Hand Gestures Reflecting Bengali Culture by Hakim Arif

The phenomenon ‘social practice’ indicates the way of social life of a community. It includes various forms of customs, rituals, norms and artifacts that help an individual to be integrated into the surrounding environment, context and culture (Johnson 2010). So, the process of social practice not only informs how human beings encounter the rules of socialization, but also identifies the essential elements that make them socialized within the community.   Since human beings in every culture performing emblematic hand gestures explore various forms of social practices of a community, BEE hand gestures can be highlighted in this regard. In fact, in exhibiting these hand gestures Bengali people reflect a holistic approach of the way of their daily life. Put to elaborate, using BEE hand gestures they express the nature of their everyday greetings, negation, begging, weeding ritual, nature of informal punishment, mental strength as well as grievances, the demand and protest, nature of showing unity etc. Among these above social practices only two rituals like wedding ritual and the nature of informal punishment—unique forms of the social practices of Bengali culture—get more explanation in the following.  

3.1 Wedding ritual  

Bengali wedding—an authentic form of Bengali cultural ceremony—includes different native customs and rituals. Some of these rituals and customs are mainly performed with different body as well as hand movements of the bride and the bride-groom. It indicates that a special form of BEE hand gesture occupies a significant position in the Bengali wedding. For example, for the following two reasons, the BEE hand gesture the palm on the palm (see the Figure 3.1b) can be mentioned here.

Firstly, the Bengali wedding with Hindu tradition admits the hand movement of bride and bride groom in its main ritual. As a part of this ritual when the Brahmin recites Sanskrit verse aloud, the bride’s father needs to put the palm of his daughter on that of the bride-groom (see the Figure 3.1a). Secondly, as a practice of cultural ritual the bride’s parents irrespective of their religious identity put the palm of their daughter on that of the bride-groom at the end of the wedding. This tradition which is termed as konna-dan [bestowing daughter in marriage] is normally done for the quest of daughter’s welfare which symbolizes that from the day of the wedding the bride-groom takes their daughter’s responsibilities. As a result, since such rituals over the period have been so significant in this culture, sometimes the whole marriage ceremony is literally termed as pani-grohon [accepting hand] (see the Figure 3.1b).

In the Bengali community assigning informal punishment is a commonly happening everyday social practice. In this community it is a form of the penalty of human activity which is mainly assigned by the elders like parents or teachers to the kids or students respectively for having done some mistakes or involved in any faulty activity. Particularly, the elders impute this punishment in the impression that after this penalty such a mistake will never be performed further by their children. For this purpose the elders in the Bengali community only specify a certain form of punishment which involves the following type of BEE hand gesturing called ear lobe pulling (see the Figure 3.2).   The iconic shape of the above BEE hand gesture (see Figure 3.2) relates to the image of a monkey who assigned by owner is pulling air lobe to get a punishment due to having done a mistake. So, the connotation of the punishment specified to the children also indicates that as they have done a mistake they will also pull their ear lobe by acting as a monkey for a while.