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Old cultures in primeval beauty

Syed Badrul Ahsan goes on a photo journey
Bangladesh's indigenous people deserve a good deal more importance, a lot more respect than they have got thus far. The unfortunate truth remains that for over fifty years now, and that takes you back to the times of Ayub Khan in pre-1971 Pakistan, they have been subjected to indignities of a kind that puts you to shame. And even as we observe, on an annual basis, the anniversary of the 1952 movement for Bengali to be established as the language of the state, we do not quite recall, or deliberately ignore, the fact that the cultures, traditions and languages of the tribes inhabiting Bangladesh also need to be emphasized in the interest of promoting an inclusive state.
And yet in all this gloom there happen to be individuals, Bengalis to boot, who have cared to hold Bangladesh's indigenous people in respect. Monowar Ahmad is proof, if proof were needed, that there are
people who care about history, about a preservation of heritage. In Bangladesher Upojatio Shongskriti, it is a whole panorama of indigenous culture he brings forth, and not just through written literature. The work is fundamentally an album of images, plenty of them, each of which is testimony to the varied nature of culture as it works in this country. If any statement were needed to re-emphasise the significance of cultural diversity in Bangladesh, this album does the job, and very well too. That Bangladesh, for all its limitations of geographical dimensions, is a land of cultural diversity comes through loud and clear in this work.
There are images of ornaments, a whole range of them, which dot the pages here. And observing them is in many ways a going back to history in the earliest stages of time and civilization. Compare the images of ornaments or other articles of use unearthed over the decades with what you yet come across in Bangladesh's tribal regions. A feeling of continuity will take hold of the imagination. Some things, traditions for instance, never change. The ornaments tell you that story.
The reality of Bangladesh's being home to ancient cultures is borne out by the presence of the many indigenous peoples within its territory. There are the Chakmas, Marmas, Mros, Tripuras, Monipuri, Bom, Oraon, Rakhaine, Koch, Garo, Khasia, Santal and a host of others. Ahmad, a freedom fighter, a photographer who has always guided himself along the principles of perfection, captures them all on his camera. And thus you spot a couple of young Marma women gathering water from a waterfall. Move on, to spot a young Chakma mother and her child going back
home from a rural market by boat. The pristine is what underlines the pictures. And that essentially means a timelessness. Indigenous culture is always about the timeless, which is why you rediscover the past through a Monipuri bridegroom placing a garland on his new bride. And alongside that comes the old Monipuri dance form, performed to exquisite delight by four young women.
Monowar Ahmad does a good job of imprisoning beauty in his lens. Old cultures are in a great many ways studies in primeval beauty, be it the beauty of women, of the river, of the deep woods, of the happy banana seller. It is the whole landscape that matters, from the point of view of geography as also from the perceptions which light up the imagination. When Bom women bathe in the stream, you have a hard
time figuring out which is more captivating to the eye and the mind, the women or the stream. The beauty extends itself, to an image of Bom homes lost in time. You go back in time as you take a tentative step toward those huts touched by the mist. That is the feeling which rises in you as you find yourself face to face with a couple of Santal hunters, properly armed with bows and arrows. You get much the same feeling when you see an elderly Oraon woman puffing away on her traditional hookah.
And food? Suffice it for now to know of the delicacy that golden frogs are. For the Rakhaine, these frogs, trapped in the paddy fields, are food that gladdens the soul, besides of course whetting the appetite.
SYED BADRUL AHSAN IS EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE DAILY STAR.