The people of West Bengal are well known for their love of poetry, politics and adda(informal group discussion).Conversations are easy to strike up with opinionated and widely-read Bengalis.

Bengali humor is renowned throughout India and the Bengalis, so ready to raise arms against political wrongdoings, are also the poets and artists of India. Throughout Bengal, women have a special status

derived from the worship of powerful female goddesses,Durga and Kali. A substantial number of Bengalis belonging to the middle class have their roots in rural rather than urban Bengal. The Bengali is a Bengali first. After that he is a Hindu or a Muslim, an Indian or a Bangladeshi, a Communist or a right-winger, a man or a woman.

The same might be said about the other communities in India but the Bengalis are the only example of people whose transcendent loyalty is not to a religion, language or caste but to their homeland. Bengalis are talkative, ebullient and charming people and usually call themselves "the French of the East". Some of the Bengalis who have been the pride of India - Shri Rabindranath Tagore, who brought about the Indian intellectual renaissance and his successors, the famous Bengali contemporaries- the philosopher Shri Aurobindo, the mystic Shri Ramkrishnadeb, the social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the revolutionary Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, the novelist Shri Sarat Chandra Chatterji, the nightingale of India, Sarojini Naidu and lately, the musician Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, the dancer Shri Uday Shankar, the painter Shri Jamini Roy, and the film director Shri Satyajit Ray.