Odia peopleThe Odia (ଓଡ଼ିଆ), formerly spelled Oriya, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group native to the Indian state of Odisha who speak the Odia language. They constitute a majority in the eastern coastal state, with significant minority populations existing in the neighboring states of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal. The earliest Odias were called Odra or Kalinga, which later became Utkal. The word Odia is mentioned in epics like the Mahabharata. The Odras are mentioned as one of the peoples that fought in the Mahabharata.
BengalisBengalis (singular Bengali বাঙালি, বাঙ্গালী baŋali, baŋgali), also rendered as Bangalee or the Bengali people, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the Bengal region of South Asia. The current population is divided between the independent country Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura, Barak Valley, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Jharkhand and part of Meghalaya and Manipur. Most of them speak Bengali, a language from the Indo-Aryan language family.
South AsiaSouth Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethnic-cultural terms. As commonly conceptualised, South Asia consists of the countries predominantly Afghanistan Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian subcontinent and defined largely by the Indian Ocean in the south, and the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Pamir mountains in the north. The Amu Darya, which rises north of the Hindu Kush, forms a part of the northwestern border.
Hooghly RiverThe Hooghly River (Anglicized alternatively spelt as Hoogli or Hugli) or popularly called Ganga or Kati-Ganga in the Puranas, is a river that rises close to Giria, which lies north of Baharampur and Palashi in Murshidabad. It is the western distributary of the Ganges. The main course of the Ganges then flows into Bangladesh as the Padma. A man-made canal, built in the 1960s and early-1970s at Farakka connects the Ganges, flowing through Malda, to the Bhagirathi to bring the abundant waters of the Himalayan river to the comparatively narrow river that rises in eastern West Bengal.
Bengali languageBengali (bɛnˈɡɔːli ), generally known by its endonym Bangla (বাংলা, ˈbaŋla), is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Bengal region of South Asia. With approximately 300 million native speakers and another 50 million as second language speakers, Bengali is the sixth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world. Bengali is the fifth most spoken Indo-European language. Bengali is the official, national, and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh, with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language.
Indian subcontinentThe Indian subcontinent is a physiographical region in Southern Asia, situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geopolitically, it spans major landmasses from the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Although the terms "Indian subcontinent" and "South Asia" are often used interchangeably to denote the region, the geopolitical term of South Asia frequently includes Afghanistan, which is not considered part of the subcontinent.
Bay of BengalThe Bay of Bengal is the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. Geographically, it is positioned between the Indian subcontinent and the Indochinese peninsula, located below the Bengal region (based on which the bay was named during the British Raj). It is the largest water region called a bay in the world. Many South Asian and Southeast Asian countries are dependent on the Bay of Bengal. Geopolitically, the bay bounded on the west and northwest by India, on the north by Bangladesh, and on the east by Myanmar and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India.