How Sylhetis Sailed Across the World
One unassuming region has produced one of the largest global Bangladeshi diasporas.
Asuk Ali was in his 20s when he jumped ship in New York and made his way to London. From there, the merchant sailor went to Birmingham, England. That’s how, in the wake of World War II, a Sylheti lascar from present-day Bangladesh scandalously lived with an Irish Catholic wife.
Asuk Ali’s story was part of a larger mosaic of Sylheti migration. Today, Sylhetis comprise 95% of the Bangladeshi population in the U.K. Ashfaque Hossain, a history professor at the University of Dhaka, once described Sylhetis as a “truly global family,” found in various corners of the world from New York to Detroit to London and beyond. So how did one landlocked region come to dominate the global Bengali diaspora?