Citizens without soil: The untold story of Bangladesh’s Telugu community
At Jahangirnagar University School and College, the corridor comes alive with the chatter of teenagers as soon as the bell rings. Students walk out in small groups, laughing and talking as they make their way home.
Rishant Dev is one among them, a first-year intermediate student, with a schoolbag slung over one shoulder. His father, Apparao Jony, is finishing his shift as a cleaner in the university's TSC area. Dev never seems ashamed of his father's work. He greets his classmates comfortably. But when the conversation turns to the future, he becomes a bit thoughtful.
"When we study, we think education will change everything. But when people from our community apply for jobs, they first look at our surname." He says.
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"They see our title and decide some jobs are not meant for us."
The corridor empties. His father comes over — his uniform still damp from cleaning. Later, one of his uncles, Singampelli Ramdas, speaks.
"My daughter once asked me, 'Baba, I don't disturb anyone. Then why do my classmates not want to sit beside me?'" His voice lowers.
"I told her maybe it's because we are Hindu and they are Muslim." He pauses. "I feel sorry that I did not tell her the real reason."
Why?
"Because I was afraid she might stop going to school."
That silence — a father choosing a softer lie over a harder truth — is where this story begins.
This is a glimpse of the untold story of Bangladesh's Telugu community.
A community few know exists
For many Bangladeshis, the word "Telugu" arrives through cinema. South Indian films, dubbed into Bangla or Hindi, have carried the cadence of the language into living rooms across the country. Action heroes, dramatic dialogues, colourful festivals — these are familiar.
What remains unfamiliar is this: Telugu-speaking families have lived in Bangladesh for generations — not on screen, but in railway colonies, municipal quarters, tea gardens and narrow government housing blocks.
In Savar, near Jahangirnagar University, there is a small pocket known as Rangamati near Bishmile. Around 20 to 25 Telugu families live there, in modest quarters originally built for sanitation workers. The houses are functional, close together, their walls holding decades of quiet history.
Within Dhaka, larger clusters exist in Tikatuli, Gopibagh, Saidabad and Gabtoli. Beyond the capital, they are spread across Sylhet's tea gardens, in Pabna, in the Ishwardi Railway Colony near Paksey, and in Khulna. The geography of their presence follows the geography of labour — railways, municipalities and plantations.
Apparao Jony, 53, President of the Jahangirnagar Telugu Community and Organising Secretary of the Bangladesh Telugu Development Society, says their first challenge is not poverty or education. It is rather an existential crisis.
"Ask people in Dhaka if they know there is a Telugu community here," he says. "Most will say no."
He begins listing locations from memory, as if reciting a map few others have studied.
"In Dhaka, we are in Tikatuli, Gopibagh, Saidabad, Gabtoli, Jahangirnagar. Outside Dhaka — Sylhet has many, Paksey, Ishwardi, Pabna, Khulna and other places. Almost every district has some connection with us."
Where is the largest population?
"Sylhet," he replies instantly. "Slightly more than Dhaka."
Within the capital, he says, Tikatuli has the highest concentration — around 700 families.
"In Jahangirnagar community there are about 20 to 25 families. We have been here since 1972, from the early days when the office was inaugurated."
"We have Bangladeshi citizenship. We have rights," he says. "But our biggest crisis is landlessness. For more than 300 years we have lived here, yet we own no land."
More than three centuries — and still no soil to call their own.
"We depend on government jobs for housing," he continues. "If we lose the job, we lose the house. Where will we go then?
He also says the roots of the landlessness lie in a cycle of very low income passed down through generations. "The salaries were low, and they are still low. As most of the people followed the same professions as their parents for generations and earned almost the same income," he says. "Because of that cycle, almost no families could save enough money to buy land. Now land prices are so high that owning land feels like a distant dream."
In official documents, they are citizens. In everyday reality, their homes remain conditional — tied to employment, exposed to uncertainty.
How they came — and how they stayed
Tatpuri James, 47, who was raised in Khulna and now lives in the Jahangirnagar University–adjacent area in Savar, traces his community's history not through archives alone, but through memory — stories carried across generations, repeated in courtyards and during festivals.
"Based on what we have heard from our elders and from reading history," he says, choosing his words carefully, "about 350 to 400 years ago, during the Mughal period — before the British came — our ancestors were brought here."
He pauses, as if measuring the weight of centuries.
"There was famine in Andhra Pradesh. Crops failed, there was a food shortage. People were forced to migrate for survival."
In his telling, migration was not ambition. It was a necessity. Hunger pushed.
According to James, their ancestors were brought as forest-clearing labourers and for other forms of state-related work. Dense jungles needed to be cut back. Settlements needed to expand. Roads and later rail lines needed hands.
"During the Mughal era, our ancestors worked in jungle clearing, railway construction during British rule, and other government labour," he says. "Later, the British employed them as labourers, providing food and some wages. Gradually, our people began settling here."
His narrative stretches across empires, compressing Mughal administration and British industrial expansion into a single arc of labour. What remains constant in that arc is not the ruler — but the role.
Academic research, however, places organised migration more firmly within the 19th-century British colonial period, when railway networks expanded across Bengal and municipal sanitation systems became more formalised.
A 2016 study published in the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, titled 'Caste System and Resistance: The Case of Untouchable Hindu Sweepers in Bangladesh,' documents how Telugu and Kanpuri sweepers migrated during colonial rule and became embedded in municipal sanitation labour.
The study situates this migration within the rigid hierarchies of caste, showing how colonial authorities institutionalised occupational segregation. Sweepers were recruited from communities already stigmatised as "untouchable" in parts of India. Their labour became essential to colonial cities, yet their social mobility remained constrained.
In other words, what began as migration for survival hardened into structured occupation.
But within the community itself, Mughal-era migration remains part of inherited memory — a story told not to contest academic timelines, but to assert depth. To say: "we have been here longer than you think."
James does not argue with the scholars. He simply returns to what feels certain.
"What we know is this," he says. "We came as workers."
A faint smile crosses his face, not bitter, not triumphant just simply aware.
"And we remained workers."
The Pakistan period and 1971
James' recollection of the Pakistan period adds another, more complicated layer to the community's history — one shaped not only by labour, but by labels.
"During the Pakistan period, our community was called Bhangi," he says. The word, historically used across parts of South Asia to describe sanitation workers from so-called "untouchable" castes, carried both occupational meaning and social stigma. "It was an official term because many of us were involved in sanitation and construction."
The naming, he suggests, was not neutral. It fixed identity to profession. It narrowed the possibility.
"There was social separation," he continues. "Pakistan kept us socially separate. But there were some allowances."
The separation was structural — embedded in housing patterns, employment lines, and everyday interaction. Communities lived in designated quarters, tied to municipal or railway employment. Occupational identity passed from parent to child with little disruption. Yet, he notes, the period was not uniform in its treatment. There were certain protections, certain continuities of work. Stability, even if limited, came through service.
"In terms of citizenship, things were not clear," James says. "But before independence, the country itself was not free."
The ambiguity of belonging during the Pakistan era, he suggests, mirrored the ambiguity of the state itself. For many marginalised communities, the question of formal recognition was overshadowed by larger political currents. The nation was unsettled; so were its people.
When he speaks of 1971, his tone shifts — more reflective, more careful.
"Pakistani rulers did not heavily torture our community," he says. "They used us for certain work."
His words neither dramatise nor deny. They describe a position on the margins of conflict — not central to the political struggle, yet not entirely detached from it either.
At the same time, he insists, the community was not passive.
"From our family history, we know many freedom fighters took refuge in our homes," he says. "We helped them. Our profession never reduced our respect for them."
The image is quiet but powerful: homes in municipal quarters becoming temporary shelters; sanitation workers opening their doors to guerrilla fighters; solidarity forming across occupational and social divides.
Their contribution may not be widely recorded in mainstream histories, but within family narratives it is remembered as a point of dignity.
After independence, there was no mass return, no collective departure.
"Just as Bengalis love their motherland, we love this country," James says. "For six or seven generations we have lived here. This soil is ours."
For James and many like him, Bangladesh is not an adopted land. It is the only land they have known — a country where their ancestors laboured under empire, survived partition, witnessed liberation, and remained.
History may have called them by different names. Governments may have shifted. But through each era, they stayed — working, adapting, waiting for recognition that matches the depth of their roots.
The inheritance of a profession
In Dhaka, Telugu-speaking families became closely identified with sanitation work — sweeping streets, clearing drains, maintaining the city's invisible systems. In Ishwardi, many were absorbed into railway cleaning. In Sylhet, others found work in tea gardens, their labour following the infrastructure of the state.
Across districts, the pattern repeated: occupation became inheritance.
Sri Ram Das, 52, has worked at Jahangirnagar University for 32 years. His voice is steady, neither angry nor defeated — simply worn by repetition.
"My father worked in sanitation. I worked in sanitation," he says.
The sentence is factual. There is no shame in the work itself. What unsettles him is not the broom, but its persistence across generations.
"I struggled to educate my children," he says. "I am in a lower position, but I wanted something different for them."
He has two sons and one daughter. He lists their progress carefully, as if presenting evidence.
"My eldest passed SSC. Another is in Class Six. My daughter is studying too."
In their extended family, many have passed SSC, Intermediate, and even completed degrees. Education, once rare, is no longer the exception. Yet the promise attached to it feels fragile.
"But when our children study well and still don't get jobs, they feel ashamed," he says quietly.
He recounts one example, and this time the composure tightens.
"My son got a GPA of 4.66 in the HSC exam. His classmate got 3.5. Yet my son does not get an opportunity."
The numbers linger — 4.66 and 3.5 — not just as grades, but as a measure of expectation. His son went on to complete his Degree. He attended three or four interviews. Each time, hope rose and fell in the same motion.
"Still no proper job," Sri Ram says. "Finally, he was appointed as a sweeper."
"We have Bangladeshi citizenship. We have rights. But our biggest crisis is landlessness. For more than 300 years we have lived here, yet we own no land. We depend on government jobs for housing. If we lose the job, we lose the house. Where will we go then?"
He looks away as he says it, not because sanitation is dishonourable, but because it feels predetermined.
"In educational institutions, teachers' and drivers' children often progress," he continues. "But when a cleaner or sweeper's son passes Degree, he still does not get an opportunity."
The problem, in his telling, is not individual failure. It is structural repetition — a quiet ceiling that hovers even above certificates and transcripts.
If this pattern continues?
"Our children's future remains uncertain," he says.
Redirected back to the broom
The stories begin to overlap. Different men. Different districts. The same pattern.
One middle-aged member of the community recalls how his father once tried to step outside the occupational line drawn for him. He had applied for a clerical post — modest, but indoors, a desk instead of a drain.
"He was humiliated," the man says. "They told him he would only be given a sweeping job."
The rejection was not subtle. It was definitive. A boundary was marked. Soon after, his father was transferred. The message, he says, was clear enough without being written down.
Others describe similar moments — interviews for clerical assistant, office support staff, and lower-tier administrative roles. They prepared documents, ironed shirts, and carried certificates.
"When they see our address, they become suspicious," one says. "Tikatuli. Jahangirnagar City Colony. Rangamati. Verification gets stuck."
The addresses themselves function like signals: municipal colonies, railway quarters, sanitation lines — neighbourhoods historically tied to one kind of labour.
According to several community members, the suspicion often takes a particular shape. Employers, they believe, assume they might leave the country.
"They think maybe we will migrate to India," one says.
Apparao Jony responds to that assumption with visible frustration.
"But we have not gone to India in 400 years," he says firmly. "Why would we go now?"
The irony, he suggests, is sharp. Families who have lived in Bangladesh for generations are sometimes treated as if they are temporary, as if their roots are shallow.
Passport delays add another layer of difficulty.
"We face passport problems," Jony says. "Many times passports are delayed. Without land ownership, documentation becomes complicated."
Proof of address becomes proof of permanence. And when housing is tied to government employment rather than ownership, paperwork grows fragile. A job letter replaces a land deed. A municipal quarter stands in for property.
Landlessness, he repeats, is the root.
"For 400 years we have lived here. Now we have citizenship, yet we own no land."
The contradiction sits at the centre of their story: recognised as citizens, yet lacking the most basic marker of settlement — soil registered in their own name.
Without land, addresses remain conditional. Without stable addresses, documentation slows. When documentation slows, opportunities narrow. And when opportunities narrow, the cycle tightens again around the same professions their ancestors once entered out of famine and necessity.
They do not argue that sanitation work lacks dignity. What they question is why dignity must be confined to inheritance.
The city they help maintain each dawn rarely sees the paperwork that trails behind them — the stalled verifications, the delayed passports, the applications that never move forward once an address is read aloud.
Untouchability without saying the word
Bangladesh does not formally recognise caste hierarchy. On paper, there is no sanctioned system of graded inequality. Yet in practice, the occupational stigma attached to sanitation work often reproduces something painfully similar to caste-based marginalisation.
Apparao Jony does not pause when asked about it. "Earlier, tea shops would not serve us," he says quietly. "That has reduced now." The change, he admits, is real—but partial. The memory of exclusion still lingers in daily life, in small gestures and unspoken boundaries. "Most of our community works in sanitation," he adds. "We want our children to avoid this profession." It is not the work itself that shames them, but the way society reads the work—and, by extension, reads them.
What they ask for is simple and direct: fair recruitment and transparency. "No bribery, no corruption," one speaker says. "Jobs based on merit." Behind that demand is a deeper frustration: that identity often arrives before qualification. That an address, a surname, or a neighbourhood can quietly close doors.
A 2016 academic study on sweeper communities in Dhaka makes a similar point, arguing that discrimination is shaped not only by religion but also by older colonial labour arrangements, patterns of migration, economic dependency, and long-standing political marginalisation. History, in other words, continues to structure the present.
The lived experiences in the community echo that analysis. "They look at who we are," Sri Ram says. The sentence is simple, but it carries generations within it.
Language between home and school
At home, Telugu still lingers in the air — in the way elders call out to children, in the rhythm of evening prayers, in the quiet conversations that unfold after dinner. It survives in rituals, in wedding songs, in the observance of festivals passed down through generations. But beyond the threshold of the home, Bangla takes over. It is the language of schoolbooks, official forms, playground arguments, and public life.
James worries about what that shift means for the future. "Now the main question is how we can preserve our language, culture, and heritage," he says. For him, language is not only a tool of communication but a bridge to memory. "If we know our history, we understand our ancestors' struggles." Without that connection, he fears, the community risks losing not just words but a sense of origin.
The generational gap is already visible. Children move effortlessly between worlds, but not always equally. Dev admits it with shy honesty: "I understand Telugu. But I write in Bangla." Comprehension remains; fluency fades. The script grows unfamiliar. The vocabulary shrinks to what is spoken at home.
Cultural practices, too, set them apart from mainstream Bengali Hindu traditions. "Our festivals, like Makar Sankranti, are different," one elder explains, describing customs that do not always align with local observances. The fear is not dramatic, but steady and persistent. "If we scatter, our culture may disappear."
Around noon in the Rangamati colony near Jahangirnagar University, several homes begin preparing lunch at the same time. From different kitchens, the aroma of cooking drifts through the narrow lanes — noticeably different from the food typically prepared in Bengali households. "In almost every house here we still cook Telugu or South Indian food," says Singampelli Lakshmi. "Dishes like idli, dosa, and sometimes pulihora are common in our homes. We cook them the way our parents and grandparents taught us."
Many Telugu families in Bangladesh still rely on these traditional dishes in their daily meals. James says the influence of their cuisine is also visible beyond their homes. "If you go to Tikatuli in the morning, or to some of the other Telugu colonies in Dhaka, you will see idli being sold in small hotels," he says. "Many of our people start their day with the same food our ancestors ate."
Activism and constitutional promises
Since around 2005, parts of the community have stepped beyond quiet endurance and into organised advocacy. Some members began engaging in Dalit rights activism, attending workshops, forming networks, and speaking about their experiences in national and international forums. "We participated in international conferences," one speaker recalls. "NGOs trained us." For many, it was the first time their struggles were framed within a broader rights discourse.
Yet the momentum, they say, did not always translate into sustained empowerment. "They train us, but they do not fully support independent leadership," another member adds. The frustration is subtle but clear: awareness without structural backing, visibility without long-term institutional change.
In their conversations, constitutional language often surfaces. "Articles 23, 24, 26 — they speak about rights," one says, referring to provisions that address exploitation, cultural protection, and the supremacy of fundamental rights. "We want recognition as a minority community and full constitutional rights." For them, recognition is not symbolic. It is practical. It could mean targeted policy support, educational opportunities, job quotas, and protection from discrimination.
Recognition, they believe, would formalise what history has already shaped — a distinct community with its own language, customs, and lived marginalisation.
"We do not want sympathy," Apparao Jony says. His voice is steady, not confrontational. "We want dignity and recognition."
Women's quiet struggle
In a modest home in Jahangirnagar University, adjacent to the colony, lives a woman quietly fighting blood cancer. She was born in Jahangirnagar and has spent the past decade building her life there. Illness, however, has reshaped her days.
"I work at Jahangirnagar University as a cleaner," she says softly. "My salary is very poor." There is no self-pity in her voice, only a matter-of-fact acceptance of circumstance. She has three children, all studying at Jahangirnagar University School and College. Their education is her greatest hope — and her greatest financial strain.
"Treatment is expensive," she says. "We try." The sentence hangs in the air, heavy with effort.
For many women in the community, options remain narrow. They either take up sanitation work like their husbands and fathers or stay at home managing households. Very few move into higher-paying or administrative positions. "Language barriers and limited health awareness stop many women," one community member explains. Without fluency in Bangla or English, navigating hospitals, public offices, or job markets becomes daunting. Without sustained health education, preventable conditions often worsen before treatment begins.
There were attempts to address this. Around 2005, women's health awareness programmes were introduced. Workshops were held; information was shared. But the momentum faded. "They stopped," she says. "NGOs come occasionally. However, they don't give any permanent solution." As a result, temporary interventions replaced long-term planning.
James says that some workers receive limited benefits through their employment. "Around 70 percent of our people who work in these jobs have some kind of insurance through their workplace," he says. "But the coverage is small. When someone becomes seriously ill, families still struggle to manage the treatment costs."
Here, marginalisation is not an abstract academic term. It is visible in hospital bills that cannot be paid easily, in schools that feel socially distant, and in housing that clusters communities into the same corners decade after decade. It is medical. It is educational. It is residential. And it is lived, every day.
Between hope and exhaustion
James returns, again and again, to the question of identity. For him, it is not abstract; it is lived. "For six or seven generations we have lived here," he says, his voice steady. "Our identity and history are firmly preserved within our society." There is no hesitation in the way he speaks of belonging. They do not see themselves as outsiders, nor as guests in someone else's land. "Just as Bengalis love their motherland, we love this country."
Sri Ram nods in agreement, carrying the thought forward. The past, he admits, cannot be rewritten. "We cannot change yesterday," he says quietly. "But maybe we can change tomorrow." It is a sentence that holds both resignation and resolve.
Dev, younger, listens as the adults talk about recognition, documents, and rights. But his measure of hope is more personal, more fragile. "I have dreams like everyone," he says. Then he pauses, searching for words that seem heavier than his age. "But sometimes I feel maybe growing up within four walls is our destiny."
His father answers not with anger, but with quiet determination. "We will not stop sending them to school," he says. "Whatever happens."
The city and the unseen hands
Every morning, before most of Dhaka has stirred awake, sanitation workers are already at work. They sweep the roads, clear clogged drains, and lift away the city's refuse. Along railway tracks, others scrub and sort. Far away in Sylhet, tea leaves are plucked at first light.
The city functions because someone maintains it. Its rhythm depends on hands that begin long before sunrise.
For more than a century—perhaps longer, if oral histories are to be believed—many of those hands have belonged to Telugu-speaking families. They arrived as labourers. They cleared forests and laid railway lines. They swept streets and maintained cantonments. In 1971, some sheltered freedom fighters. After independence, they did not leave. They stayed.
They built lives without owning land. They raised children who earned degrees, only to find that qualifications do not always open doors. Sometimes those degrees circle back to the same broom their fathers once held.
In narrow lanes tucked behind government buildings, they celebrate Makar Sankranti. Children fly kites between concrete walls. At school, they speak Bangla. At home, they speak Telugu. In official forms and interviews, they speak about something more complicated—citizenship, explained and re-explained.
"The city knows our work," Sri Ram once said quietly. "But it does not always know our names."
The question is no longer whether they belong here. Generations have been born and buried on this soil. Their histories are woven into the making of the city itself.
The question now is whether belonging will finally translate into recognition: into land rights instead of temporary quarters, into documentation that does not trigger suspicion, into recruitment processes where merit matters more than address, into jobs that match education.
Until then, the city will continue to shine each morning—its streets washed and swept by people whose names most residents will never know.
And in a quiet corridor after school, a boy named Dev will bend over his books, studying carefully, hoping that one day, when someone reads his name, they will see not a label, not an inherited occupation, but a future wide enough to choose.
Recognition, rights and dignity
On election day in 2026, many members of the Telugu community stood in the same long lines as millions of other Bangladeshis. When they returned home, the dark voting ink on their fingers carried a quiet sense of pride.
For many, it had been years since they had last felt their voice mattered in the country's political process.
Apparao Jony, president of the Jahangirnagar Telugu Community, held up his ink-marked finger and reflected on what the moment meant.
"We voted," he says. "This country is ours too."
Members of the community say their demands are not extraordinary. They are not asking for sympathy or charity. What they seek, they say, are rights that should already belong to them as citizens who have lived in this land for generations.
One of their main concerns is the preservation of language and culture. Within their homes, Telugu still survives in conversations, rituals, and festivals. But outside those walls, Bangla dominates schools, offices, and public life. Community leaders fear that without institutional support, the language may gradually disappear among younger generations.
They say official recognition of the Telugu language would help preserve their cultural heritage. Establishing Telugu-medium schools, appointing trained teachers, and providing textbooks in their mother tongue could allow children to grow up connected both to their roots and to the broader society around them.
Employment is another urgent concern. Many community members say they want recruitment processes that value merit rather than background. Degrees and qualifications, they argue, should carry more weight than addresses linked to sanitation colonies or municipal quarters.
"No bribery, no corruption," one community member says. "Jobs based on merit."
They also emphasise the need for vocational and technical training so that younger generations can move into a wider range of professions beyond the occupations historically associated with their community.
Housing remains perhaps the most immediate challenge. Many Telugu families still live in government quarters tied to municipal or institutional jobs. Losing employment can mean losing shelter.
For families who have lived in Bangladesh for centuries, the absence of land ownership remains a painful contradiction. Community members say special housing initiatives in cities and municipalities, allocation of government land for landless families, and proper rehabilitation plans are necessary to break that cycle of uncertainty. They also stress that no Telugu settlement should be removed without fair resettlement.
Above all, they say they seek equal rights, equal dignity, and full recognition as citizens of Bangladesh.
