Kazi Nazrul Islam, popularly known as Nazrul, was a Bengali poet, writer, musician, and is the national poet of Bangladesh. Nazrul produced a large body of poetry, music, messages, novels, and stories with themes that included equality, justice, anti-imperialism, humanity, rebellion against oppression and religious devotion. Nazrul Islam's activism for political and social justice as well as writing a poem titled as "Bidrohī", meaning "the rebel" in Bengali, earned him the title of "Bidrohī Kôbi". His compositions form the avant-garde music genre of Nazrul Gīti.
Syed Waliullah was a Bangladeshi novelist, short-story writer and playwright. He was notable for his debut novel, Lalsalu. He was awarded Bangla Academy Literary Award (1961), Adamjee Prize (1965), Ekushey Padak (1984) and Bangladesh National Film for Best Story (2001).
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 be 1600 years 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.
Syed Mujtaba Ali was a Bengali writer, journalist, travel enthusiast, academic, scholar and linguist. He lived in Bangladesh, India, Germany, Afghanistan and Egypt.
Qazi Imdadul Haq (1882–1926) was a Bengali writer.
Bengali theatre primarily refers to theatre performed in the Bengali language. Bengali theatre is produced mainly in West Bengal, and in Bangladesh. The term may also refer to some Hindi theatres which are accepted by the Bengali people.
Mufazzal Haider Chaudhury was a prominent Bengali essayist, prized scholar of Bengali literature, educator and linguist of the Bengali language.
The culture of Bengal defines the cultural heritage of the Bengali people native to eastern regions of the Indian subcontinent, mainly what is today Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura, where they form the dominant ethnolinguistic group and the Bengali language is the official and primary language. Bengal has a recorded history of 1,400 years.
Jyotirindranath Tagore was a playwright, a musician, an editor and a painter from Bengal. He played a major role in the flowering of the talents of his younger brother, the first non-European Nobel Prize winner, Rabindranath Tagore.
Muzaffar Ahmad was an Indian-Bengali politician, journalist and a co-founder of the Communist Party of India.
Muhamed Mianudin Ahmed (Selim Al Deen) (18 August 1949 – 14 January 2008) was a Bangladeshi playwright and theatre artist. He was the founder chairperson of the Department of Drama and Dramatics at Jahangirnagar University. He was awarded Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1984 and Ekushey Padak in 2007 by the Government of Bangladesh for his contribution to theatre and won the Independence Award in 2023 for his contribution to the field of literature.
Ubaidullah Al Ubaidi Suhrawardy was a Bengali Islamic scholar, educationist and writer from Midnapore. He is often regarded as the Father of modern Islamic education in Bengal.
Ghulam Murshid is a Bangladeshi author, scholar and journalist, based in London. He won a number of awards, including Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1982 for his contribution to research.; Prothom Alo Book Award in 2007; IFIC literary prize 2018; the Ekusey Padak for language and literature in 2021 and the Vidyasagar Endowments Lectures 1973 at Calcutta University. Besides being a prolific author, Dr. Murshid is a distinguished lexicographer. He edited a three-volume Bengali dictionary, called 'Bibartonmulak Bangla Abhidhan', published in 2013–2014, by the Bangla Academy. In the two hundred years' of history of Bengali dictionaries, it is the first to be based on historical principles. It provides the evolution of the form and meaning of every word and traces the first use thereof in written Bengali.
Nurul Momen was a Bangladeshi playwright, educator, director, broadcast personality, orator, academician, satirist, essayist, translator and poet. He served as a faculty member in the capacities of professor and dean at the faculty of Law in the University of Dhaka. He also served as a lawyer. He is called "Father of Bangladeshi theatre" and "Natyaguru" of Bangladesh. He was awarded the Bangla Academy Award in 1961, merely a year after its inception. He was also honoured by the People's Republic of Bangladesh with the Ekushey Padak in 1978, only a couple of years after this State honor was introduced.
Aneek, established on 09 October 1999, is a group theatre based in Kolkata, India. Aneek celebrates its Silver Jubilee this year.
Sanglap Kolkata or Sanglap theatre group is a Kolkata based Bengali theatre group. The theatre group was founded in 1979. The group's first production was "Ispat" based on Nikolai Ostrovsky's novel "How the Steel Was Tempered".
Theatre in Bangladesh is believed to have its origin in the 4th century AD in the form of Sanskrit drama. The conquest of Bengal by the Gupta dynasty led the ingress of the northern Indian culture into the ancient Bangladeshi culture which eventually introduced the tradition of theatre in Bangladesh. At present, apart from the Sanskrit theatre, the influence of the European theatre and the indigenous folk culture can also be seen in the theatre art of Bangladesh.
Syed Rashid Ahmed Jaunpuri was a Sufi saint, author, scholar of Hadith and Quran, and Muslim missionary in Bangladesh. He was influenced by Aala Hazrat Imam Ahmed Raza Khan Qadri and his Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat Barelvi movement He also written Urdu ghazals, nazm, hamd and naat, his Pen name being Fani. As a Sufi master he was initiated in Qadiriyya, Chishti, Naqshbandi, Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya, Shadhili, Uwaisi, Qalandariyya, Saberiyya and Nizamiyya orders.
Moḥammad Abū Bakr Ṣiddīque al-Qurayshī was a Bengali Islamic scholar and the inaugural Pir of Furfura Sharif in West Bengal. He is regarded by his followers, who are scattered across eastern India and Bangladesh, as a mujaddid (reviver) of Islam in the region, due to his significant contributions in religious propagation via the establishment of mosques and madrasas, publication of newspapers and education development in neglected areas. He was the founding president of the sociopolitical Anjuman-i-Wazin-i-Bangla organisation, which advocated for causes such as the Khilafat Movement and Pakistan Movement. Siddique died in 1943, and his shrine is greatly venerated as one of West Bengal's most prominent Sufi centres.
Syed Alimuddin Ahmad, popularly known as Master Saheb, was a Bengali bodybuilder and wrestler. He participated in the anti-British independence movement as an underground activist and revolutionary, as a part of the Dhaka Mukti Sangha organisation. Ahmed rose to prominence after the organisation was absorbed into Subhas Chandra Bose's Bengal Volunteers during the mayorship of Chittaranjan Das in Calcutta.
