Language
Although Asansol is predominantly a Bengali speaking city today, Asansol has mixed population of Bengali, Hindi and Urdu speaking people, English is the language of business communication and once widely spoken. After the railway works came, there was a substantial British and Anglo-Indian population. English medium schools started to impart education in English from as early as 1877. The first Christian Brother School in India St. Patrick's School was started in 1891. The students from this and other English medium schools provided the elite work force that was needed to operate the British Indian Railways, the British Indian Army, the Indian Civil Services and the coal mines.
Post independence, most of the Anglo-Indian community migrated to Canada and Australia. The community living in Asansol now is multicultural as there are a large number of Biharis,Punjabis, Marwaris, Gujaratis, Muslims and other non Bengalis.There is no Indian festival that is not celebrated in Asansol and the people of all communities take part in them with equal fervour.
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Famous quotes containing the word language:
“The language of the younger generation ... has the brutality of the city and an assertion of threatening power at hand, not to come. It is military, theatrical, and at its most coherent probably a lasting repudiation of empty courtesy and bureaucratic euphemism.”
—Elizabeth Hardwick (b. 1916)
“There is ... in every child a painstaking teacher, so skilful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!”
—Maria Montessori (1870–1952)
“The problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions, its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. The guilt of English then must be recognized and appreciated before its continued use can be advocated.”
—Njabulo Ndebele (b. 1948)