3 min readFeb 24, 2026 02:43 PM IST
First published on: Feb 24, 2026 at 02:43 PM IST
Every time I moan/ I moan in Kamtapuri… After the lovemaking/ I dream in the language of my orgasm – Kamtapuri.
When this poem was published, some people felt it was outrageous, others maintained silence, as they often do to invisibilise voices. It’s quite a struggle for me to claim my tongue, my mother language — Kamtapuri. It is spoken by a large number of people in North Bengal.
In 2018, it became one of the official languages of West Bengal. Still, my mother language is called “chhotoloker bhasha” (the language of the outcastes) by the mainstream Bengali Bhadraloks. In childhood, my family didn’t let me speak Kamtapuri in public spaces, particularly in school. We are sarcastically called “Bahe”, the other, the outcastes. When the world celebrates February 21 as International Mother Language Day, we continue living in the shadows of the Bengali hegemony.
Language contains the collective memories of a community. Killing a language means killing the stories, food habits, culture. But in a majoritarian framework, the language minorities most of the time don’t have a choice but to adopt the language of the majority. Moreover, our educational curriculum imposes the language of the so-called mainstream majority. And the rapid rise of private schools adds to further silencing.
In my childhood, I used to get cuts and bruises very often. But my Nani (grandmother) was always ready with her home-made totka (trick): A gauze of neatly clean old cotton saree and “kala kochu” (black taro). We knew nothing was more healing than the sap of black taro for minor cuts. Losing our language deprives my daughter of this generational knowledge of herbal medicine.
My daughter and her friends are now singing K-Pop rather than our own lullabies: Aye Aye nindbali aye aye aye/ raati pohale jaani kiba dyekha hoy (Come dream come/ Come to me/ If the night dies/ Our meetings will remain incomplete). I see how the traditional taste is dying with the language. As my daughter gets closer to burger, pizza and croissant, she moves far away from our own community snacks: pitha, muri, chaler gura, chal bhaja, kheer, halua, payesh.
Climate change also plays a definitive role in killing a language. The dying rivers are taking away our traditional Kamtapuri/Rajbanshi dishes, like Chheka, Shidol. These dishes need dry fish. When the rivers die, the fishermen become climate refugees without work. And when the refugees change places, they can’t help but adopt the language of the new place, gradually forgetting their own.
In 2004, at the dawn of August 16, when military personnel surrounded my locality looking for the people who dared to organise movements upholding the separate identity of Kamtapuri, I realised the struggle is much more complicated than it seems.
On Mother Language Day, we must celebrate diversity. It is the only antidote to authoritarianism. We need to save culture, language and climate together. They are enmeshed in memories and practice. One cannot survive without the other. My Kamtapuri calls for such conservation — of memory and belonging.
The writer is a West Bengal-based poet
