Bengali Language Initiative

This initiative was closed in 2011.

The Bengali Language Initiative was started in 2006 under the aegis of the now closed Arts Research and Documentation programme. The initiative sought to engage in vernacular and non-metropolitan contexts through research, archiving and writing in Bangla, to counter the centrality of the English language and the conceptual frameworks derived from an English-speaking, formal, institutional context. It supported projects that contributed significantly to knowledge production in the arts in the local language and created an engaged vernacular readership. A panel of experts including Moinak Biswas, Anjum Katyal and Suman Mukhopadhyay were consulted on this initiative on a continuous basis.

Between 2006 and 2011 the initiative supported 12 projects.

The Bengali Language Initiative was closed in 2011 after a decision that consistent and sustained engagements with language contexts will be included centrally into the Arts Research and Documentation programme itself.