After a two-year hiatus, students are working to reestablish a cultural organization to create a community for Bengali students on campus.
Leaders of the Bengali Student Association said they plan on collaborating with organizations like the South Asian Society and the Elliott School of International Affairs South Asian Board — a graduate student organization that focuses on South Asian politics — throughout the academic year to increase their visibility within the student body. Junior and BSA Co-President Ayaan Syed said he and other executive board members wanted to reestablish the organization to create a space for Bengali students to celebrate their culture and talk about the state of the country’s political system after recent natural disasters and mass protests.
“We just felt like there was no space for us,” Syed said. “Obviously, there’s South Asian [Society], but there’s something different when it’s just Bengali people.”
The organization first launched during the fall of 2019 and remained active until the end of the 2021-22 school year, according to their Instagram page.
Syed said the group will have to reapply to be a student organization when applications open in October, which requires a roster of 10 students, attendance at an information session and a constitution of the organization’s mission before applying. He said after messaging a former member on Instagram, he learned the organization became inactive in 2022 because its membership mostly consisted of seniors that academic year and they were unable to garner enough interest among underclassmen to continue.
He said he wanted to revive the organization since his first year at GW in 2022, but was motivated to do it this year after he “fell in love” with his native country during a trip to Bangladesh this past summer.
Syed said he has not met a large population of Bengali students on campus. But, after restarting the organization’s Instagram page last month, students and organizations like SAS reposted their post in the middle of August, which he said increased the group’s visibility among students and will hopefully attract enough students to join.
He said the group is also planning on hosting a “chai night” for attendees to share Bangladesh’s version of the South Asian tea, which Syed believes is slightly different from India and Pakistan’s, which commonly includes more spices.
“We have our own little spices and flavors to it,” Syed said. “It would be fun to show people our tea and food.”
Syed said the BSA also plans on hosting multiple cultural events for members including “dawats,” an Urdu and Hindi term for feast. He said he hopes the dawats will allow students to immerse themselves in Bengali culture through food, music and games.
Syed said the executive board members have been focusing their efforts on recruiting underclassmen to protect its longevity and garnering support from larger organizations like SAS to promote their group, like advertising on their social media pages and putting up flyers on campus.
Last month, a student-led movement ousted the country’s former prime minister and more than 600 people were killed during the weeks of protests and clashes between law enforcement and students. He said the group will collaborate with the ESIA South Asian Board to host a panel next month on Bangladesh’s politics with panelists Mushfiqul Fazal, a U.S. based Bengali journalist, and Amna Qayyum, a historian of international affairs.
BSA communications chair Mehek Laskur said 21 people attended BSA’s first interest meeting in District House on Sept. 6.
“I never knew we had this many Bengalis overall, because in my high school we had a few Bengalis — not really a community, so I’m glad that we have a community now,” Laskur said.
Laskur said the group plans to grow their executive board so current leaders can divide tasks for officially reestablishing the group and organizing events and collaborations with other student organizations.
Junior Labibah Haque, the BSA co-president, said she wanted to create a space where she could connect with other Bengali people in the D.C. metropolitan area through programming. Haque said she hopes the organization’s revival will increase representation of the Bengali community on campus.
“I feel like Bengali students don’t have as much representation as the Indian Student Association or the Pakistani Student Association,” Haque said. “We’re different, and I feel like we’re just underrepresented, and so we need that.”
Junior Sefat Fatema, the BSA secretary, said the group also plans on hosting fundraisers to provide monetary relief to Bengalis, and the group’s cultural and political outreach events will support a Bengali student population that is often underrepresented within the South Asian community on campus.
“We just wanted a community for us to celebrate our culture and our traditions and whatnot, because they have South Asian ones, but I feel like Bengali students are not as recognized as Indian or Pakistani students, just in the community right now,” Fatema said.
Ashvini Selvanayagam, the president of SAS, said she hopes to collaborate with the group to increase outreach to South Asian students on campus.
“It gives me hope for the future of these smaller South Asian populations for having representation at GW and being able to create a space and accentuate their own voices,” Selvanayagam said.
Selvanayagam said she hopes the BSA can be a part of and create programming for the South Asian Heritage Celebration, a monthlong series of events each year in March to showcase South Asian culture. She said having a niche group within the broader South Asian community on campus will encourage more people to get involved and encourage representation.
“I think having a specific smaller group not only emphasizes their voices, but I think brings to light issues that are important to them, especially with South Asian activism,” Selvanayagam said.
Sophomore Thea Mahboob said she attended the interest meeting after learning about the group through an executive board member who was tabling for SAS at the Multicultural Student Services Center Block Party at the end of last month. Mahboob said she didn’t meet other Bengali students before the MSSC Block Party and attending the interest meeting made her feel at home at GW.
“I definitely feel like I have some sort of a community,” Mahboob said.
