Hill Ethnic Communities Fight to Keep Mother Tongues Alive, CCCB Teaching the Chakma Alphabet Village to Village

In the Chittagong Hill Tracts, people of the small ethnic communities are working, individually and through organisations, in a struggle to keep their own mother tongues alive. They speak their languages among themselves, but without a written form, studying or creating literature in the mother tongue had long been impossible.

For the past few years, however, some organisations and individuals from the Chakma, Tripura and Tanchangya communities have been working to give their mother tongues a written form. One such organisation is the Chakma Cultural Council of Bangladesh, or CCCB.

Since 2023, the organisation's leaders have been training young people and students in remote hill villages in the Chakma alphabet. They are working so that the language is not lost, and they are also active in creating literature in the mother tongue to increase the language's beauty and strength.

Through direct training in the field and online, the CCCB has taught the language to more than 150 students. The number is not large, but for remote hill villages the initiative carries separate significance, because without any institutional system it is carrying the language to a new generation.

The organisation's adviser Ananda Jyoti Chakma said there had been no institutional arrangement for practising their language for a long time. They began working organisationally to protect the language and spread it among everyone. In his words, the organisation's young members go from village to village teaching the language and introducing people to the alphabet; village children are gradually mastering Chakma and learning to write it.

Ananda Jyoti Chakma added that this work will continue in future. But he believes government patronage is also needed to enrich the language further.

Alongside the organisations, mother-tongue books are now distributed and taught at the primary level in schools, and students are becoming skilled in Chakma. Because books are distributed in the mother tongue from pre-primary to class four, students can write the alphabet and various words in it. Teachers and parents, however, believe teachers need more training in this area.

Mukul Chakma, a class-four student at Banarupa Government Primary School, said he could speak before but could not write; since books were given at school, he can now gradually write in his Chakma mother tongue. Parent Jharna Chakma said children can now learn and write the Chakma alphabet after the book distribution, but it should be extended to class five, and without quality teachers the programme will not succeed — trained teachers are needed.

The school's assistant teacher Jemi Chakma said books in Chakma, Marma and Tripura languages were distributed on 1 January. Students have become familiar with the alphabets. She believes teachers need training to make students more skilled.

It is not only Chakma. The Tanchangya Kalyan Sangstha and the Tripura Kalyan Foundation are working separately to keep the Tanchangya and Tripura languages alive in the same way. Two years ago, dictionaries of the Chakma, Tanchangya and Marma languages, including a Kokborok vocabulary for the Tripura language, were published at the initiative of the district council. Collecting, preserving and publishing words has enriched the mother tongues and increased opportunities to practise languages that were disappearing.

Advocate Dinanath Tanchangya, former secretary general of the Tanchangya Kalyan Sangstha, said they first made software for the Tanchangya alphabet with UNDP support. Then, with the district council's support, they published primary education books containing vowels and consonants. Two years ago they also published a Tanchangya dictionary. He said they are working so that the language is not lost and literature can be created in it.

Khokoneshwar Tripura, assistant professor in the Tourism and Hospitality department at Rangamati Science and Technology University and a Tripura language researcher, said different Tripura clans live in the three hill districts. In Khagrachhari the Naitong, Khali, Dendak and Faitong clans, in Rangamati the Reang and Rajsthali, and in Bandarban the Usui clan speak Kokborok. Words differ by clan; they have tried to bring together in one place who says which word and how, and the effort will continue.

Meanwhile, Mukul Kanti Tripura has won a response in Rangamati by creating literature in the Tripura language. His first poetry book 'Emangni Khumtang', meaning 'a garland of dream flowers' in Bangla, was unveiled in 2021, and he has edited several more books in the language. In his words, the 'Tripura Kha-Kachangma Khumbar Boi' written in 1942 by ascetic Khushikrishna Tripura, known as Balangrai Sadhu, is among Bangladesh's literary landmarks; Mahendra Lal Tripura and Brother Mantrajay created scripts to give the Tripura language a written form, but their scripts never gained social recognition, which made protecting the language challenging. Later, by decision of the Tripura Kalyan Sangshad, the Roman script came into use for Kokborok practice.

In Bangladesh, a country that gave blood for language, language lovers and conscious people hope the mother tongues of the small ethnic communities will survive in their own distinct identity. The small initiatives of organisations, schools, dictionaries and literature together are now building the base of that hope; how far they advance if government patronage and trained teachers are added remains to be seen.