Chhayanaut: Bangladesh's cultural vanguard that refuses to be silenced
For more than 60 years, Chhayanaut has been the shelter under which the Bangali cultural soul took cover when the political weather turned violent, and even today, it remains the place where that identity is nurtured.
In 1925, Kazi Nazrul Islam published a collection of poems titled Chhayanaut, significantly shaped by his dedication to humanity, his rebellion against oppression, and his love for Bangali culture. The name has its roots in Hindustani classical music, woven from two ragas — Naat and Chhaya — that together carry a particular mood: deeply devotional, quietly romantic, and full of longing.
Decades later, the very same name was given to an organisation that resonates with the spirit of both Nazrul's poetry and the raga itself. It grew, over time, into a sanctuary for Bangla music and arts, fostering a renaissance of cultural expression at a moment when Bangali identity faced systematic erasure. And in doing so, it came to honour the most literal meaning of its name as well: the shade of a large tree.
Attacking the building is not the same as suppressing Chhayanaut. If it were, so many people would not have shown up at the solidarity gathering that followed. The building is just a symbol; attacking it is an attempt to silence us. But we do not wish to be silenced, and we are not the kind to be silenced.
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For more than 60 years, Chhayanaut has been the shelter under which the Bangali cultural soul took cover when the political weather turned violent, and even today, it remains the place where that identity is nurtured.
The morning after the mob attack on 19 December 2025, one might have expected to find a sense of brokenness within its walls. The physical scars, the shattered glass and the debris of a mindless intrusion, certainly, were there. But what was more striking was the absence of defeat.
Instead of retreating behind locked doors or responding with the same kind of vitriol that had been hurled at them, the institution did what it has always done when faced with an attempt to silence it. There was no shouting, no aggressive slogans; they only sang a steady, unwavering chorus of voices in a solidarity assembly.
People came from across the city, with no formal connection to Chhayanaut, who had simply heard what happened, and they stood together thereby. It was a reminder that while you can damage a structure, you cannot break a spirit that has spent over half a century learning how to grow through the cracks of adversity.
It was, indeed, completely in its character. Chhayanaut was built in resistance, has lived in resistance, and seems to understand resistance in a way that most institutions do not.
Born in hostile silence
The year was 1961. Pakistan had been partitioned into two wings for over a decade, and the cultural machinery of the state had long been at work trying to reshape what it meant to be a citizen of that eastern wing.
Rabindranath Tagore was a particular target. The military establishment declared, without quite saying it outright, that his birth centenary would not be observed, because Tagore did not belong to Pakistan.
The musicians, poets, and intellectuals of Dhaka did not accept this quietly.
As Sarwar Ali, the current president of Chhayanaut, explains, "After the partition, the first blow came against our culture and our language. When the country was divided, many artists and classical musicians, not finding the country hospitable, crossed over to the other side.
"But national identity is not just about religion; there is also the question of cultural selfhood. The artists who remained understood this crisis. Bangla music was openly discouraged. It was in response to this, to preserve and nurture Bangla music and to produce new musicians, that Chhayanaut was established," he added.
Despite what amounted to an unspoken prohibition, a group of Bangali cultural figures gathered to mark Tagore's centenary with a three-day festival of song, dance, and drama. Justice Mahbub Morshed, Gobinda Chandra Dev, Professor Mofazzal Haidar Chowdhury, and others led the effort. The celebration was itself an act of defiance, an assertion that Bangali people had a heritage that predated, and would outlast, any state that tried to claim them.
Buoyed by that success, a group including Sufia Kamal, Wahidul Haq, Sanjida Khatun, and others gathered afterwards and decided to form Chhayanaut School of Music, which would sustain this cultural work.
The tree they planted
Since 1963, through its School of Music, Chhayanaut has gradually broadened its curriculum to include instruction of Tagore songs, Nazrul songs, traditional Bangla songs, folk songs, classical vocal and instrumental (Tabla, Sitar, Violin, Flute, Esraj) music and dance (Manipuri and Bharatanatyam).
But Chhayanaut was never just about producing technically accomplished singers. Laisa Ahmed Lisa, the current general secretary, puts it plainly, "We are not saying we are creating great artists here; this is not a factory from which major performers will emerge. What we are saying is: let people develop taste, let them develop a way of seeing life, a cultural sensibility, a sense of what is good and what is not.
"When we teach songs, we choose them with this in mind, and we try to give the meaning of those songs to our students. The environment we have created here, we try to pass that on, so that they can carry this way of thinking with them when they leave," she explained.
Currently, it is the largest informal school of music in the subcontinent with around 5,000 students.
Their philosophy took an iconic shape in 1967, when Chhayanaut initiated the Pohela Boishakh dawn concert at Ramna Batamul, under the old banyan tree in Ramna Park. It became the largest secular celebration in what was then East Pakistan, gathering thousands of Bangalis each year to mark the Bangla New Year with Bangla songs at first light.
In a country under martial law, with no constitution and no free press, this gathering was both a cultural act and a political one. It sent a message, We are here, we are Bangali, and we will celebrate that openly.
Sanjida Khatun was the quiet engine of much of this. A singer, musicologist, scholar, educator and institution-builder, she gave her life's work to Chhayanaut.
Under her guidance, Chhayanaut nurtured musicians, thinkers, painters, theatre practitioners, filmmakers, and social workers. It organised relief after the Gorky cyclone in the early 1960s, its members singing in the streets, collecting coins from rickshaw pullers and pedestrians, amassing fifty thousand taka to build shelters and schools in affected coastal areas. After the 1970 floods, it did the same. Whenever Bangladesh faced disaster, Chhayanaut went toward it, not away.
The architecture of resilience
Chhayanaut has always been a target because it represents a version of Bangladesh that some find terrifying: a Bangladesh that is inclusive, secular, and rooted in the soil rather than in dogma.
The Pahela Baishakh gathering at Ramna Batamul had, by 2001, become a beloved ritual for hundreds of thousands of Dhaka residents. Families came early morning, staking out spots on the grass. Children sat on their parents' shoulders. Chhayanaut performers took the small stage under the banyan as the sky turned.
Then the bombs went off.
Hidden explosives detonated in the crowd, killing at least 10 people and wounding many more. It was a premeditated attack designed to strike at the heart of Bangla secular culture, targeting not a political rally, not a government function, but a celebration of Bangla new year.
Then after 25 years of that attack, another mob vandalisation took place in their Chhayanaut Shangskriti-Bhaban. But it was a bit different than the previous one, in a chilling way.
In 2001, the perpetrators hid bombs in a crowd. They acted under cover, at a distance. The December 2025 attack on the Chhayanaut building in Dhaka was carried out openly by a mob that felt no need to conceal itself.
Sarwar Ali noted this shift with a particular clarity, "Strangely, 25 years after the 2001 attack, this came around again in this form. In 2001, they planted bombs secretly. This time, the attack was carried out entirely in the open. So you can say their audacity has grown."
Lisa echoed this reading, while refusing to let it become a source of paralysis, "Attacking the building is not the same as suppressing Chhayanaut. If it were, so many people would not have shown up at the solidarity gathering that followed. The building is just a symbol, attacking it is an attempt to silence us. But we do not wish to be silenced, and we are not the kind to be silenced."
The solidarity gathering itself became a kind of answer. Students, teachers, and supporters came along. Even people who had no formal connection to the institution turned up.
"After the attack on 19 December, our students or their parents could have been afraid," Lisa says. "But when we called for the solidarity gathering, everyone came spontaneously. It wasn't just those associated with Chhayanaut; people from all over the city rushed to join their voices with ours. That is where our strength lies."
She explains that the protest was deliberate in its form. "Chhayanaut holds power from within. If you notice, there is something immensely powerful in the act of singing together. That day, we simply sang, and everyone present joined in the melody with us. Through that, a bond formed between us. What happened that day is now a great source of inspiration and strength for us as we move forward."
Sarwar Ali drew the line between the two attacks explicitly, "Just as Chhayanaut's journey began with song, after the attack on the Chhayanaut building on 19 December, the gathering we held was also a solidarity gathering through song. We did not protest with speeches or slogans. We did it through music."
There is a name that runs through everything Chhayanaut has ever done: Sanjida Khatun.
She lived 92 years, and nearly all of them were given to this work. Co-founder, guiding spirit, musicologist, scholar, singer — she was all of these, and also something harder to categorise: the person who taught everyone around her how to stand back up.
Sarwar Ali invoked her directly when speaking of how Chhayanaut has found the will to recover, "After this attack, there has been no disruption to our programmes, rather, we have begun our work with renewed energy. The strength to rise again came from Sanjida Khatun herself. She was the one who taught us how to stand up under adversity. In 2001, when we were struck, we rose back stronger. The following year, even more people came to our events."
The work continues
This year's Rabindra Utsav, Chhayanaut's annual Tagore festival, is being held with a theme that reflects something of the moment.
Lisa describes it, "The theme we have organised around for this year's Rabindra Utsav is the relevance of Tagore's songs in a world filled with unrest and crisis of various kinds. There is content that speaks of rising above hatred and division, and we have prepared a script using Tagore's songs of awakening. Every time, we work around a theme like this. This year, our message is: speak of peace, leave behind all unrest and crisis, and move forward. That is what we have taken as our guiding theme."
The choice is deliberate. After what happened in December, after what has repeatedly happened across the world, Chhayanaut is saying with its programming what it has always said with its music: this is not the end. We are still here.
Lisa puts it with a directness that leaves little room for ambiguity, "If all of society supports us in this way, not just Chhayanaut but even small organisations that practice culture in their own space will be able to move forward. Whoever wishes to practice whatever they wish, they must be given the freedom to do so. This right has to be claimed. Because how many more times will they keep striking?"
The history of Chhayanaut is a testament to the fact that culture is not a luxury; it is a defence mechanism. From the Pakistani era's attempt to strip away the Bangali identity to the modern-day mobs trying to intimidate secular spaces, the 'Shade of the Large Tree' has remained.
It has survived because of what it offers: not merely music lessons, but a way of being Bengali that is rooted in culture rather than politics, in beauty rather than ideology. The people who have come through its doors over sixty-plus years did not all become professional musicians.
When Chhayanaut stood under the open sky at Ramna Batamul in 1967 to sing in the New Year, it was making a claim about what Bengal was and would remain. When it continued that tradition after the 2001 bombing, it renewed that claim. When it called its people together in song after December 2025, it renewed it again.
The tree that gives shade is still standing. And they are still singing beneath it
