Bengali

The Bengali people are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group native to the Bengal region of South Asia, today divided between the nation of Bangladesh and India's West Bengal state, and among the largest ethnic groups in the world by population. Bengali, a language with a literary tradition stretching back centuries, is closely tied to Bengali national identity, most visibly in the 1952 Language Movement in what was then East Pakistan, commemorated internationally through UNESCO's International Mother Language Day, a movement that fed directly into Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence. Bengali culture is noted for its literary tradition, including Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, its classical and folk music, and the Durga Puja and Pohela Boishakh festivals celebrated across both Hindu and Muslim Bengali communities.