research and Planning (BCRP)
Executive Editors
Mili Rahman, Associate Professor, DIU & Chairman, BCRP, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Md. Ehsanul Islam Khan, Assistant Professor, MIU, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Managing Editor
Ali Akber, Assistant Professor, DIU, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Assistant Managing Editor
Ayesha Khatun, MPhil Fellow (JU) & Deputy Director, BCRP
Editorial Assistants
MumtahinaFardos, Research Assistant, Hello-Teen Society, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Nasim Mahmud, Editorial Assistant (JEE), Hello-Teen Society, Dhaka, Bangladesh
CONTENTS
| The Culture of the Urang Community of Bangladesh Snehangshu Shekhar Chanda, Ayesha Khatun | 01-07 |
| Universal Appeal of Kobor Comparing to Western Elegies Ahmad Mahbub-ul-Alam, Mohammad Ehsanul Islam Khan & Nafisa Ahsan Nitu | 08-13 |
| Crisis of Modernity in ‘The Second Coming’ and ‘Adbhut Andhar Ek’(A Strange Darkness) Ali Akber | 14-18 |
| Psychological Tone of Suffering in The Lowland Md. Jahidul Azad | 19-25 |
| Integrated Democracy as a Weapon of Interpersonal Skill in Walt Whitman’s Poetry Md. Shah Alam Chowdhury | 26-32 |
| Homeopathy Treatment in the Social Context of Bangladesh Md. Salimur Rahman, Md. Mostafizur Rahman Siddique, Md. Mashiusjaman & Anwar H Biswas | 33-39 |
| Public Health during the Global Pandemic Covid-19: Intervening, Perceiving and Incorporating Dr. S. Quadir Patwari | 40-43 |
| A Green Study of Tagore’s Gitanjali Mili Rahman | 44-48 |
| An Introspective Study of National Development in Bangladesh through Mass Media Md. Burhan Uddin, Md. Abu Bakar Siddique& Farhana Chowdhury | 49-52 |
| Causes and Effects of Inflation in the Business Sectors: An Overview in Bangladesh Context Mohiuddin Ahmed Mojumder | 53-58 |
Abstract: This comprehensive study focuses on the life and culture of the Urang community of Bangladesh, who are living mainly in greater Sylhet for ages. Data have been collected through field visits and semi-structured interviews with 64 members of the community. The result shows that, even though the Urangs have traditionally been working and living in different tea gardens in Sylhet, a lot of them are now engaged in various professions including jobs even in some government offices. Culturally the community has its distinctive features while it has affinity with Hinduism. Rice is their staple food and they dress up in accordance with mainstream Bangladeshi culture. Their food habit is different from other Bengali people living in this area. They wear different dresses in different occasion. Because of living in the remote area, they are habituated to adjust with raining and other natural disaster. They generally speak in Sadri and Kurukh language.
Keywords:The Urangs, Language,Culture,Kurukh,Sadri
1.Introduction
Bangladesh is known for its cultural diversity where people of different cultures based on their
regional, religious and ethnic identities have been living side by side in harmony for centuries. It is
home to more than two dozen of ethnic communities settled in many a district of the country,
especially in the hilly regions. One of the many such ethnic communities living in Bangladesh is
the Urang community. It is worth mentioning here that the variation in the English spelling of the
name of the community in question may be confusing as the word Urang is sometimes and in
some documents spelt as Oraon, Uraon, Oran, and even Oram. This community is also known as
the Kurukh tribe according to the mane of their hero-king Karakh. One, however, should
remember that all these variations in the name and spelling of the Urang community refer to the
same and one ethnic group that we have preferred to mention as the Urang community in this
study.
Anthropologists opine that originally Urangs are Austric as a race and in terms of language they
are Dravidians and that is why researchers often describe the Urangs as the descendants of Dravidspeaking Kurukha race. Though their ancestral home is in India, now they are found in
neighboring countries such as Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. It is not clear when the
Urangs immigrated to Bangladesh but it is assumed that they entered into Bangladesh during the
Mughal rule. Although the Urangs in Bangladesh are scattered across the country, the largest
number of the Urangs are settled in greater Sylhet, particularly in Habiganj and Maulavaibazar. As
per the Census Report of 1991, the number of Urangs in Bangladesh was 11,296.
Most of the ethnic communities living in Bangladesh are bilingual: they use their tribal mother
tongue to communicate with the people who belong to the same tribe while they learn and use
Bangla, most often the local Bangla dialect, as the lingua franca for intertribal communication and
for communicating with mainstream Bangladeshi people. That said, it is not always possible to
have a lingua franca for intertribal communication, especially when it comes to communicating
with less progressed ethnic groups. In such a situation, usually an interpreter’s help is sought.
Furthermore, as a result of Christian missionary activities, a lot of people of many ethnic
communities have converted to Christianity and as a result of this many of the ethnic people turn
multilingual as they speak English too along with their ethnic mother tongue and Bangla. It should
also be remembered that while only a few ethnic languages have still retained their original
writing systems, for example, Chakma and Marma, many of the ethnic languages either have
already lost their original written scripts, resulting in these languages’ being spoken-only
languages, or adopted scripts of other languages to write their own languages. However, the few
ethnic communities that have preserved their original writing systems till date; it has been
observed that the young generations of those communities are quite unfamiliar with the written
scripts. This is due to the fact that the schools that the young generations of these ethnic
communities went to, have been teaching students to read, write and speak only Bangla and
English until recently. However, over the last few years, initiatives have been taken to preserve the
written forms some of the dominant tribal languages through printing books in these languages
that are being taught to school children.
With respect to the languages used by the Urangs, it is documented that the Urangs living in India
and in other countries in Indian subcontinent use Sadri, a dialect of Hindi, as lingua franca.
However, the Urangs living in Bangladesh are said to use Kurukh language as their mother tongue
(see www.banglapedia.org). Regarding Kurukh, the mother tongue of the Urangs, it was usually
written with the Devanagari alphabet until when Dr. Narayan Oraon decided to introduce a new
script for his native language Kurukh. The script is known as Tolong Siki that was published and
introduced to some schools in Jharkhand, a state in eastern India, in 1999 and officially recognized
by the government of Jharkhand in 2007. Tolong Siki script is now promoted by Kurukh Literary
Society and a few books and magazines have already been published in this script. Even it is
taught is some schools in India. According to Omniglot, an online encyclopedia of writing systems
and languages, there are some Kurukh speaking people in Bangladesh, along with many Urangs
who speak Kurukh in some states of India and in some other countries in Indian subcontinent. An
image of Tolong Siki, the alphabet that is used to write Kurukh, the mother tongue of the Urangs,
is found on Omniglot’s website. The Tolong Siki script is as follows
- Objectives
The current study was undertaken with the following objectives:
- To find out the language(s) used by the Urangs living in Bangladesh
- To know about the written script of the Urangs
- Literature Review
One of the earliest literatures dealing with religious beliefs of the Urangs or Kurukhs was
reviewed by Hahn (1900), a German Lutheran missionary working in Lohardaga, the heartland of
Urangs in Chotanagpur, India, for 25 years and he wrote Kurukh Grammar. Subsequently a book
entitled Kunrukh Folk-lore in the Original (Hahn, 1905), was published that contained folklores
and myths of the Urangs. A critical text with translations and notes was later written by Grignard
(1931), another European missionary, entitled as Hahn’s Oraon Folk-lore in the Original : A
Critical Text with Translations and Notes and it is very important for scholarly study and analysis
of the religion and language of the Urangs.
As the present study was conducted in and around different tea gardens of Sylhet district, (mainly
because the Urangs have been working and living for many generations in different tea estates of
Sylhet) it is worthwhile to review literature pertaining to tea garden labourers. The findings of
some studies show the sub-human life of tea workers both in terms of working environment, living
JEE, Volume-2, Issue-3 & 4, July-December 2019
conditions and health and sanitation as most of tea workers live below the poverty line (Barkat,
2010) and their poor income (Ahmed & Chowdhury, 2014; Majumder & Roy, 2012) often lead
them to live without basic human rights. Labourers are to accommodate themselves in a small
dilapidated house, sometimes with their pet animals (Das, Islam, & Zakirul, 2006; Majumder &
Roy, 2012). Workers living in tea gardens are not facilitated with sanitary toilet rather majority of
them are inured to use open place for excretion of faeces (Khan, 1991). High rate of illiteracy,
ignorance, social exclusion, economic hardship etc. bound them to maintain traditional life
without minimum opportunities (See Ahmad, Yasin, Rowshon, & Hoque, 2015; Ahmed &
Chowdhury, 2014; Chowdhury, Hasan, & Karim, 2012; Kabir, 2007). - Methodology
The present study was conducted following mixed method research design conducted from
November to December, 2018 from inside and outside the tea garden areas near Sylhet city. Data
were collected by means of semi-structured interviews with 64 respondents who were selected
randomly. Some of the collected data were analyzed quantitatively while the rest was analyzed
qualitatively. The authors themselves visited the area, collected data and mingled with the
common people of the community to observe the languages the community used. Since huge
number of Urangs work in tea gardens, this study focused predominantly on the tea garden
workers. Field visits were carried out to different tea gardens in Sylhet to talk to various
respondents.
Additionally, a few undergraduate students of Chattogram Veterinary and Animal Sciences
University who belong to different ethnic communities living in Chattogram Hill Tracts were
interviewed to get an overall idea about similarities as well as differences among and coexistence
of different ethnic communities of Bangladesh. - Findings and Discussion
5.1. Demographic Description of the Urang Participants
Out of the total 64 respondents interviewed, 65% percent were male and 35% were female. In the
past they worked only in tea gardens as wage labourer and lived inside or outside the tea garden.
They had no land of their own but nowadays few of them had settled outside tea gardens as well.
Figure-1: Gender of the respondents
Whereas previously most of the Urangs used to work in tea gardens only, nowadays, a good
number of them were engaged in different types of professions. For example, some of them were
found to work as electricians, some as masons, even some were found to work in private and
government offices.
The Language of the Urang Community
Figure-2: Professions of the respondents
As the chart shows, out of the 64 respondents 14.06% were in various jobs, 15.62% were jobless,
34.37% were labourers and 35.93 % were students. It is clear from the chart that the rate of
literacy among the Urangs is good and on the increase.
5.2. Language
Upon asked if they had any writing systems for their original languages, out of the total, 37.50%
said that they had their own writing systems. On the other hand, 62.50% opined that they had no
written scripts. However, none of them was able to write any words in Kurukh language though
Kurukh has its own writing system. The Urang children were observed to speak Kurukh at home
and they were used to using Bangla at schools and outside home. The older people were seen to
use Sadri language. They said that they were used to using both Sadri and Kurukh for intracommunal communications. Since the community originates from Nagpur of India, both Sadri and
Kurukh are their mother tongues. As the Urangs have been living in Bangladesh for long, all of
them were found to be fluent speakers of Bangla and they said were used to communicating
through Bangla outside their community. Even though the respondents had shown strong feelings
towards standard Bangla, they were not found to be fluent in Sylheti, the local dialect of greater
Sylhet. At the time of this study, all the respondents were observed to be capable of speaking
Kurukh. However, the young generation of the community had been found to be interested in
learning English which is taught as compulsory subject at schools. Some words in Kurukh were
found to be similar to those in the local Bangla dialect. For example, some names of ornaments
such as tikli, bala, payra, bali and kanpasha etc. are the same both in Kurukh and Bangla. Many
words relating to relationships were also found to be common to both languages: for example, ma
(mother), baba (father), mama (uncle), bhagina (nephew) etc.
English Bangla Urang Dialect
What is your name? Tomer nam ki? Tor nam ki?
Where are you going? Tumi kothai jaiteso? Tay kaha jathis?
What class do you read in? Tumi kon classe paro? Toy kon classe parishla?
How many brothers and sisters do
you have? Tomer koy bhai bon? Toni koy bhai bon?
What does your father do? Tomer baba ki kore? Tor bap kikorela?
A Puja will be held at my house
tomorrow.
Kal amader barite puja hobe. Kail hamni ghore puja hoy.
You will meet me tomorrow. Tumi agamikal amer sathe dekha
korbe. Toy agamikal amer sathe dekha korish.
It is difficult to work at tea garden. Cha bagane kaj kora khubi kothin. Cha bagane kaj kora bejan kothin.
I want to succeed in life. Ami jibone unnoti korte chai. Ham jibone unnoti korek khojila.
I will go to Baluchor Bazar. Ami Balucor bazare jabo. Ham Baluchor bazare jabo.
What does your father do? Tomer baba ki kore? Tor bap kikorela?
(Table: 1 An interview with Sumon Urang, a member of the Urang community)
JEE, Volume-2, Issue-3 & 4, July-December 2019
The Urang people who were engaged in various jobs were found to be interested in learning and
speaking standard Bangla. They wanted their children to be fluent both in English and Bangla.
However, in the survey area nobody was found who was able to write kurukh language.
5.3. Language related to Agriculture
During the study, the people of the Urang community were shown images of some of the
agricultural tools and asked what they called those tools in their language. The following chart
contains the tools shown to the respondents.
English: Plow English: Hand Fork
Urang: Langol Urang: Akhashi
English: Axe English: Hoe
Urang: Tabol Urang: Nirani
English: Hand hoe English: Hammer
Urang: Hat nirani Urang: Hatura
English: Sickle English: Shovel
Urang: Kaste Urang: Belcha
English: Spade English: Scrapper
Urang: Kodal Urang: Khurpi
English: Sprayer English: Watering bucket
Urang: Chitanor jontro Urang: Pani chitanor patro - Conclusion
The study can be concluded here by saying that the people of the Urang community who have
been living in Sylhet for many years are hard-working. Though the previous generations of the
community used to work and live in tea gardens, with the passage of time a lot of Urang people
are now engaged in various jobs outside ranging from wage earning as day labourer to office
work. For communication, they use their tribal mother tongue Kurukh and some of them speak
Sadri for intra-communal communication while they use Bangla for communicating with
mainstream Bangladeshi people. As almost none of them know how to write their mother tongue
Kurukh, mainly due to the fact that they hardly have any books written in this language, this
language can be considered as an endangered one. Initiatives should be taken to revive this
language by printing books and periodicals in it and by teaching it to the people of the community.
The result of the study has implications for socio-economic and linguistic studies of ethnic
communities living in Bangladesh.
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