I write this essay with some degree of trepidation. First, because it is by no means an academic paper. Second, because in some senses this is not a subject that admits of academic presentation.

I am of this community but also in many senses outside its pale. If you hear the first person far too often in this essay, it is because it is largely one person's recollections of the last 55 years. No research work has gone into it. Aside from memory, this essay has few sources; however with memory having become the strong suit of social scientists in the present generation, I suppose you will bear with me.

Many years ago in 1956, when the oldest of my sisters married a Bengali, Acharya J B Kripalani, who was a good friend but no relation of my father's, sent my father a strange long telegram. Referring to his own marriage to a Bengali Brahmo woman Smt. Sucheta Majumdar, later first woman Chief Minister of an Indian state, and to that of Krishna Kripalani (also no relation) to Nandita, granddaughter of Rabindranath Tagore, he had written, and I quote the telegram exactly: