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...
