In a house in the Patrokhola tea garden of Kamalganj Upazila, Moulvibazar, an old nagara lies quietly. Its skin has thinned with age, its body bears the marks of long use, and the sound it once carried through ceremonies and gatherings is rarely heard today.

Its keeper, Robi Munda, has no intention of allowing that sound to disappear.

Dressed in traditional white clothing and a turban, Robi holds the large drum close, a wooden stick poised in his hand. The instrument shows its age plainly. Yet what he is holding is more than an object inherited from another time. It is part of his family's history, a link to generations before him and one of the surviving traces of a cultural world that is gradually receding from everyday life.

"This is a nagara," he says.

There was a time when little explanation was necessary. People in his community knew the instrument, knew its sound and knew the occasions on which it should be played. The nagara accompanied religious and Vedic rituals as well as the social and cultural gatherings around which community life revolved.

Robi did not learn of the instrument from a book or a museum display. He inherited its tradition within his family. His father played it, as did his grandfather before him. In that sense, the drum has travelled through generations not simply as a possession, but as a living practice.

The world around it, however, has changed.

Musical tastes have shifted, ceremonies have evolved and other instruments have gradually taken its place. As the khol and other forms of musical accompaniment became more common, the nagara began to retreat from community life.

Robi says many people today no longer recognise the instrument. Some even laugh when they see it.

He has nevertheless kept the old drum carefully preserved and, importantly, playable. For him, preservation does not mean placing an object somewhere safe and allowing it to gather dust. An instrument survives through being played.

That distinction matters particularly for communities whose traditions have historically been transmitted from one generation to another through practice, memory and participation.

Members of the Munda community live in different parts of Bangladesh, including tea garden areas and the Sundarbans region. Their cultural life encompasses a range of festivals, songs, dances and rituals, including Jhumur Gaan, Jahanda, Karam, Sarhul, Nawa-Khawa, Ban Pahari and Bansati.

Music has long been woven into many of these occasions. During pujas, festivals and social gatherings, Jhumur songs and dances come alive to the rhythms of drums and madals. Instruments such as the madal, nagara, kartal and manjira have accompanied celebrations and rituals across generations, helping communities express both belonging and continuity.

The nagara is built to produce a deep, resonant sound. Traditionally, animal hide is stretched tightly across a round, bowl-shaped body, which may be made of iron, clay or another metal. Buffalo or camel hide is commonly used for the drumhead, while interlocking ropes secure the skin and maintain the tension needed to produce its characteristic beat.

But understanding how the instrument is made explains only part of its significance.

Traditional instruments are also repositories of memory. Their sounds are associated with particular ceremonies, seasons, gatherings and moments in people's lives. They accompany rituals, mark celebrations and provide the rhythm to which songs and dances are performed. Through repeated use, they become embedded in the social memory of a community.

When such an instrument disappears from everyday life, therefore, the loss is not merely musical.

For the Munda community, this question has become increasingly urgent as elements of language, culture and inherited tradition face the risk of fading away. Modernisation does not necessarily erase older traditions, but it can gradually loosen the circumstances that once kept them alive. A ritual becomes less common, a song is sung less frequently, an instrument is replaced, and eventually a younger generation may encounter something their grandparents considered ordinary as if it were an artefact from a distant past.

II

Baishakhi Debborma had always wanted to wear her grandmother's jewellery.

Growing up in Tripura Palli in Dulubari village of Sreemangal, Moulvibazar, the schoolgirl had seen the old ornaments that belonged to another generation of women in her family. She wanted to wear them as her grandmother once had, carrying a small piece of that history with her.

But time had already taken its toll.

Some of the ornaments had been buried underground for safekeeping and were badly damaged. Others had disappeared altogether. What remained was too fragile to wear.

Baishakhi, however, found another way.

She asked her grandmother how such ornaments were made. From her, she learnt that jewellery resembling the traditional pieces could be fashioned from coins. Baishakhi began making her own and now wears them at Tripura community events.

"I really wanted to wear my grandmother's jewellery," she says. "But it is now ruined. So, after learning from my grandmother, I made jewellery using coins."

For Baishakhi, the new ornaments are not substitutes without meaning. Their value comes from the knowledge passed from grandmother to granddaughter and from the connection they allow her to maintain with her Tripura heritage.

Traditional jewellery, she says, is rarely seen in her area now. Changing lifestyles and concerns about safety have discouraged many women from wearing such ornaments regularly. Many families no longer possess the old pieces at all.

"It would have been better if I could wear the original jewellery," Baishakhi says. "But when I wear what I have made, I feel like I am holding on to my Tripura culture and cherishing it in my heart."

Elsewhere in Moulvibazar, old jewellery tells a more melancholy story.

At Lungla Tea Garden in Kulaura, elderly Koloti Luhar keeps ornaments that have travelled through several generations of her family. She wore them at her wedding. Before her, they belonged to her mother, and before that, to her grandmother.

Once part of weddings, festivals, songs and dances, the pieces now remain largely untouched. Younger women in the family have moved to cities and adopted different ways of life.

"After I'm gone, no one will even recognise these," Koloti says.

Her fear reaches beyond a box of jewellery. Across many of Bangladesh's lesser-known ethnic communities, objects once woven into everyday life are becoming unfamiliar even to younger generations.

Rights activist Liton Ganju of Patrokhola Tea Garden points to ornaments called hansli, hansuli or haikel among different communities. The names vary, but the pieces reflect cultural traditions that have developed alongside one another over generations.

Some have disappeared; others survive because weddings, festivals and rituals still require them.

III

By the time the Harmony Festival, held from June 19 to 21, 2026, formally began at Phulchhara Tea Garden, people were already streaming towards the field. Tea bushes stretched deep green beneath the monsoon sky, while towering shade trees offered some protection from the sweltering afternoon heat. Rain the previous night had soaked the ground; with every footstep, muddy water rose through the grass.

Under the sprawling festival pandal was another landscape altogether: one made of objects, memories and traditions.

Representatives of 27 ethnic communities had gathered alongside Bengali visitors, bringing with them ornaments, agricultural implements, household objects, clothing and food. The Oraon, Shabar, Ganju, Kara, Gaur, Tripura, Kanda, Telugu, Rikiashon, Baraik, Kharia, Manipuri, Santal, Garo and Khasia were among those represented.

Placed side by side, the collections revealed something striking. Communities with different histories and identities often possessed ornaments remarkably similar in shape, function and even name. The hansli, hansuli and haikel, for instance, appeared in different forms across several traditions, suggesting histories of proximity, exchange and shared cultural landscapes.

But the tables also revealed how much is being lost.

The Santal display included natuni, worn on the feet, bracelets, hansli necklaces, earrings and khoppar hairpins. Swapan Santal said many such ornaments are rapidly disappearing from use among Santals in the Sylhet region.

At the Kondo table, the story extended beyond jewellery. There was a marua, a wooden device for threshing rice or wheat, alongside agricultural tools and ornaments including khaksa, baju, kanka and garmol. Rabin Kondo said many now emerge from storage mainly for weddings and ceremonies.

The Gaur collection was particularly extensive, ranging from Shirbandi or Vindiya headpieces, Kharu bracelets and Hansuli necklaces to cooking vessels, a sickle, winnowing tray and traditional bow and arrow. Srikantha Gaur said many survive for one practical reason: custom still demands their presence at weddings. Without them, certain ceremonies cannot proceed.

That fragile relationship between ritual and survival appeared repeatedly across the pandal.

At the Rikiashon table, two young women sat writing down the names of traditional objects, documenting knowledge that could otherwise disappear with those who still remember it. Sonali Rikiashon pointed to clay objects used in weddings and rituals.

"We preserve what still needs to be used," she said. "The rest is being lost."

Others are trying to intervene before that happens. Sanchita Baraik has been collecting traditional ornaments herself, even as rising costs make them increasingly difficult to produce. "Our ancestors used them, and they carry our history and traditions into the present generation," she said.

Laxman Munda of the Greater Sylhet Munda Samaj Kalyan Parishad sees the same pattern. Many Munda ornaments, he said, survive principally because customary practices still require them.

For now, necessity is keeping parts of this material culture alive. But necessity, too, can disappear.

Bangladesh Tourism Board chief executive Md Abdur Rouf said plans are under way for a cultural village where regular practice and cultural programmes could help preserve these traditions while drawing visitors.

"The goal of this festival is to preserve this culture," he said.

Across the pandal, however, preservation was already taking place in smaller ways: in an ornament brought from home, an old tool placed on a table, and two young women carefully writing down the names of things that generations before them never imagined would need to be recorded.
 

Mintu Deshwara is a journalist at The Daily Star

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