Bengali Association of South Florida

Bengali Association of South Florida is an association formed by 'Bengalees' living in South Florida. Bengal,where they come from,is a historical-geographical region in the Northeast part of the Indian subcontinent.The majority of Bengal is inhabited by Bengali people known as Bangali- who speak the Bengali language,Bangla. The exact origin of the word Bangla,or Bengal,is unknown, though it is widely accepted that the word is derived from the Dravidian-speaking tribe 'Bang' that settled in the area around the year 1000 BC.Another school of thought attributes the name Banga or Bongo to have come from the Austric word 'Bongo' meaning the Sun God. The mostly accepted theory is that the Dravidians migrated to Bengal from the South,while Tibeto-Burmese people migrated from the Himalayas,followed by the Indo-Aryan from Northwestern India. There were a handful of Pathans,Persians,Arabs,and Turks in the region.