Building Written Forms to Save Their Mother Tongues: The Hill Tracts' Small Ethnic Groups Fight On

In the Chittagong Hill Tracts, members of small ethnic groups are working, individually and through organisations, to keep their mother tongues alive. They speak their languages among themselves, but without a written form it was impossible to study or create literature in them. Over the past few years, that has begun to change.

Organisations and individuals from the Chakma, Tripura and Tanchangya communities have set about creating written forms for their languages. One such organisation is the Chakma Cultural Council of Bangladesh (CCCB).

Since 2023, the organisation's leaders have been training young people and students in remote hill villages in the Chakma alphabet. Through in-person field training and online teaching, the CCCB has taught more than 150 students in the language, and its members are also writing literature in the mother tongue to grow its beauty and strength.

The organisation's adviser, Ananda Jyoti Chakma, said, “For a long time there was no institutional arrangement for practising our language. We began working in an organised way to protect the language and spread it among everyone. Our young members go from village to village teaching the language and introducing people to the alphabet. Village children are gradually mastering Chakma and can now write it.” He also called for government patronage.

Alongside the organisations, schools are now distributing books and teaching in the mother tongue at primary level. With books available from pre-primary to class four, students are learning to write the alphabet and various words. Teachers and parents, however, say more teacher training is needed.

Mukul Chakma, a class-four student at Banarupa Government Primary School, said, “Before, I could speak but not write. Since the school gave us books, I can gradually write in my Chakma mother tongue now.”

Parent Jharna Chakma said children can now learn and write the Chakma alphabet since the books were distributed, but argued the programme should extend to class five and that without quality teachers it will not succeed — trained teachers are essential.

Assistant teacher Jemi Chakma of the same school said, “On 1 January, books were distributed in the Chakma, Marma and Tripura languages. The children have become familiar with the alphabets. Teachers need training to make students more proficient.”

It is not only Chakma: the Tanchangya Kalyan Sangstha and the Tripura Kalyan Foundation are working separately to preserve the Tanchangya and Tripura languages. Two years ago, dictionaries of Chakma, Tanchangya and Marma, along with a Kokborok vocabulary for Tripura, were published at the district council's initiative. Collecting, preserving and publishing words has widened the space for practising languages that were on their way to disappearing.

Advocate Dinanath Tanchangya, former secretary general of the Tanchangya Kalyan Sangstha, said, “At the start, with UNDP support, we made software for the Tanchangya alphabet. Then, with the district council's help, we published primary education books containing the vowels and consonants. Two years ago we also published a Tanchangya dictionary. We are working so that the language does not disappear and so that literature can be written in it.”

Khokoneshwar Tripura, an assistant professor in the Tourism and Hospitality department at Rangamati Science and Technology University and a Tripura language researcher, said Tripura clans across the three hill districts speak Kokborok with words that differ from clan to clan. Their effort has been to bring together who says which word and how, in one place — an effort that will continue.

Meanwhile in Rangamati, Mukul Kanti Tripura has drawn attention by writing literature in Tripura. His first book of poems in the language, “Emangni Khumtang” — “Garland of Dream Flowers” in Bangla — was unveiled in 2021. He notes that the 1942 book by the ascetic Khushikrishna Tripura, alias Balangrai Sadhu, is a landmark of the language's literature; Mahendra Lal Tripura and Brother Mantrajoy created scripts, but they never won social acceptance, making preservation harder. Later, under a Tripura Kalyan Sangsad decision, the Roman script came into use for Kokborok.

In Bangladesh, a country that gave blood for language, language lovers hope the mother tongues of its small ethnic groups will survive in their own distinct identity. But organisation leaders say trained teachers and government patronage are now the most urgent needs if the fight is to be sustained.