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Bhadralok
Bhadralok (, literally 'gentleman', or 'well-mannered person') is Bengali for the new class of 'gentlefolk' who arose during British rule in India in the Bengal region in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent. Caste and class makeup According to Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, the ''Bhadraloks'' primarily, though not exclusively, belonged to "the three traditional upper castes of Bengal", Brahmin, Baidya and Kayastha. Wealth, English education, and high status in terms of administrative service were the factors which led to the rise of this 'new aristocracy' and since a large number of the three upper castes had administrative skills and economic advantages, they formed the majority of Bhadralok in 19th century Bengal, but the ''Bhadralok'' "was never a closed status group", rather in practice it was an open social group. Majority of the Brahmins and Kayasthas being poor and illiterate were not regarded as ''Bhadralok''. By late 19th century many of middle ranking peasant and trading c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baidya
Baidya or Vaidya is a Hindu community located in Bengal. Baidyas, a caste (''jāti'') of Ayurvedic physicians, have long had pre-eminence in society alongside Brahmins and Kayasthas. In the colonial era, the Bhadraloks were drawn primarily, but not exclusively, from these three upper castes, who continue to maintain a collective hegemony in West Bengal. Etymology The terms ''Baidya'' means a physician in the Bengali and Sanskrit languages. Bengal is the only place where they formed a caste or rather, a ''jati''. Origins The origins of Baidyas remain surrounded by a wide variety of overlapping and sometimes contradictory myths, and are heavily contested. Aside from Upapuraṇas and two genealogies(Kulajis), premodern Bengali literature does not discuss details of the caste's origins; no literature from outside the region discuss them either. The semi-legendary Ambastha connection of Baidyas who mostly held to be of a Kshatriya origin in Hindu scriptures is tenuous. It is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry of ''Gitanjali'', he became in 1913 the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Referred to as "the Bard of Bengal", Tagore was known by sobriquets: Gurudev, Kobiguru, Biswakobi. A Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Burdwan district* * * and Jessore, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-yea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bengali Language
Bengali ( ), generally known by its endonym Bangla (, ), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language native to the Bengal region of South Asia. It is the official, national, and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh and the second most widely spoken of the 22 scheduled languages of India. With approximately 300 million native speakers and another 37 million as second language speakers, Bengali is the List of languages by number of native speakers, fifth most-spoken native language and the List of languages by total number of speakers, seventh most spoken language by total number of speakers in the world. Bengali is the fifth most spoken Indo-European language. Bengali is the official language, official and national language of Bangladesh, with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. Within India, Bengali is the official language of the states of West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam. It is also a second official lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chandrabindoo (band)
Chandrabindoo (often spelled Chandrabindu), based in Kolkata, is a Bengali band known for satirical, colloquial lyrics, with references to current affairs and cultural phenomena. The band is chiefly popular in the Indian city of Kolkata, and in cities like Delhi and Mumbai that have a large expatriate Bengali population. Name Origin The band shares its name with the last letter (technically a modifier) of the Bengali alphabet, ◌̐. The name is a reference to a piece of dialogue from Sukumar Ray's ''হযবরল'' '' HaJaBaRaLa'', a well-known work of literary nonsense in Bengali. বেড়াল বলল, “বেড়ালও বলতে পার, রুমালও বলতে পার, চন্দ্রবিন্দুও বলতে পার।” আমি বললাম, “চন্দ্রবিন্দু কেন?” শুনে বেড়ালটা “তাও জানো না?” বলে এক চোখ বুজে ফ্ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bengal Presidency
The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William and later Bengal Province, was a subdivision of the British Empire in India. At the height of its territorial jurisdiction, it covered large parts of what is now South Asia and Southeast Asia. Bengal proper covered the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal (present-day Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal). Calcutta, the city which grew around Fort William, was the capital of the Bengal Presidency. For many years, the Governor of Bengal was concurrently the Viceroy of India and Calcutta was the de facto capital of India until 1911. The Bengal Presidency emerged from trading posts established in Mughal Bengal during the reign of Emperor Jahangir in 1612. The East India Company (HEIC), a British monopoly with a Royal Charter, competed with other European companies to gain influence in Bengal. After the decisive overthrow of the Nawab of Bengal in 1757 and the Battle of Buxar in 1764, the HEIC expanded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Class In India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia. Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago., "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by modern humans originating in Africa. ... Coalescence dates for most non-European populations average to between 73–55 ka.", "Modern human beings—''Homo sapiens''—originated in Africa. Then, interm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Anthropology
Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In the United States, social anthropology is commonly subsumed within cultural anthropology or sociocultural anthropology. Comparison with cultural anthropology The term ''cultural'' anthropology is generally applied to ethnographic works that are holistic in spirit, are oriented to the ways in which culture affects individual experience, or aim to provide a rounded view of the knowledge, customs, and institutions of a people. ''Social'' anthropology is a term applied to ethnographic works that attempt to isolate a particular system of social relations such as those that comprise domestic life, economy, law, politics, or religion, give analytical priority to the organizational bases of social life, and attend to cultural phenomena as somewha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cultural History Of Bangladesh
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tylor, Edward. (1871). Primitive Culture. Vol 1. New York: J.P. Putnam's Son Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies. A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group. Accepting only a monoculturalism, monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change. Thus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
