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Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali poet, Brahmo Samaj (syncretic Hindu monotheist) philosopher, visual artist, playwright, composer, and novelist whose works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A cultural icon of Bengal and India, he became Asia's first Nobel laureate when he won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature.
A Pirali Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta (Kolkata), India, Tagore first wrote poems at age eight. He published his first substantial poetry — under the pseudonym Bhanushingho ("Sun Lion") — in 1877 and wrote his first short stories and dramas at age sixteen. His home schooling, life in Shilaidaha, and travels made Tagore a nonconformist and pragmatist ; however, growing disillusionment with the British Raj caused Tagore to back the Indian Independence Movement and befriend Mahatma Gandhi. Despite losing virtually his entire family and his sorrow at witnessing Bengal's decline, his life's work — Visva-Bharati University — endured.
Tagore's works included Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World), while his verse, short stories, and novels — many defined by rhythmic lyricism, colloquial language, meditative naturalism, and philosophical contemplation — received worldwide acclaim. Tagore was also a cultural reformer and polymath who modernised Bangla art by rejecting strictures binding it to classical Indian forms. Two songs from his rabindrasangeet canon are now the national anthems of Bangladesh and India: the Amar Shonar Bangla and the Jana Gana Mana.
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Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Bangla: শেখ মুজিবর রহমান) (March 17, 1920 – Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Bangla: শেখ মুজিবুর রহমান Shekh Mujibur Rôhman) (March 17, 1920 – August 15, 1975) was a Bengali political leader in East Pakistan and the founding leader of Bangladesh. He headed the Awami League, served as the first President of Bangladesh and later became its Prime Minister. He is popularly referred to as Sheikh Mujib, and with the honorary title of Bangabandhu (বঙ্গবন্ধু Bôngobondhu, "Friend of Bengal"). His eldest daughter Sheikh Hasina Wajed is the present leader of the Awami League and a former prime minister of Bangladesh.
A student political leader, Mujib rose in East Pakistani politics and within the ranks of the Awami League as a charismatic and forceful orator. An advocate of socialism, Mujib became popular for his leadership against the ethnic and institutional discrimination of Bengalis. He demanded increased provincial autonomy, and became a fierce opponent of the military rule of Ayub Khan. At the heightening of sectional tensions, Mujib outlined a 6-point autonomy plan, which was seen as separatism in West Pakistan. He was tried in 1968 for allegedly conspiring with the Indian government but was not found guilty. Despite leading his party to a major victory in the 1970 elections, Mujib was not invited to form the government.
After talks broke down with President Yahya Khan and West Pakistani politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mujib was arrested and a guerrilla war erupted between government forces and Bengali nationalists aided by India. An all out war between the Pakistan Army and Bangladesh-India Joint Forces led to the establishment of Bangladesh, and after his release Mujib assumed office as a provisional president, and later prime minister. Even as a constitution was adopted, proclaiming socialism and a secular democracy, Mujib struggled to address the challenges of intense poverty and unemployment, coupled with rampant corruption. Amidst rising popular agitation, he banned other political parties and declared himself president for life in 1975. After only seven months, Mujib was assassinated along with his family by a group of army officers. (more...)
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Kazi Nazrul Islam (Bengali: কাজী নজরুল ইসলাম) (25 May 1899–29 August 1976) was a Bengali poet, musician, revolutionary, and philosopher who pioneered poetic works espousing intense spiritual rebellion against orthodoxy and oppression. His poetry and nationalist activism earned him the popular title of Bidrohi Kobi (Rebel Poet). Accomplishing a large body of acclaimed works through his life, Nazrul is officially recognised as the national poet of Bangladesh and commemorated in India.
Born in a poor Muslim family, Nazrul received religious education and worked as a muezzin at a local mosque. He learned of poetry, drama, and literature while working with theatrical groups. After serving in the British Indian Army, Nazrul established himself as a journalist in Kolkata (then Calcutta). He assailed the British Raj in India and preached revolution through his poetic works, such as "Bidrohi" ("The Rebel") and "Bhangar Gaan" ("The Song of Destruction"), as well as his publication "Dhumketu" ("The Comet"). His impassioned activism in the Indian independence movement often led to his imprisonment by British authorities. While in prison, Nazrul wrote the "Rajbandir Jabanbandi" ("Deposition of a Political Prisoner") and condemned Islamic fundamentalism, orthodox traditions and bigotry in society. Exploring the life and conditions of the downtrodden masses of India, Nazrul agitated fiercely for their emancipation.
Nazrul's writings explore themes such as love, freedom, and revolution; he opposed all bigotry, including religious and gender. Throughout his career, Nazrul wrote short stories, novels, and essays but is best-known for his poems, in which he pioneered new forms such as Bengali ghazals. Nazrul wrote and composed music for his nearly 3,000 songs, collectively known as Nazrul geeti (Nazrul songs), which are widely popular today. At the age of 43 (in 1942) he began suffering from an unknown disease, losing his voice and memory. What was later diagnosed as Pick's Disease, caused Nazrul's health to decline steadily and forced him to live in isolation for many years. Invited by the Government of Bangladesh, Nazrul and his family moved to Dhaka in 1972, where he died four years later. (more...)
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Ziaur Rahman (Bengali: জিয়াউর রহমান Ziaur Rôhman) (January 19, 1936 – May 30, 1981) was the President of Bangladesh and the founder of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Popularly called Zia, he is also sometimes referred to as a Shaheed (Martyr). His widow Begum Khaleda Zia has served as Prime Minister of Bangladesh three times.
An officer in the Pakistan Army, Zia's unit captured the Kalurghat radio station at the onset of the Bangladesh Liberation War and declared the independence of Bangladesh on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Recognised as a war hero, he was honoured with the Bir Uttom in 1972. A high-ranking officer in the Bangladesh Army, Zia was appointed chief of army staff following the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975. Although briefly overthrown in a counter-coup, Zia returned to power in a military coup organised by Colonel Abu Taher.
Declaring himself president in 1977, Zia won a referendum held in 1978. Founding the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Zia won widespread popular support for stabilising the nation and leading it in a new direction. A right-wing politician, Zia established free-market policies in a 19-point programme of industrialisation and development. He adopted policies bringing the government increasingly under Islam, which he included in the national constitution. Zia controversially pardoned the assassins of Sheikh Mujib by signing the Indemnity Act and rehabilitated individuals who had supported the Pakistan Army. A popular yet controversial leader, Zia was assassinated in 1981 in an abortive military coup. (more...)
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Satyajit Ray (May 2, 1921 - April 23, 1992) was an Indian film director, regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of twentieth century cinema for his subtle, austere and lyrical style of film-making. Born in a prominent Bengali family of arts and letters, Ray studied in Kolkata and at the Visva-Bharati University, Shantiniketan. After completing his education, Ray took up visual design, before turning to film direction. Ray's cinematic debut, Pather Panchali (1955) is a milestone of humanist filmmaking and changed the course of Bengali and Indian cinema. Ray directed thirty seven films, comprising of features, documentaries and shorts. Apart from being a film-maker, he was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, graphic designer and film critic. Ray received many major film and movie awards in his illustrious career, including an Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1991 shortly before his death in Kolkata.
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Amartya Kumar Sen (born 3 November 1933) is an economist and a winner of the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences ("Nobel Prize for Economics") in 1998, for his work on famine, human development theory, welfare economics, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, and political liberalism. From 1998 to 2004 he was Master of Trinity College at Cambridge University, becoming the first Asian academic to head an Oxbridge college. He is currently the Lamont University Professor at Harvard University. Amartya Sen's books have been translated into more than thirty languages. He received the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India 1999. The same year, he received honorary citizenship of Bangladesh and the Companion of Honour, UK, in 2000.
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Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (November 30, 1858 – November 23, 1937) was a Bengali physicist from undivided India, who pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics. His research in plant stimuli were pioneering, he showed with the help of his newly invented crescograph that plants responded to various stimuli as if they had nervous systems like that of animals. He is also considered as the father of Bengali science fiction. He was the first Indian to get a US patent, in 1904, although Bose was himself critical of patents.
Jagadish Bose studied in Calcutta University, University of Cambridge and University of London. He was the first Indian to join Presidency College to teach science and had to face great difficulty in establishing himself. Commemorating his birth centenary in 1958, the JBNSTS scholarship program was started in West Bengal
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Swami Vivekananda, whose pre-monastic name was Narendranath Dutta, (January 12, 1863 - July 4, 1902) was one of the most famous and influential spiritual leaders of the Vedanta philosophy. He was the chief disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and was the founder of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. Many consider him an icon for his fearless courage, his positive exhortations to the youth, his broad outlook on social problems, and countless lectures and discourses on Vedanta philosophy.
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Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (b.26 June 1838- d.8 April 1894), ('Chattopadhyay' in the original Bengali; 'Chatterjee' as spelt by the British) was a Bengali Indian poet, novelist, essayist and journalist, most famous as the author of Vande Mataram or Bande Mataram, that inspired the freedom fighters of India, and was later declared the National Song of India.
Chatterjee began his literary career as a writer of verse. He soon realized, however, that his talents lay in other directions, and turned to fiction. His first fiction to appear in print was Rajmohan's Wife. It was written in English. Durgeshnondini, his first Bengali romance and the first ever novel in Bengali, was published in 1865.
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Kamini Roy (12 October-1864 27 September 1933), was a leading Bengali poet, social worker and feminist. A part of the earliest batch of girls to attend school, she was the first woman honours graduate in the country, having passed her bachelor of arts degree with Sanskrit honours from Bethune College of the University of Calcutta in 1886. She was inclined towards literature from a young age and started composing poems at the age of eight. Her father, Chandi Charan Sen, a judge and a writer, was a leading member of the Brahmo Samaj. In 1894 she married Kedarnath Roy. Kamini Roy was a feminist in an age when even women’s education was a taboo. In an address delivered at a girls’ school in Calcutta she declared that the aim of women’s education was to contribute to their all-round development and fulfilment of their potential.
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Satyendra Nath Bose (January 1, 1894 – February 4, 1974) was a Bengali Indian physicist, specializing in mathematical physics. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, providing the foundation for Bose-Einstein statistics and the theory of the Bose-Einstein condensate. The elementary particle boson was named after him.
Although more than one Nobel Prize was awarded for researches related to the concept of the boson, Bose himself was never awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Among his other talents, Bose knew many languages and also could play Esraj (a musical instrument similar to violin) very well.
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Ram Mohan Roy, also written as Rammohun Roy, or Raja Ram Mohun Roy (May 22, 1772 – September 27, 1833) was the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, one of the first Indian socio-religious reform movements. His remarkable influence was apparent in the fields of politics, public administration and education as well as religion. He is most known for his efforts to abolish the practice of sati, a Hindu funeral custom in which the widow sacrifices herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.
In 1828, prior to his departure to England, Rammohan founded, with Dwarkanath Tagore, the Brahmo Samaj, which came to be an important spiritual and refirmist religion movement that has borne a number of stalwarts of the Bengalee social and intellectual reforms. For these contributions to the society, Raja Ram Mohan Roy is regarded as one of the most important figures in the Bengal Renaissance.
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 Dr. Muhammad Yunus (Bengali: মুহাম্মদ ইউনুস, pronounced Muhammôd Iunus) (born June 28, 1940) is a Bangladeshi banker and economist. A former professor of economics, he is famous for his successful application of the concept of microcredit, the extension of small loans to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. Yunus is also the founder of Grameen Bank, which specializes in providing credit to the poor.
The success of the Grameen model has inspired similar efforts throughout the developing world and even in industrialized nations, including the United States. The Grameen model of micro financing has been emulated in 23 countries. Many, but not all, microcredit projects also retain its emphasis on lending specifically to women. More than 96% of Grameen loans have gone to women, who suffer disproportionately from poverty and who are more likely than men to devote their earnings to their families.
In 2006, Yunus and the bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below." Yunus himself has received several other international honors, including the ITU World Information Society Award, Ramon Magsaysay Award, the World Food Prize and the Sydney Peace Prize. He is the author of Banker to the Poor and a founding board member of Grameen Foundation. Yunus recently showed interest in launching a political party in Bangladesh, Nagorik Shakti (Citizen Power), but later discarded the plan. He is one of the founding members of Global Elders. (more...)
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