The UK based Bengali heritage organisation celebrated Bangladesh's Victory Day with an event at the British Library on 16 December with an evening of conversation, stories, songs and music from 1971.

The programme included Mahmudur Rahman Benu, who led the Bangladesh Mukti Shangrami Shilpi Shangstha artists in 1971, touring the war zone and refugee camps in India singing Songs of Freedom. He featured in Tareque & Catherine Masud's 1995 Muktir Gaan documentary film.

Moushumi Bhowmik, an Indian Bengali singer, writer and music archivist who composed and sang the iconic "Jessore Road", based on Allen Ginsberg's poem "September on Jessore Road", for Tareque & Catherine Masud's 1999 documentary Muktir Kotha, performed the song at the event.

Budhaditya Bhattacharyya, an Indian Bengali musician and music researcher, based in the UK, performed Bengali classical music. He is a researcher at Durham University, working on musical histories of migration and citizenship between Bengal and Britain.

Finally, The Grand Union Orchestra, led by composer Tony Haynes, who has a long history of collaboration with artists from Bangladesh, was joined by Yousuf Ali Khan on tabla and singer Lucy Rahman performing songs by Lucy's father Sheikh Luthfur Rahman, a celebrated singer-songwriter and activist in the cause of independence.

The event also launched Swadhinata Trust's oral history project, "Bengali Music and Musicians in the UK", now part of the British Library Sound Archive. The event was hosted by Julie Begum, chair of Swadhinata Trust, and Valentine Harding, who worked in refugee camps as a nurse during 1971 and a member of Swadhinata Trust & researcher for the Bengali Music and Musicians in the UK project.

For the occasion, the British Library auditorium was lit up in Bangladesh's colour of red and green. In addition, in separate initiatives, other landmarks were lit up in Bangladesh flag's colour, including St Georges town hall in London Borough of Tower Hamlets and the iconic Tower Bridge at the initiative of City of London Councilman Munsur Ali.