Fifty years ago, months of brutal fighting came to an end and birthed a newly independent Bangladesh. On Friday, the Bangladeshi community of the Philadelphia region came together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of that independence at City Hall, raising the Bangladeshi flag high for the first time.
“We’re celebrating this flag-raising event as an opportunity to present our community as a united group,” said Ashik Ansar, president of the Bangladesh Association of Delaware Valley. “When we look back to 50 years ago, and then we are here celebrating the golden jubilee of Bangladesh and independence of Bangladesh, we take huge pride in it. We wanted to unite everyone from our communities to celebrate it in a festive manner.”
While the Bangladeshi flag has been up on Benjamin Franklin Parkway for years, Friday’s event was the first time the flag was raised under the Philadelphia Honors Diversity Flag Raising Program, run by the Office of the City Representative and the Office of Immigrant Affairs (OIA) since its inception in 2018.
“As a proud Welcoming City, we know that our diversity is our strength and the year-round cultural programming offered by the Philadelphia Honors Diversity Program is part of our commitment to celebrating the contributions of our diverse immigrant communities,” Amy Eusebio, executive director of OIA, said in a statement.
Naimul Islam, one of the driving organizers behind the flag-raising ceremony, said the community rallied around this opportunity to increase its visibility and access to resources.
“The Bangladeshi community in Philadelphia is the least known and underrepresented compared to their population size in Greater Philadelphia,” said Islam, who is the diversity, equity, and inclusion community specialist for the city’s behavioral health department.
Islam said the idea to apply for the flag-raising stemmed from that fact, as community leaders witnessed the cultural and linguistic barriers Bangladeshis faced when trying to access services such as health care and social security. Islam said there’s an estimated 24,000 Bangladeshis in the greater Philadelphia region.
“We wanted to unite everyone from our communities to celebrate it in a festive manner.”
“Philadelphia is one of the big cities that provide free language services to all Philadelphians, but unfortunately because of lack of information, the Bangladeshi community is always behind the ball,” Islam said. “So the whole purpose of it is to promote our culture, promote our community and make sure that our community is heard, that they’re represented at the city level, and they’re getting all the services and benefits they deserve.”
The Bangladeshi community in Philadelphia is economically and politically vibrant, community leaders said. It has many entrepreneurs and small business owners, as well as medical professionals.
Ziaiuddin Ahmed, a professor of medicine at Temple University, said the community played a big role in getting Mayor Jim Kenney elected in 2015, as well as City Council members.
When she ran for auditor general in 2020, Nina Ahmad said, the community was hugely supportive of her, knocking on doors, putting up signs, and financially contributing to her campaign.
“We’re not a huge community in terms of numbers,” said Ahmad, who’s currently running for City Council at-large. “But in terms of energy and excitement and participation, I think because we come from a history of struggle, we remember that sense of achievement and glory and the solidarity that comes out of that feeling.”