Bangla is simply more than a language. It is the essence and pride of all Bengalis, no matter where they reside and for however many years they have been away from West Bengal (India) or Bangladesh, the two places where it is spoken as a native language. While India has about 67,200,000 Bangla speakers, its neighbor Bangladesh has approximately 100,000,000 speakers. These figures do not indicate the entire population of Bengalis as many others reside in various other countries. For instance, U. A. E. has about 70,000 Bengalis and the US. has a far greater number. The extensive diaspora of the Bengali population all over the globe, has raised the everyday demand and popularity of this language in the international scene.
Bangla is more than a language for it opens the door to a whole vista of rich cultural material that is both traditional and contemporary. Those who learn Bangla learn to appreciate the works of Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel laureate in literature, and the works of the modern masters from West Bengal and Bangladesh--Jibanananda Das, Manik Bandopadhyay, Akhtaruzzaman Ilias, Humayun Ahmed, Selina Hossein, and many others. Many also learn to appreciate the beauty and craft of Bangla cinema, especially the films of Satyajit Ray, the Oscar winner of the 'Lifetime Achievement Award', and Ritwik Ghatak, the radical auteur of the Partition trilogy, as well as the films of the young turks like Tareque Masood. For those interested in philosophy and religion, the knowledge of Bangla becomes crucial to understand the philosophy Chaitanya, Bhakti, the posthumanist philosophy of the Baul (wandering minstrels of Bengal) and Lalon Fakir, and the spirituality of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.
In today's world Bangla occupies an important place. For this language, whose origins lie in the middle of the tenth century, allows one to simultaneously explore the ancient traditions as well as appreciate the prevailing trends of a community of people who hold onto their traditional values, but at the same time are eager to explore new paths in diverse directions.
The Bangla Studies Initiative supports the instruction in Bangla language and literature at Berkeley. Spoken both in India and Bangladesh, Bangla is the fifth most commonly spoken language in the world, and is the language of some of the world’s greatest writers and creative artists, such as Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam and Satyajit Ray. Yet in the United States, Bangla is regularly taught at only one institution of higher education and sporadically at a handful of other universities:
Objectives
The Bangla Studies Fund allows ISAS to:
- Teach the Bangla language at the introductory, intermediate and advanced levels
- Help prepare researchers who wish to conduct field work in Bangladesh or India
- Train development practitioners, entrepreneurs and NGO activists to work in the field
- Fund scholarships
- For Berkeley students focusing on West Bengal or Bangladesh
- For Bangla or Bangladeshi graduate students pursuing graduate studies at UC Berkeley
- Create new and innovative materials to enhance the study of Bangla
- Increase Berkeley’s library holdings in Bangla literature
- Create lecture series to bring Bangla scholars, artists and performers to the Bay Area
The Bangla Studies Fund is the only one of its kind, specifically designated for the study of Bangla language and culture at an American university.
Your generous donation will initially be collected in to a current use fund which will then annually be transferred to an endowment.
Bangla Faculty
Courses Offered
- Introductory Bangla (BANGLA) 1A
- Intermediate Bangla (BANGLA) 101A
For more information on giving opportunities, please contact:
Anirban Gupta-Nigam
Associate Director, Institute for South Asia Studies
anirbangn@berkeley.edu
