Bengali, or Bangla as it is also known by, can be used to describe people originating from Bengal, a region at the tip of the Bay of Bengal, located in South Asia. This region in present day encompasses West Bengal, a state of the Republic of India, as well as the country of Bangladesh (Khondker 2008). “Bengali” can also refer to the language of the same name, which has some origins in Sanskrit (Khondker 2008)

Th primary educational institutions for Bengali include the Bengali Literary and Language Society (BLLS), as well as the Bengali Language and Cultural Foundation (BLCF)

Timeline

1913 → The earliest records of Bengali professionals migrating to Singapore.

1956 → The Bengali Association of Singapore, or BAS, was set up by migrants from the Bengali-speaking parts of India. Religious ceremonies were commonly event, along with other cultural events in the Bengali calendar. Membership however, was not limited to Bengalis from India. Some Bangladeshis were members and even held positions of authority within the association

1960s-1970s → Political strife in the soon-to-be independent People’s Republic of Bangladesh caused challenges in forming a sense of Bengali identity among the Bengali diaspora in Singapore.

1971 → The People’s Republic of Bangladesh becomes an independent country.

1977 → A local Singaporean Bangladeshi businessman attempts to establish an association for Bengalis, which was turned down by the Registry of Societies on the reasoning that there was already an association for Bengalis in Singapore.

1981 → The Singapore Bangladeshi Society (SBS) was successfully created by a group of Bangladeshi academics, headed by Dr M. A. Aziz, an engineering professor from the National University of Singapore (NUS) who served as SBS’s President for the first five years of the organisation.

1990 → NTIL students can sit for their Mother Tongue “O” Levels in the five approved NTIL languages (Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Urdu).

1994 → NTIL students can sit for their Mother Tongue Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLEs) in the five approved NTIL languages (Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Urdu). In the same year, the Bengali Literary and Language Society (BLLS) was created as an educational institution for Bengali language students to take classes on Saturdays.

1980s-1990s → Tens of thousands of Bangladeshi workers began to migrate to Singapore amidst a period of increased demand for construction projects in Singapore. This third wave of Bangladeshi diaspora brought up further questions about race, regional and communal differences within the Bengali-speaking community.

The “Bengali” and “Bangladeshi” divide

With the establishment of the different Bengali associations in Singapore, it reflects the divide within the Bengali community in Singapore. Early Bengali-speaking migrants to the small island had to meld into the larger Singaporean population at large, as there were no formal educational schools dedicated to the teaching of Bengali (Khondker 2011).

For those who migrated from Bangladesh after it gained its independence in 1971, they began to see themselves as “Bangladeshis”, in order to differentiate themselves from the Bengalis who migrated from West Bengal (Khondker 2008). It also manifests in the separate associations: BAS and SBS. This division, primarily based on nationality, led to limited social interaction between the two groups for over a decade after SBS’s founding (Khondker 2008). It should be noted here also that the working Bangladeshi population from 1980s-1990s are quite distinct from the larger Bengali-speaking community in Singapore, with them celebrating Bengali cultural events in their own communes across the island.

1990 was a crucial year in the relationship between the two organisations, as the officialisation of Bengali as a second language by the Ministry of Education paved the grounds for a Bengali school to be established. Bengali could finally be an official language learnt in schools for a new generation of Bengali-speaking children. Conflicts arose however, over the school's direction, with one group advocating for a focus on Bengali language education and another promoting Bangladeshi nationalism (Khondker 2008). This disagreement led to a division within the community, resulting in the formation of a new school focused solely on language education, BLLS (Khondker 2008).

The creation of BLLS brought the Bengali-speaking community together, across regional lines, from Bangladeshi & West Bengal. Cultural events held by the school achieved this to a large effect, fostering closer ties between the two subgroups within the confines of the school grounds. However, the social dynamics and frictions between these two subgroups still dictates a large part of the Bengali-speaking community in Singapore until present day.

Bengali-speaking community in Singapore today

In present-day Singapore, Bengalis can be found in diverse sectors, including information technology, finance, healthcare, education, and engineering.