The People

About 98 per cent of the population is Bengali; the remainder consists of Biharis, an Urdu-speaking people, and ethnic groups of various origins. More than four-fifths of the people follow Islam, the official religion. Hindus make up the largest religious minority.

According to the 2001 census, Bangladesh had a population of 129,247,233. The population density was 2,325 persons per square mile (898 per km2), one of the highest in the world. Most of the people live in rural areas, mainly in small towns and villages.

Bengali, an Indo-European tongue, is the official language. English, however, is widely spoken among educated persons. About 35 per cent of the people are literate. Schooling is unavailable to a large part of the population. The country has several universities; the largest is in Dhaka.

Bangladesh has one of the lowest living standards in the world. Most Bengalis live in primitive villages, in bamboo homes. With the growth of industry since World War II, however, there has been a great influx of people into the cities, where much of the population lives in streets and shanties. Sanitary conditions in the cities and rural areas are extremely poor, and cholera, typhoid fever, and other epidemics are common. The mainstay of the Bengali diet is rice, usually eaten with curry sauce. High living standards are found only among the privileged few.

The Bengalis have a strong literary and artistic tradition. The greatest Bengali poet is the 1913 Nobel Prize winner Sir Rabindranath Tagore. The sitar player Ravi Shankar, a native of Bangladesh, is the foremost interpreter of ragas, Indian classical music. Bengalis have been prominent in modern painting.