Saturday 8 February 2014

Life on the islands of Sundarbans


The Sundarbans (Pron:/ˈsʊndəˌbʌnz/) (Bengaliসুন্দরবনShundorbôn) is the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world.[2] The Sundarbans is a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering parts of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal.


More than two-third of the Sundarbans is in Bangladesh and the remainder is in West Bengal, India. The Sundarbans National Park is aNational ParkTiger Reserve, and a Biosphere Reserve located in the Sundarbans delta in the Indian state of West Bengal. Sundarbans SouthEast and West are three protected forests in Bangladesh. This region is densely covered by mangrove forests, and is one of the largest reserves for the Bengal tiger.

This  information is available on wilkipedia but to understand the life on sundarbans you have to visit the land divided in to hundreds of islands.


It may be not on the list of travelling destinations, I think that’s good for the island and remaining habitat on the island. 




Sundarnas was not a space where people could settle down. It was a home of nature. Home of variety of mangrove, animals, and birds. Spotted chital and Tigers. Human were attracted to sundarbans for the variety of fishes which has a very high demand in Calcutta and remaining Bengal, later fishermen visit regularly and sometime they made temporary tents (Kachchi Jhuggi), very soon it became a popular destination for fishing and Honey collection soon families started living on the nearby islands and rapidly population increased, started with the nearby islands and almost every island was crowded, home of animals and birds ruined by human.








We (Darpana for Development) were working on Education for Sustainable development project for WWF – India to bring about the awareness amongst the school children and make them actor activists. We did arts based workshop with them. During the workshop we came across some very strange facts about the life in sundarbans. 




The islands were divided into two group’s basically one group of island for the human and other one for the animals specially reserved for the Bengal tigers. Reserved islands in the Indian Territory are covered with the nets may be to protect the human from Tigers.


 In all the islands where humans are living they have made a protection wall to protect themselves from the water and animals like tiger and crocodile.


During high tide the tiger swim and travel from one island to another looking for food. And in low tide human cross the nets and go into the reserved islands for honey. In a week an average of 2 humans are attacked by the tigers. Many of them dose not survive, on this islands there is very less medical facilities available, very few islands has the hospitals. The tragedy is in low tide no ferry can travel which is the only ultimate transportation facility available. Many casualties happened just because of the less transportation facilities.




The main source of income and food is coming from the water and Muddy Islands. Now they are grooving rice, Vegetables and fruits. On some islands people have started the ship making factories.










The children here are very curious but having very low exposure and less opportunities. They have only source available for entertainment is DVD’s of films and especially the bangla films and music, Hindi and any other languages are not so popular.

There is no electricity, most of the electric equipments work on the solar energy, and solar energy equipment are not so cheap so only few can afford, remaining lives in dark.  









The Bangla folk theatre Bonabibi is only folk art survived. We invited them to present their performance its nice blend of piece which shows hindu and muslim culture and the play is all about the conservation of goddess forest “bonabibi”.    






The community lives here is not from one region but people from several parts of Bangla and now form many parts of india have start living here so no strong cultural roots, refugees from Bangladesh also shifted here.






It’s a whole new culture now, need support and guidance.
It is necessary to conserve the tigers and other animals but what about this human species lived here and only lived...  



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