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| Father Alex. |
We meet him at the St. Andrew’s Parish
Mission in Diglakona village of Jamalpur’s Bakshiganj. It’s
occasional-wild-elephant country up that way, in the dreamy lower hills
adjacent to the Meghalayan border. The villagers are harvesting cassava. It’s a
sunny afternoon.
There’s a shady sitting place in the
grounds and we wait. After a few minutes Alejandro Rabanal, better known as
Father Alex, wanders down. He’s sporting a bright orange t-shirt and casual
trousers – formal attire is hardly a daily affair in Diglakona. His hair is
grey yet his face looks surprisingly fresh and untroubled by time. It’s only as
he starts to speak of his experiences that it truly becomes apparent that his
age – well, it’s not nice to ask – is a fair bit closer to requiring three
digits than it is to needing only one.
Getting there along the narrow country
roads in from Bakshiganj town has been a pleasant journey, but not altogether
short. Still, Father Alex’s Bangladeshi journey was a great deal longer: from
his home in Pangasinan of north Luzon in the Philippines he first arrived in
Barisal in the then East Pakistan, in 1959.
“I was surprised,” he says of his first
impression, “by how much water there was. There were rivers, water...
everywhere.”
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| Mandi students at the Diglakona mission school. |
The church and school at Diglakona cater
to the scattered twelve villages of the ethnic minority Mandi, who are commonly
called Garos by outsiders. Communications between the villages isn’t easy so
there’s a girls’ hostel and a boys’ hostel where the 49 young students board while
completing their primary years under the guidance of three teachers. The school
is called Sal Gital, meaning “New Light” in Mandi.
“We have two of our former students in
Dhaka University,” Father Alex says proudly, “but it’s only a small percentage
of students who can pursue higher education, mostly due to money problems.” He
is passionate about education.
Father Alex conducts morning and evening
prayers in the chapel, and confession. The students and local community have
taken to calling him Acchu, which means grandfather.
Of course the Mandi community is itself no
stranger to long journeys. According to oral tradition it was around 400 BCE
when their ancestors under the leadership of Jappa Jalimpa, having left Tibet
first crossed the Brahmaputra River to settle in Meghalaya’s Garo Hills. From
there the civilisation spread to include villages in the lower hills and
southern plains, in areas that are now Bangladesh.
The rivers and hills of both history and
geography conspired to bring divergence to that civilisation. For one thing,
several dialects developed in the common language. The term Mandi comes from
the southern A’beng form of the language found in the plains and means ‘human
being.’ Nowadays it describes the ethnic group throughout Bangladesh, be it in
Tangail’s Modhupur, Netrakona, Mymensingh or Jamalpur. The northerners in
Meghalaya are meanwhile described as A’chik mande, literally ‘hill people’ in
the A’chik dialect, by Bangladeshi Mandi.
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| A local Mandi villager taking a break outside the mission gate. |
Father Alex’s journey didn’t start with
the Mandi – he first met them in 1972 when he accepted a position in Galchatra
village of Tangail’s Modhupur, where he would stay for the following twenty-two
years. Yet the Mandi have been a great influence. It is due to them he decided
to join the priesthood in 1988.
Speaking of his arrival in this part of
the world, Father Alex recalls, “I came to serve. It was my main aim. I came to
help the poor, which I could not do as a university professor in the
Philippines.”
The opportunity arose from a Canadian
Catholic Brother who had been a prisoner of war in the Philippines in World War
Two. From that time he had established connections with the president of the
university where Father Alex had commenced his career. The Canadian Brother was
supposed to take a position in Barisal to teach improved agricultural methods
to primary and high school students, with the view that many would later run
their family farms. However, the Canadian Brother found he couldn’t adjust to
Barisal’s climate and he approached his friend, the university president, to
find a volunteer to take his salary and go in his place. Father Alex raised his
hand.
“The students were very receptive,” he
says of his initial three years in Barisal. “We were able to help them improve
their farming methods.” At the end of his term and the project’s funding,
Father Alex returned to the Philippines. But he must have been popular because
just three months later he was asked to return.
“Bangladesh has changed a lot since those
days,” Father Alex says, “For one thing, the population has doubled.” Asked why
he committed to stay in Barisal into the 1970s he says, “They wanted me to
stay. They loved me. We succeeded in that way. In any case what I liked and
didn’t like was never the focus. I came to serve.”
To this day Father Alex admires the
devoutness of Bengali Muslims. “I appreciate how regular they are in their
prayers.” Likewise he thinks highly of the Muslim attributes of politeness and
respect. “Even the children always greet you with an assalamu alaikum.”
Yet in 1972 providence led him to accept
a position in Modhupur. “I felt at home soon after I arrived,” he recalls, “I
found that Mandi culture is not far from Filipino culture. Men and women mix
freely. There is no malice. They joke with each other. I like how they work
together including in the field when sowing or harvesting rice. Segregation is
not there.”
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| Mandi villagers outside the mission gate. |
He was impressed by Mandi hospitality.
“No matter how poor a family is, they will treat guests with a big reception.
They can borrow at least two days’ labour wages to buy chicken and other food.”
“And
especially if they offer rice wine,” he adds with a laugh, “Then the
hospitality is even better!” What he’s not so keen on, however, is the pungent
shutki-like dried fish dish called nakam.
Father Alex also points to the Mandis’
strong sense of community. “One family I know,” he narrates, “Has eight
children and they took in one more because that child’s family was struggling.
It’s the maternal uncle’s duty to help out if the family is poor.”
Father Alex’s description is a far cry
from how the Mandi have been described in the past. Both invading Mughal armies
and the British were fearful. From around 1800 accounts describe them as
‘bloodthirsty savages’ and they had a reputation as headhunters, with a Mandi
man’s status determined by the number of heads he owned. But of course the
narratives of conquerors often serve their own purpose. It is likely much of
the Mandis’ reputation arose as a result of their willingness to vigorously
defend their lands from the invaders.
Indeed the Mandi have inherited a
sophisticated matrilineal culture and had a well-developed religion which is
sometimes underestimated as a form of animism, called Songsarek. Unlike many of
the minority religious beliefs of India, Songsarek developed separately from
Hinduism. Traditionally the Mandi believed in reincarnation but not caste.
From the 1860s however, the Mandis’
journey brought to them Christianity. “The Baptists were the pioneers,” says
Father Alex. By the 1970s belief in Songsarek in Bangladesh had begun to
dramatically decline. Nowadays nearly all Mandis profess Christianity, with
Catholics comprising the largest denomination.
Father Alex believes the biggest
contribution the Catholic Church has been able to make, for the Mandi and in
Bangladesh, is in the provision of education. “It’s the best thing we have
done,” he says. Another milestone in the Mandis’ journey was the Vatican II
changes approved in Rome in 1965. These changes allowed for mass to be given in
local languages rather than Latin, and led to a new approach to local cultures
which had previously been discouraged.
“The people were very receptive,” Father
Alex says of the implementation, “When we started to use local language in
songs, when they understood what they were saying...” In Diglakona he gives the
mass in Mandi.
Another change he has witnessed has been
a decline in the Mandis’ penchant for a semi-nomadic lifestyle. “Since the
forests became occupied and available land was less they stopped moving so
often. Still they will move within the community, but not to new areas like
before.”
By the late 1980s the funding for his
position in Madhopur had dried up. “But I could see that they still needed me,”
he said. “I decided to do more.” With this in mind, to facilitate his continued
goal of service, he joined the priesthood. It was the decision that would bring
him, ultimately, to Diglakona.
Asked what has been most difficult about
living in Bangladesh he says, “The languages are very hard – Bengali more so
than Mandi. It’s so difficult to find a proper teacher. I was always asking
children and studying myself. And don’t ask me to write Bangla!”
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| Mandi villagers making bamboo fence for the mission. |
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| The author with Father Alex and mission staff members. |
This article is published in Star Magazine, here: An Afternoon with Father Alex
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