Hason Raja

Hason Raja, (Bengali: হাসন রাজা; 1854–1922) was a Bengali poet, mystic philosopher and songwriter from Sylhet, Bangladesh. He gained international recognition few years after his death, when Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, mentioned him in his lectures at Oxford University. Tagore said, "We realise it through admiration and love, through hope that soars beyond the actual, beyond our own span of life into an endless time wherein we live of all men." and "It is a village poet of East Bengal who preaches in a song the philosophical doctrine that the universe has its reality in its relation to the Person."

Biography

Early life

Raja was born on 21 December 1854 in Rampasha, Bishwanath Upazila, (in present-day Sylhet District) and moved to Sunamganj in his adolescence. He was the son of Dewan Ali Raja, a direct descendant of Birendraram Singhdev (later converted from Hinduism to Islam and renamed as Raja Babu Khan). His mother was Hurmuth Jahan Bibi, the last and fifth wife of Ali Raja. He spent most of his childhood in Sunamganj with his mother. At the age of seven, his father started living in Rampasha of Lokkishiri, 33 miles away from Sunamganj, for the most part of the year. Ali supervised and managed his paternal properties.

Raja

Raja (/ˈrɑːdʒɑː/; also spelled rajah, from Sanskrit राजा rājā-) is a term for a monarch or princely ruler in South and Southeast Asia. Rana is practically equivalent, and the female form Rani (sometimes spelled ranee) applies equally to the wife of a raja or rana. Maharaja, or "great king" is in theory a title for more significant rulers in India, but after some inflation of titles over time, there is no clear difference between the terms.

The title has a long history in the Indian subcontinent and South East Asia, being attested from the Rigveda, where a rājan- is a ruler, see for example the dāśarājñá, the "battle of ten kings".

Etymology

Sanskrit rājan- is cognate to Latin rēx (genitive rēgis), Gaulish rīx, Gaelic rí (genitive ríg), etc., originally denoting heads of petty kingdoms and city states. It is believed to be ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European *h₃rēǵs, a vrddhi formation to the root *h₃reǵ- "to straighten, to order, to rule". The Sanskrit n-stem is secondary in the male title, apparently adapted from the female counterpart rājñī which also has an -n- suffix in related languages, compare Old Irish rígain and Latin regina. Cognates of the word Raja in other Indo-European languages include English reign and German reich. Rather common variants in Rajasthani, Marathi and Hindi, used for the same royal rank in parts of India include Rana, Rao, Raol, Rawal and Rawat.

Mithun Chakraborty

Gourang Chakraborty, better known by his stage name Mithun Chakraborty (Bengali: মিঠুন চক্রবর্তী); informally referred to as Mithun Da, is an Indian film actor, singer, producer, writer, social worker, entrepreneur and a Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament. He is the recipient of three National Film Awards. He made his acting debut with the art house drama Mrigayaa (1976), for which he won his first National Film Award for Best Actor.

He began his career as a junior actor and went on to establish himself as one of the top lead actors in Bollywood. He is particularly recognized as one of the best "dancing-heroes" in Bollywood with his unique "Disco and Desi" fusion-style dancing that is immensely popular among the masses. Along with legendary actor Raj Kapoor, Chakraborty is hugely popular in Russia for his role as dancer Jimmy in the 1982 Bollywood film Disco Dancer. He later won two more National Film Awards for his performances in Tahader Katha (1992) & Swami Vivekananda (1998). Chakraborty has appeared in more than 350 films including Bengali, Oriya, Bhojpuri, Telugu and Punjabi pictures.

Ruhul Amin

Ruhul Amin (Bengali: রুহুল আমিন; born 1971) is a Bangladeshi-born British film director.

Early life

Amin was born in Sylhet District, Sylhet Division, Bangladesh and came to Britain with his parents in the early 1980s while he was a teenager. While he was at school, he made his first documentary-drama Prubo London. He attended National Film and Television School.

Career

In 1986, Amin made his first feature film for Channel 4 Television entitled A Kind of English.

Amin has made 15 films for the BBC and Channel 4. Most of them are documentaries and experimental dramas. He is currently making an epic Bengali feature film Hason Raja based on the based on the life and music of the folk poet, mystic philosopher and songwriter of the same name played by Mithun Chakraborty, produced by Galaxy Films between UK, India and Bangladesh. The film was funded by Amin's friends and the Bangladeshi community in England.

Amin is known for creating sensitive, understated, poetic films centred on the life of the Bengali community in the East End of London.

Raima Sen

Raima Sen (born Raima Dev Varma on 7 November 1979) is an Indian film actress who primarily appears in Bengali films. Her performances have been acclaimed critically on more than one occasion.

Early life

She is the daughter of Moon Moon Sen and Bharat Dev Barma and the granddaughter of actress Suchitra Sen. Her sister Riya Sen is also in the Bollywood industry. Their father Bharat Dev Varma is a member of the royal family of Tripura. Her paternal grandmother, Ila Devi, was the princess of Cooch Behar, whose younger sister Gayatri Devi

was the Maharani of Jaipur. Her paternal great-grandmother Indira was the only daughter of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda.

Raima's maternal great-grandfather Adinath Sen was a prominent Kolkata businessman, whose son Dinanath Sen - a relative of former Union Law Minister Ashoke Kumar Sen- was the Diwan or a Minister of the Maharaja of Tripura. The sisters are credited on-screen under their mother's maiden name, although their official papers carry the surname Dev Varma.