Word: bengalis
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...basic to the building of a modern cohesive state out of disparate parts. The nation of Gandhi and Nehru has no majority tongue. Some 41% of its people speak Hindi. Another 14% speak Marathi, Gujarati, Kashmiri and Punjabi-all closely related to Hindi. Some 32% speak Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Oriya, Malayalam, Kannada and Assamese. The remaining 13% speak miscellaneous dialects...
...only one way in the phone book. But which way? That was left up to Calcutta University (which already standardizes its students' names). A faculty board found that the high-caste ancestors of present-day Mukerjees, etc., had all been imported from Benares 600 years ago by a Bengali king who wanted to increase the number of Brahmans in his realm. When the British East India Company came to Calcutta, the Brahmans' descendants flocked to work as babus (clerks). Their employers promptly shortened the babus' names and made them more pronounceable for British tongues...
...Expiation. Henry and Annette would not have left so many letters if they had not been forced to spend half their lives apart-he, sitting in the fetid courtroom "jabbering Bengali 6 or 7 hours every day with the artful dodgers;" she, reviving her pallid children in the cool hills of Darjeeling and Mussoorie; when the children were taken to school in England both had to be separated from them. "We (excuse me dear)," wrote Henry at last, "are so old that we may not see much of our children or they of us if we wait till our retirement...
...swami if he can find any followers. As a result there are devout swamis who lead the good life and there are swamis who simply enjoy a good life. Few of either kind write their autobiographies, so this life story by California's Paramhansa Yogananda (a Bengali pseudonym meaning approximately Swami-Bliss-through-Divine-Union) is something of a document. It is not likely to give the uninitiated much insight into India's ancient teachings. It does show exceedingly well how an alien culture may change when transplanted by a businesslike nurseryman from the tough soil of religious...
...Jamini Roy, a Calcutta "primitive" who quit his highbrow protrait business to paint flat, bright figures like the ones which decorate Bengali pots and dolls. Jamini (rhymes with Tammany) makes his own paints from rock dust, mud, chalk and tamarind seeds, keeps a back-roomful of helpers grinding out copies of his wasp-waisted festival dancers, friendly tigers and almond-eyed Christs...