WE LIVE TO FIGHT

In Bangladesh, the body has long been a site of discipline, resistance, and control. Various forms of martial arts are practiced across the country, including Bangladeshi martial traditions that emerged during the British colonial period. These practices were not merely physical training but acts of survival. Villagers developed martial techniques to defend themselves against oppression by Zamindars (landowners), who enforced tax collection through armed lathial groups. The body became a political tool, shaped to resist coercion and reclaim agency.

After independence, martial arts entered a formal institutional phase with the establishment of the Bangladesh Judo and Karate Federation in 1972 and the Bangladesh Martial Arts Confederation in 1997. Since then, martial arts have played multiple social roles. Clubs across the country offer self-defense training to women and children as a response to sexual harassment in public spaces, positioning the trained body as a form of everyday resistance. For many children, martial arts function as recreation, while for others, especially men and women in film and television, the disciplined body becomes a spectacle that circulates through popular culture.

Several indigenous communities continue to practice their own martial traditions outside mainstream recognition, preserving embodied knowledge passed down through generations. Yet despite international achievements, many martial artists and clubs remain financially marginalized. Often labeled as underground sports, these practices receive little institutional funding and limited media visibility, reinforcing whose bodies are deemed worthy of attention and support.

We Live to Fight examines martial arts in Bangladesh through the lens of body politics. It explores how bodies are trained, controlled, displayed, neglected, and empowered, revealing the intersections of history, power, gender, class, and resistance embedded in these fighting communities.