North American Bengali Conference

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The North American Bengali Conference is an annual conference held in North America to celebrate Bengali culture. It is usually held around the weekend of, preceding or following July 4. It was one of the first annual conferences for people of South Asian descent in North America.^{[citation needed]} Since starting in 1980 in New York City under the sponsorship of the Cultural Association of Bengal, it has spread to several cities all over the United States and Canada. The conference has attracted participants numbering in the thousands each year.^{[citation needed]} This has brought in an influx of advertisers and merchants whom promote their products and services to the conference attendees by giving support of the conference. At the Silver Anniversary event in 2005, the budget from contributions of commercial and private donors grew to $1 million USD.^{[citation needed]} During the event, people discuss various issues affecting the Bengali and Bengali-American community including cultural identity, the future of the community, addressing unique issues affecting the community, networking opportunities, social gatherings, class re-unions, movie showings, literary readings and cultural performances dealing with Bengali culture.

1 History
2 NABC Youth and Next Generation
3 Criticism of NABC
4 Past/Future NABC Venues
5 See also
6 External links
7 References

[edit] History

Created in 1980 by the Cultural Association of Bengal, the North American Bengali Conference began as a cultural conference that brought together the growing Bengali diasporas of North America. The conference has grown from a gathering of local and regional Bengalis to include attendees, speakers, and performers from all over the world. The purpose of the conference is to create a resurgence in Bengal's role in the Indian sub-continent and establish a role in the North America. It's goal is to shift the paradigm of the conference from a focus on socialization and entertainment to more of an emphasis on the exchange of ideas to create a cohesive Bengali identity. The annual conference attempts to have Bengalis organize themselves in a single voice in order to put forth and execute the community's goals for current and future generations alike.

[edit] NABC Youth and Next Generation

NABC Youth is a sub organization of NABC that tries to bring together the youth participating in the conference to help promote a common identity and cultural awareness for the age group. It is unknown when exactly a formal youth organization was set up, but events geared towards the younger generation have been around since the beginning of NABC.

In 2005 at its 25th Anniversary, the NABC decided to create the NABC Next Generation as an evolution of NABC Youth. The thought amongst the organizers was that the 2nd generation of Bengalis had grown beyond the age to be considered "youth" anymore. Thus, they created the Next Generation program to reach out to the unique issues faced by 1.5 or second generation Bengalis born in North America.

[edit] Criticism of NABC

Despite its rather large gathering, many feel that there is a lack of understanding of Bengali heritage within the 2nd generation of the Bengali community and beyond. First generation programming has been criticized to not reach out to the 2nd generation to entice them to learn more.

This divide amongst the generation has been prevalent amongst the population as both generations differ considerably with the definition of Bengali culture. Much of the 2nd generation do not pursue traditional or modern Bengali performers but rather elect to follow the better marketed Bollywood movies and Punjabi bhangra dances. Most of the 1st generation, and a small but vocal segment of the 2nd generation, feels that Bengali culture should be authentically Bengali and void of other non-Bengali adulteration. They claim that simply promoting a Bengali performer, many of whom perform other acts not of Bengali origin, does not qualify as promoting Bengali culture.^[1]

Furthermore, although NABC is officially secular, most of its participants are Hindu and descend mostly from the state of West Bengal in India. Greater Bengal includes the sovereign nation of Bangladesh, which is mostly Muslim. There has been noticeable Muslim and/or Bangladeshi participation in NABC but not nearly representative of the entire greater Bengali population.^{[citation needed]}