Putting Bangladesh on the Wall — A community celebrates identity
Last Sunday, as America began preparing for a midterm election in a continually polarizing political system, a community in Hamtramck, MI gathered to celebrate their roots. On this cold Autumn day, in bold colors, and with a collage of everything quintessentially Bengali, the first ever Bangladeshi-themed mural in the United States was revealed and celebrated on the border of Detroit and Hamtramck (Charest Street).
The Bangladeshi Mural Project was initiated by OneHamtramck, a social justice organization that aims to address racism and discrimination by promoting art and culture in Hamtramck, a city of 22,000 bordering the city of Detroit. Abu Hanif, a board member of the organization, and community organizer during this project’s initiation, and Kamal Rahman were both a part of the project’s committee. After Hanif’s sudden passing in 2016, his daughters Subha and Farha Hanif, along with other community members recommitted to the mural project.
With the support of Bill Meyer, executive director of OneHamtramck, and community buy-in, the project soon became more youth-driven and was funded by the Bangladeshi community and Michigan Economic Development Corporation. The mural was thoughtfully planned to be painted on the wall of Bridge Academy West school, a chartered middle school mainly attended by children in the community of Bangladeshi, Arab, and African American origin.
“The mural will show everyone that Bangladeshis are here. We exist. This is our legacy. And we aren’t going anywhere,” says Farha Hanif.
She hopes the mural will teach people more about Bangladesh as more than a nation with high poverty that borders India.
Bangladeshi immigrants often move to existing enclaves for family and social support, work opportunities, and to acclimate the culture in the U.S. Similar to most urban cities, Detroit and Hamtramck are major ports of entry for newly arrived immigrants — and is home to the heart of the Bangladeshi community in Michigan. The tri-county area (Wayne County, Oakland County, and Macomb County) is often referred to as Metro-Detroit, which has the third-largest Bangladeshi population in the United States followed by New York City and Washington D.C. The diaspora presence is so significant that in 2012, the federal government required the city to print election material and ballots in Bangla.
The main scene on the mural depicts a young girl draped in the Bangladeshi flag, inspired by a photograph taken by Detroit-based Mohtashim Mahin. “I feel humbled,” he told BIP. “It’s a feeling of immense pride that a picture I took can represent the Bangladeshi identity in America today.”
The flag holds a face of the Royal Bengal Tiger, shapla phul (water lilies), the national flower of Bangladesh, and an embroidered nokhshi katha, a traditional stitching. The image then transitions to a view of the tea gardens of Sylhet, where the majority of Bangladeshis in Hamtramck are originally from. Bangla letters are painted on a clear sky. The mural also depicts the Shaheed Minar, a national monument in Dhaka that commemorates those who were killed in the 1952 language movement. (Read: The story behind international mother language day, Shadhinota Dibosh: the Story of Bangladesh’s Declaration of Independence). These symbols celebrate the art, culture, and history of Bangladesh. Their portrayal on the 46-foot high wall conveys the omnipresence of Bangladesh — sceneries that some Bangladeshi-American children have never physically seen, in Hamtramck.
As Subha Hanif recently reflected in an article for Brown Girl Magazine: “For me, working on the mural project in the Michigan Bangladeshi community has allowed me to meet so many young, inspiring Bangladeshi children who are eager for the mural to be completed in their neighborhood. Their eyes light up when they hear it and they feel so proud that they can go to school and see the painting on a huge wall that represents them, and the country their grandparents or parents emigrated from. They have a sense of excitement knowing that it could be one step closer to being recognized as a Bangladeshi instead of being misrepresented as Indian or Pakistani.”
Shaffwan Ahmed, a community leader and member of the mural project committee, remembers a similar struggle: of the inter-generational communication gap existing between Bangladeshi children in the diaspora and older adults. It’s an issue which he has been addressing by mentoring younger generations in the community.
“Because there are blue-collar families, kids don’t get that time with their mother and their father, the older generations, to hear more of their lives and the history of the country,” he says. “That was one of the gaps we were able to fill with mentoring — passing this information along and reinforcing and telling them this is what happened [in Bangladesh’s history]. This is what was done to us and it is all interconnected. And education is important to our parents because of this.”
Ahmed was born in Detroit and raised in Hamtramck. His father and uncle were among some of the first Bangladeshis to move to Hamtramck in the early 1970s. As a child, he recalls there only being 8 to 10 Bangladeshi families in the city, where he often acted as the default translator.
Whether it was enrolling the children to school, or the nurse needing to call a child’s home where the parents only spoke Bangla, the responsibility of being an intermediary is one that commonly falls on the shoulders of first-generation children in places like Hamtramck. Similar to other families, Ahmed recalls his family acting as a social support system for newly arrived immigrants, often housing relatives and newly-arrived immigrants until they found their own place to stay. With the community having grown significantly, this role of individual families acting as resettlement agents has shifted to now-developed masjids which serve as both places of worship and centers for community organizing and social support.
The project was more personally significant to Ahmed and his family because they never envisioned that a project like this would happen — they have been living in the house adjacent to the school building, which is now home to the mural, for close to 30 years. The building was previously the North Detroit Hospital which had been shut down and abandoned for 10 years. While abandoned, Ahmed, his father, and neighbors helped maintain and keep it safe, preventing arson and theft because they felt it was their responsibility as community members.
“After all this, I am hoping the mural will provide a little more self-reflection about our identity, our culture, and our community,” he says.
The Bangladeshi Mural Project already has a significant impact on the lives of those who were involved in its creation — members expressed how bitter-sweet the unveiling of the mural has been for them and what it means.
“There were so many gaps between generations, and even Bangladeshis themselves, and this mural bridged those gaps,” says Yasmeen Ahmed. “That bridge is so beautiful to me because when we started this project, we said it would represent unity, not just for Bangladeshis, but for the entire community. I drove past the mural today and never felt so proud of our culture being represented in a place where having a dual identity was always a struggle. I hope we can accomplish the goal of uniting with this mural in the coming years for the next generations.”
Glossary:
Shapla phul — Water lilly
Nokshi katha — A type of embroidered quilt
Masjid — Arabic word for mosque
