Bengali

Modern Indian language in the IndoEuropean language family, spoken in
the region of modern Bengal, for which
it is named. Like many of India’s regional tongues, Bengali has a long history as
a literary language in its own right. In
the nineteenth century, Calcutta was the
most important cultural center in India
as well as a hotbed of resistance to
British rule. As the vernacular tongue,
Bengali was used in that era’s revolutionary politics, particularly by Bankim
Chandra Chatterjee and Aurobindo
Ghose; it was also the language used by
religious figures such as Ramprasad
and Ramakrishna.