Bengali Culture Over a Thousand Years

Bengali Culture Over a Thousand Years PDF

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.

Travel Culture, Travel Writing and Bengali Women, 1870–1940

Travel Culture, Travel Writing and Bengali Women, 1870–1940 PDF

Author: Jayati Gupta

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2020-07-23

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1000088227

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This book chronicles travel writings of Bengali women in colonial India and explores the intersections of power, indigeneity, and the representations of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ in these writings. It documents the transgressive histories of these women who stepped out to create emancipatory identities for themselves. The book brings together a selection of travelogues from various Bengali women and their journeys to the West, the Aryavarta, and Japan. These writings challenge stereotypes of the 'circumscribed native woman’ and explore the complex personal and socio-political histories of women in colonial India. Reading these from a feminist, postcolonial perspective, the volume highlights how these women from different castes, class and ages confront the changing realities of their lives in colonial India in the backdrop of the independence movement and the second world war. The author draws attention to the personal histories of these women, which informed their views on education, womanhood, marriage, female autonomy, family, and politics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Engaging and insightful, this volume will be of interest to students and researchers of literature and history, gender and culture studies, and for general readers interested in women and travel writing.

Globalization and Urban Culture in Dhaka

Globalization and Urban Culture in Dhaka PDF

Author: Kazi Abusaleh

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-05-05

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 1000584887

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This book examines globalization and urban cultures in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, from a socio-cultural view. It focuses on the evolving nature of urbanity in the city due to globalization and the global flow of information, while framing the changing patterns of everyday cultures and practices. The volume explores key linkages and factors in urban transformation; the history and heritage of Old Dhaka; globalization, diverse urban cultures and ethnic spaces; changes in food habits, clothing, health practices, and recreation; changing forms of festivals, marriages, and religious practices; the situation of indigenous people in Old Dhaka; and the roles that need to be played by NGOs, civil society, and the local government. With its rich ethnographic case studies and field-based evidence, it discusses the relations between technology-driven economic activities and increasing cultural homogenization. It traces developments induced by cultural globalization and includes contemporary debates along with comparisons of Asian and global perspectives. This book will be a useful resource for scholars and researchers of urban studies, city studies, urban sociology, social anthropology, cultural anthropology, political sociology, development studies, South Asian studies and cultural studies, and to those interested in Bangladesh.

India and Identity - Some Reflections

India and Identity - Some Reflections PDF

Author: Dr. Firoj High Sarwar

Publisher: Blue Rose Publishers

Published: 2024-01-10

Total Pages: 616

ISBN-13:

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'India and Identity: Some Reflections' is an edited book, comprising fifty-two articles, written by distinguished scholars of arts and social sciences, mainly reflecting the multifarious and multilayer identities of India and Indians. It covers the arena of Indian history, culture, politics, society, economy, regions, languages, religions, castes, classes, and ethnicity which has traveled since remote ancient times to the recent twenty-first century. We hope that this book will provide a scope for an intellectual discourse on India and the diversified issues of Identities and enlighten our existing knowledge

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Indian Cuisine

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Indian Cuisine PDF

Author: Colleen Taylor Sen

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-02-23

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 1350128651

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This reference work covers the cuisine and foodways of India in all their diversity and complexity, including regions, personalities, street foods, communities and topics that have been often neglected. The book starts with an overview essay situating the Great Indian Table in relation to its geography, history and agriculture, followed by alphabetically organized entries. The entries, which are between 150 and 1,500 words long, combine facts with history, anecdotes, and legends. They are supplemented by longer entries on key topics such as regional cuisines, spice mixtures, food and medicine, rites of passages, cooking methods, rice, sweets, tea, drinks (alcoholic and soft) and the Indian diaspora. This comprehensive volume illuminates contemporary Indian cooking and cuisine in tradition and practice.

Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America

Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America PDF

Author: Vivek Bald

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2013-01-07

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 0674067576

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Nineteenth-century Muslim peddlers arrived at Ellis Island, bags heavy with embroidered silks from their villages in Bengal. Demand for “Oriental goods” took these migrants on a curious path, from New Jersey’s boardwalks into the segregated South. Bald’s history reveals cross-racial affinities below the surface of early twentieth-century America.

Teaching and Learning for Comprehensive Citizenship

Teaching and Learning for Comprehensive Citizenship PDF

Author: Candice C. Carter

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-16

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1000246213

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Ultimately concerned with how citizenship education for peace can be enriched through interdisciplinary learning, this edited volume reveals the role of peace education in global citizenship by illuminating instruction for comprehensive citizenship. A truly international collection, this volume offers timely insights from countries including Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Canada, Bangaldesh, Korea, Zimbabwe, and Timor Leste as it provides critical, in-depth analyses of peace-oriented instruction in formal and informal settings. The text illustrates how citizenship can be effectively developed on both a global and a local level, and discusses the practical learning opportunities that can enact change through schools, nongovernmental organizations, and community-wide civic actions with children, youth, adults, and families. This text will appeal to academics and researchers involved in the field of international and comparative education and will be of interest to educators and school leaders concerned with the role citizenship plays in the context of teaching and learning.

City of Mirrors

City of Mirrors PDF

Author: Lālana Śāha

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 649

ISBN-13: 0190680229

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Carol Salomon dedicated over thirty years of her life to researching, translating, and annotating this compilation of songs by the Bengali poet and mystical philosopher Lalan Sai (popularly transliterated as Lalon) who lived in the village of Cheuriya in Bengal in the latter half of the nineteenth century. One major objective of his lyrical riddles was to challenge the restrictions of cultural, political, and sexual identity, and his songs accordingly express a longing to understand humanity, its duties, and its ultimate destiny. His songs also contain thinly veiled references to esoteric yogic practices (sadhana), including body-centered Hathayogic techniques that are related to those found in Buddhist, Kaula, Natha, and Sufi medieval tantric literature. Dr. Salomon's translation of the work is the first dedicated English translation of Lalan's songs to closely follow the Bangla text, with all of its dialectical variations, and is here produced alongside the original text. Although her untimely death left her work unpublished, the editors have worked diligently to reconstruct her translations from her surviving printed and handwritten manuscripts. The result is a finished product that can finally share her groundbreaking scholarship on Baul traditions with the world.

A Story of Ambivalent Modernization in Bangladesh and West Bengal

A Story of Ambivalent Modernization in Bangladesh and West Bengal PDF

Author: Pranab Chatterjee

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9781433108204

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This book details the evolution of Bengali culture (in both Bangladesh and West Bengal) since antiquity and argues for its modernization. Originally peripheral to Hindu civilization based in North India, Bengali culture was subjected to various forms of Sanskritization. Centuries of invasions (1204-1757) resulted most notably in the Islamization of Bengal. Often there were conflicts between Sanskritization and Islamization. Later colonization of Bengal by Britain (1757) led to a process of Anglicization, which created a new middle class in Bengal that, in turn, created a form of elitism among the Bengali Hindu upper caste. After British rule ended (1947), Bengali culture lost its elitist status in South Asia and has undergone severe marginalization. Political instability and economic insufficiency, as reflected by many quantitative and qualitative indicators, are common and contribute to pervasive unemployment, alienation, vigilantism, and instability in the entire region. A Story of Ambivalent Modernization in Bangladesh and West Bengal is appropriate not only for Bengali intellectuals and scholars but for sociologists, political scientists, cultural anthropologists, historians, and others interested in a case study of how and why a given culture becomes derailed from its path toward modernization.

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