The Brahmanbaria you don’t read about

In the mainstream imagination of modern Bangladesh, Brahmanbaria has fallen victim to a flattened narrative. In media commentary and social media discourse, the district is routinely caricatured as a region overtaken by religious hardliners—a symbolic battleground where a once secular, culturally vibrant Bangladesh has allegedly regressed into an intolerant landscape where tablas and harmoniums are smashed, and public life is policed by madrasa students.

This image is not without origin. The district has been the site of troubling incidents that made national and international headlines. It was here that madrasa students vandalized and torched the Ustad Alauddin Khan music school, a cultural institution named after one of Bengal’s greatest classical music maestros. 

That attack on the legacy of Ustad Alauddin Khan and his legendary brothers—pioneers who elevated the subcontinental raga tradition—sent shockwaves through the country’s cultural elite.

Brahmanbaria’s legacy in Islamist politics is pretty evident. It is the birthplace and final resting place of Fakhre Bangal Maulana Tajul Islam, a foundational figure whose ideological footprint paved the way for groups like Hefazat-e-Islam. He founded an early version of the same group in the 1960s. The Jamia Islamia Yunusia madrasa, where he taught, stands as a reminder of his influence. 

His lifelong campaign to officially declare the Ahmadiyya community as non-Muslim continues to reverberate across the country, echoed as recently as last week when Hefazat’s leadership renewed the same demand.

Yet, to reduce Brahmanbaria to these flashpoints is to mistake the loudest voices for the entire choir. When visiting the district, one discovers a more complex, resilient, and thriving society—a reality this writer saw first hand during a visit to Brahmanbaria city late last year. My daylong trip to the city and rural parts of the low-lying district made it clear that the public perception of Brahmanbaria is misunderstood.

Behind the rather ‘clickbait-y and dramatic’ headlines lies an ingrained syncretic and Sufi heritage. Brahmanbaria holds the distinction of being home to the second-highest concentration of Sufi shrines in Bangladesh, trailing only Chittagong. Recently, while headlines were dominated by reports of madrasa students protesting a police concert in the city center, a different reality was unfolding a few miles away in Akhaura. 

At the 14th-century shrine of Syed Ahmad Gesu Daraz, popularly known as Kalla Shah, over half a million devotees gathered at the Kharampur Mazar for the annual Urs. They came from all walks of life to celebrate one of the most revered Sufi saints of the Bengal Delta, filling the air with devotional music, prayers, and communal feasts.

This syncretic culture has endured. When extremists attacked the Kharampur shrine with crude bombs in 2004, killing a devotee, the violence temporarily stunned the community, halting rituals and prayers. Yet within a couple of years, the shrine sprang back to life, remaining today one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the country. 

Far from ceding ground to hardliners, rural Brahmanbaria has seen the construction of dozens of new Sufi shrines in recent decades, while long-established traditions, such as the annual Urs of Sufi Abdul Gani Shah, continue to draw devoted crowds year after year.

The persistence of the district’s cultural soul is equally evident at the Ustad Alauddin Khan music school itself. Though attacked and damaged, the institution was never destroyed in spirit. It remains one of the largest classical music and arts academies outside Dhaka. Step inside its courtyard today, and you will find young boys and girls practicing vocal ragas, learning traditional dance forms, and tuning stringed instruments—a daily act of cultural defiance.

Economically and socially, Brahmanbaria is a story of mobility and aspiration. It stands as one of Bangladesh’s most successful migration hubs. Hundreds of thousands of its natives live and work across Western nations, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. The inflow of remittances has transformed the district, fueling an expanding urban center where families invest heavily in the next generation. 

Travelers arriving in Brahmanbaria City are often struck not by religious austerity, but by the concentration of coaching centers packed with young students preparing for competitive medical and public university entrance exams.

Brahmanbaria should not be defined by the village feuds over land that occasionally spark local clashes, nor by the noise of hardline factions seeking political leverage. Its identity belongs to its educated youth, its migrant-backed economy, and a centuries-old tapestry of musical heritage and Sufi devotion that refuses to be erased.

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Shafiqul Alam is the Editor of Daily Waadaa