Language and Culture

Bānglā or Bengali is a major world language, spoken by more than 200 million people worldwide. Bengali is the English word referring to the language as well as the people speaking the language. In the language itself, the tongue is called Bānglā , and the people are called Bangalee .

Bangla is native to the region of Bengal, currently comprised of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal in Southeast Asia. It is the second most commonly spoken language in India (after Hindi). Bengal has a very rich historical and cultural past, combining Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Mongol/Mughul, Arab, Persian, Turkic, and West European cultures. There was a saying, "What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow" . The first Asian to win a Nobel prize in any subject is a Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore.

Bangla literature dates back to the 12th Century. In modern times, it was the first Indian language to show the influence of Western literary styles. Bengal gave birth to innumerable well known poets, writers, and artists, who enriched the world literature and arts ceaselessly. Some prominent members include Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay Bibhutibhushan Bandapadhay, Jibananda Das, Buddhadeva Bose, Sukanta Chattopadhyay, Shamsur Rahman, Syed Mujtaba Ali, Satyajit Ray, and Ravi Shankar.

To know more about Tagore, Nazrul and other famous poets/writers/artists of Bengal, please click on the Famous People link.
There is an excellent article on Rabindranath written by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen. Click here to read it.

To read more about Bengali heritage visit this web site