Writing the Padma

The first experience of the great river Padma is nothing less than overwhelming, and slightly terrifying. I first came to face the mighty river as a young lad in my teens sometime in April of the momentous year of 1971. My first sighting came with two terrors. My father was fleeing Dhaka with the family with the hope of crossing the river to escape the brutal onslaught of the Pakistan army. Arriving at the banks, there was the Padda (Padma) before us with its glorious panorama. It seemed like an oceanic river, with no sight of the other side, and the frightening prospect of crossing it.

49th death anniversary / Art and decolonisation, with Zainul Abedin

When Zainul Abedin left Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1947, as India and Pakistan negotiated a partition-ridden freedom from the British Empire, he was one of the city’s most acclaimed artists.

New Contextualism: An architectural philosophy for deltaic Bangladesh

This endeavour seeks to offer a more nuanced, responsible, and humane approach to shaping our built environments

Guerrilla operations

Ak Khandker: Around June-July of 1971, those of us involved in the Liberation War were a bit frustrated. But in mid-August, our naval commandos conducted successful attacks on shipping at the Chittagong and Chalna ports.

3y ago

The day we made a tryst with destiny!

Amar Ekushey (Immortal 21 February) is a day of special significance for us in Bangladesh, as we recall with reverence and gratitude, all those young brave-hearts who made supreme sacrifice by giving up their youthful lives for a noble cause.

3y ago

Anti-colonial movements as passive revolution: Abdur Razzaq’s insights on 1947

This stain-splattered daybreak, this night-bitten dawn,

3y ago

Calcutta’s Muslims after Partition

Before the Partition of British India (1947), Calcutta (Kolkata) was as much of a Muslim city as it was a Hindu one. Muslims who came to this city belonged to diverse classes, various sects and spoke in different tongues.

3y ago

The origin of the Language Movement

How was the Language Movement initiated?

3y ago

Bangladesh liberation war memories: An Untold Story

I had written this letter to my friend Hafiz who was then a Lieutenant of the 1st Bengal regiment and was in winter exercise in Chowgacha Police Station of the then Jashore district adjacent to subdivision Jhenaidah where I was posted.

3y ago

Global Sixties in Bangladesh: Praetorian Guards and Subaltern Resistance

Like bunches of blood-red Oleander, Like flaming clouds at sunset Asad’s shirt flutters In the gusty wind, in the limitless blue.

3y ago

Revisiting the Bengal Famine of 1943

The 1930s in Bengal were devastating for the poor. Global depression since 1929 had disabled the economy, and across the province there was ample evidence of starvation.

3y ago

Folk songs of East Bengal

East Bengal has a population of about 45 millions and an area of about 15,000 square miles. Less than three per cent of its people have any education in the real sense of the term. The only way in which you can get to know this province, is to study its folk-songs and tales, which mirror its aspirations, achievements and frustrations.

3y ago

The indefatigable public intellectual and political mobiliser

A small incident took place at a school in Burdwan in 1944. A class teacher of Grade 7 was wrongly reprimanding a student, accusing him of stacking all the high benches of the classroom against the short ones the previous evening, when a lanky boy stood up and said, “It was not Abanti, it was me.” Impressed by the boy’s moral courage, the teacher excused him.

3y ago