Bengal Delta · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain

People

Name	Years	Field	Known for
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu	1486–1534	Religious reformer	Born at Nabadwip, he made congregational singing and street procession the central act of Vaishnava practice, in a form open to people the temple would not admit. Gaudiya Vaishnavism, padavali kirtan and the jatra stage all descend from what he started here.
Krittibas Ojha	fifteenth century	Poet	Wrote the Bengali Ramayana at Phulia in Nadia — for centuries the most widely read book in the delta, and the text through which the epic reached people who could not read Sanskrit.
Ramprasad Sen	c. 1723–1775	Poet and songwriter	Created the Shyama sangeet register at Halisahar, addressing Kali as a difficult family member. His songs are still sung at deathbeds and at Kali Puja, and half a dozen of his lines function as ordinary Bengali proverbs.
Bharatchandra Ray	c. 1712–1760	Poet	Court poet to Raja Krishnachandra of Krishnanagar and author of Annadamangal, the last great Mangalkavya and the most technically accomplished Bengali verse before the modern period.
Raja Rammohan Roy	1772–1833	Reformer and scholar	Born at Radhanagar in Hooghly. Founded the Brahmo Sabha in 1828, argued in Persian, Sanskrit, Bengali and English at once, and campaigned for the abolition of sati. He also did more than anyone to establish Bengali prose as a vehicle for argument rather than only for verse.
Michael Madhusudan Dutt	1824–1873	Poet	Born at Sagardari in the eastern delta. Introduced blank verse and the sonnet into Bengali and wrote Meghnadbadh Kabya, an epic that takes the Ramayana's antagonist as its tragic hero — a structural inversion no one in the language had attempted.
Nobin Chandra Das	1845–1925	Confectioner	Generally credited with the spongy rosogolla, made at his Bagbazar shop from 1868. His son K. C. Das later developed a vacuum-tinned version, which is how a sweet with a two-day life became an export.
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay	1876–1938	Novelist	Born at Debanandapur in Hooghly. His novels of village households and their internal cruelties were the most widely read Bengali fiction of the twentieth century and have been filmed more often than any other Indian literary source.
Jagadish Chandra Bose	1858–1937	Physicist and plant physiologist	Demonstrated millimetre-wave radio transmission in Kolkata in the 1890s and refused to patent his devices. His later instruments for measuring plant response were built by his own workshop because nothing sensitive enough could be bought.
Rabindranath Tagore	1861–1941	Poet, songwriter and educator	Born at Jorasanko in Kolkata. His most productive song and short-story years were spent managing the family estates on the eastern delta's rivers, and the boat, the char and the village postmaster enter Bengali literature from that decade. His Santiniketan work belongs to Rarh; his language belongs here.
Kazi Nazrul Islam	1899–1976	Poet and composer	Worked and published in Kolkata, wrote several thousand songs, and is the standard second voice of Bengali song beside Tagore. Nazrul geeti runs from Islamic devotional to Shyama sangeet, written by the same man, which is the fact most often cited about him and the least often reckoned with.
Satyajit Ray	1921–1992	Film director, designer and writer	Made a body of films rooted in delta households and delta towns, designed his own posters and typefaces, wrote detective fiction and edited a children's magazine his grandfather had founded. His first film was shot largely on location in delta villages with a mostly untrained cast.
Salil Chowdhury	1922–1995	Composer	Born in the delta and trained in its choral and folk repertoire, he wrote for both the mass-song movement and commercial cinema, moving Bengali folk melodic material into orchestral film scoring.

People from Bengal Delta who shaped its history, arts, science, sport and public life. (13)