Malay Roy Choudhury was an Indian Bengali poet, playwright, short story writer, essayist and novelist who founded the Hungryalist movement in the 1960s.
Namasudra, earlier known as Chandal, is an Avarna Bengali Hindu community originating from eastern and central Bengal. The term Chandal or Chandala is usually considered as a slur. They were traditionally engaged in fishing and as boatmen, and later in cultivation. They lived outside the four-tier ritual varna system and thus were outcastes.
Bengali literature denotes the body of writings in the Bengali language and which covers Old Bengali, Middle- Bengali and Modern Bengali with the changes through the passage of time and dynastic patronization or non-patronization. Bengali has developed over the course of roughly 1,300 years. If the emergence of the Bengali literature supposes to date back to roughly 650 AD, the development of Bengali literature claims to have 1,600 years of old. The earliest extant work in Bengali literature is the Charyapada, a collection of Buddhist mystic songs in Old Bengali dating back to the 10th and 11th centuries. The timeline of Bengali literature is divided into three periods: ancient (650–1200), medieval (1200–1800) and modern. Medieval Bengali literature consists of various poetic genres, including Hindu religious scriptures, Islamic epics, Vaishnava texts, translations of Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit texts, and secular texts by Muslim poets. Novels were introduced in the mid-19th century. Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore is the best known figure of Bengali literature to the world. Kazi Nazrul Islam, notable for his activism and anti-British literature, was described as the Rebel Poet and is now recognised as the National poet of Bangladesh.
Prithwindra Mukherjee, who retired in 2003 from his career as a researcher in the Human and Social Sciences Department (Ethnomusicology) of the French National Centre of Scientific Research in Paris, is an author of a number of books and other publications on various subjects.
Subodh Sarkar is a Bengali poet, writer and editor, and a reader in English literature at City College, Kolkata. He is a recipient of the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award.
Indian English poetry is the oldest form of Indian English literature. Henry Louis Vivian Derozio is considered the first poet in the lineage of Indian English poetry followed by Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Sarojini Naidu, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, and Toru Dutt, among others.
Dalit literature is a genre of Indian writing that focuses on the lives, experiences, and struggles of the Dalit community, who have faced caste-based oppression and discrimination for centuries. As Jobymon Skaria explains, "Dalit literature has been the most potent literary expression of Dalits' daily struggle for human dignity." This literature encompasses various Indian languages such as Marathi, Bangla, Hindi, Kannada, Punjabi, Sindhi, Odia and Tamil and includes diverse narratives like poems, short stories, and autobiographies. The movement originated in response to the caste-based social injustices in mid-twentieth-century independent India and has since spread across various Indian languages, critiquing caste practices and experimenting with different literary forms.
Harichand Thakur , worked among the untouchable people of Bengal Presidency. He formed the Matua sect of Hindus.
Matua Mahasangha is a religious reformation movement that originated, around 1860 AD, in modern-day Bangladesh, with a considerable number of adherents both in Bangladesh and in West Bengal of India. Matua is a sect of depressed class AVARNA Bengali Hindus who are Namasudras, a Scheduled Caste group of Bengal. The movement was launched as a reformation by the followers of Harichand Thakur. Thakur attained atmadarshan at an early age and would subsequently preach his Darshan in Twelve Commandments. The teachings of Thakur establish education as preeminently important for the adherent and the upliftment of the population the adherent's duty, while also providing a formula for ending social conflict.
New Alipore College, established in 1963, is an undergraduate college in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. It is affiliated with the University of Calcutta. The college campus is free from posters and plastic. The college is the seat of higher studies in the region. The college has been visited by a range of people from historians to poets, and journalists to educationists, like John Thieme (UK), Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (NZ), Ranabir Chakravorty (JNU), Alessandro Vescovi, Università degli Studi di Milano - State University of Milan (Italy), Subodh Sarkar, Binayak Bandyopadhya, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Anjum Katyal, Sharmila Ray, Snehasis Sur, Gopali Banerjee, Gopal Chandra Mishra, Prof. Malashri Lal, Prof. Bashabi Fraser, noted poet Keki N Daruwalla, Nalini Bera, Ashwini Kumar, Basudhara Roy, Bill Ashcroft( online), Paul Sharrad( Australia), Ashok Sengupta, Dr Siddhartha Biswas and Dalit activist and author Manohar Mouli Biswas. The college has MoUs with many academic institutions. It has created an ecosystem for continuous research and innovation. The college has a dedicated research laboratory; very rare in a college. Cultural competence building among the stakeholders is one of the importation features of the college.
Sharankumar Limbale is a Marathi language author, poet and literary critic. He has penned more than 40 books. His best known work is his autobiography Akkarmashi published in 1984. Akkarmashi has been translated to several other Indian languages and English. The English translation has been published by the Oxford University Press with the title The Outcaste.
Baṅgamātā, Bangla Maa, Mother Bengal or simply বাংলা/ Bangla, is a personification of Bengal created during the Bengali Renaissance and later adopted by the Bengali nationalists. In Bangladeshi Bengali and Indian Bengali poetry, literature, cultural and patriotic song, she has become a symbol of Bangladesh and India's West Bengal & Tripura and considered as a personification of the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The Mother Bengal represents not only biological motherness but its attributed characteristics as well – protection, never ending love, consolation, care, the beginning and the end of life.
Manoranjan Byapari is an Indian Bengali writer, socio-political activist, and a politician. He stands as one of the pioneering authors in the realm of Dalit literature in Bengali, hailing from the Indian state of West Bengal. Hindered by financial constraints, he was precluded from availing formal education, thereby distinguishing himself as a unique exemplar—a former convict turned rickshaw puller—having authored a substantial corpus comprising twelve novels, in addition to over a hundred short stories and non-fiction essays.
Manohar Mouli Biswas is the pseudonymous appellation adopted by Manohar Biswas, a distinguished and arguably the preeminent bilingual poet, essayist, and luminary figure in Dalit Literature emanating from the Bengal region.
Jaydeep Sarangi is a bilingual writer, poet, and critic.
Boro Maa was a matriarch of the Matua Mahasangha, a Hindu religious reformation movement. Her original name was Binapani Devi Thakur; the name "Boro Maa" translates to "elder mother", an epithet for universal mother of Matua Community. She along with her husband Pramatha Ranjan Thakur established the community's new capital at Thakurnagar.
Kalyani Thakur Charal is a Dalit feminist poet from India writing in the Bengali language.
Guruchand Thakur (1846-1937) was an Indian reformer who works for the upliftment of the untouchable peoples in the Indian society. He leads the Matua sect of Hindus after the death of his father Harichand Thakur. Under his strong leadership, the Matua section achieved a major organizational push and started the Namasudra protest movement in 1872. He established many schools for the upliftment of the Dalit community. He preached the abolition of caste inequality, gender equality via performing secular duties. Matua Movement is one of the first Dalit uprisings in the Indian subcontinent.
Orakandi Thakur Bari is a pilgrimage for Matua Community in Bangladesh. It is popularly known for the birthplace of Shri Shri Harichand Thakur, founder of the Matua Community and his son Shri Shri Guruchand Thakur, a social reformer. Matua Movement, a reforming movement for the upliftment of backward community started in about 1860. The place comes to the lightlime after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited here in 28 March 2021.
