West Bengal. This item is unavailable.West Bengal

The Anthropological Survey of India launched the People of India project on 2 October 1985 to generate an anthropological profile of all communities of the country. It also recorded the impact of developmental programmes on these communities and the links that bring them together. The ethnological survey of all 203 communities in West Bengal was taken up for the first time with help from local scholars. The results of this survey were discussed at workshops held in Kolkata and North Bengal University. The term Bangla or Bengal came into existence some time around 1000 ec. The Bengal region has remnants of continuous human habitation from palaeolithic to historic periods; historic and linguistic evidences suggest that early settlers were speakers of Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic languages with the Indo-Aryan speakers coming later. Since the tenth century bc, the kingdoms and janapadas have been governed by Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim rulers. The British gained political power in the eighteenth century; eventually Bengal became the epicentre of British rule in India. The end of colonial rule in 1 947 came with the partition of Bengal; the Indian portion came to be known as the state of West Bengal. The greater part of this state is in the low-lying delta of the Ganges, one of the most densely populated regions in the world. The northern part of the state is in the eastern Himalayas.