The haors lie downstream. Hence, the region is known as Bhati-Bangla—the Bengal of the lowlands. Upstream, to the northeast, rise the hills of India. Meghalaya’s Cherrapunji and Bangladesh’s Sreemangal are among the rainiest places in the region, and the haors sit directly beneath this rain-soaked landscape. When rainwater rushes down from the hills, people here call it the upstream hilly torrent. In the haor’s own vocabulary, the flood created by this sudden rush is Afal. When storms and strong winds whip the haor water into violent waves, they are called Afarmara waves.

Life in Bhati-Bangla was once intimate with the arithmetic of upstream and downstream water. Echoes of that knowledge live in the Mymensingh Gitika and the old Baromasi songs of Sylhet. Water rolled down from the hills and entered the haor below. Its arrival was like the coming of a naiori—a daughter returning to her father’s home. This naiori of water stayed through the monsoon, then left the region through the many rivers and channels, heading to the sea. In that long journey from hill to sea, the haor received the special touch of the Baishakhi waters. That touch carried no blow, no agony, no deceit of sudden submergence. Now, year after year, the haors drown.

During the British colonial period, Robert Lindsay came from Europe to Sylhet to make his fortune. Through influence, favour, and colonial patronage, he ruled Sylhet for twelve years. Yet in Lindsay’s descriptions of downstream Sylhet and northeastern India, there is no sign of haors repeatedly swallowed by hilly torrents. He wrote instead of the deep forests of the haor region.

Alongside the beel, kanda, jangal, and hatibandha villages, swamp forests were among the defining features of the haors. The Korocher bag, Hijoler bag, Nol-notar bon, and Ikor-atiyar bon were familiar names in the haor’s own dictionary. Just as the Meghalaya hills were covered with mixed rainforests, the haors had their swamp forests. Those ancient forests have now almost disappeared. Once, the Forest Department even had a dedicated Swamp Forest Office in the haor region. Today, only a few weakened remnants survive: Khortir Jongol and Lokkhi Baor in Baniachong, Habiganj; Ratargul in Sylhet; and Tanguar Haor in Sunamganj.

The story of these lost forests is inseparable from the story of the haors’ submergence and the crisis now taking shape. From the Kalbaishakhi storms of Chaitra and Baishakh onward, rain fell relentlessly over the upstream forests before rolling down toward the lowlands. In those hill forests, dense layers of wild vines, grasses, shrubs, and trees slowed the rainwater, keeping it from rushing directly into the haors below.

Through the forests, rainwater descended from upstream to downstream as if filtered, as if slowly seeped through. The haor people knew the namota of these hilly torrents by heart—their rhythm, timing, and manner of descent. Each haor sits at a different geographical distance from the hills. People could calculate how long it would take the torrent to reach Matian or Kharchar Haor after entering Tanguar Haor. By reading the pattern and arrangement of clouds, elders began preparing for the Afal.

That older hydrological order has been broken. Across the Bangladesh border, in the forested hills of northeast India, natural forests have been destroyed for multinational mining projects. Downstream, the haor’s swamp forests once reduced the force of the torrent and weakened the violence of the current. The Koroch-Hijol bag and tree enclosures around villages acted as natural shields against the rush of water. Bontulshi, Dholkolmi, Chapra grass, Binnachuba, wild roses, and thorn bushes helped slow the flood.

Most of the haor’s swamp forests have disappeared with agricultural expansion and new settlements. The Nol-nota and Ikor forests were cleared to supply raw materials for the pulp factory in Sylhet. Today, the natural forests upstream and downstream of the haors are gravely diminished, endangered, and in many places gone.

The Meghalaya hills, meanwhile, have been hollowed out by continuous coal and limestone extraction. Now, even a light spell of rain can send parts of those hills collapsing into the haors of Bangladesh. What descends from upstream is no longer only water. It is mountain sand, stone, and gravel. At the same time, in the name of crop-protection embankments in the downstream haors, kanda and high jangal lands are being cut down one after another.

The result is a double accumulation. From upstream come sand and stone; from downstream come the piles of earth raised for embankments. Together, they gather in the haors and rivers. The belly of the wetlands and rivers has risen. The haor no longer has enough space to hold rainwater or the force of the hilly torrent. So the haors flood, stagnate, and sink. A new disaster is being created: a waterlogged flood.

To address the crisis of the sinking haors, forests in both upstream and downstream areas must be protected. Bangladesh must safeguard the swamp forests of its own haor region. It must also pursue stronger transboundary diplomacy with India to protect the upstream forests on which the life of Bhati-Bangla depends.

The Koroch-Hijol bag and tree enclosures around villages acted as natural shields against the rush of water. Bontulshi, Dholkolmi, Chapra grass, Binnachuba, wild roses, and thorn bushes helped slow the flood. Most of the haor’s swamp forests have disappeared with agricultural expansion and new settlements.

From the Khandava forest of the Mahabharata to the contemporary Amazon, forests have burned in the flames of greed. They have been set ablaze by those who arrived from outside, driven by hunger for land, profit, and possession.

In the 1950s, many homeless people displaced during the Bangal Khedao movement in Assam took shelter in the reserved forests of Sunamganj. It was then that fire was set to this historic forest. For seven days and seven nights, the ancient forest burned. By the time the flames died, a forest that had stood for generations had vanished from the world. In this way, the deep Ikor-atiya forest was turned by settlers from outside into cultivable agricultural land.

Accounts speak of the Laur and Maharam forests stretching for nearly fifty miles along the foothills of Meghalaya’s West Khasi Hills, bordering Dharmapasha, Tahirpur, and Bishwamvarpur in Sunamganj. This forest, known locally as the Ikor-atiyar jongol, was rich with Nol, Nota, Khag, Ikor, Kash, Binnachuba, Bontulshi, wild roses, Chhon, cane, and bamboo. In the wetlands grew the bag of Hijol, Koroch, Borun, Kodom, and Murta.

This was a dense, living forest. Tigers, leopards, civets, porcupines, pangolins, bears, boars, foxes, deer, pythons, buffaloes, fishing cats—known locally as tara bagh—and many rare birds could be seen there.
In 1700, Khwaja Osman, the last independent zamindar of Bengal, reached Sylhet through the Laur jongol. After the partition, the forest began to decline rapidly. In Manigar Norkhadok, published by Muktadhara in 1988, editor Khalil Chowdhury wrote:

“At one time, people from the downstream areas of Kishoreganj, Netrokona, and Sunamganj would come to cut Ikor, Chhon, Nol, cane, and bamboo from this forest. During the Pakistan period, groups of people from Mymensingh, Tangail, Netrokona, Kishoreganj, Noakhali, and Cumilla came, bought forest land at nominal prices, and became involved in the destruction of the forest.”

With the disappearance of the haor’s swamp forests, many rare fish species, including Nanid and Loch, have vanished. Through an unjust, profit-driven leasing system, and by legitimising commercial fish farms, the last remaining swamp forests and Hijol bag have been pushed toward death.

The roaming grounds and habitats of wildlife and migratory birds are now under threat. In the once-famous feeding and resting grounds of the Kura bird, there are no longer enough trees for birds to perch on. The loss of swamp forests is creating a new crisis in local land management and land use—one that is producing new conflicts.

These forests once held rare wild fruits, including Monkanta, Defol, Lukluki, Gab, and Bonboroi. For the indigenous Hajong, Banai, and Mandi communities along the haor banks, these forests carried immense importance in traditional medicine and spiritual practice. Even today, many ancient jongol and trees in the haor are preserved as sacred sites of worship.

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There is a deep relationship between the ancient swamp forests and the indigenous deep-water rice varieties of the haor. Rice varieties such as Gochi, Rata, Tepi, Jagali Boro, Godalaki, Kachalot, Lakhai, and Hatibandha once received the touch of water flowing through these swamp forests. Their life was tied to the movement, rhythm, and quality of that water.

Protecting the swamp forests is therefore not only an environmental necessity. These forests are intertwined with the life and nature of the haor people in natural, social, spiritual, cultural, and economic ways.

The state must have the courage and sensitivity to hear, within the sinking haors, the lament of the lost swamp forests. A national framework for haor protection must be strengthened by recognising and honouring the complex relationship between haor life and the swamp forests that once sustained it.

Pavel Partha, an ecology and biodiversity conservation researcher, is the director at Bangladesh Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge (BARCIK). He can be reached at [email protected].

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