People, languages and culture of the Sylhet division

Sylheti speech and script, mystic songs, Manipuri dance, Khasi punjis, tea garden festivals and the Londoni link, with advice on visiting with respect.

The Sylhet division is a borderland. The Khasi and Jaintia hills of Meghalaya rise along its northern edge and the Tripura hills to the south, with the haors, the tea-covered tilas and the valleys of the Surma and Kushiyara between. For centuries people have arrived from every side: Sufi preachers, Manipuri refugees, Khasi families from the hills and tea labourers brought from India by British planters. In the other direction, Sylheti seamen went out to Britain, and their money came back.

In a single day here you can hear Sylheti, Bangla, Khasi, Meitei and Sadri, pass a shrine, a temple, a Manipuri mandap and a punji church on one hill road, and sleep in a village house built with London wages. This chapter introduces them, and how to visit with respect. For how they came to be here, read History of Sylhet.

Who lives in the Sylhet division

The 2022 census counted about 11 million people in the four districts: about 3.86 million in Sylhet, 2.70 million in Sunamganj, 2.36 million in Habiganj and 2.12 million in Moulvibazar. Most are Bengali Muslims. Hindus are the second-largest community, and greater Sylhet has long had one of the largest Hindu populations in eastern Bengal.

Indigenous peoples live mostly in the hills and along the Indian border: the Khasi, the Bishnupriya and Meitei Manipuris, the Garo, the Tripura, the Patro (whose language is Laleng) and the Kuki. The tea estates are home to communities descended from plantation labourers, among them Kurmi, Musahar, Bauri, Bhumij and Sabar families. Each keeps its own language, food and festivals, even as Bangla becomes the language of school and work.

Another Sylhet lives abroad. A 1986 estimate put the share of British Bangladeshis with roots in the region at about 95 per cent, and many Sylheti families have also settled in North America and the Gulf states.

Sylheti: a language with its own script

Sylheti is the home language of an estimated 10 to 11 million people: in the division, in Assam's Barak Valley, in parts of Tripura and Meghalaya, and abroad, where some 400,000 speak it in Britain alone. It has an ISO code, syl, but no official status in Bangladesh or India, and UNESCO classes it as vulnerable.

Whether it is a dialect of Bangla or a language in its own right is an old argument: George Grierson in 1903 and Suniti Kumar Chatterji in 1926 treated it as an eastern dialect, while several recent linguists argue for a separate language. You notice the differences quickly. Aspirated consonants lose their breath, p softens towards f, k becomes a throaty kh and ch turns into s. Sylheti also uses tone, rare among Indo-Aryan languages, so two words can differ only in pitch.

Sylheti Nagri

Sylheti also had its own script, Sylheti Nagri, also called Jalalabadi or Musalmani Nagri: a compact alphabet of about 32 letters, five of them vowels. Its origins are disputed. Some scholars derive it from Kaithi, a script of Bihar; others date it to Muslim rule in Sylhet (Banglapedia to the first decade of the 14th century) or to later Afghan rule in Bengal. The earliest known manuscript is Talib Huson by Gholam Huson, dated 1549.

Nagri carried puthi: long verse narratives and Sufi songs, read aloud at home. In the 1860s (around 1869, by one account) Abdul Karim, a munshi who had spent several years in London learning the printing trade, designed a typeface and founded the Islamia Press at Bandar Bazar in Sylhet, the first to print the script. Munshi Sadeq Ali, author of Halat-un-Nabi, became its most popular writer, and Banglapedia counts about 150 surviving Nagri texts by some 60 writers.

Standard Bangla script took over in the 20th century, and the Islamia Press burned during the war of 1971. Unicode added the script in version 4.1 in March 2005, in the block U+A800 to U+A82F, and a revival followed: printing in Nagri resumed in Bangladesh in 2009, the publisher Utsho Prokashon issued a set of 25 old texts in 2014, the Bangla Academy has hosted Nagri stalls at the Ekushey Book Fair, and linguists at SOAS in London run a Sylheti project.

In Sylhet City, look for the Nagri Chattar, a circular Nagri mural built in 2018 at Surma Point on the river, paid for by the city corporation and the district council. Pair it with a riverside walk to Keane Bridge.

Mystic songs and folk music

Greater Sylhet, and Sunamganj's haor country above all, is known across Bangladesh for songs of the spirit: Baul songs that seek the divine within the human body, marfati songs of mystical knowledge, murshidi songs to the spiritual guide and Vaishnav songs of Radha and Krishna. They are sung at shrines, village gatherings and on boats, to the ektara, dotara, dhol and harmonium.

Hason Raja

Hason Raja was born on 21 December 1854 at Tegharia in the Lakshmansree pargana, now in Sunamganj, into a Muslim zamindar family, and died in 1922: most sources give 6 December, others 7 or 8 December or November. He practised Sufism and gave land for schools and mosques, and his mystical songs were gathered in Hason Udas. Rabindranath Tagore discussed his verse in his 1930 Hibbert Lectures, published as The Religion of Man, and Humayun Ahmed later used his songs in films and television plays. The Museum of Rajas in Sylhet City keeps his memory.

Radha Raman Dutta

Radha Raman Dutta, born in the early 1830s at Keshabpur in Jagannathpur upazila, Sunamganj, died on 10 November 1915, and his house became his samadhi. A Vaishnav devotee who also drew on Sufi, Baul and Sahajiya ideas, he is credited with more than 2,000 songs and is often called the father of dhamail, though Banglapedia treats the form as much older: scholars believe the 14th-century poet Chandidas drew on dhamail songs.

Shah Abdul Karim

Shah Abdul Karim was born on 15 February 1916 in Derai upazila of Sunamganj and died in Sylhet on 12 September 2009. He learned from Baul teachers and wrote more than 1,600 songs, published in six collections between 1948 and 2001, two of them named after the Kalni river. His songs move between Sufi mysticism, the Baul philosophy of the body and the hardships of rural life; admirers call him Baul Samrat, the emperor of Bauls, and he received the Ekushey Padak in 2001.

Dhamail

Dhamail is a women's song-dance, performed mainly by Hindu women in greater Sylhet and Mymensingh at weddings, births and religious rites. Twenty to twenty-five women form a circle in the courtyard and keep time with hand-claps, called thapri in Sylhet, instead of instruments, bending and lifting their heads with each clap as they step round. Some songs tell of Radha and Krishna; others of brides, grooms and proverbs.

Dhamail is women's space: at a village wedding, watch from where your hosts place you and ask before you film. If Baul singers perform for you, it is courteous to offer something in return.

The Manipuri community and its dance

Manipuris settled in Sylhet in waves from the late 18th century, driven by war in the kingdom of Manipur, above all the Manipur–Burma war of 1819 to 1825, when King Chourajit Singh and his brothers took refuge in Sylhet and many subjects followed. They live in and around Sylhet City, in Kamalganj, Sreemangal, Kulaura and Barlekha in Moulvibazar, in Chunarughat in Habiganj and in Chhatak in Sunamganj; the 1991 census counted about 25,000, more than half of them in Moulvibazar, and the 2022 census about 18,000 in Moulvibazar district alone.

The Meitei speak Meitei, a Tibeto-Burman language; the Bishnupriya Manipuris speak an Indo-Aryan language close to Bangla and Assamese. Both follow Chaitanya's Vaishnav tradition, and a smaller group, the Meitei Pangal, are Manipuri Muslims. Dance is central to their life: the classical Ras and Gostha Leela are gentle and devotional, and Rabindranath Tagore, who saw Manipuri dance in Sylhet in 1919, later introduced it at Santiniketan.

Rash Leela at Madhabpur and Adampur

The great night is the Maha Rash Leela, on a full moon that usually falls in November. The Bishnupriya festival is held at the Jora Mandap in Shibbazar, Madhabpur, in Kamalganj upazila, and the Meitei festival at nearby Adampur. The first recorded Rash at Madhabpur's Jora Mandap was in 1842, and the 2025 festival was counted as the 183rd.

By day, boys dressed as the young Krishna and his cowherd friends dance the Rakhal Ras. Around 11 pm the Maha Ras begins and retells the love of Radha and Krishna until dawn, danced in silk blouses, long necklaces and white veils to songs inspired by Jayadeva, Vidyapati and Chandidas. The grounds become a fair, and the festival welcomes people of every caste and faith.

For the Rash, book a room in Sreemangal well ahead, bring a shawl for the November night, take your shoes off at the mandap, keep out of the dance circle and switch off your flash. The performance is worship first and a show second.

Khasi, Garo and other indigenous peoples

The Khasi, often written Khasia, live in hill villages called punjis, mostly near the Indian border: around Kulaura and elsewhere in Moulvibazar, in Jaintiapur and Gowainghat, including the country around Jaflong, and in Bishwambarpur, Tahirpur and Chhatak in Sunamganj. The 1991 census counted 12,300 Khasi in Bangladesh and the 2022 census about 10,000 in Moulvibazar district alone, while community leaders estimate 30,000 to 35,000; a 2014 estimate put the punjis of greater Sylhet at about 94.

Khasi is an Austroasiatic language, distantly related to Mon and Khmer. In Meghalaya it is written in the Latin alphabet, but in Bangladesh it has no single script and is often written in Bangla letters. More than 80 per cent of Khasi in Bangladesh are Christian, and a few families keep the older, pre-Christian faith. Society is matrilineal: children take their mother's clan name, a husband usually moves into his wife's home, and the youngest daughter inherits the family house, though in some punjis sons now take an equal share. The headman, the mantri, settles disputes, leases plots and records betel leaf sales.

Betel leaf is the Khasi economy. The vines are trained up tall trees in partly cleared forest, and the leaf is traded in markets on both sides of the border. Because many punjis sit on land with unclear title, disputes with forest officials and powerful neighbours are common, and cutting a family's vines, which take three years to regrow, is a familiar form of pressure.

The Garo, a matrilineal people with a Tibeto-Burman language, are best known in greater Mymensingh, but Garo families also live in Sylhet and Sunamganj. The Patro, and Tripura (Tipra) and Kuki families, are among the division's smaller communities. All of them are close-knit, so a visit is best made through someone the village knows.

Lawachara National ParkA tropical forest where western hoolock gibbons call from the canopy and a railway line cuts through.JaflongThe Piyain river runs over beds of stone below the Khasi hills and the Dawki bridge.

The tea garden communities

When British companies opened tea estates in Sylhet in the 19th century, they brought indentured labourers from Bihar, Odisha, Assam and elsewhere in India, often on false promises. These workers cleared the jungle and planted the bushes, and their descendants still live on the estates in rows of company housing called labour lines.

Bangladesh has around 170 tea estates (reports from 2023 to 2026 give 166 to 172), most of them in this division. The Tea Board counts about 117,000 registered workers plus thousands of casual ones, and union leaders estimate that close to a million people live in garden communities. After a mass movement in 2022 the daily wage rose from Tk 120 to Tk 170; it stood at Tk 187 in 2025, against the workers' demand of Tk 300.

The gardens hold dozens of peoples. Bangla is the shared language, but Sadri, Kurukh (the language of the Oraon), Mundari, Kharia and Odia are spoken at home, and researchers count several of them among the country's endangered languages.

The workers' best-remembered protest is Mulluk Cholo, “let us go to our homeland”. In May 1921 around 30,000 workers walked out of the gardens to return home. On 20 May, at the steamer ghat in Chandpur, colonial forces attacked them: many were killed or drowned in the Meghna, and many who escaped were later caught and sent back to the gardens. Tea communities mark 20 May as Tea Workers' Day.

Phagua (or Fagua), the spring festival of colours, usually falls in March: workers of many groups smear each other with abir powder and dance through the day. The 2023 celebration at Phulchhara garden in Moulvibazar drew thousands of people and at least 30 dance performances, a rare break from long, poorly paid working days.

Tea estates are workplaces and the labour lines are homes. Public roads cross many gardens, but ask at the garden office or go with a local guide before you enter the lines, and ask before photographing anyone. Malnichhara, on the edge of Sylhet City, is the easiest estate to reach from town; read more in The tea gardens.

Faith, festivals and shared celebrations

Islam in Sylhet is bound up with the Sufi saints. Tradition holds that Shahjalal arrived in the 14th century, and the shrines of Shahjalal and Shah Paran in Sylhet City draw pilgrims every day. Shahjalal's urs, the two-day anniversary of his death, is dated by the Islamic calendar, so it comes about 11 days earlier each year (mid-October in 2011, mid-September in 2014), and it draws thousands from across Bangladesh and from India. Pilgrims feed the sacred fish in the shrine's tank; see Shrines, temples and sacred sites.

The two Eids are the biggest days for the Muslim majority, when Sylheti kitchens turn out akhni and festive meat; see Food and tea. Hindu Sylhet keeps its own calendar, from Durga Puja in autumn to the Rash at Madhabpur, Phagua in the gardens and dhamail at weddings, and the Khasi and Garo churches fill at Christmas. Many celebrations are open to all: the Rash welcomes visitors of every faith.

Festival dates follow lunar calendars and shift every year, so check them before you plan, and expect full buses, trains and hotels around Eid and the urs. At the shrines everyone removes shoes, women have their own area, and only men enter Shahjalal's tomb chamber. See When to go.

Hazrat Shahjalal DargahThe shrine of the 14th-century Sufi saint who gave Sylhet its name as the spiritual capital.Hazrat Shah Paran DargahHilltop shrine of Shahjalal’s nephew, reached by a long stair on the eastern edge of the city.

The Londoni connection

Sylhet's link with Britain began at sea. By 1873 Sylheti men were working as lascars on British ships and as cooks in London, and serangs, the crew bosses, recruited from their own villages, sometimes up to 40 men from one village for one ship. In the 1950s and 1960s more men came to work in Britain and settled around Brick Lane in Tower Hamlets, and changes in immigration law in the 1970s brought a new wave of settlers.

The UK's 2021 and 2022 censuses counted about 652,500 British Bangladeshis, about half of them in London. Brick Lane was mostly Bengali by the late 1970s, and in April 2001 the local council renamed the ward Spitalfields and Banglatown.

In Sylhet, Londoni means a family with members in Britain. Remittances paid for land, large houses, mosques and village roads; in one village described in 2019, about 150 people held British citizenship and Londoni families owned almost half the farmland. Towns such as Biswanath, Beanibazar, Goalabazar and Moulvibazar, and Jagannathpur and Chhatak in Sunamganj, depend heavily on this money.

You see it as you travel: large houses among the paddy, many empty for most of the year; shopping centres in Sylhet City with unlet upper floors; and land quarrels between branches of families on two continents. The flow is slowing as British-born generations send less: about 85 per cent of East London's Bangladeshi families sent money home in the 1960s and 1970s, and 20 per cent by 1995.

Sylheti cooks also built one of Britain's best-known restaurant trades, a story told in Food and tea. If you are visiting from the diaspora, see Visiting from abroad.

Crafts: shital pati, Manipuri cloth, cane and bamboo

Shital pati, the cool mat, is woven in villages across greater Sylhet from strips of murta, a green cane. Men and women cut and prepare the stems and women do most of the weaving; the mat is used for sitting, for sleeping on in hot weather and for prayer. In 2017 UNESCO added the traditional art of shital pati weaving of Sylhet to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Manipuri women weave at home on wooden handlooms: saris, with two weavers to each, the inafi shawl, woollen shawls, scarves, bedsheets and bags; Bhanubil Majhergaon in Kamalganj is one well-known weaving village. Most yarn now comes from India and China, and one community leader is trying to bring back natural dyes. In 2023 a sari sold locally for Tk 5,000 to 6,000 fetched about twice that in Dhaka, so buying in the villages helps the weavers most.

Sylhet's cane furniture was once famous, made in the Betpalli quarter of Ghasitula in Sylhet City and in Balaganj, Chunarughat and Derai. Betpalli had more than 50 shops around 2010 and 20 to 22 by 2020, and most cane is now imported from Indonesia. Bamboo and cane still turn up everywhere in village life, in baskets, mats and house walls.

Buy from the makers where you can: at the Rash fair, from weavers' homes in Kamalganj or in Sylhet City. A good shital pati is tightly woven and smooth; roll it rather than fold it for the journey home.

Etiquette in villages, punjis and tea communities

• Dress modestly: shoulders and knees covered for everyone, and a scarf for women at shrines and mosques.
• Take off your shoes at shrines, mosques, temples and Manipuri mandaps, and when you enter a home.
• Ask before you photograph anyone, and never photograph people at prayer or inside their homes without permission.
• Punjis are private villages, not parks. Go with a local guide or an invitation, greet the mantri or an elder first, stay on the paths and never pick betel leaves or fruit.
• On tea estates, check with the garden office before walking into the sections or the labour lines.
• Do not hand out money or sweets to children; paying a local guide or buying crafts at a fair price helps more.
• Avoid alcohol in public, and during Ramadan eat and drink discreetly in daylight.
• Punjis near Jaflong, Jaintiapur and the Moulvibazar hills lie close to the Indian border. Carry ID, follow instructions from Border Guard Bangladesh and never cross the border line.
• Some punjis lie within or beside protected forests such as Lawachara: stay on marked trails, keep noise down and carry your rubbish out.

For more, read Responsible travel and Plan your trip.