The phrase “a thousand years of culture” often sparks unhelpful and ill-informed debates. Some people question it with remarks like, “Did people really cook this way for a thousand years? Did they eat like this? Rinse their mouths like that?”
Such questions are trivial and miss the point entirely. Those who raise them clearly need a better understanding of what culture truly is.
To begin with, a thousand years of culture does not mean that everything has remained unchanged for a millennium.
Culture is what people carry with them—it is a living, breathing entity. And a living culture is one that continuously evolves. It is like a flowing river: the moment it stops, it dies.
Culture is made up of a wide range of components—language, literature, music, performance, painting, craft, architecture, and so on. It also encompasses religion, social values, customs, folk beliefs, food habits, clothing, speech, etiquette, tools, and weapons. If you reflect on your own daily life, you will notice how significantly these things have changed—even within a few decades. Imagine, then, how much transformation is possible over a thousand years.
My own life has been but a fleeting moment, yet I have witnessed notable shifts. Language in radio, television, and film has evolved dramatically. Once, even taking photographs was considered forbidden in certain religious circles—yet today, even video recording is widely accepted.
Take classical music, for instance. It is often said to be nearly six thousand years old. But does that mean the ragas, rhythms, styles, and compositions have remained exactly the same all this time? Absolutely not. Setting aside ancient history, even the Sangeet Ratnakar—a definitive musical treatise written in the 12th century—mentions ragas that scarcely resemble those performed today. A glance through the history of music reveals that every 70 to 80 years, both composition and performance styles undergo change.
So, what then does a thousand years of culture really mean?
Let us consider Charyapada, the oldest known body of Bengali literature. Can it be read and understood using modern Bengali? Certainly not—because the language has changed.
My son might struggle to fully grasp the writings of Bankimchandra. My grandson, even if he reads Rabindranath Tagore, may not be able to comprehend his language as we do.
Once, Persian and Urdu were written in the elegant Nastaliq script. That once-dominant script has now become marginal. Persian has largely faded from use. Today, many Urdu poets write in Roman script. The age-old tradition of coining compound words in Urdu poetry is nearly extinct. No modern poet is likely to write lines such as “ufaq pe khoon-e-tamanna-e-dil”. Similarly, no contemporary Bengali poet would dare coin words like “āpakkadhānyabhārnamra”, as Rabindranath once did.
Expressions evolve. Vocabulary shifts. Even alphabets transform. The structure of sentences—syntax—tends to change more slowly, but it too eventually evolves.
Now we come to the next question:
If so much changes, what exactly remains over a thousand years?
What endures is identity—the collective memory of transformation, the wisdom gained from it, and the refined, distilled essence of what came before. That is our cultural wealth.
And how is that wealth of any use?
It is upon this cultural foundation that a stronger, more enlightened future is built. It is as essential as the foundation of a solid building.
That is precisely why we speak of a thousand years of culture.