The cruelties of the genocide, and the heroism of the resistance were all parts of the people’s lived experience.
An incredible opportunity has been created to build a more democratic, just and beautiful Bangladesh.
Even though transparent, participatory and competitive elections are a constitutional right, the realities today have vitiated those expectations.
A great university inspires and prepares students for a rich and fulfilling experience in a changing and challenging world.
Shorn of its sacred grandeur the Padma has embraced its secularised and earthier image with some muscularity, audacity and flair.
What makes a good student? A definitive answer to this question is difficult.
Today, the question of being a 'good teacher' generates a new vernacular.
The ubiquity of the word “secularism” (it is mentioned in more than 75 of the world’s constitutions as an ideal the State promotes, or an organising principle that it affirms), and the passionate discussions it generates throughout the world, sometimes distracts us from the fact that its origins are relatively recent.
The demand was predictable. Given the outrage that has been generated by the vicious acts of assault and dehumanisation that have been inflicted on women over some time, it even appears justifiable.
Dr. Anisuzzaman’s life was a radiant gift to us, his departure an irreparable loss. The usual metaphors that have been applied (tower of strength, conscience of the nation, a reassuring lighthouse, an iconic intellectual/cultural presence , an institution by himself, a large and shady tree, the embodiment of humanist principles, and so on) may all be applicable.
The American project was founded on rank hypocrisies. On the one hand, President Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the stirring words in the Declaration of Independence that upheld “these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal”, did not free his own slaves (not even Sally Hemings, who bore him six children).
It is almost axiomatic that free speech is indispensable to democracy.
On April 8, Bernie Sanders was compelled to fold his bid for the Presidency. Consistent with his decency as a human being, his graciousness as a
The word “politics” is much maligned and stigmatised. It suffers from a huge image problem both in the world as well as in Bangladesh.
Dr Nurul Islam has been a towering presence in the intellectual landscape of Bangladesh. He has graduate degrees from Harvard, and held prestigious fellowships at Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, Yale and the Netherland School of Economics, was Professor and Chair of Economics at Dhaka University, and the author of about 29 books of some scholarly heft and influence.
Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan (1797 – 1869), popularly known by his takhallus (pen name) Ghalib (conqueror), makes it difficult for writers to sum him up easily or definitively. He himself would probably have taken great and impish delight in that knowledge. In one of his ghazals he suggests (Shahid Alam
The issue of Islam in Bangladesh is complex, sensitive and fraught. It has problematised the sense of national identity of Bangladeshis into a schizophrenic duality driven by the tension between the cultural and religious aspects of their collective personality.
