Bengali Culture Over a Thousand Years
Bengali Culture Over a Thousand Years

Author: Ghulam Murshid

Publisher: Niyogi Books

Published: 2018-01-25

Total Pages: 507

ISBN-13: 9386906120

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Art, literature, music and other intellectual expressions of a particular society are together regarded as the culture of that society. Ideas, customs and social behaviour of a particular people or society are also its ‘culture’. Contrary to what we think, it is not easy to describe ‘culture’, nor is it easy to write the cultural history. Writing the history of Bengali culture is even more difficult because Bengali society is truly plural in its nature, made even more so by its political division. The two main religious communities that share this culture are often more aware of the differences between them than the similarities. Nonetheless, the people remain bound by history and a shared language and literature. Ghulam Murshid’s Bengali Culture over a Thousand Years is the first non-partisan and holistic discussion of Bengali culture. Written for the general reader, the language is simple and the style lucid. It shows how the individual ingredients of Bengali culture have evolved and found expression, in the context of political developments and how certain individuals have moulded culture. Above all, the book presents the identity and special qualities of Bengali culture. The book was originally published in Bengali in Dhaka in 2006. This is the first English translation.

Bengal in Global Concept History
Bengal in Global Concept History

Author: Andrew Sartori

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-09-15

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0226734943

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In this study, Sartori closely examines the history of political and intellectual life in 19th- and 20th-century Bengal to show how the concept of 'culture' can take on a life of its own in different contexts, weaving the narrative of Bengal's embrace of culturalism into a worldwide history of the concept.

Crossing the Bay of Bengal
Crossing the Bay of Bengal

Author: Sunil S. Amrith

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2013-10-07

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0674728475

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The Indian Ocean was global long before the Atlantic, and today the countries bordering the Bay of Bengal—India, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaysia—are home to one in four people on Earth. Crossing the Bay of Bengal places this region at the heart of world history for the first time. Integrating human and environmental history, and mining a wealth of sources, Sunil Amrith gives a revelatory and stirring new account of the Bay and those who have inhabited it. For centuries the Bay of Bengal served as a maritime highway between India and China, and then as a battleground for European empires, all while being shaped by the monsoons and by human migration. Imperial powers in the nineteenth century, abetted by the force of capital and the power of steam, reconfigured the Bay in their quest for coffee, rice, and rubber. Millions of Indian migrants crossed the sea, bound by debt or spurred by drought, and filled with ambition. Booming port cities like Singapore and Penang became the most culturally diverse societies of their time. By the 1930s, however, economic, political, and environmental pressures began to erode the Bay’s centuries-old patterns of interconnection. Today, rising waters leave the Bay of Bengal’s shores especially vulnerable to climate change, at the same time that its location makes it central to struggles over Asia’s future. Amrith’s evocative and compelling narrative of the region’s pasts offers insights critical to understanding and confronting the many challenges facing Asia in the decades ahead.