The Sylhetis (Sylheti: ছিলটী, ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ) are Bengalis who speak the Sylheti language, which is either considered as a dialect of Bengali or as a separate language due to significant differences between them and lack of mutual intelligibility. They are native to the Sylhet Division of Bangladesh and the Barak Valley, India with sizable population in Shillong, Meghalaya and Tripura, India.
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Sylhetology
Sylhetology is a deductive method of studying the ancient history of Sylhet, hypothesising the tradition of oral history and comparing with written history and archaeological findings to reach a rational conclusion. Sylhetology as a form of proposed by a London-based polymath on 25 May 2015.
Sylheti Jati
Sylheti Ethnicity is also known as Sylheti Jati in popular form; it includes peoples from Barak Valley in Southern Assam, India and Surma Valley or Sylhet Division, Bangladesh. Sylheti Jati includes peoples from different religious denominations including Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Pagans and Atheists. A perception runs wild in Bangladesh that people of Sylhet are planning in connivance with India to carve out an independent state of Sylhet consisting of South Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, greater Mymensingh, greater Dhaka, greater Comilla, greater Noakhali, greater Chittagong and Chittagong Hill Tracts with the epicentre at the city of Sylhet. This myth was concocted in an anonymous group or individual(s) in London and it led to consequential suppression of Sylheti Jati in Bangladesh. Sylheti Jati is gaining wider recognition and momentum outside of Bangladesh and India due to growing human conscious and prevalence of human rights in European countries, particularly in the UK, and the USA. Sylheti as a Jati is promoted by Sylhetologists and human rights activists.
Until partition in 1947, Sylhetis were part of Assam in north-eastern British India, as it then was.
Early History
Sylheti diaspora emerged due to a need for an economic sustenance, young men searching for better employment elsewhere led to the foundation of Sylheti Diaspora. In the heyday of the British Raj, when young men from the land of Sylhet worked as lascars in the British merchants marine, some jumping the ship in London in search of better life and others found alternative routes to enter the motherland, causing chain migration and eventual settlement in working-class neighbourhoods of London’s East End. Many of the Sylheti men moved on and found better working conditions in industrial cities and towns such as Luton, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Oldham and so on. Sylhet is a seafaring nation; going to the sea is in the blood of all Sylheti and it was a daredevil adventure for Sylheti young men until the land reform forced upon them by the British Raj in 1793 CE as part of the Permanent Settlement Act of 1793, which altered the entire social, political and economic landscape of the country and going to the sea became a necessity. Young men from Sylhet boarded ships mainly at Kolkata, Mumbai and Singapore. Some of these early Sylheti seamen visited Britain and America and sought employment; although by virtue of Magna Carta Libertatum, there were no legal restriction on them to enter and leave Britain freely, some authors have played the ship jumping rather disproportionately without realising that the Sylheti seamen knew they could visit the motherland without making any declaration of intent, which was required to enter the USA. The early recorded history indicates a strong connection between Sylheti Diaspora and the Sylheti seamen.
Caste and Class
People of Sylhet are socially stratified into four caste, which is called chaturvarna and three social classes. Caste system derived from Hindu system of varna ‘colour’ and jati ‘ethnicity’, which divides people into four colours: White, Red, Yellow and Black. White people are Brahmans, who are destined to be priests, teachers and preachers; Red people are Kshatriyas, who are destined to be kings, governors, warriors and soldiers; Yellow people are Vyasas, who are born to be cattle herders, ploughmen, artisans and merchants; and Black people are Shudras, who are born to be labourers and servants to the people of twice born caste. People from all caste denominations exist among Hindus in Sylhet.
Class system among Muslims evolved during the halcyon days of the Mughal Empire and it is divided into three layers: Ashraf, Ajlaf and Arzal. Ashraf is the noble class destined to be priests, teachers, preachers, kings, governors, warriors and soldiers; Ajlaf is the middle class destined to be cattle herders, ploughmen, artisans and merchants; and Arzal is the working class destined to labour and provide services to all others. People belonging to Arzal social class do not have family names or surnames; Arzal men usually use names of Islamic heroes or honorific as their last name, which are about a dozen of the last names commonly used by Arzals and they names are as follows:
Women of Arzal social class use about half a dozen of names as their last names and examples are given below:
Many Arzal men are given one of the ninety nine attributions of Allah and these attributions are required to have prefix of servant to make a distinction between the Creator and creation.
Diaspora
The Sylheti diaspora refers to the descendants of ethnic Sylhetis who emigrated out of the Sylhet Division, Bangladesh, to a certain specific countries which have had socio-economic and political ties with Sylhet. The Sylheti diaspora numbers around one million, mainly concentrated in United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, France, Australia, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Finland and the Middle East and other European Countries. A study from 2008 shows that, Britain have the largest number of Sylheti diaspora where 500,000 people speak Sylheti, which is 95% of total number of Bangladeshi people in UK According to the census of 2009 it shows the actual number is lot higher. Sylhetis in Bangladesh have conversely affected by remittances send from across the world and the community has been suffering from a serious lack of government initiatives causing development inertia. According to neo-classical theory, the poorest would move to the richest countries and those from densely populated areas would move to more sparsely peopled regions. This has clearly not been the case. The brain drain was a movement from core to core, purely on economic maximisation, while it was young Sylheti pioneers with access to financial resources that migrated from a severely overpopulated Bangladesh to the overcrowded streets of Spitalfields, poorest from all parts of Bangladesh migrated to Sylhet for a better life, causing a severe overcrowding and scarcity of resources in Sylhet.