Society and Culture in West Bengal

About three quarters of the population lives in the villages. Of the different religions, Hinduism, with its substrata of castes and aboriginal tribes, claims the adherence of more than three-fourths the population, most of the remainder being Muslim.

West Bengal contains about 40 recognized communities of tribes–the better known among them being the Santals, Oraons, Munas, Lepchas, and Bhutias–that make up less than one-tenth of the total population. Bengali is the language of most of the people, with Hindi, Urdu, Nepali, and English as minority languages. English, however, is the language of administration and a lingua franca for business purposes.

Bengalis have always fostered literature, art, music, and drama. Bengali literature dates to before the 12th century. The Caitanya movement, an intensely emotional form of Hinduism inspired by the medieval saint Caitanya (1485-1533), shaped the subsequent development of Bengali poetry until the early 19th century, when contact withthe West sparked a vigorous creative synthesis.

The modern period has produced, among others, the Nobel prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore
(1861-1941), whose contribution still dominates the Indian literary scene. Bengal also boasts of three other Nobel prize winners, Mother Teresa, Amartya Sen and Satyajit Ray. Jamini Roy, Uday Shankar, Bimal Mitra and Tarashankar Banerjee all belong to this culturally rich land.