Lost song of the Sundarbans' fisherfolk

The Hindu

4 days ago

In the Sundarbans, which hosts the world's largest mangrove forest, monsoon used to be different. Not the weather itself so much as the activities connected to it. Even in the first decade of the century, fisherman Swapan Kumar Mandal used to have his evenings packed with rehearsals. He used to manage Bishnupriya Opera, a jatra pala (folk theatre) troupe that specialised in Bonbibir Pala, a folk theatre form based on the legend of Bonbibi, the Sundarbans' guardian deity who protects fishers and honey gatherers from tiger attacks.
This year, however, among the members of the troupe, lead singers Shreemonto Sheet and Khokon Sana are in Andhra Pradesh, working as agricultural labourers. Once the fishing season begins, they are engaged in marine fishing. Some of the other musicians and actors will also soon travel to Kerala to work in the fishing trawlers.
'Dwindling income from fishing in West Bengal has left the state's fishers in dire straits. Folk music and drama troupes are disintegrating due to migrations. Besides, television and smartphones are taking away the space for traditional outdoor entertainment,' says Mandal, in his 50s. A farmer-cum-carpenter, he lives in Sonaga village, Gosaba, the largest island in the Indian part of the Sundarbans deltaic landscape.
The Sundarbans, West Bengal's prime fishing hub, made up of mangrove forests, islands and criss-crossing rivers, creeks and channels, is home to about 250 fish species. It serves as the biggest supplier of fish to the capital city of Kolkata, which has a population of six million, and where fish is an essential part of the daily diet.
Yet, small and marginal fishers of Sundarbans are struggling to survive. With reduction in fish hauls, income is dwindling. This year, the mood is additionally sombre, with the hilsa, the golden crop of Bengal's waters, largely eluding the nets.
'Only about 10% of the boats got hilsa in mid-to-end-June. There was absolutely nothing for about a month. At the end of July, roughly 10-15% boats had some hilsa hauls. The rest returned with other fish,' says Narayan Das, the South 24-Parganas district unit president of Dakshinbanga Matsyajibi Forum (DMF), an organisation of small and marginal fishers.
Moving South
Das cites decreasing fish haul to be the impact of trawling, increasing pollution, and rising salinity in the rivers, among other reasons.
He says that laws prohibit bottom trawling — wherein fishing nets go up to the floor of the sea — as it destroys the seabed ecosystem. Besides, trawling is only allowed 12 nautical miles away from the coast, as the coastal waters are reserved for traditional fishers. However, there is no mechanism to monitor or implement these regulations and, therefore, there are rampant violations.
'We have seen trawlers engaging in bottom trawling within the prohibited zone of 12 nautical miles. As a result, the seabed ecosystem is damaged and inland fishing has been badly hurt,' says Das.
Migration of fisherfolk from the Sundarbans began on a large scale after Cyclone Aila, in 2009, devastated the region, especially by increasing soil salinity in thousands of acres of farmland and filling freshwater ponds with saline water. While land fertility has recovered over time, decreasing fish haul has kept up the out-migration momentum.
Take the case of Krishna Das, a 45-year-old resident of Shibpur Paschim village in Kakdwip block. Starting this month, Krishna and his two brothers, Chaitanya and Prabir, will be working in Kerala for the next 10 months, with occasional visits back home.
Since the last four years, they have been spending time in their Sundarbans home — where their parents, wives and children live — only in the months of June and July, when Kerala implements the annual trawling ban. 'By mid-August, more than 200 men from our village will be in Kerala,' says Krishna.
There is another section of migrant workers who fish in the Sundarbans till September, but move to Kerala during the drier months (October-March/ April), the lean period for fishing in West Bengal.
In Kerala, migrant workers who work on larger vessels that go on fishing trips lasting one or more weeks usually live on the boat itself when it's docked at shore. Some also live in cheap lodging facilities, sharing small rooms among three to four persons.
A 2023 working paper that focused on migration of traditional fishers from Sundarbans to the harbours of Ponnani and Beypore in Kerala — a migration corridor has developed over the past couple of decades — says that continuous in-migration of workers from other states has been a major factor that seems to have helped boat owners in Kerala increase their fleet size.
However, the migrant workers have to deal with 'informal work arrangements, non-standard forms of wage payment, lack of proper amenities like housing and sanitation, and a near absence of state initiatives to protect their rights and entitlements', says the paper, co-authored by Roshan Menon, Tara Nair and Atanu Ghosh.
Disappearing community
A 2024 Jadavpur University research paper, titled 'Ma Bonbibi: A Goddess in the Folk Culture of Sundarbans Region in India & Bangladesh', says that migration from Sundarbans to other parts of India 'is not only affecting the population of the region, but also has a significant impact on local perception and attachment to the deltaic landscape'.
Traditional folk art forms are mostly kept alive by amateurs, who do other work to earn a living. In the Sundarbans, the folk singers, dancers and theatre actors usually depend on fishing, farming or honey gathering.
Puranjan Mandal, a Gosaba resident who works with the Kolkata-based Banglanatak Dot Com, a social enterprise to conserve intangible cultural heritage, says that migration is one of the key reasons behind the disintegration of folk art groups in the region. 'A decade ago, there were about 20 Bonbibir Pala teams in our locality. Now, there are only five,' he says.
The organisation has been working towards documentation and promotion of the art form, including using it for awareness campaigns on human trafficking. Migration-prone areas are also trafficking-prone, say experts.
Sanjoy Ganguly helms the theatre group Jana Sanskriti, which has been working in the Sundarbans region for over two decades. Their activities among the adolescents in Patharpratima block of Sundarbans mostly get female participants today. 'Teen boys are migrating for work. Besides, screen addiction keeps many young adults away from group social activities,' says Ganguly. Resultantly, community-oriented folk art practices are disappearing.
Bonbibir Pala is not the sole folk art form impacted by migration. Local musical genres such as Jari, Sari and Bhatiyali also have a decreasing number of practitioners. Sourav Moni, a Bhatiyali singer from Sundarban's Hingalganj block, says that Majhi Malla, a music troupe he formed seven years ago, lost 70% of its regular participants due to work-related migration.
What is Bonbibir Pala? One of Sundarbans' most popular folk performances, Bonbibir Pala has traditionally been a part and parcel of the festivities around the deity Bonbibi's puja in mid-January. But it is also performed at other fairs and festivals throughout the winter. Performed under makeshift tents in open fields in the dark of the night, the play goes on for about three hours and involves scenes that show Bonbibi's fight with her arch-enemy, Dakshin Ray, who takes the form of a tiger and hunts fishers. Instruments like dhol, tabla, shehnai and cymbals create the background music. The plays preach peaceful coexistence with nature, and carry a strong message against greed, advising people to take from the forests only what is needed.
Blame game
Locals say that governments and politicians prefer to blame climatic changes for the migration of fisherfolk, but avoid discussing how the river waters are highly polluted due to unchecked discharge of industrial waste from Kolkata and its outskirts. The rivers have also lost their natural flow due to human interventions. For instance, the Farakka barrage in northern West Bengal is one of the major impediments in the course of the Hooghly river.
Fisherfolk see no immediate change of the situation. However, Das of the DMF believes that strictly monitoring and implementing trawling guidelines and easing prohibitions in the core areas of the Sundarban Tiger Reserve, among other moves, can prevent immediate further acceleration of the migration trend.
The Kolkata-based author and independent journalist writes on politics, policy, environment, human rights, history and culture in South Asia.