Bengali Bards Trivia Quiz

Answer: Rabindranath Tagore.

The innocent civilians were gathered at the garden of Jalianwalahbagh, Punjab, for a peaceful demonstration against the British, demanding their civil rights in British-ruled-India. The police, led by General Dwyer, started shooting at the innocent demonstrators, including women and children, and hundreds died.

When Rabindranath Tagore, the first Indian and Asian to win a Nobel in any category, was informed of this massacre, he immediately sent a telegram to the British Government expressing his shock and disapproval, and rejecting the Knighthood.

Answer: Geetanjali (the Song Offerings).

A compilation of devotional and metaphysical lyrics of Rabindranath Tagore, 'Geetanjali' represents the poetic introspection through which one feels nearer to God, who is omnipresent. Some of these songs reveal a sense of Pantheism, which one can find in poetry of William Wordsworth. Tagore translated the poems himself and the English version bears an introductory preface composed by William Butler Yeats.

Answer: Mukunda Das.

Mukunda Das followed the ways of medieval troubadours who used to sing about daily sobs and sniffles of life, through a satirical representation. He did not have any formal education, yet he went on to survive as an Aesop-like poetical genius in the hearts of millions of Bengalees.

Answer: Sukanta Bhattacharya.

Most of Sukanta Bhattacharya's poetry has a deliberate attachment to the Marxist school of thought and discusses the change of social divisions of wealth and education through severe communist activity. The Chief Minister of West Bengal, India, Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, is the nephew of this young bard.

Answer: Satyajit Ray

Academy Award winner and noted film-maker Satyajit Ray had a strong legacy of literature, art, and culture in his family. His father, Sukumar Ray was the pioneer in writing nonsense rhymes and limericks in Bengali literature. Though he started his career as a writer at an age of 42, Satyajit Ray was warmly appreciated by children because of his masterful wordplay and the trivia he inserted in his short stories and novels. 'Feluda' is his most well known character.

Answer: Comedy of Errors

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was a 19th Century social reformer who did much to eradicate unreasonable social and religious dogmas from his society, which enraged the fundamentalists of his time. A Hindu Brahmin by birth, he did not hesitate to teach himself English and Farsi though these two languages were considered 'language of infidels' in Hindu society.

He is revered as one of the pioneers of the Golden Age of Bengali culture, as he made the re-marriage of widows legal in a society which was most inhumane and chauvinist to women. Vidyasagar was the first person to introduce colloquial prose to Bengali literature which earlier was predominated by obsolete and ornamental Sanskrit poetry.

Answer: Taslima Nasreen.

Nasreen's books 'Lajja' (the Shame), 'Nirbachito Column' (Selected Columns), and 'Aamar Meyebela' (My Girlhood) were banned in Bangladesh, her home-country, because she wrote explicitely about the maltreatment of women in an Islamic society.She wrote of how women are commercially exposed to a man's world, and their painful fate in being an object of sex from life to death.

She had to move to India after the fundamentalist organizations declared a 'fatwa' against her and announced a sum of money for her head.

A doctor by profession, Nasreen now lives in France and continues writing candidly about social exploitation of women.

Answer: Shri Aurobindo.

Aurobindo Ghosh was an extremist revolutionary during the fiery time of armed revolutionary freedom movement in Bengal in the '20s. He was charged in the famous 'Alipore Bomb Case' which created a surging impact on the psyche of Bengali youth, as the freedom movement gathered its momentum. Later on, after he was acquitted, he founded the Auroville, an 'ashram'(monastery) in Pondicherry, which served as a theosophical refuge for troubled minds.

A learned scholar of English and French, Ghosh is fondly called 'Rishi' or 'the Abbot'.

Answer: Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay.

Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay was one of the finest among the post-Tagore writers in the 1950s. His main expertise was a vivid description, and relating oneself with nature. 'Pather Panchali' is all about Opu, the protagonist, a teenage boy who lives with his family in a distant village.

The story revolves around his deep connection with nature and what he learns from nature. Bibhuti Bhushan actually wrote the 'Opu Trilogy'which shows Opu's life from childhood to his becoming a father. Satyajit Ray also made three separate films inspired by the 'Opu Trilogy'.

Answer: India and Bangladesh

The National Anthem of India is 'Jana-Gana-Mana' (Thou art the Ruler of our Minds ) and the National Anthem of Bangladesh is 'Aamar Sonar Bangla' (O! My Golden Bengal ). Bengali is the main language of Bangladesh and West Bengal (a province in India). Bangladesh was known as 'East Bengal' to most Indians (however, it was officially known as "East Pakistan") before it acquired independance from Pakistan in 1971.

The language being the same, the Bangladesh Government decided on the lyrics of Tagore, revered in both countries as a humanitarian poet, to be its National Anthem.