Little village positioned in Hormuz in trouble-torn Iran that has it’s deep-routed bond over the centuries with Bengal by it’s nomenclature has surprised even the researchers, the organs dealing with the Indo-Aryan progenitors in the wake of ensuing warfare conflicts there.
The hamlet, incredibly named as Bangali still confuse many, both in India, Bangladesh, and also even some Iranian researchers.
The tiny Bangali village is situated just beside the Strait of Hormuz – currently a channel fuming during the warfare. It’s just on the bank of the Strait within the southern part of Qeshm County and Ramkan Rural district of the Hormozgan province. Like the other Iranian provinces and localities there, Bangali village, too has consistently been bearing the brunt of frequent missile attacks these days due to it’s spot-linked geopolitical factors.
Apart from it’s multiple medium and short-range ballistic and cruise missiles, as G D Bakshi, former Major General of the Indian Army told media recently, Iran has explored underwater tunnels to block the 21 km wide Hormuz Strait as part of it’s war strategy to cause severe inconvenience to the wider world that depends on Gulf oil. Bangali village, incidentally is situated at the tactical and vulnerable point of the underwater threat perception especially after Iran hardened its resistance posture to survive the US-Israel hostility.
Bangali, according to the data exhibited by the Iranian National Committee for Standardization of Geographical Names, and the National Cartographic Centre of Iran, is inhibited by a meagre 109 persons in 23 families and mostly from the fishermen community. “They, as of today, hardly can speak in Bengali as Bengali seems to be a dying language in whole Iran,” stated Emilia Nercissian of Tehran University. She’s a researcher on the ‘Decline and Death of Migrants’ Language’ together with Shaolee Mehboob of Jagannath University, Dhaka. The researchers documented linguistic flexibility of 19 Bengali-Persian-originated children aged between 5 to 35 years to see the trajectory of Bengali among and around them.
Their research revealed that couples like Bina Sheikh (a Bengali by birth) and Mahmud Bukhs (a colonel of the Iranian Army) still practice Bengali for private conversations, but their 35 year-old fashion designer daughter and 28 year-old engineer don’t want to get cozy with Bengali, instead, are comfortable with Persian.
“It’s nothing to get surprised, but of course a tragedy,” said 70 year-old Ghulam Hussaine Irani, the Sardar of ‘mini Iran’ comprising two localities – Dalurbandh and Mohal in Pandaveswar block near Durgapur town where 2000 odd descendants of Iranian origin are staying officially since 1920. The Iranian Embassy had purchased land for our permanent settlements in 1994. Ghulam Hussaine said: “Here, our children are still fluent in Farsi, Hindi, English and Bengali as well. Equally they could have nourished their mother tongue well there to preserve their root.” Nazneen Khatun, preparing for MBBS in Pandaveswar’s mini Iran said in Persian: “It’s really sad and unacceptable that they neglected Bengali.” The Sardar, meanwhile still has got some ancestral links in Qeshm County. He said: “What I have gathered, there’s hardly anyone can speak in Bengali at the Bangali village.”
Around 2,000 Bangladeshi migrants residing across Iran, with nearly 400 staying in war ravaged Tehran, as of today, the Statistical Centre of Iran stated.
But, how this village was named as Bangali – a million dollar question that still remains unanswered properly. So remained a question – why some shops in the Iranian port city of Abadan still display signs reading “Our Goods Come from Calcutta”, until the former Iranian Ambassador to India Dr Ali Chegeni, while bringing forth a deep, historic trade connection between Iran and Kolkata mentioned in 2021 that Kolkata was the cultural and business epicenter of South Asia over the centuries and the Abadan port city used to convince the buyers about the genuinity of the imported goods.
About the ‘Bangali’ village’s nomenclature, Dr Fuad Halim, Council Member, Iran Society in Kolkata told The Statesman: “Our linguistic experts are still busy in search of the actual root behind such a naming of the little village. It might be the proper noun of a Persian word has evolved like this, or could be due to a settlement of migrant Bengalis there.” The inhabitants of the Qeshm County primarily speaks a dialect of Farsi that’s heavily influenced by Arabic and even Hindi.