Bengalis and Related Topics

Bangladesh

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Country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of either 148460 km2 or 147570 km2, making it one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Bangladesh shares land borders with India to the west, north, and east, and Myanmar to the southeast; to the south it has a coastline along the Bay of Bengal. It is narrowly separated from Bhutan and Nepal by the Siliguri Corridor; and from China by 100 km of the Indian state of Sikkim in the north. Dhaka, the capital and largest city, is the nation's economic, political, and cultural hub.

Vanga Kingdom and erstwhile neighbours in ancient South Asia

7th century buddhist monastery. Known as Somapura Mahavihara

The Pala Empire was an imperial power during the Late Classical period on the Indian subcontinent, which originated in the region of Bengal.

The Sixty Dome Mosque is the largest mosque in the UNESCO protected Mosque City of Bagerhat.

Choto Sona Mosque, built during the reign of Sultan Alauddin Hussain Shah

Shipbuilding was a major industry in the Bengal Sultanate and later in Mughal Bengal

The Bibi Mariam Cannon (Lady Mary Cannon) was used by the Mughals to defend their bases.

Lalbagh Fort was the residence of the Mughal viceroy Shaista Khan.

Portuguese envoys (top left) at the imperial court of emperor Akbar. The Portuguese settlement in Chittagong flourished until the Mughals expelled the Portuguese in 1666.

Lord Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey, which led to the overthrow of the last independent Nawab of Bengal

Founding conference of the All India Muslim League in Dhaka, 1906

The Dominion of Pakistan in 1947, with East Bengal its eastern part

Women students of Dhaka University marching in defiance of the Section 144 prohibition on assembly during the Bengali Language Movement in early 1953

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (left) and Munier Chowdhury (centre) visiting Matiul Islam (right), an East Bengali student at Harvard during the late 1950s

Sheikh Mujib casting his ballot during a general election. He was given the popular title of Bangabandhu (Friend of Bengal) and is regarded as Bangladesh's founding leader.

Ziaur Rahman with members of the Dutch royal family in 1978

Muhammad Yunus (center) celebrating the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 with his family in Oslo, Norway

Rohingya refugees entering Bangladesh from Myanmar

A Bengal tiger, the national animal, in the Sundarbans

Bangabhaban, the official residence of the President of Bangladesh, was built in 1905 during the British Raj for use by the Viceroy of India and the Governor of Bengal.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during bilateral talks with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the Prime Minister's Office in Dhaka

Map of Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Force deployments

First South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting in 1985 in Dhaka (l-r, top row: the presidents of Pakistan and the Maldives, the king of Bhutan, the president of Bangladesh, the prime minister of India, the king of Nepal and the president of Sri Lanka)

U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry meeting Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her residence in Dhaka in April 2021

The Rapid Action Battalion has been sanctioned by the United States for human rights abuses

Historical development of GDP per capita

Construction of Padma Bridge, the longest bridge on the Ganges, by China Major Bridge Engineering Co. Ltd. The bridge was designed by AECOM.

Hotels and office blocks in an upmarket neighborhood of Dhaka

Paddy fields dominate the country's farmland. Bangladesh is a top global producer of rice (3rd), potatoes (7th), tropical fruits (6th), jute (2nd), and farmed fish (5th).

A Boeing 777 of the national flag carrier Biman Bangladesh Airlines

Coal and natural-gas fields in Bangladesh, 2011

In 2018, the first payload of SpaceX's Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket was the Bangabandhu-1 satellite built by Thales Alenia Space

The Charyapada scrolls are the oldest surviving text of the Bengali language. The photograph was taken at the Rajshahi College Library

Chakma alphabets are indigenous to the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Eid prayers for Muslims at Barashalghar, Debidwar, Comilla

Bangladeshis celebrating Pahela Baishakh as a mark of the beginning of Bengali new year

Faculty of Sciences at the University of Dhaka; The Curzon Hall

A Bangladeshi nurse in Kutupalong Refugee Camp

Historical development of life expectancy in Bangladesh

A preserved cloth of historic Bengali fine muslin, which is now extinct

Muslim feminist Begum Rokeya and her husband in 1898

The 18th century terracotta Hindu Kantanagar Temple in Dinajpur

A Baul from Lalon Shah's shrine in Kushtia

Embroidery on Nakshi kantha (embroidered quilt), centuries-old Bengali art tradition

Traditional Bangladeshi Meal: Mustard seed Ilish Curry, Dhakai Biryani and Pitha

Bangladesh team on practice session at Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium

Anwar Hossain playing Siraj-ud-Daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal, in the 1967 film Nawab Sirajuddaulah

Beds of zamindars kept at the Bangladesh National Museum

Bengalis make up 98% of the total population of Bangladesh, and the large Muslim population of Bangladesh makes it the third-largest Muslim-majority country.

Bengal

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Geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predominantly covering present-day Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal.

On a clear day, the snowy peaks of the Himalayas in Nepal and Sikkim can be seen from northern Bangladesh and Darjeeling district of West Bengal

A 2015 census of Sundarbans Bengal tigers found 106 in Bangladesh and 76 in West Bengal.

Inscriptions on the Adina Mosque proclaim the builder Sikandar Shah as "the wisest, the most just, the most perfect and most liberal of the Sultans of Arabia, Persia and India."

A woman in Dhaka clad in fine Bengali muslin, 18th century.

The Battle of Plassey in 1757 ushered British rule

The former royal palace of Hill Tippera in Agartala

Shaheed Minar in Dhaka commemorates the 1952 Language Movement

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman led Bengali's decade long independence struggle including the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971

Bangabhaban (the House of Bengal) is the official residence of the president of Bangladesh

Writers' Building, the official seat of the Government of West Bengal

Biman Bangladesh Airlines is the largest airline based in the Bengal region

New Mooring Terminal, Port of Chittagong

The strategically important city of Chittagong is home to the busiest port on the Bay of Bengal

A silver coin with Proto-Bengali script, 9th century

Rabindranath Tagore, known as the Bengali Shakespeare, being hosted at the Parliament of Iran in the 1930s

Bangladeshi paintings on sale at an art gallery in Dhaka

Bungalows originated from Bengali architecture

A sculpture on Fazlur Rahman Khan at the Sears Tower in the United States

A Baul musician. The Baul ballads of Bengal are classified by UNESCO as humanity's intangible cultural heritage

A mustard and date palm farm in West Bengal

Kanchenjunga from Singalila National Park, West Bengal

Gangaridai in Ptolemy's map, 1st century

At its greatest extent, the Bengal Sultanate's realm and protectorates stretched from Jaunpur in North India in the west to Tripura and Arakan in the east

Colonial Eastern Bengal and Assam, early 20th century

Flag of the Bengal Subah (15-18th Century)

Flag of Bengal Presidency, under British rule

Flag of Bangladesh during Bangladesh Liberation War and after

The predominant ethnolinguistic group is the Bengali people, who speak the Indo-Aryan language of Bengali.

West Bengal

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West Bengal (, Bengali: Poshchim Bongo,, abbr.

Coin of the King Shashanka, who created the first separate political entity in Bengal, called the Gauda Kingdom

Firoz Minar at Gauḍa was built during the Bengal Sultanate.

Subhas Chandra Bose, he was a leading freedom fighter of India

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999.

Many areas remain flooded during the heavy rains brought by a monsoon.

A hut in a village in the Hooghly district

The Grand Hotel in Kolkata. Tourism, especially from Bangladesh, is an important part of West Bengal's economy.

Freshly sown saplings of rice in a paddy; in the background are stacks of jute sticks.

Satyajit Ray, a pioneer in Bengali cinema along with Ravi Sankar.

Panchchura Temple in Bishnupur, one of the older examples of the terracotta arts of India.

Jamdani Sari of Bangladesh is very popular in West Bengal.

Salt Lake Stadium / Vivekananda Yuva Bharati Krirangan, Kolkata

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport is a hub for flights to and from Bangladesh, East Asia, Nepal, Bhutan and north-east India.

Kolkata Metro, India's first metro rail system

University of Calcutta, the oldest public university of India.

The front entrance to the academic block of NUJS, Kolkata.

Prajna Bhavan, housing the School of Mathematical Sciences and School of RKMVU.

The state's main ethnic group are the Bengalis, with the Bengali Hindus forming the demographic majority.

Bengali language

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Indo-Aryan language native to the Bengal region of South Asia.

Present-day distribution of Indo-European languages in Eurasia. Bengali belongs to easternmost spoken Indo-European language family

Indo- Iranian language family, Bengali marked yellow

The descent of proto-Gauda, the ancestor of the modern Bengali language, from the proto-Gauda-Kamarupa line of the proto-Magadhan(Magadhi Prakrit).

Silver coin of Maharaj Gaudeshwar Danujmardandev of Deva dynasty, circa 1417

Silver coin with proto-Bengali script, Harikela Kingdom, circa 9th–13th century

A mural with Bengali letters in Hamtramck-Detroit, United States

An example of handwritten Bengali. Part of a poem written in Bengali (and with its English translation below each Bengali paragraph) by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore in 1926 in Hungary

An 1855 Dobhashi manuscript of Halat-un-Nabi written by Sadeq Ali using the Sylheti Nagri script.

A map of Bengal (and some districts of Assam and Jharkhand) which shows the dialects of the Bengali language.
Eastern Bengali Manbhumi dialect
Varendri dialect Rarhi dialect
Sundarbani dialect
Rajbanshi dialect/language*
Chittagonian dialect/language*
Sylheti dialect/language*
(those marked with an asterisk * are sometimes considered dialects or sometimes as separate languages)

The Bengali Language Movement was a popular ethno-linguistic movement in the former East Bengal (today Bangladesh), which was a result of the strong linguistic consciousness of the Bengalis to gain and protect spoken and written Bengali's recognition as a state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan.

Muslim-majority districts of Bengal highlighted in green on a map of 1909

Bengali Muslims

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The Mosque City of Bagerhat is a UNESCO World Heritage Site

A manuscript painting from the Bengal Sultanate depicting Alexander the Great in Nizami Ganjavi's Iskandarnama. The manuscript was produced during the reign of Sultan Nusrat Shah.

Ruins of Adina, once the largest mosque in the Indian subcontinent

The giraffe gifted by the Sultan of Bengal to China's emperor being presented by a Bengali envoy on 20 September 1414

"People of the Kingdom of Bengal", 16th-century Portuguese illustration

A scene from the Gazi scrolls. Pir Gazi was a Sufi preacher. Sufi-led villages were centers of Islamic conversion during the Mughal period.

The Prime Ministers of British Bengal were from the Muslim community of the Bengal Presidency

Awami League leaders Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Tajuddin Ahmad, Syed Nazrul Islam and others in 1970

The award-winning modernist Bait Ur Rouf Mosque

Areas of the Hanafi school are shaded in light green

Ustad Alauddin Khan (centre), one of the greatest maestros of South Asian classical music, performing with his ensemble at Curzon Hall in Dhaka, 1955

Mausoleum of Lalon Shah, a syncretic Baul poet inspired by Sufism

Shaheed Minar (Martyr Monument), at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh, commemorates those who were killed on 21 February 1952 Bengali Language Movement demonstration.

Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national poet of Bangladesh

A Bengali language Quran. Bengali Muslims are fiercely proud of the indigenous Bengali script. Since the 14th century, Arabic texts were added to Bengali texts as part of the Dobhashi tradition

Hason Raja was a mystic Muslim poet whose songs are widely popular in the region

Baitul Mukarram, the national mosque of Bangladesh and the headquarters of the nation's Islamic Foundation

Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize

Bengali Muslims (বাঙালি মুসলমান; ) are adherents of Islam who ethnically, linguistically and genealogically identify as Bengalis.

Bengali Hindus

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Ethnoreligious population who make up the majority in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Jharkhand, and Assam's Barak Valley region.

Devi Durga Sculpture by Sandalwood. Found in Murshidabad, West Bengal. Now kept in Indian Museum, Kolkata.

Dancing Ganesha sculpture from North Bengal, 11th century CE, Asian Art Museum of Berlin (Dahlem).

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the founder of Gaudiya Vaishnavism

Swami Vivekananda was a leading figure of the Bengal Renaissance Vivekananda at the Parliament of the World's Religions (1893)

Signature dish of Bengali: Fish And Rice.

Savitri-Satyavan story on Kalighat Painting, 3rd quarter of the 19th century.

Durga Puja, the largest festival of Bengali Hindus

Rath Yatra at Dhamrai in Dhaka district, Bangladesh

The Bengali Hindu diaspora celebrate Durga Puja all over the world.

Ichhai Ghosher Deul at Gourangapur in Paschim Bardhaman, West Bengal. (India)

Dhakeshwari Temple in Dhaka. (Bangladesh)

Baro-chala Buro Shiva temple at Jalshara in Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal. (India)

Devi Manasa with her husband Jaratkaru & son Astik flanked by Nagas, 11th century Pala period statue from Bengal

In India, they tend to identify themselves as Bengalis while in Bangladesh they tend to identify themselves as Hindus.

Dhaka

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Capital and largest city of Bangladesh, as well as the world's largest Bengali-speaking city.

Bengali woman wearing muslin in Dhaka in 1789

Dhaka, or Dacca, under British rule in 1861.

The Rajoshik sculpture, in front of the InterContinental Dhaka, displays a horse carriage that was once common in the city

Dhaka's central business district in the 1960s

Aerial view of Dhaka's main CBD in the 1980s, including the Jiban Bima Tower, Janata Bank Bhaban and Bangladesh Shilpa Bank Bhaban

Aerial view of Dhaka skyline, including the Independence Monument in Suhrawardy Udyan and the adjacent Ramna Park

The National Parliament House in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar

Nagar Bhaban is the seat of the Dhaka South City Corporation

City Centre Bangladesh (centre), Janata Bank Bhaban (left) and the office of Biman (right) in Motijheel CBD

The Ekushey Book Fair is the largest Bengali language book fair in Bangladesh

Dhaka has a popular style of mutton and potato biryani, known as the Kachi Biryani.

The headquarters of Bangladesh Television

The Teacher-Student Centre in Dhaka University, designed by Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis, is one of the major student hubs of the city

Runway and apron area of the Shahjalal International Airport

thumb|Ahsan Manzil in Old Dhaka, a fine example of Indo-Saracenic architecture in the city

Laila Centre (Citi offices) designed in the shape of a Rubik's Cube

Chistia Palace is a modernist castle and one of the most famous private residences in Dhaka

Bait Ur Rouf Mosque designed by Marina Tabassum

Gulshan Society Mosque designed by Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury

The Awami League was formed at the Rose Garden Palace, in 1949 as the Bengali alternative to the domination of the Muslim League in Pakistan.

Somapura Mahavihara from the Pala dynasty, a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Bengali Buddhists

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The Mainamati Buddhist ruins in southeastern Bangladesh

A Buddhist temple on Maheshkhali Island, Chittagong

Dipankara Srijan, president of the Chittagong Buddhist Association, as leader of a delegation at the 6th Buddhist council in Rangoon.

Bengali Buddhists (বাঙালি বৌদ্ধ) are a religious subgroup of the Bengalis who adhere to or practice the religion of Buddhism.

Bengalis in Pakistan

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Pakistani Bengalis (পাকিস্তানি বাঙালি, ) are Pakistani citizens of Bengali heritage, who had lived in either West Pakistan or East Pakistan prior to 1971 or who migrated from Bangladesh after 1971.