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ORIGIN
Bhojpuri is a
dialect of Hindi and has its origins from a
place called Bhojpur located in Eastern UP/Bihar
area of Northern India. The Bhojpuri Speaking
Belt ranges from Eastern Uttar Pradesh to Bihar.
The early migrants left their ancestral homeland
in the late 1880s to seek a better life in
various parts of the world i.e. Surinam,
Trinidad, Tobago, British Guyana, Mauritius,
Seychellees, South Africa, Maldives, Thailand,
Malaya, Singapore and Fiji. Bhojpuri Speaking
People are characterised by their frankness,
straightforwardness and their melody in the
accent.
In other parts of India, at about the same time,
the Bhojpuri Speaking People moved and set up
homes away from their ancestral villages. The
poor people of Bhojpuri region have been forced
to leave the land in the absence of employment
opportunities in and around this region. The
lack of infrastructures for vocational training
forced them to resort to work as construction
workers in south and west India, as farm workers
in Punjab and Haryana, as coolies in almost all
the cities of North India, as Rickshaw Pullers
in Kolkata and Delhi, as Taxi Drivers in Mumbai
(almost 90% from UP) and Kolkata (almost 95%
from Bihar), as Pan-walas and Chai-walas every
where.
ARRIVAL
IN SINGAPORE
In Singapore, the first generation Bhojpuri
Speaking People (1920-1939) came in the early
1920s and worked as watchmen, milkmen, bus
conductors, prison warders, laundrymen and other
humble professions in view of their low
education. As a people, they were seen as hardy,
honest, hardworking, simple and religious.
Compared to the other North Indian Dialect
Groups like the Gujeratis, Sindhis, Punjabis,
Bengalis, they were in the lower strata of
working life. They worked hard, saved and sent a
lot of their income back to their ancestral
villages to build better homes and more land so
that they could return at the end of their
working life for a more comfortable retirement.
They had no thoughts of sinking their roots in
Singapore as they regarded it as a place of work
The first generation of local born people of
Bhojpuri descent ( 1940 onwards) had the benefit
of better education and the support of their
parents for a better life. They became civil
servants, lawyers, teachers, military officers,
police officers, engineers, businessmen and rose
above the humbler professions. The greatest
change in them was that they came to look at
Singapore as their home.
The second generation local born, 1965 onwards,
received better education and with the new
opportunities in a multi racial and vibrant
Singapore has started their path to professional
excellence and is now in many good professions.
From 2000 onwards, a new generation of Bhojpuri
Speaking People from UP, Bihar and other parts
of the world have started to come to Singapore
as trained IT Engineers, Bankers, Chemists,
Doctors, Academics, Scientists and they have
given a boost to the local born Bhojpuri
Speaking People.
The Bhojpuri people
share a common custom, social and cultural bond.
In spite of their distant relocation their
culture, rituals and customs are intact and are
almost same whether they are in UP, Bihar,
Jharkhand, MP etc. in India or anywhere else in
different parts of the world.
Collectively, both parties i.e. local born and
new migrants, have resolved that they will bring
the BSP to a higher level of Social and Economic
Standing on the same level as the other
progressive Indian Sub Groups of North and South
Indian Descent. Hence the birth of Bhojpuri
Society Singapore in August 2005
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