Society, culture & contemporary issues
Bangladesh society and culture for the BCS: demography, language and festivals, women and minorities, NGOs, and contemporary challenges from migration to climate.
A Bengali-Muslim Majority Nation State
Bangladesh is among the world's most densely populated large countries: the 2022 Population and Housing Census (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics) counted 165.2 million people at a density exceeding 1,100 persons per square kilometre. The society is strikingly homogeneous by South Asian standards: roughly 91% Muslim, about 8% Hindu, with Buddhist (concentrated in the Chittagong Hill Tracts) and Christian minorities. Bengali (Bangla) is the mother tongue of around 98% of the population, making Bangladesh one of the few states founded explicitly on a linguistic-cum-religious identity.
Language as Founding Myth
The Language Movement (Bhasha Andolan) is the cornerstone of national identity. When the Government of Pakistan sought to impose Urdu as the sole state language, students at Dhaka University were killed by police on 21 February 1952 (Ekushey February) — Abdus Salam, Rafiq Uddin Ahmed, Abul Barkat and others becoming the language martyrs (Bhasha Shaheed). The Shaheed Minar commemorates them. UNESCO designated 21 February as International Mother Language Day in 1999 (proclaimed at the 30th General Conference, observed from 2000). Article 3 of the Constitution declares Bangla the state language; Article 23 directs the state to conserve cultural heritage.
Festivals and Cultural Calendar
Pahela Baishakh, the Bengali New Year (14 April under the revised Bangla calendar), is the great secular-national festival; the Mangal Shobhajatra procession organised by Dhaka University's Faculty of Fine Arts was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2016. Bangladesh holds four ICH inscriptions: Baul songs of Lalon (2005/2008), Jamdani weaving (2013), Mangal Shobhajatra (2016) and Shital Pati mat-weaving of Sylhet (2017). The poet Kazi Nazrul Islam is the national poet; Rabindranath Tagore's 'Amar Sonar Bangla' is the national anthem (adopted 1971). Eid-ul-Fitr, Eid-ul-Adha, Durga Puja, Buddha Purnima and Christmas are public holidays, reflecting the secularism restored to the Preamble and Article 12 by the Constitution (Fifteenth Amendment) Act, 2011.
The Hill Tracts and Indigenous Question
The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) — Rangamati, Khagrachhari, Bandarban — are home to eleven distinct ethnic communities including the Chakma, Marma and Tripura, who are predominantly Buddhist and Hindu. A two-decade insurgency by the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti and its armed wing Shanti Bahini ended with the CHT Peace Accord of 2 December 1997, signed under Sheikh Hasina's first government, creating the Regional Council and three Hill District Councils. Implementation disputes — land commission functioning, demilitarisation — remain live. The Constitution amended Article 23A in 2011 to protect the 'culture of tribes, minor races, ethnic sects and communities', though the term 'indigenous' (adivasi) is officially contested.