Bengali culture

The culture of Bengal encompasses the Bengal region in South Asia, including Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam (Barak Valley), where the Bengali language is the official and primary language. Bengal has a recorded history of 4,000 years. The Bengali people are its dominant ethnolinguistic community. The region has been a historical melting pot, blending indigenous traditions with cosmopolitan influences from pan-Indian subcontinental empires. Bengal was the richest part of Medieval India and hosted the subcontinent's most advanced political and cultural centers during the British Raj.

The partition of Bengal left its own cultural legacy. Bangladesh is the scene of a dominant Bengali Muslim culture, whereas Indian Bengali-speaking regions have a Bengali Hindu majority. It must be noted that Muslim-majority Bangladesh is home to a significant Hindu minority, whereas West Bengal has a large Muslim minority. Apart from these, there are also numerous ethnic and religious minorities. Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, is a cosmopolitan city which houses sizeable number of ethnic communities. Bengal is an important hub of classical South Asian arts. Festivals on the secular Bengali calendar are widely celebrated.

Bengal has one of the most developed literary traditions in Asia. A descent of ancient Sanskrit and Magadhi Prakrit, the Bengali language evolved circa 1000-1200 CE under the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty. It became an official court language of the Sultanate of Bengal and absorbed influences from Arabic and Persian. Middle Bengali developed secular literature in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was also spoken in Arakan. The Bengali renaissance in Calcutta developed the modern standardized form of the language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rabindranath Tagore became the first Bengali writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, and was also the first non-European Nobel laureate. Kazi Nazrul Islam became known as the Rebel Poet of British India. After the partition of Bengal, a distinct literary culture developed in East Bengal, which later became East Pakistan and Bangladesh.

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