Thinking Citizen Blog — India (Part Fifteen) West Bengal (I) — Northeastern India, 100 Million (Pop), Kolkata, Capital and Largest City, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941)
Thinking Citizen Blog — Tuesday is Economics, Finance, and Business Day
Today’s Topic: India (Part Fifteen) West Bengal (I) — northeastern India, 100 million (pop), Kolkata, capital and largest city, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941)
To review: so far we have covered the Punjab (the home of the Sikhs), Rajasthan (and its capital of Jaipur “The Pink City”), Telangana (and its capital Hyderabad (nicknamed “Cyberabad”), Uttar Pradesh (population 240 million) and its capital of Lucknow and most sacred city of Varanesi, Karnataka and its capital Bangalore, “The Silicon Valley of India,” Tamil Nadu and its capital Chennai (formerly Madras) to Maharashtra and Mumbai, the financial capital of India, Gujarat, the hub of the Indian pharmaceutical industry, and Bihar — the birthplace of the Maurya and Gupta empires. It is also home of the Bodhi Tree where Gautama Buddha experienced enlightenment in roughly 500 BCE. Then, Odisha, one of the poorest of Indian states but also one of the fastest growing. Historically, famous for the Kalinga War (261 BC). More recently, ruled by what you might call the Patnaik Dynasty — from 1960 to 2024. Four weeks ago, the “National Capital Territory of Delhi.” Then Kerala, a place of beautiful beaches, the world’s richest temple, a high literacy and low poverty rate and India’s strongest communist tradition. Then Madhya Pradesh and its capital Bhopal, the site of the worst industrial accident in human history in 1984 — a gas leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant. Last week, Chhattisgarh which stretches from Uttar Pradesh in the north to Andra Pradesh in the south, whose capital is Raipur.
Today, West Bengal. Have you lived or worked there? What do you know about West Bengal and Kolkata that the rest of us probably should but don’t?
Experts — please chime in. Correct. elaborate, elucidate.
BANGLADESH TO THE EAST (AS WELL AS THE INDIAN STATE OF ASSAM), NEPAL AND BHUTAN TO THE NORTH (AS WELL AS THE INDIAN STATE OF SIKKIM), TO THE SOUTH ODISHA, AND TO THE WEST JHARKAND AND TO THE NORTHWEST BIHAR
1. From the 14th to the 16th century The Bengal Sultanate was the “ dominant power of the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta.” Thereafter it was absorbed into the Mughal Empire.
2. From 1772 to 1911 Calcutta was the capital of British India (when it was moved to New Delhi).
3. “From 1912 to India’s Independence in 1947, it was the capital of the Bengal Province.” In 1947 the Bengal province was partitioned along religious lines into a majority Hindu West Bengal and a majority Muslim Bangladesh.
NB: Before the partition the population of West Bengal was about 20 million with 25% Muslim. It is now 100 million with about 27% Muslim. Bangladesh at partition was about 35 million in total population and 25% Hindu — and now is about 175 million and about 8% Hindu.
KOLKATA HAS A METROPOLITAN POPULATION OF ROUGHLY 20 MILLION — languages spoken; Bengali 61%, Hindi 23%, Urdu; Religion: Hindu 75%, Islam 20%.
1. The population of Calcutta was less than a million in 1900 and grew to roughly 11 million in 1991 and has since doubled.
2. “The three villages that predated Calcutta were ruled by the Nawab of Bengal under Mughal suzerainty. After the Nawab granted the East India Company, a trading licence in 1690, the area was developed by the Company into Fort William. Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah occupied the fort in 1756 but was defeated at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, after his general Mir Jafar mutinied in support of the company, and was later made the Nawab for a brief time.”
3. “Under company and later crown rule, Calcutta served as the de facto capital of India until1911. Calcutta was the second largest city in the British Empire, after London, and was the center of bureaucracy, politics, law, education, science and the arts in India.”
NB: “The city was associated with many of the figures and movements of the Bengali Renaissance.
It was the hotbed of the Indian nationalist movement.”
RABINDRANATH TAGORE (1861–1941) “THE BARD OF BENGAL” — first Asian to win a Nobel Prize of Literature (1913) The second non-European to win any Nobel prize (after Theodore Roosevelt who won the Peace Prize for negotiating the peace in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5.)
1. A polymath — “poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter.”
2. Author of two national anthems — “Jana Gana Mana” of India and “Amar Shonar Bangla” of Bangladesh.
3. A fierce opponent of the British Raj.
NB: WB Yeats made Tagore famous in the West when he wrote the introduction to Tagore’s “Gitanjali” in 1909. Tagore won the Nobel Prize four years later. Attributed to Tagore: “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.” Do you have a favorite Tagore quote?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bengal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkata
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_Bengal_(1947)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_Renaissance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore
Thinking Citizen Blog — A Hugely Consequential, but Largely Forgotten War: the Birth of Bangladesh…
Thinking Citizen Blog — Bangladesh — “How a Country’s Economy Was Siphoned Dry” (NYT)
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY INTO FOURTEEN BOOK-LENGTH PDFs:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN — Please share:
a.) the coolest thing you learned this week related to business, economics, finance.
b.) the coolest thing you learned in your life related to business, economics, finance.
c.) anything at all related to business, economics, finance.
d.) anything at all
