Portal:West Bengal

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The West Bengal Portal

West Bengal is a state in eastern India. With Bangladesh, which lies on its eastern border, the state forms the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal. To its northeast lie the states of Assam and Sikkim and the country Bhutan, and to its southwest, the state of Orissa. To the west it borders the state of Jharkhand and Bihar, and to the northwest, Nepal.

The region that is now West Bengal was a part of a number of empires and kingdoms during the past two millennia. The British East India Company cemented their hold on the region following the Battle of Plassey in 1757 CE, and the city of Kolkata, then Calcutta, served for many years as the capital of British India. A centre of the Indian independence movement through the early 20th century, Bengal was divided in 1947 into two separate entities, West Bengal - a state of India, and East Pakistan belonging to the new nation of Pakistan.

Following India's independence in 1947, West Bengal's economic and political theatres were dominated for many decades by intellectual Marxism, Naxalite movements and trade unionism. From late 1990s, economic rejuvenation led to a spurt in the state's economic and industrial growth. An agriculture-dependent state, West Bengal occupies only 2.7% of the India's land area, though it supports over 7.8% of Indian population, and is the most densely populated state in India. West Bengal has been ruled by the CPI(M)-led Left Front for three decades, making it the world's longest-running democratically-elected communist government. Many notable poets, writers, artists and performers are native to West Bengal.

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Bengali or Bangla (বাংলা, IPA: ['baŋla]) is an Indo-Aryan language of East South Asia, evolved from Prakrit, Pali and Sanskrit. With nearly 200 million native speakers, Bengali is one of the most widely spoken languages of the world (it is ranked between four and seven based on the number of speakers). Bengali is the main language spoken in Bangladesh, and the second most commonly spoken language in India (after Hindi-Urdu). Along with Assamese, it is geographically the most eastern of the Indo-European languages. Owing to the Bengal renaissance in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bengali literature emerged among the richest in South Asia, and includes luminaries such as Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Like most other modern Indic languages, Bengali arose from the Apabhramsha melting pot of Middle Indic languages, around the turn of the first millennium CE. Some argue for much earlier points of divergence - going back to even 500 BCE, but the language was not static, and different varieties co-existed concurrently, and authors often wrote in multiple dialects. In particular, the eastern region language known as Abahatta (with considerable overlap with Purvi and Magadhi Apabhrangsha), had begun to emerge by the seventh century AD. Hiuen Tsang has noted that the same language was spoken in most of Eastern India.

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Credit: Dwaipayan

Hangseshwari temple is a located in Banshberia, Hooghly. This template is dedicated to Goddes Kali. The Hangseshwari temple has a distinctive style of architecture — different from the usual pattern present in this area. The structure of the temples is the representation of Tantrik Satchakrabhed.

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Selected biography

Kamini Roy (12 October-1864 27 September 1933), was a leading Bengali poet, social worker and feminist. A part of the earliest batch of girls to attend school, she was the first woman honours graduate in the country, having passed her bachelor of arts degree with Sanskrit honours from Bethune College of the University of Calcutta in 1886. She was inclined towards literature from a young age and started composing poems at the age of eight. Her father, Chandi Charan Sen, a judge and a writer, was a leading member of the Brahmo Samaj. In 1894 she married Kedarnath Roy. Kamini Roy was a feminist in an age when even women’s education was a taboo. In an address delivered at a girls’ school in Calcutta she declared that the aim of women’s education was to contribute to their all-round development and fulfilment of their potential.

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Wikipedia in Bengali

There is a Bengali version of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Current news

June 18:Operation Lalgarh has been started against the Maoist who have been active in organising a tribal movement alongside a group called the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) by the police and security forces in Lalgarh, West Bengal to restore law and order in the area and flush out the Maoists. Indian Express

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Did you know...

...that after the Battle of Palashi in 1757, Nabakrishna Deb organised a Durga Puja where Lord Clive offered thanksgiving?

... that the Chinese of Calcutta have established the only Chinatown in India?

...that Satyendranath Tagore, the first Indian to join the elite Indian Civil Service, played a pioneering role in freeing women from being imprisoned in their homes?

...that the Oriental Seminary, established in 1829, was the earliest privately run modern school in Kolkata?
- ...that Kumortuli neighbourhood of Calcutta supplies images of Goddess Durga to Indian communities in about 90 countries?
- ...that in 2006, nearly 50,000 people were marooned in Labhpur and surrounding areas of Birbhum district in West Bengal because of floods?
...that a three-horse omnibus plied briefly between Dharmatala, a neighbourhood in Kolkata, and Barrackpore in November 1830?
...that with the 2008 bird flu outbreak in West Bengal, 16,000 birds were destroyed in Itahar, but health workers retreated from villages that refused to kill their birds?
...that Mahendranath Gupta (pictured) was closely associated with two notable figures in Hinduism—as a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna and as a teacher to Paramahansa Yogananda?
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Major topics

Economy and Politics: Government of West Bengal | Chief Ministers | Governors | Legislative Assembly | Left Front

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Tasks you can do

Photos required: Cooch Behar • Kolkata Airport • University of Calcutta • College Street (Kolkata) • Indian Coffee House • Park Street, Kolkata • Binay Ranjan Sen • Nirad C. Chaudhuri • Brajendra Nath Seal • Shakti Chattopadhyay • Dhan Gopal Mukerji • Biraja Sankar Guha • Subhas Mukhopadhyay (poet) • Subhash Mukhopadhyay (physician)

Citations/References required: Alipore • Barrackpore • Ichapore • Kalyani • Etymology of Cooch Behar

Clean-up required: Purulia District • Dakshin Dinajpur • Shibpur

Information required: for many towns. Please check list of towns in West Bengal and see if you can assist in improving the contents of any town, as per Guide to layout and Manual of Style.

Review: Bengal

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WikiProjects

WikiProject West Bengal - a project to improve all articles related to West Bengal.
WikiProject India - a project to improve all articles related to India.
WikiProject Bengal - a project to improve all articles related to Bengal.

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Related portals

Geography – India • Uttar Pradesh • Maharashtra • Tamil Nadu • Kerala • Goa • Gujarat • Himachal Pradesh • Karnataka • Punjab • Bangladesh • Bengal
Events – Indian independence movement • Indian Current Events

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