Rajshekhar Basu was a Bengali chemist, author and lexicographer. He was chiefly known for his comic and satirical short stories, and is considered the greatest Bengali humorist of the 20th century. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1956.
Sukumar Sen was an Indian linguist and historian of the Bengali literature, who was also well versed in Pāli, Prakrit and Sanskrit.
Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi is the official regulatory body of the Bengali language in West Bengal, India. It was founded on 20 May 1986 in Kolkata to act as the official authority of the language and is entrusted with the responsibility of reforming Bengali spelling and grammar, compiling dictionaries, encyclopedias and terminologies and promoting Bengali language and culture in West Bengal. Though the Akademi has no enforcement power over their rules and regulations, yet they are widely accepted by the Governments of West Bengal and Tripura as well as a considerable number of private publishing houses and institutions like the Oxford University Press and the Ramakrishna Mission.
Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay was an Indian novelist who wrote in the Bengali language. He wrote 65 novels, 53-story-books, 12 plays, 4 essay-books, 4 autobiographies, 2 travel stories and composed several songs. He was awarded Rabindra Puraskar, Sahitya Akademi Award, Jnanpith Award, Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan. He was nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971 and posthumously nominated in 1972.
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.
Annada Shankar Ray was an Indian poet and essayist in Bengali. He also wrote some Odia poetry.
Suchitra Mitra was an Indian singer, composer, artist exponent of Rabindra Sangeet or the songs of Bengal's poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore, professor, and the first woman Sheriff of Kolkata. As an academic, she remained a professor and the Head of Rabindra Sangeet Department at the Rabindra Bharati University for many years. Mitra was a playback singer in Bengali films and was associated for many years with the Indian People's Theatre Association.
Syed Mujtaba Ali was a Bengali writer, journalist, travel enthusiast, academic, scholar and linguist. He lived in Bangladesh, India, Germany, Afghanistan and Egypt.
Leela Majumdar was an Indian Bengali-language writer.
Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay was an Indian Bengali-language novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, and physician who wrote under the pen name of Banaphul. He was a recipient of the civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan(1975).
Kalpathi Ganpathi "K.G." Subramanyan was an Indian artist. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2012.
Rebati Mohan Dutta Choudhury (1924–2008) was a noted Assamese litterateur, Sahitya Akademi Award winner and an academician from Gauripur in Assam, India. Popularly he is known as Sheelabhadra, his pen name.
Syed Kawsar Jamal is an Indian poet, essayist and academic. He was born in the village of Murshidabad, West Bengal, India on 24 October 1950.
Mahananda Poudyal was an Indian writer, a former teacher, social worker and political thinker.
Khaled Choudhury was a theatre personality and artist of Bengal. He worked for various directors of both Bengali and Hindi plays, including Sombhu Mitra, Tripti Mitra, and Shyamanand Jalan in various capacities — creating the Stage, sets and costumes and later as music director. He was a bachelor. He has been awarded the Padma Bhushan for his contribution to theatre in India's Republic Day Honours List on 26 January 2012. He died on 30 April 2014 in Kolkata.
Alokeranjan Dasgupta was a Bengali poet who was the author of over 20 books of poetry. He translated Bengali and Santal poetry and plays into English and German, and also translated literature from German and French into Bengali. He also published a number of books of essays, and was well known for his distinctive prose style.
Pracheta Gupta is a Bengali writer and journalist. In 2007, his work Chander Bari has been adapted into a Bengali film by director Tarun Majumdar. In 2011, director Sekhar Das made film on Gupta's story Chor-er bou, the film was named Necklace. Few of his stories have been translated into Hindi, Oriya and Marathi language.
Bankim Puraskar is the highest award given by the Government of West Bengal for contribution to Bengali fiction. The award was instituted in 1975 in memory of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, a famous Bengali novelist of the 19th century. It has been brought under the aegis of Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi, functioning under the Department of Information & Cultural Affairs, in 2003. The award is handed over by the Chief Minister of West Bengal.
Santanu Kumar Acharya is a National Sahitya Academy Award-winning Indian writer.
Anita Agnihotri is an Indian Bengali writer and poet. She has been translated into major Indian and foreign languages, including but not limited to English, Swedish and German. She is also a retired civil servant. She lives in India.
