A century of unbroken chains in Sylhet tea gardens

A century of unbroken chains in Sylhet tea gardens

ON the morning of May 20, 1921, approximately 30,000 tea workers left everything behind. Chan­ting Mulluke Cholo — “Let’s go to our homeland” — they left the tea gardens of Sylhet and began walking towards Meghna ghat in Chandpur, hoping to return to Bihar, Odisha, Assam, and the other lands from which they had been brought under false promises of a better life. They never made it. At the ghat, the British colonial police opened fire. Bodies fel…