Bengali through the ages: from Islamic rule to the colonial era and beyond

Bengali and its many varieties

Bengali, the principal language of the Bengal region, spans modern-day Bangladesh, West Bengal, Tripura, and parts of Assam. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the larger Indo-European language family.

As author Aritra Sarkar suggests in an email interview with indianexpress.com, Bengali did not emerge overnight; it is the culmination of a slow and layered evolution, sparked by ancient linguistic traditions such as Sanskrit, Pali, Magadhi Prakrit, and later Abahatta.

Most scholars agree that Bengali’s roots can be traced back to around the 10th century CE, primarily derived from Magadhi Prakrit. Reflecting on its early literary record, academics Kunal Chakrabarti and Shubhra Chakrabarti note in Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis, “The oldest extant body of work in Bengali is a collection of pre-13th-century CE verses called the Charyapadas, written in an obscure allegorical language.”

The early 13^th century brought a transformation with the arrival of Islam in Bengal. Sarkar remarks, “With the march of Turko-Afghan rulers under Bakhtiyar Khilji came not only power, but also the influence of Persian and Arabic vocabularies, new sonic palettes, and poetic forms that would soak into the ink on parchment.”

During this period, Persian became the dominant language of administration, court, and commerce, while Arabic enriched the spiritual lexicon, particularly within Sufi traditions. Urdu, still in its formative stages, made its way into everyday speech through military camps and urban markets.

Despite this dominance, Bengali oral traditions thrived. Puthi poetry—narratives of romance, conflict, and religious devotion—flourished in the vernacular. Oral genres such as ballads, epic recitations, and devotional songs spread widely through the villages, often preserved by women who became vital keepers of collective memory, transmitting mythologies through generations.

In the northeastern hills of Bengal, a distinct dialect known as Sylheti took root. Sarkar notes that “it dropped the softness of central Bengali and embraced the glottal stops and phonetic abruptness that echoed in the hills”. This dialect absorbed vocabulary from Arabic, Persian, and later Urdu, all layered over older Magadhi elements. Sarkar describes Sylheti not merely as a dialect but as “a border song, resonating between Bengal and Assam, Hindu and Muslim, soil and stone”.

Sylheti script (Source: Wikipedia)

Meanwhile, in the deltaic south—the Bhati region—another distinctive linguistic rhythm developed. It reflected the life of the wetlands, deeply rooted in oral expression and local folklore.

The evolution and convergence of Bengali

The body of literature that followed is broadly categorised by the Chakrabartis into two chronological phases: the medieval (1350–1800) and the modern (post-1800) periods. By the 15^th century, the diverse versions of Bengali had begun to converge into a more cohesive literary language. Many of the defining features of modern standard Bengali were already in place by the close of the Mughal era.

Medieval Bengali literature, according to the Chakrabartis, coalesced around four major genres. The Mangalakavya, or celebratory narrative poems devoted to regional deities, remained popular until the 18^th century. Alongside these were Bengali adaptations of the Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The third genre, padavali literature, comprised lyrical poems focused on the divine play of Krishna and the love of Radha. Finally, there were poetic biographies of Chaitanya, rooted in the Gaudiya Vaishnava movement and its devotional fervour.

In the fertile central plains of Bengal, Radhi Bengali began to flourish. Emerging from the spiritual landscape of Radha—Krishna’s beloved and a symbol of divine longing—this dialect was melodious and refined. Softer than Sylheti and more fluid than Varendri, Radhi Bengali was moulded by Vaishnava devotional poetry, bhakti kirtans, and folk songs of yearning. Sarkar describes it as the “sacred softness” of Bengal, a dialect that would ultimately become the foundation of standard colloquial Bengali.

As Bengali continued to evolve, a hybrid form known as Dobhashi Bengali emerged. This variant combined folk linguistic forms with Persianised vocabulary and was often transcribed in Persian script. McGill observes, “I have to go back to the early history of Bengali, when it was a dialect of Sanskrit, a Prakrit. Sanskrit was the written form; Prakrit, the spoken. Since then, Bengali has absorbed Persian, and even Hindustani to some extent.”

Echoing this, Roy states, “Loanwords from Arabic and Persian came naturally with the Muslim communities. These influences are deeply embedded in the Bengali we speak today.”

Colonisation of language

British colonialism in Bengal extended far beyond territorial conquest—it reshaped language and culture itself. What was once a rich tapestry of linguistic variety began to transform into a standardised form of Bengali. According to Sarkar, the arrival of the printing press in Serampore in the late 18^th century marked a shift—language became fixed and codified.

The Rarhi dialect, particularly that of Nadia and Kolkata, was elevated and formalised into grammar books. Refracted through colonial tastes, it was refined to fit Sanskritic syntax. In contrast, Sarkar notes, ‘dialects’ from regions like Barisal, Chattogram, Rangpur, and Sylhet were dismissed as uncouth and incorrect.

From this colonial linguistic engineering, says Sarkar, emerged Sadhu Bhasha—an artificially elevated literary form of Bengali. Characterised by elaborate compound verbs, rigid inflections and a heavily Sanskritised structure, Sadhu Bhasha bore little resemblance to the language spoken in everyday life. It became the language of courts, classrooms, and colonial bureaucracy. “In colonial Bengal, language became caste,” Sarkar observes. Fluency in Sadhu Bhasha signalled education, Hindu identity, urban sophistication, and social respectability.

But for others, especially Muslims, indigenous communities, and rural populations, “dialect remained the true language of daily experience,” says Sarkar. Sylheti-speaking Muslim farmers, though often illiterate in Sadhu Bhasha, were rich in oral traditions. Sarkar also adds that Bhati boatmen had no place in textbooks. Rajbanshi, Kharia, and Kamtapuri, spoken across North Bengal, were deemed inferior and excluded from print altogether.

“Sadhu Bhasha was developed in the 1800s. It’s not a spoken language—nobody grew up speaking it,” notes McGill. Roy adds, “Sadhu Bhasha exists only in written form—archaic, formal. You will mostly find it in Bankimchandra’s works. It was always bound between the hard covers of books.”

By the mid-19th century, Sadhu Bhasha reigned supreme on paper. But in homes, people spoke their dialects—or a colloquial Bengali known as Cholito Bhasha. This flowing, accessible form was rooted in the Rarhi dialect but far closer to natural speech. Meanwhile, oral traditions such as Sylheti and Bhati folk poetry continued to thrive outside the world of print.

Reformers and writers like Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Rabindranath Tagore, opines Sarkar, began to push back against the rigidity of Sadhu Bhasha. Censuses and surveys, however, collapsed the rich linguistic diversity of Bengali language into a single category: “Bengali.”

Michael Madhusudan Dutt (Source: Wikipedia)

As the nationalist movement surged, varieties of Bengali found renewed power—not through the printed word, but through sound. Bengali theatre began incorporating varieties to add realism to its characters. According to Sarkar, rural Jatra performances, folk revival, led by cultural icons like Abbasuddin Ahmed, and the posthumous celebration of Lalon Fakir, brought dialectal songs to the centre stage. He notes that songs in Bhati dialects and Sylheti began circulating on gramophones and through village fairs. Yet, he says: “Here, dialect was not a tool of politics or literature, but of spiritual transmission, class solidarity, and existential yearning.”

As Bengal emerged as a hub of anti-colonial resistance, Sarkar argues that dialects transformed into weapons of mass communication. Political pamphlets were written in Cholito Bhasha and other local varieties to reach rural audiences. Marginalised communities organised movements in their own linguistic registers, resisting both colonial power and elite linguistic norms.

How the Partition fractured language

The Partition of India in 1947 did not just split land, it fractured language. Sarkar notes that Sylhet, once part of Assam, was pulled into East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), sparking a deep linguistic disorientation. Rajbanshi and Chittagonian, spoken in border areas, were left stranded, belonging to no official nation or language policy.

In West Bengal, Bengali gradually shifted toward a more urban, standardised form—Cholito Bhasha, shaped by the Rarhi of Kolkata. Rural vernaculars like Manbhumi, Midnapori, and Rajbanshi were pushed to the margins, seen as rustic.

Across the new border in East Bengal, varieties of Bengali stayed alive in everyday life. From the gentle tones of Barishal to the sharp rhythms of Sylhet, no single version of Bengali took over. But when the Pakistani government tried to impose Urdu as the sole national language in 1948, resistance erupted—not just for Bengali, but for its many varieties.

The Language Movement of Bengal (Source: Wikipedia)

The Language Movement of 1952 in Dhaka, Sarkar writes, wasn’t just about protecting Bengali—it was about protecting the right to speak it in all its diverse forms. Students from across regions—Barisal, Mymensingh, Sylhet, Noakhali—marched in protest. This movement laid the foundation for the birth of Bangladesh in 1971.

Roy, who is from Agartala, Tripura, points out: “The Bangla spoken in Tripura and parts of Assam comes from Bangladesh. In places like Silchar, Assam, Sylheti is still strong. These varieties are living proof that you can silence a people politically, but not linguistically.”

By the late 20^th century, West Bengal had largely adopted a standardised form of the Rarhi dialect, while other regional varieties became less prominent in public discourse. In Bangladesh, the language landscape was shaped by the dominance of Dhaka-centric Bengali, coexisting with a wide range of regional dialects. “Both Bengals carried the trauma of erased dialects, even as those dialects found secret rooms to survive—in music, migration, meme, and mother tongue,” concludes Sarkar.

Standardisation of Bengali

Chelsea contends that language standardisation does not necessarily entail the abandonment of diverse speech forms in favour of a single, uniform vernacular. Rather, it often encourages code-switching—the strategic shifting between standardised and local forms depending on the social context.

This mirrors Sarkar’s observations on the use of Sadhu Bhasha in public domains and Cholito Bhasha in more intimate, private settings. However, McGill cautions that such linguistic flexibility comes at a cost: namely, “the gradual erosion of idioms, cultural expressions, and rich traditions of folk literature”.

Roy draws on the work of American linguist William Labov, who in 1966 examined how different social classes in New York City pronounced the linguistic variable (r). Labov discovered that rhoticity—the pronunciation of the (r) sound—increased with socioeconomic status, being most prominent among the middle class. According to Roy, the overuse of rhoticity in the middle class exhibits a strong inclination towards linguistic assimilation.

Roy suggests that a similar pattern may be emerging with standardised Bengali. She argues that the standardised form is more readily embraced by the urban elite and middle classes, while rural communities continue to use non-standard varieties, highlighting that language is a powerful expression of identity, reflecting cultural heritage and socio-economic realities.

Further reading:

1. The Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis by Kunal Chakrabarti and Shubhra Chakrabarti
2. The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language (1972)  by Suniti Kumar Chatterji