University of Kolkata Scholars interact with Sadri Community | Photo source: Special Arrangements
A group of scholars from the University of Kolkata recently visited a village of the St. Dalbans to save language that is about to die. They entered a settlement called Kamarpara in the Gosaba subdivision of South 24 Parganas, and began to translate into English as a novel written in a tribal language called Sadri, and spent time with members of the Sadri community.
Novel – Title BAMAN BURIR CHAR (‘The char of the short lady’), char Meaning of emerging river islands – written by Dayalhari Sardar, an assistant professor in Bangladesh in nearby Bhangor Mahavidyalaya.
“I would say it is the author who is actually saving the language. But language and literature are not just about the scripts and words — they carry with them culture, tradition, politics, society, struggles and much more. So, by translating it into English and opening it up to a global audience, we’re essentially introducing the world to their world. It helps build an identity and also creates opportunities for pedagogy,” Shreya Datta, one of the four schoolers who visited the village, said.
According to her, the idea of spending a day with the community earlier this month was to learn about the “geography of literature” on which Sadri’s novels are based.
Ayan Ghosh, another member of the team, said that according to the 2011 language census, West Bengal has 741,528 Sadri speakers, most of whom are concentrated in northern Bengal, mainly among tea garden workers, among the descendants of the tea gardens, workers brought by the British during the colony.
“In contrast, only a few Sadri speakers were taken to the Sandabban area, mainly from today’s Chhattisgarh to clear dense forests and prepare to cultivate land. The descendants of these workers are communities of the symposiums in today’s Sadri that we have visited,” he said.
Sadri has no scripts. Members of the community living in West Bengal wrote in a Bengali script that people belonging to chhattisgarh use devnagari.
“The novel is about the Sandbanian life in Sadri char Land, river erosion, land loss, people’s vulnerability to live there. The author is glad his novel was translated into English. We have been doing this kind of work since the last few years. In 2022, I organized a seminar called “Translation Sundarbans”. The translation is the result of the seminar.
Team members said it was a difficult task to get to Kamarpara. After taking the train to Canning, they boarded the 40-minute journey of the automatic city of kotrakhali, and from there they took a boat across the river to reach Gopalkata Ferry Ghat, where the villagers rode their motorcycles to pick them up. “The village is surrounded by waterways that isolate it from basic services. Communication with the outside world after nightfall is almost impossible,” said project researcher Sudeshna Ghose.
publishing – April 22, 2025 02:52 AM IST
