The Dialect Debate in Bengali Cinema: A Call for Authenticity on Mother Language Day
For decades, formal dialogue in Bengali cinema has been overwhelmingly dominated by the colloquial Rarhi dialect from Nadia and Kolkata. The observance of International Mother Language Day on February 21 provided a timely occasion for many in Tollywood to critically examine how dialects are utilized—and often misused—on the silver screen.
Legacy of Linguistic Authenticity in Classic Films
Bengali cinema has long carried a profound legacy of leaning on dialects to shape character, place, and social reality. Speech was never treated as mere ornamentation but as a core element of authenticity and performance. From rural landscapes to small-town milieus, speech patterns functioned as a vital cinematic resource—an index of social history as much as of geography.
In older films, dialect was not decoration; it was landscape, class, and history carried in the mouth. Directors and actors approached dialect with the same reverence as light or music—something that could not be faked without the audience sensing the deception. Director Atanu Ghosh fondly recalls that era as a time when performers arrived with an "earthy connection" to their roots, often trained in group theatre where language was respected as a craft.
"Earlier, many actors in Bengal had a deep, earthy connection to their roots, which made them fluent in local dialects. Many also came from group theatre, where dialect work was taken seriously," Ghosh said. "I still remember the dialects in Rajen Tarafdar’s ‘Ganga’ and ‘Palanka’—there was no compromise on authenticity. Even in Goutam Ghose’s ‘Padma Nodir Majhi’, actors like Utpal Dutt and Robi Ghosh were remarkably precise in their use of dialect."Contemporary Challenges and Urban Gaze
However, the landscape has shifted dramatically. Actor Sudipta Chakraborty points to Ritwik Ghatak’s cinema as a benchmark for authenticity, noting his native dialect from Bangladesh. Against that standard, she feels contemporary Bengali cinema only occasionally gives dialects their due, citing rare examples like Anirban Bhattacharya and Pratik Dutta’s ‘Mandar’ and Ranjan Ghosh’s ‘Adyama’. She also highlights how precision can exist without marked regional dialect, as seen in Rituparno Ghosh’s ‘Bariwali’, where her character Malati had a private idiom built from exact decisions.
So, has authenticity of dialect become an occasional aesthetic choice rather than a baseline responsibility in modern Tollywood? The problem lies in an increasing urban gaze that leaves little room for dialects. In many city-centric films, dialect is reduced to a marker reserved almost exclusively for domestic workers within urban households. This reflects a certain directorial laziness, propped up by peculiar justifications for not requiring actors to learn authentic speech.
When dialects ring false, filmmakers often defend them with strained logic, sometimes claiming the story unfolds in an imaginary terrain where any dialect will do—untethered to linguistic reality. The director of ‘Adyama’ attributes this to an attitude that looks down upon rural cultures: "I don't think it’s ignorance or laziness. I’d attribute it to an attitude that looks down upon rural cultures and does not think it’s important to know them intimately. If you take genuine interest in them, only then will you be able to appreciate their uniqueness."
Voices for Change and Emotional Truth
Anuparna Roy, whose ‘Song of Forgotten Trees’ traveled to Venice, is unimpressed with contemporary dialect use. Her first short film ‘Run to the River’ in 2021 smelled of Purulia’s red earth, with locals facing the camera and bringing their own speech. "When cinema erases dialect, it erases memory because language is not just how we speak, it is where we come from," Roy said. "Bengali cinema often claims realism, yet it keeps dressing every character in the same polished, elite Kolkata Bangla as if the rest of Bengal does not exist. When we ignore local dialects, we don’t just lose originality; we lose soil, class, politics, and pulse. A language flattened for comfort can never carry the truth of a region."
Atanu Ghosh shares reservations, noting that dialects are often rendered crudely—less an authentic register than a distortion, an unresearched blend of Bengali from various districts with traces from Bangladesh. For language purists, this becomes a caricature of "the rural," assembled from whatever sounds sufficiently non-urban.
Exemplary Efforts and Practical Hurdles
Amid this flattening, a different kind of work has begun to reappear—slow, difficult, and accountable. Ranjan Ghosh set ‘Adamya’ in the Sundarbans, refusing the industry’s favorite shortcut: the generic "Bengal village" dialect. He called such generalization not only inauthentic but humiliating. During pre-production, he conducted workshops with villagers over four months, incorporating their spoken dialects into dialogues, with syntaxes and pronunciations guided by them. Villagers were brought to Kolkata for dubbing, and their warm smiles upon watching the film provided the biggest validation.
Pradipta Bhattacharya speaks of dialect as emotional truth—the way an audience recognizes a world before a plot. For ‘Birohi’ and ‘Nadharer Bhela’, he recorded real conversations, making actors learn the rhythm rather than merely the words. However, he acknowledges practical hurdles: "The challenge is that actors often can’t spare six months to prepare, and budgets rarely allow for that kind of time. The other problem is when audiences accept whatever is presented, many stop investing the effort that dialect work truly requires."
Conclusion: The Path Forward for Tollywood
On International Mother Language Day, the question hanging over contemporary Bengali cinema was not whether dialects should be used, but how. Used well, dialect returns people to their place in the world, restoring the grain of region and the dignity of specificity. Used badly, it becomes a tool of convenience—either erased in the name of urban polish or distorted into a humiliating, placeless noise.
Between these two choices lies the real work: listening, researching, rehearsing, and admitting that a mother tongue is not a single tongue at all, but many—each carrying its own memory, each demanding to be heard without being turned into a joke. As Tollywood evolves, the call for authenticity grows louder, urging filmmakers to honor the rich linguistic diversity that defines Bengal’s cultural fabric.
