This video is sponsored by Nebula, support
me directly while getting access to dozens of Original series, early releases, and more
by following the link below. This is Bengal, home of the Bengali people. One half, eastern Bengal makes up the country
of Bangladesh literally Land of the Bengali. The other half makes up the state of West
Bengal and parts of Tripura and Assam in India. Divided by borders since 1947 --- Bengalis still share a common history, food,
culture, and language that they are immensely proud of and have died to protect. There are roughly 300 million Bengalis worldwide,
making them the world’s 3rd largest ethno-lingustic group. About 283 million of them live here in Bengal,
a small area of just 239,000km2. Just 1 half of Bengal, Bangladesh is the 11th most densely
populated country on Earth and every country above it is a microstate. There are more Bengalis
in this spot than there are people in all of Russia, Brazil, or Mexico. Bengal is a thriving hub of people and culture,
with a history stretching over millennia and across oceans, filled with daring conquests,
magnificent architecture, and delicious food. In what was once the richest country in the
world. Join me as we figure out who are the Bengalis, why is Bengal seperated, and what
exactly is a duckupine? Well, let’s find out! Geography Bengal is diverse, from the awe-inspiring
views of the Himalayas and Darjeeling's tea plantations in the north, to the lush, rain-soaked
region of Sylhet in the northeast. Seriously, this place gets 4200 mm of rain a year, famously
rainy Seatlle, London, or Copehagen get less than 1000mm a year. Central Bengal houses the thriving capital
of Bangladesh, Dhaka, one of the most densely populated cities on Earth --- The beating
heart of one the world’s most rapidly developing economies --- This megacity is home to 22
million inhabitants. Old Dhaka due to its canals, gardens, and opulence was once called
the Venice of the East. Venturing southwest, we encounter colourful Kolkata ---- previously
known as Calcutta. This is the vibrant capital of the Indian state of West Bengal and home
to 14 million people. It’s also the Indian city with the most Nobel Prize winners. Further South is the Sundarbans, a biodiversity
hotspot and the world's largest mangrove forest --- This is a lush mosaic of rivers, trees,
and swamps, and one of the last refuges of the Bengal Tiger. --- Who by the way eat about
20 people a year. In the past fishermen here wore masks on the back of their heads to scare
off the tigers but the tigers have apparently figured out that trick.
Southeast Bengal is home to Chattogram, one of Asia’s busiest ports --- and Cox’s
Bazar, the world's longest beach. The rugged Chattogram Hills Tract is culturally unique,
you see, while Bangladesh is 98% Bengali, here in the hills there are many non-Bengali
indigenous peoples and languages and it is one of the last strongholds of Buddhism in
South Asia. Bengal has the world’s largest network of
rivers. From Space you can see the Ganges, Padma, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers winding
down from the Himalayas, building up speed before surging out into the Ganges Delta,
the largest Delta on Earth, bringing fertile silt and soil with the waters every year.
Each year from June to October the monsoon brings immense amounts of rain. Unending rain
for weeks at a time turns the ground to slush. Bengalis know how to live with water, most
of the country is within 10m of sea level. Throughout history communities have moved
as the delta and rivers moved. But every few years a disaster strikes in the form of cyclones
or flash floods. In 1970 the deadliest cyclone in history devastated Bangladesh killing 300,000
people. But these grey skies and rushing rivers bring
the nourishing silt and water that have given Bengal the world’s most fertile soils that
have fed millions and stood as witnesses to the rise and fall of civilisations.
Outside of the places already mentioned some fascinating places in Bengal are: The Mosque
City of Bagerhat, the temples of Bishnupur, Katra Masjid, Lalbagh Fort right in the middle
of Dhaka, the Victoria memorial the largest memorial to a monarch on Earth, the Pink Palace,
Panam Nagar Ghost City, the Star Mosque, the Marble Palace, and Curzon Hall where language
protests eventually resulted in the creation of the state of Bangladesh or the Shaheed
Minar monument built for the language martyrs. However if you asked Bengalis what defines
them it wouldn’t be rivers, silt, architecture or Bengal tigers but rather something they
consider to be the sweetest sound in the world. Language
“The struggle for language is a struggle for life” or “Those who dare death for
language, we remember them today’ (Badruddin Umar) or “They want to take the language
of my mouth They want to steal my language” The language we call Bengali in English is
actually called Bangla by its speakers. Actually it’s closer to Bongla than Bangla which
is why the word Bungalow which literally means Bengali style house is pronounced that way
rather than Bangalow. Bengali is spoken by roughly 300 million people
worldwide and is the national language of Bangladesh and the second most spoken language
in India and the 7th most spoken language in the world. Bengali belongs to the Indo-European language
family which means it has a common origin with languages like English, Sanskrit, Greek,
Latin, Persian, and Irish. Bengali is about 1300 years old, originating around the 10th
century evolving from Sanskrit, the sacred language of the Vedas, the holy books of Hinduism. Here is how it sounds. ----- Bengali interestingly has no gendered pronouns,
the informal e or formal ini can mean he or she. Bengali is written in its own script
called Bengali-Assamese. It’s written left to right and unlike English writing which
floats above an imaginary baseline Bengali words hang down from a line called a matra. Bengalis are deeply in love with their sweet
language and many have died for it. The 21st of February is International Mother Language
Day a holiday dedicated to the martyrs that died for Bengali. The nation of Bangladesh
was born out of a war started to preserve the Bengali language, an event we’ll cover
later in the video. Tumi kemon acho, is how you ask someone how
they’re doing in Bengali. Dhan'yabāda (Dhon-O-Bad) is thank you. My favourite Bengali phrase
though is Hans-Jaru literally Duckupine as in a creature with the face of a duck and
the body of a porcupine, it means a confusing state of affairs.
History The first evidence of permanent settlements
in Bengal emerged 4000 years ago, at Pandu Rajar. These Bronze Age rice farmers lived
in well-planned towns, worshipped a mother goddess and wore comfy cotton clothing. Around
500BCE, they began developing iron tools to transform the dense forests and swamps into
farmland leading to the growth of large cities like Pundranagar, Chandraketugarh (Chandra-kat-u-gar),
and Wari-Bateshwar (Bat-eshh-waar). Wari-Bateshwar was a wealthy port city with fortifications,
canals, paved streets and a cotton textile and glass manufacturing industry with trade
connections as far as Southeast Asia, China, and the Mediterranean. Coins discovered at
Wari Bateshwar even have little boats on them. Terracotta art gives us a glimpse into what
life was like. Here are some rice farmers, here’s a family with a cute dog, me after
I’ve eaten too much bread, and here’s a goddess with weapons for hair which is a
look I think we should bring back. These early Bengalis spoke languages from
the Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, and Austro-Asiatic language families. Around the 5th century
the Vedic-Aryan peoples migrated into Bengal from the West. They brought with them horses
and wheat. But they brought something even sexier than gluten. They brought the Sanskrit
language, the holy language of Hinduism. Through these people Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism
entered Bengal. The Aryans and Bengalis did not get along
at first. The Mahabharata, an early Hindu epic describes Aryan raids taking away Bengal’s
wealth, and calls the people there mlechchhas or barbarians. The Mahabharta also tells us
a Bengali, the King of the Vanga Kingdom, rode a giant elephant which he used to yeet
soldiers around. Hinduism and especially Buddhism spread rapidly
as the Aryans settled down and became rice farmers alongside the Bengalis. The Bengali
language would evolve from Sanskrit, but the ancient non-Indo European languages are still
spoken in the hills. Ancient Bengal was rich. The port city of
Tamralipta traded as far away as Crete, Egypt, South East Asia, and China and it’s mentioned
in Greek and Roman sources and a Chinese monk studying here in 409CE counted over 20 Buddhist
monasteries in the city. It traded gems, spices, and fine textiles called muslins. We have
records of Romans complaining that these textiles were so fine that the people wearing them
might as well be wearing nothing at all! People called these muslins flowing water because
they were so delicately made. Bengali traders could be found all over the Indian ocean and
probably introduced Buddhism to Sri Lanka where it is still the primary religion. Alexander Of Macedon invaded India in 327
BCE… for some reason. But “Even Alexander … although he had subdued all Asia, refrained
from making war upon the Gandaridae (Vanga) alone of all peoples;...upon learning that
the Gandaridae had four thousand elephants equipped for war he gave up his campaign against
them.”.....FOR ALEXANDER KNEWETH THE THE BENGALI ELEPHANTS DID YEET ABOUT SOLDIERS
AND FEARTH THEM HE DID. Alexander failed to conquer them but Bengal
would eventually be integrated into the first great Indian Empires ruled from Pataliputra
like the Maurya then the Gupta Empires. The Maurya and Gupta empires eventually decayed
and by the 8th century the Bengalis were divided and having…. a rough go of it. The last
few centuries were full of foreign invasions…. pillaging… this guy got his arm chopped
off. It was madness. They called it matsya nyaya (Maat-sean-eye)
or fish justice. Which clearly involved little fish judges and little fish lawyers screaming
things like you’re trout of order counsellor and Your Honour the Defence is clearly floundering,
cod knows this case smells fishy and we can’t let them off the hook and other hilarious
fish related puns? No? It’s a metaphor for a deeply unjust, violent and cruel word where
big fish consume the little fish…that’s not nearly as fun :( Sick of being little fishes the Bengalis decided
having a strong centralised government would defend them so they had an election. Here’s
an inscription describing the event, that word prakriti means “the people'' in Sanskrit.
So the people chose a man of humble origins, the warrior Gopala as their king in 750 CE.
Him and his elephants pacified the country and his dynasty the Palas built one of India’s
most powerful empires. In 851 an Arab visitor called Sulaiman said the Palas had 50,000
elephants in their army, an army so large it employed 15,000 clothes washers a good
idea since battles are pretty messy. The Palas built a strong stable state, with
hospitals, police, food relief for the poor, and they governed by 10 laws, one of which
made it illegal to “talk nonsense”. The Palas were devout Buddhists and oversaw
a Buddhist golden age. Bengal was the last stronghold of Buddhism in India, a land where
that religion was dying. They used their vast wealth to fund Buddhist
learning centres like Nalanda University in Bihar, this was built centuries before the
Palas took over but Nalanda really peaked under Palas patronage. Nalanda was one of
the first universities in history. Oxford in the UK is one of the world’s oldest universities
and Nalada is 500 years older than it. This massive centre of learning educated thousands
of Buddhist monks and one section of it’s vast library was nine stories tall housing
hundreds of thousands of books. Unhappy with simply funding existing learning
centres the Palas built a network of universities, Vikramashila, Odantapuri, Jagaddala and the
jewel of them all, Somapura. Just look at these things! The beautiful brick
work, the geometry, the carvings, the hundreds of rooms for students surrounding the monasteries,
the central tower soaring out from the flat bengal plain, the little happy goat marvelling
at the architecture. And these are just the ruins and foundations we can only imagine
what these looked liked in their prime. Tens of thousands of students and professors came
from India, Tibet, China, Java, Cambodia, and Myanmar to study logic, philosophy, science,
astronomy, and Buddhism here. The Bengali monk Atisa trained at Vikramshila then went
to Tibet and revived Buddhism there, where it is still the major religion today. Hindus
were still part of Pala society and held government positions and Islam arrived through trade
in the 800s and began to slowly gain followers. After 450 years of rule the Pala kingdom crumbled
in the face of numerous invasions in the 12th century, even the Tamils all the way down
here got some raids in. From the chaos, the Senas, chieftains from southern India, took
over Bengal. The Senas were orthodox Hindus and under their
rule Buddhism went into a steep decline. The Senas oversaw a great age of Hindu literature
and black stone art but they were interrupted when a new power arrived from
the West. Around the 11th century recently Islamised
Turkic, Afghan, and Iranic peoples started raiding Northern India, they conquered the
Indian kingdoms and set up the Delhi Sultanate in the first few years of the 1200s which
quickly incorporated large swaths of India. Enter Muhammad Bakhtiar, a general of the
Delhi Sultanate. With his army, he swept across Bihar, plundered its rich monasteries, massacred
the monks there, and left them as silent, smouldering ruins. His historical infamy was
sealed as the flames of thousands of ancient texts danced in his eyes. The surviving monks
grabbed what they could and fled to Tibet and Nepal. His gaze then turned to Bengal.
On hearing of his arrival in Bengal in 1204, the 80 year old Sena King Lakshmansen fled
east. Bengal fell without much of a fight, many even joined Bakhtiar, especially Buddhists
unhappy with Sena rule. Bakhtiar created a Muslim kingdom in Bengal, built a Buddhist
temple to reward his followers, then off he went to get murdered while invading Tibet.
His brief reign, while just a blip, injected Turkic, Afghan, and Iranian influences into
Bengal's cultural & genetic mosaic and brought a Muslim ruling class and Arabic and Farsi
as the new state languages. Soon the Delhi Sultanate swallowed Bengal and its riches
flowed to Delhi.
In 1342, Shamsuddin Iliyas Shah, a Delhi Sultanate official, rebelled, conquered Gaur, told the
Delhi Sultanate they were losers, and declared independence creating the independent Bengal
Sultanate. The Ilyas Shah Dynasty ruled for 150 years
and created the first unified "Bengali'' identity. Before Sanskrit, Arabic, and Farsi were the
state languages but now Bengali was standardised and given state support which funded Hindus
and Muslims that wrote in Bengali, by the 15th century a Chinese visitor noted the universal
language in use was Bengali and the Sultans although Muslim took part in pre-Islamic Bengali
traditions such as ceremonial bathing in the Ganges and calling themselves rajas. They
had become Bengali kings. This area stopped being called different regional
names like Vanga, Gaur, and Samatta, and now the whole thing was Bangalah.
The Bengal Sultanate was a huge exporter, their trade routes went from Spain to East
Africa to China. It was called "the richest country to trade with," and exported goods,
like silk, muslin, steel, and gunpowder. From the seventh to the sixteenth century
Gaur was the capital of Bengal. It was founded by the Bengali Hindu king Shasanka in the
7th century, whose reign is the beginning of the Bengali calendar, current year 2023
is 1430 in the Bengali calendar. By the 16th century Gaur was the 5th largest
city on Earth. Chinese and Portuguese visitors describe the splendour of Gaur’s houses,
palaces, ponds, and gardens, with beautiful coloured tiles which you can still barely
see on on its ruins today. It’s large walls with fabulous gates each guarded by 150 eunuchs,
its buildings mounted with golden domes, it’s hundreds of markets and paved streets where
platoons of soldiers marched in columns with colourful flags.
The river that Gaur relied on changed course in the seventeenth century which brought floods
and malaria and destroyed its river trade, the once great city died and was abandoned,
is ruins stand today as a reminder of it’s glorious past.
Bengali artists created an era of architectural brilliance, one example is the Adina Mosque,
completed in 1375. The Bengal Sultan Sikander fought off an invasion from the Delhi Sultanate
and as revenge decided to show off by building a true Bengali Mosque ignoring North Indian
styles and using ideas from Iran and the Palas and Senas. Just look at this thing! The arches,
the courtyard, the intricate details, the little carving of the Hindu god Ganesha. In
its heyday with its 350 domes it must have been awe-inspiring, it remains the largest
mosque ever built in South Asia. Bengali architecture, Hindu or Muslim from this time is so distinct
but its most iconic trait is the curved roofs based on the humble thatched bamboo roofs
found everywhere in the villages of Bengal. Historical Bengali architecture in general
is beautifully intricate and detailed, with all these little carvings in the walls that
tell us stories from the past. The Bengali Sultans oversaw a period of wealth
and extravagance that sponsored the arts where Hindus and Muslims mixed freely. Hindus sang
in Muslim styles and Muslims philosophised using Hindu ideas. In the 15th century the
Hindu saint Chaitanya started a massive Hindu religious movement based on love, equality,
and devotional singing of Hare-Krishna the Sultan Husain Shah gave the movement state
protection and the Hindus called him Lord Krishna in return.
This was also an era of imperial intrigue and assassinations. Dynasties of all kinds
of ethnic origins sat on the Bengali throne. At one point the Ethiopian palace guards staged
a coup and an Ethiopian dynasty ruled Bengal for 7 years.
Eventually the Persianised Turkic military juggernaut known as the Mughal Empire conquered
Bengal in 1576, although it took decades and immense amounts of bloodshed for them to stamp
out Bengali resistance. Mughal rule ended Bengal’s independence and brought it into
one of the largest empires in Indian history. The Mughals oversaw the Islamification of
Bengal. Wait? Didn’t Islam arrive with Baktiar almost 400 years ago? Well it’s complicated.
Bengal is pretty unique, under Muslim rule the Indian subcontinent remained Hindu but
Bengal, specifically eastern Bengal became Muslim.
You see, by the time of the Sultanate, Hinduism was having a golden age in Western Bengal
But eastern Bengal stuck with Buddhism, some Hinduism, and other indigenous faiths.
Islam was not the majority religion, Bengal was ruled by Muslims but they didn’t force
the religion on the people. When the Mughals took over Bengal they wanted
to increase their tax revenue by farming more land. But most usable land was already settled
in western Bengal and eastern Bengal was isolated, difficult to traverse, and heavily forested.
Then in the 16th century the Ganges shifted its channel east, opening up eastern Bengal.
Mughal officials went crazy issuing permits to men willing to go out, chop down the forests,
swamps and marshes, create farmland and build towns. The majority of these adventurous pioneers
were charismatic Muslim Sufis called pirs. These pirs went out, founded towns with mosques
as their cultural centres. Local people from the forests came to these towns and settled
down. As more land was settled Islam spread and became the religion associated with towns
and economic growth. The Pirs didn't enforce an exclusive religion, they mixed Islam with
local beliefs. Today in the Sunderbans there is a local deity called Dakshin Roy, a combination
of a Muslim saint and a Hindu god, who is still worshipped by Hindus and Muslims so
is Bonbibi a Hindu and Muslim forest goddess. Tombs of Pirs, like the one of Sufi Saint
Shah Jalal in Sylhet, are holy sites to all religious groups. Islam subtly blended into local beliefs over
such a long period of time that we can’t point to when these people “converted”
to Islam as the pirs settled more land Buddhists, Hindus, and indigenous faiths folded into
an Islamic core. Generations later most people here were Muslim.
And so you can see the mark of this movement today, West Bengal is mostly Hindu, East mostly
Muslim, and the less farmable hills are Buddhist. The Mughal Empire in 1700 made up 25% of the
Earth’s economy Bengal was it’s richest province making it the richest area of the
richest country in the world. The Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb called Bengal “the paradise of
nations”. Wealth poured in the capital, Dhaka, a city with 1 million inhabitants by
1700. Bengalis enjoyed some of the highest living standards in the world.
A visitor noted: “At this market were also many kinds of
cotton goods...the eyes were attracted by the sight of such superabundance of many things
in one city.” Mughal Bengal was home to the largest textile
manufacturing and shipbuilding industry in the world. Ottoman and British navies sailed
on Bengali ships, cannons and guns relied on Bengali gunpowder, armies fought with Bengali
made steel. The 1760s saw British ships abandon easily broken and flooded forecastles and
poop decks and adopt a stronger, watertight flush decks, a design they got from Bengali
rice ships. Bengal’s rice fed Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The nobles of Europe, the
Islamic world, and East Asia wore the finest Bengali silks and muslins and enjoyed tea
and candies sweetened with Bengali sugar. The muslins of this era were so well made
20 metres of this woven air could fit inside a little tobacco box and almost 2000 years
after the Romans complained some prudes in Britain were upset at how revealing this cloth
was which has provided us with this incredible pun.
We know from Indian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Ethiopian, and Chinese sources that Bengal was exporting
immense amounts of textiles as early as the third century BCE. Bengalis out produced the
world through their intricate transport and production system. Their rivers and canals
acted as highways where tens of thousands of boats connected rural farmers with specialised
production towns which connected to urban markets and ports. Some towns focussed on
textiles, others on sugar processing, others on cash crops, others on shipbuilding. In
Dhaka state owned factories or Karkhanas employed thousands of workers under 1 roof to produce
specialised goods. which were exported from Europe to East Africa to China.
In the 18th century Bengal’s economy showed signs of a proto-industrial revolution As
the Bengali textile industry grew more efficient, advanced, and profitable huge amounts of capital
were amassed in Bengal which could have been invested in better equipment.
Something would stop Bengal from making that industrial leap.
As a trade hub Bengal attracted the world’s fortune
seekers. The first Europeans to sail around Africa
and into the Indian Ocean were the Portuguese in 1498. They soon arrived in Bengal, attracted
by the promise of immense booty…different immense booty. In 1528 the Sultan gave them
permission to settle in Chattogram. They brought trade and Jesus but also potatoes, tomatoes,
and chilies from America but soon they would join up with Arakan pirates and become a pirating
and slave trading menace in the Bay of Bengal. The French, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, and British
followed the Portuguese in the following decades. The British East India Company set up a trading
post in a fishing village called Kolkata in 1690. The British called it Calcutta.
By the early 1700s Mughal control of Bengal was weak, Bengal was essentially independent
and ruled by Princes called Nawabs. The Nawabs ruled from the dazzling city of Mushibad as
some of the world’s richest rulers, patronising the arts.
But the mid 1700s were rough. Portuguese and Arakan pirates were causing havoc and the
Marathas, a rapidly growing Empire from Central India repeatedly invaded from 1741 onwards
killing around 400,000 people in Bengal. Eventually the Nawabs paid about 1 billion modern dollars
a year to keep the Marathas away. In the 1700s the British East India Company
demanded more and more concessions from a weakened Bengali state and tensions began
to boil over. When the British built illegal fortifications around Calcutta the Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula
(dough-la) besieged Calcutta in June of 1756 and kicked the British out.
The British East India Company and Bengalis would meet for battle the following year at
a site called Palashi. When Siraj met the British in battle he had every advantage,
his army was larger, better trained, and he had more artillery. But he had made a fatal
error, he annoyed Bengal’s richest banking families and his army commander, Mir Jafar.
In the weeks before the East India company leader Robert Clive had made a secret deal
with Mir Jafar and those families. The Battle of Palashi was a none battle, Siraj’s army
under Mir Jafar stood by and watched British artillery kill about 500 loyal Bengalis, Siraj
fled, was promptly murdered and Clive placed Mir Jafar on the Bengali throne.
The Company quickly booted Mir Jafar off the throne, Bengal’s riches made the East India
Company one of the wealthiest corporations in human history and paid for the Company’s
conquest of India and by 1858 when Company ruled ended and the British Crown took direct
control, all of South Asia was governed from Calcutta, the second largest metropolis of
the British Empire after London. British rule would bring a nightmare to the
“paradise of nations”. Robert Clive and the East India Company’s mismanagement resulted
in a devastating famine in 1770, killing ¼ people that about 3-10 million people, they
received no aid. Over the next 127 years Bengal, the land of super-abundance would suffered
through 25 British-policy induced famines. In 1793, Britain's Permanent Settlement Law
changed Bengal's land system, turning a class called zamindars who were tax-collecting nobles
under Mughal Rule into landowners with a fixed yearly payment to the British. Failure to
pay meant their land would be sold to another family. This burden simply fell on the peasants
who lost their rights to the land. The new landowners, the zamindars treated them like
servants, increasing rents at will and evicting them when they couldn’t pay, some even banned
tenants from wearing shoes. Peasants could no longer pay rent in crops, the British wanted
cash, so peasants took high-interest loans from zamindars and moneylenders leaving them
in crushing generational debt. The Zamindars were almost exclusively Hindus, the peasants
Muslim. I wonder if this British policy will have ramifications later??
Bengal’s exports fell from 5.6 million textiles a year in 1799 to 244,000 60 years later.
4% of their previous output As Bengal was de-industrialised, millions of workers and
artisans were sent back to the fields to grow cash crops like indigo, tea, silk, jute, and
opium which the British then used to hook China on drugs in order to pay for Chinese
tea. The 1800s were crazzzzy. Cheap Indian raw materials now fueled Britain’s
industrial revolution and the East India Company forced British goods into India tax-free keeping
it as a captive market destroying Indian industry. William Digby a journalist at the time noted
“England's industrial supremacy owes its origin to the vast hoard of Bengal”.
By 1800 Dhaka’s spinners and weavers had “died in famine” the city was “Impoverished…ruined
and abandoned". The art of making its fine muslins was lost.
Life expectancy plummeted under British rule and the economist Utsa Patnaik calculated
that Britain drained $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938.
As all this was happening across Bengal, things were going differently in Calcutta, now the
capital and nerve-centre of British rule in India. In an emerging cosmopolitan Calcutta
English, Bengali, Sanskrit, Latin, Western & Indian ideas mixed freely. As an economic
hub, Calcutta prospered and attracted ambitious Bengalis, the university of Calcutta opened
in 1857 and soon a generation of wealthy and educated Hindu Bengalis created an era of
literature, art, and science called the Bengal Renaissance.
During this period, world class poets and writers emerged from Bengal, like Nazrul Islam
the Rebel Poet, the novelist Bankim Chandra Chatterjee or the man that towers over Bengali
literature Rabindranath Tagore (rah-bin-dra-nath). Tagore was a poet, writer, playwright, spiritualist,
composer, and singer who wrote over 4,000 poems and 2,500 songs. He took up painting
at 70 and made over 3000 drawings. He was unstoppable.
In 1913 he became the first non-European Nobel Prize winner and he was a global phenomena
in the early and mid 1900s, travelling the world and meeting with people like WB Yeats
and Einstein. Not just a writer but also a revolutionary he championed Indian independence
and the education of the masses and when the British committed a massacre of civilians
at Amritsar in 1919, Tagore gave up his knighthood in disgust.
He forever changed Bengali literature. His works which evolved over his lifetime focussed
on human dignity, freedom, universalism, nationalism, anti-nationalism, internationalism, anti-imperialism,
and religion. Seriously Tagore’s work varies from short beautiful quotes to full on breakdowns
of nationalist thought or the need to master mechanical production to tree planting, the
guy had range. This novel Gora is an incredible insight into Indian politics, feminism, and
nationalism at the time and even has an incredible twist involving the Irish. Today every Bengali knows Tagore, not just
for his literature. He revolutionised Bengali music and Tagore songs called Rabindra Sangeet
are still a popular genre. His poem Jana Gana Mana became the national
anthem of India and another Amar Shonar Bangla became the national anthem of Bangladesh.
The Bengal Renaissance created world class scientists like Jagadish Chandra Bose. In
November 1895 at a public demonstration in Calcutta, Bose shot radio waves through a
person, and over a distance 23 metres through two walls where they triggered an apparatus
he had set up to ring a bell. This was two years before Guglielmo Marconi, the famous
inventor of radio, performed a similar demonstration of wireless telegraphy in England.
The Bengal Renaissance brought up a new generation that demanded civil rights and fostered a
sense of nationalist consciousness, leading to several revolts against British rule, Bengal
would lead the way for the Indian Independence movement.
The British used a policy of Divide and Rule in India. Muslims and Hindus were pitted against
each other to protect colonial interests, intensifying a division between them. So as
the independence movement grew the Two Nations Theory emerged, proposing the Hindus and Muslims
were two separate nations and post-independence from Britain they should become two independent
states, one a Hindu majority India the other a Muslim majority Pakistan.
The Partition of India is often described as purely religious but it was very complex.
To put it very simply British policy had placed Bengali Muslims’ in abject poverty under
the domination of the British and upper-class Hindu zamindars and money-lenders. One East
Bengali peasant in 1929 said: “My father, Sir, was born in debt, grew in debt and died
in debt. I have inherited my father’s debt and my son will inherit mine.” The Muslim League which pushed for the creation
of Pakistan also called for the end of the zamindari system. For these millions of Muslim
peasants Pakistan would be a farmer’s utopia, a hope to live a life of dignity. Imagine
how appealing the idea of your landlord and the people keeping you in crushing debt suddenly
living in another country sounded. This was as much a class divide as a religious one.
When Hindus pushed for independence the British tried to break the movement by bringing more
Muslims into government to scare them. “With deteriorating Hindu–Muslim relations,
violent communal riots unknown in the pre-British days became a common feature in Bengal.” It was during these riots that poet Nazrul
Islam wrote songs demanding Hindus and Muslims to unite.
But they descended into fear, Hindu and Muslim communities were concerned that in an independent
united India one group would dominate the other, they began to see each other as two
monoliths trapped in a bitter rivalry, as if they had not shared a common homeland,
language, heritage and culture in an undivided Bengal for nearly a 1000 years.
Even with this conflict, both the Muslim League and Indian National Congress were building
huge momentum in the goal to push the British out of India and secure independence.
Britain declared war on Germany in 1939 and dragged their Indian colony into the Second
World War. Japan attacked Pearl Harbour on the 7th December
1941 by the summer of 1942, they conquered British Malaya, Hong Kong, Singapore and blitzed
into Burma as the British army retreated. Calcutta was now the stronghold of the British
Empire in the East. Defending Calcutta didn’t mean reinforcing it militarily, the Japanese
bombed it without resistance. The defence would be a scorched earth policy
called Denial. To deny the Japanese any resources should
they invade, the British ordered the destruction of boats across Bengal. All of the rice from
the countryside was seized and stockpiled in Calcutta, to feed its citizens. The rice
that could not be seized was destroyed. The price of rice skyrocketed well beyond what
the poor could afford. By August 1942, the Chief Minister of Bengal, Fazlul Huq, was
sounding the alarm stating "we are faced with a rice famine in Bengal." He was ignored.
In the sweltering heat of May 1943, the first reports of deaths began to trickle into Calcutta
the trickle became a tsunami. The countryside had become a “deathscape”. Famine was
killing every 7th person.Rural peasants weakened by months of hunger, poured towards Calcutta,
but they would receive no food there and if caught by the authorities would be sent to
camps to die. The British government refused to declare
a state of famine, even though its Famine Code would have mandated vital aid and stockpiled
rice rooted in warehouses rather than being distributed to the poor.
Winston Churchill refused food imports to Bengal. It was his opinion that “The famine
was their own fault” and “The starvation of underfed Bengalis is less serious than
that of sturdy Greeks,” When Parliament reminded him of the famine he asked “Why
hasn’t Gandhi died yet?”. When the famine officially ended in December
1943. Over 3 million lives had been annihilated, that number is probably an underestimate.
During World War 2 the Bengalis suffered more casualties than the US, UK, and France combined
but they are rarely counted among the war dead. 1943 would be “the final judgement on British
rule in India". In the wake of the war and famine, rebellions
and violent riots broke out between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal just as the Independence
Movement sealed victory. In 1947, under Viceroy Lord Mountbatten, Britain was compelled to
relinquish India. In a matter of weeks the subcontinent was vivisected, the British drew
lines across India, ignoring history and community, to create a Hindu majority India and Muslim
majority Pakistan. At 11:57 on the 14 August 1947 Pakistan became
an independent nation, India followed on the 15th. Two centuries of colonial rule had come
to an end and the people of this subcontinent were free to govern themselves. But twenty million people found themselves
on the wrong side of these lines and had to rapidly move, abandoning their previous lives,
hundreds of thousands died in the violent chaos. Bengal would be sliced in half; the
Hindu West went to India, the Muslim East to Pakistan ending thousands of years of shared
history. Pakistan was born a bifurcated nation. West
Pakistan and Bengal, now called East Pakistan, were separated by 1,400km. The administration,
bureaucracy, and army were entirely staffed by West Pakistanis. All economic aid and development
went to West Pakistan, even though the East had more people and earned most of the revenue.
Bengal was still a colony. Even though Bengali was spoken by 58.6% of
the population, Urdu, a language from West Pakistan, was the sole official language.
Bengalis demanded recognition of their language so in February 1948 East Pakistan went on
strike. The Governor General of Pakistan Muhammad
Ali Jinnah visited Dhaka on March 19th to cool things down. He declared to the crowd
“Let me make it clear to you that the state language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and
no other language.” and that anyone that disagreed was “the enemy of Pakistan”. On February 21st 1952 thousands of students
and members of the Bengali Language Movement protested at Dhaka University. They were surrounded
by police who opened fire into the crowd. Injuring hundreds and killing five people. Bangladesh had its first martyrs. The 21st of February is now International
Mother Language Day and deeply important in Bangladesh. The Awami League political party was formed
to push for Bengali rights. East Pakistan was plagued by riots and strikes, people proudly
sung the Bengali songs of Tagore, a new identity was forming. A charismatic Bengali politician
by the name of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman rose up to become President of the Awami League
in January 1966. When he advocated for a self-ruling East Pakistan Mujibur and thousands of Awami
League members were jailed and to rub salt in the wound West Pakistan banned all Tagore
songs. His arrest made Mujibur a political icon for
Bengalis. To end the chaos the President of Pakistan Yahya Khan released Mujibur and called
elections for December 1970. The deadliest cyclone in human history smashed
into East Pakistan in November killing 300,000 people in East Pakistan with no response from
West Pakistan . Fed up, united, and led by Mujibur the Bengali
response would be world changing. On the 7th of December the election results came in.
The Awami League, the Bengalis, won a majority in Pakistan’s national assembly. Mujibur
would now be Prime Minister. Instead. Yahya brought in martial law. On March 7th
Mujibur made a fiery speech to a crowd of 2 million in Dhaka. “If another bullet is fired, if any more
of the people are murdered, it is a directive to all of you :turn every house into a fortress,
resist the enemy with everything you have…The struggle this time, is a struggle for our
liberty. The struggle this time, is a struggle for our independence. Joi Bangla" On the 25th of March Yahya told his soldiers
to initiate Operation Searchlight, kill the idea of Bangladesh. Mujibur was arrested and smuggled to West
Pakistan. Soldiers, armed cars, and tanks rolled out
onto the streets of Dhaka hunting down Awami League members and burning the city. Students
and lecturers barricaded themselves in Dhaka University and resisted the army’s assault.
The university's dorms were shelled. The future minds of Bangladesh were massacred. In the
proceeding weeks thousands of people were picked up by the army and “dispatched to
Bangladesh'' West Pakistan unleashed total war on the Bengalis.
Massacres took place across Bangladesh. An eyewitness account recalled “we could not
stay in any particular village for any length of time, the Pakistani army was burning the
villages one after another….it was hell” By May 1.5 million Bengalis had fled to India,
about 60,000 crossed the border daily. The Awami League regrouped in Kolkata and formed
a government in exile. The Mukti Bahini, the freedom fighters, formed and recruited thousands
of men and women. By November tens of thousands of Mukti were
assaulting Pakistani positions in an intense guerrilla campaign. In April 1971 Archer Blood, an American counsel
in Dhaka, sent an angry cable message to President Nixon and Henry Kissinger, denouncing their
support of Pakistan’s actions which he called “genocide.” They were furious at Blood
for leaking this information. The Pakistani military needed American materials to continue
running, pressure from them would have ended the bloodbath. But this was the Cold War. The Pakistani army was commiting genocide
in Bangladesh armed to the teeth with American weapons. Pakistan was a key ally to both the
US and China. The Americans were using Pakistan as a secret channel to communicate with Mao
Zedong's China. Nixon and Kissinger wanted the opening of China to be their crowning
political achievement. They needed Pakistan happy. On 2 May 1971 with reports of genocide
coming in Nixon and Kissinger told their government “Don’t squeeze Yahya at this time.”
The “Don’t” was underlined three times. India had been supporting Bangladesh for months.
Calcutta and West Bengal were a base of operations for the Mukti and the Indian army was assisting
them. India is facing a massive humanitarian crisis as millions of Bangladeshi refugees
fled into India. The United States warned Indira Gandhi, India's
leader, that if India intervened to stop Pakistan there would be severe consequences. Kissinger informed China that if they militarily
intervened to help their ally Pakistan, the US would defend them if another nation like
for example the Soviet Union responded. The Soviet Union joined India in supporting
Bangladesh and in August sign a treaty with India agreeing to defend India if anyone attacked
it. Things got extremely tense. A war of liberation
by Bengalis that simply wanted to speak their own language now descended into an almost
comedic scenario. At one point Richard Nixon the President of the United States discussed
“lobbing nuclear weapons in ” to defend Mao Zedong’s China if the Soviets attacked
it if China intervened against India to protect Pakistan. The 1900s were craaaaazy! The Mukti were putting up an incredible fight
against a better armed military but with every passing day the genocide continued and millions
of refugees poured into a stressed India. Now confident they had Soviet support by November
India was massing troops on the Pakistan border. On December 3rd Pakistani planes bombed strategic
sites across Northern India. India joined the war, the US sent a nuclear
aircraft carrier and powerful task force to the Bay of Bengal as a final warning to India.
The clock was ticking, the American task force was approaching. If they didn’t have total
control of Bangladesh and a Pakistani surrender before the Americans showed up then the resulting
stalemate would be a humanitarian disaster. The Indian and Bangladeshi armies blitzed
towards Dhaka to secure victory. The fighting was brutal --- but in just two weeks on the
16 of December Indian and Bangladeshi troops took Dhaka and forced a Pakistani surrender. The true number is still not known but this
war killed roughly 1.7 million people in 9 months. Hundreds of thousands of women were
sexually assaulted. 10 million were refugees in India and 20 million were displaced internally. But Bangladesh was born. And this is where I need to stop. I could
keep talking about this for hours but the video can only be so long. Next up we have! Religion
Bengal’s religious history is etched into its landscape as Mosques, Temples, Stupas,
and Churches dot Bengal. Today about 67% of Bengalis are Muslim and 32% are Hindu. Buddhists,
especially in Bangladesh, and Christians make up the remaining 1%. Muslims make up 91% of Bangladesh while Hindus
make up 70% of West Bengal. Hindus may be a minority in Bangladesh but there’s still
13 million of them which is more people than are in Belgium. Over in West Bengal there
are 24 million Bengali Muslims which means West Bengal has a larger Muslim population
than overwhelmingly Muslim Syria or Mali. You can see the religious origins of Bengali
people through their surnames. Kazi, Soijed, or Mustafi are Muslim surnames. Bose, Roy,
and Gupto are Hindu. Barua is Buddhist and Gomes, D’Silva, and D’Souza are Christian,
a reminder that the Portuguese were the first to bring Christianity here. The most important festival to Bengali Hindus
is the Durga Puja, which celebrates Durga, a powerful mother goddess, who defends the
weak and slays the wicked. The Puja happens during the Bengali month of “Ashvin” September-October
in the Gregorian calendar. For 10 days in Bengal especially West Bengal all attention
is directed towards showing love and gratitude to Durga. Streets are packed with people,
markets and fairs are open all night, there are scripture readings, performances, dances,
feasting, gift-exchanging, parades, and most importantly temporary statues/stages are built
and decorated; these are called Pandals. During the festival Bengalis go Pandal hopping to
see all the diverse pandals made from all sorts of materials and with special themes
such as environmentalism, motherhood, supporting sex workers, remembering the partition or
migrants, and all sorts of other stuff. On the 10th day the Pandals are brought to the
local river, immersed in the water, and Durga returns to the cosmos, her visit to Earth
having ended. Durga is a Hindu goddess but many Muslims
will join in the celebrations with their Hindu neighbours and it has become a festival that
celebrates Bengali culture. The colour and vibrancy of this festival is
unmatched as people party in the streets. During the Dhunuchi Naach dance the colourfully
dressed dancer balances a chalice filled with coconut husks, burning charcoal, and incense.
They move to the beat of nearby dhak drums. It’s incredible to watch and some even dance
with the chalice in their mouths. Another festival, Pohela Boishakh, is Bengali
new year. It’s celebrated on the 14th and 15th of April. This is a secular Bengali festival
with a strong sense of camaraderie during the parades, feasts, and family visits that
occur. Everyone gets together to make plans for the new year. People wear red and white
and the streets will be filled with greetings of Subho Noboborsho or Happy New Year. Ok one last one, Dhaka also has another festival
called Shakrain which is a kite festival but at night they have these amazing light shows
and there fire-eaters on the roof tops. Look at the lights is that not the coolest thing!!! FOOD The Bengalis are food obsessed, even when
eating a good meal Bengali will be talking about a previous good meal and they have every
right to be obsessed. Their food is incredible and diverse with influences from India, China,
South-East Asia, Central Asia, and Europe. The Portuguese brought yeast baked bread,
potatoes, chilli peppers, and tomatoes. The French introduced the multi course meal. The British brought………eh….. The Mughals influence led to a huge increase
in the use of milk, cream, sugar, mutton, chicken and ghee or clarified butter and spices
like saffron and cardamom they introduced Arabic and Persian dishes like biryani, korma,
bhuna, chap, rezala, and kathi roll which is a kebab. These dishes are more common in Bangladesh
where meat is more common since as Muslims they can eat beef whereas Hindu Bengali do
not. Many Hindus also do not eat garlic or onion; they use asafoetida instead whereas
Bengali Muslims are happy to use garlic and onion. Sitting on so many rivers Bengali food is
dominated by rice and fish. Ilish fish is by far the most popular and
this oily fish rich in omega 3 can be found in curries or fried in mustard oil. Bengali
food uses distinct flavours like mustard oil, turmeric, cinnamon, cardamon, naga chilli,
nutmeg, and mace. Bengali food also uses a lot of coconut. Poppy seeds, a cultural reminder
of Bengals opium history. The traditional spice blend of Bengali cuisine
is Panch Phoron, made of cumin, nigella, fenugreek, fennel, and mustard seeds. Many dishes are
also eaten with some lemon on the side. Iconic Bengali dishes are Shorsha hilsa: Ilish fried in mustard oil
with chilis, cumin, turmeric, and lime Shukto: A bitter vegetable dish made with
bitter lemon and spices that is supposed to help with digestion
Luchi and cholar dal: Fried flat bread with a sweet-savory dal made of split chickpeas,
coconut, raisins, and spices Muri Ghonto: Fish head curry
Biryani: This meat and rice dish is eaten across South Asia but Bengali Biryani is unique,
it adds potatoes. Morog Polao: A delicious slow cooked chicken
with pilaf rice and spices Khaashir Mangsho: A silky potato and mutton
curry Bengalis also have a huge range of sweets
and desserts. Roshogolla is their iconic sweet, a cottage cheese dough filled with delicious
syrup. There’s also Misti Doi, fermented sweet
yoghurt. And Borhani and Sandessh and Shahi jilapi. There are so many regional sweets,
drinks, teas, and desserts it’s impossible to include them all.
Diaspora Today Bengalis are one of the world’s largest
diasporas numbering about 13 million people. Outside of Bengal they are primarily located
in India & Pakistan, the Gulf States, Malaysia, the UK, USA, South Africa, and Italy. Bengalis merchants have settled in places
like Indonesia and Sri Lanka for thousands of years but in the 19th century Bengalis
spread further as they were exported across the British Empire as indentured labourers. In 1814 3 Bengali sailors jumped off their
East India Company ship near New Zealand and swam ashore where they joined up with the
local Maoris teaching them” strategies for fighting Europeans”. 30 years later in 1841
one was found with face tattoos living on Stewart Island with his Maori family. I bet
you weren’t expecting the Maori to show up in this video were you! Specifically the Bangladeshi diaspora is a
fundamental cog in the economy of Asia. 2.5 million of them live in Saudi Arabia and millions
more in other Gulf States where they build and maintain vital services, often under terrible
conditions. They send home about 22 billion dollars a year and it is Bangladesh's second
largest GDP contributor after the garment industry. The country where Bengalis have had by far
the largest impact outside of South Asia is in the United Kingdom. Bengalis have been
travelling to the UK for centuries. In the 1800s Dean Mahomed married a woman from Cork,
moved to London, and introduced shampoo to Europeans. After the Second World War Britain was in
desperate need of labour.. During the 1950-60s Bengalis helped rebuild Britain by working
in vital industries such as construction, auto manufacturing, steelworking, and other
industrial sectors. Many of these labourers settled down in the Brick Land area of East
London, today known as Banglatown. When refugees fleeing the 1971 war ended up
in Britain this community cared for them and absorbed them into the growing Bengali restaurant
business. Bengali immigrants started opening up Indian Curry shops and tweaked South Asian
food to suit the British palette. Doing so they pioneered British Curry and Chicken Tikka
Masala, one of Britain’s favourite dishes. About 90% of the UK’s “Indian” restaurants
were started by Bangladeshis. However, just as in Bangladesh this community would have
its own martyrs, this community suffered horrific racist attacks and on the 4th of May 1978
while walking home Altab Ali was murdered. In protest his coffin was marched to 10 Downing
Street. This community persevered. Bengalis have gone from some of Britain's worst performing
students to some of its best, memorials to Ali stand beautifully in Brick Lane, Boishakhi
Mela the British version of Bengali New Year is now the second largest street festival
in Britain. Culture Throughout history the Begalis have crafted
beautiful works from cloth, silk, ivory, terracotta, bamboo, rice flour and muslins which have
seen a revival in post-colonial Bengal. Carved masks are used in the chhau dance where dancers
act out scenes from mythology. But the Bengali are most famous for their love of arts such
as literature and music. Almost all Bengalis can sing Tagore songs and the songs of nomadic musicians called
Bauls are incredibly popular. These musicians attempt to connect with the divine by having
no material positions and bringing people joy through song. The most famous Baul is
Lalon Shah, an incredible philosopher-musician whose work spoke out against class, religion,
and gender discrimination and claimed that God cannot be found in any temple or mosque
but inside humanity. Bengali are famous bookworms. The largest
second-hand bookmarket in the world is in Kolkata and every year Bangladesh holds a
book fair that attracts 500,000 people and earns €4 million. Alongside writers like
Tagore and the national Poet of Bangladesh Nazrul Islam, the rebel poet who fought against
British rule and inter-religious violence, and there is the Bengali feminist writer Rokeya
Hossain one of her books from 1905, Sultana’s Dream is a short satirical sci-fi novel about
a futuristic world in which the gender roles are reversed. Women have built an advanced
society and men are secluded away with no roles in public life. It’s a very short
book but a fascinating look at a critique of South Asian gender relations 100 years
ago. Also the women fire solar powered lasers at the men so there's that too. Hossain became
one of Bengal’s most influential authors. She started a school to educate women and
pushed for the education of girls in a society deeply against it, now Bangladesh has dedicated
the 9th of December as a holiday in her honour. Bengali cinema was one of the earliest to
evolve in South Asia. Tollywood which gets its name from Tollygunge in Kolkata was christened
in 1932. The tradition of adding -ollywood to different film industries started here
with Tollywood. Bollywood would follow in its footsteps. While Indian film is known
for its musicals and sudden outbursts of song, Tollywood produced realistic, grungy films
that commented on sociopolitical issues. The star of Tollywood is definitely Satyajit Ray
and his Apu trilogy. This coming of age story is an important cinematic masterpiece. Bounce
lighting was invented by its crew and so far it has won over 30 awards. It’s up with
LOTRs as one of the highest rated trilogies of all time. Director Akira Kurosaw said “Not
to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the
moon” Today cricket is Bengal’s primary sport
and Bengalis go crazy for it but football holds a special place. Bengalis are obsessed
with the Argeninian and Brazilian football teams, seriously they go to war for these
teams. During the last world cup one of my favourite moments was watching the Bengalis
rally behind Argentina. When Maradona visited Calcutta in 2008 hundreds of thousands of
Bengali went to the streets to see him. Now there’s a 4m statue of him in Kolkata and
this love of football goes back to an incredible moment in history. The year is 1911, 2 minutes remain in a 1-1
match between the East Yorkshire Regiment and Mohun Bagan, the first all-Indian team
to reach the India Football Association finals. Tensions are high, this was the height of
the British Empire, the Indian independence movement was kicking off and now 11 barefoot
Bengalis stood against a crack British regiment team. Abhilash Ghosh smashes the ball into
the net, the game ends 2-1. Mohun Bagan becomes the first all-Indian team to win the championship,
Bengal erupts in celebration and this team goes down in history as the Immortal 11. It
became a major event in Indian independence when the Bengalis proved they could beat Britain
at their own sport. The victory in 1911 proved the British could be beaten, Mohun Bengal’s
second championship victory came in 1947 when the British finally were. I absolutely love learning about other cultures,
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people you would like me to cover next. If you are Bengali please leave a comment if
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Sources I used are also in the description. Thank you so much for watching and Bidāẏa
