Sir Herbert Hope Risley (1851-1911) – who signed himself ‘H. H. Risley’ – was a member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) who became British India’s pre-eminent anthropologist.
After the creation of Pakistan, the nascent state embarked on vigorous projects to industrialise both parts of the country.
History is complicated; simplifying it is the work of politicians. My research on Bangladesh challenges the national memory of the 1971 war, as represented at the Liberation War Museum.
The necessity that was felt a few days after the Declaration of Independence of Bangladesh was that of a Government which could take upon itself the burden of directing the liberation struggle.
The Daily Star (TDS): Your family was closely involved with the Liberation War of Bangladesh. Could you please provide some insights into this historical involvement?
Historian Willem van Schendel divides the historiography of the War of 1971 into two broad categories: i) first-generation historiographies and ii) second-generation historiographies.
The year 2023 marked the centennial of Abul Mansur Ahmad’s journalism—a milestone that holds not only significance but also relevance in understanding his enduring impact.
In a jungle by a wide river bank, a small group is sitting amongst the dangling roots of a luscious banyan tree. The single-stringed ektara, four-stringed dotara, wood-bead necklace mala, hand-spunned bright-coloured cotton gamccha and white outfits identify the members as Bauls, the traditional mystic musicians of Bangladesh.
Listen, from one Mujibur/ A thousand Mujib’s voices rise/ The sounds and echoes of those voices/ Ring out through the wind and the sky/ Bangladesh, my Bangladesh….
In 1976, a mass procession led by a nearly 80-year-old peasant leader, Maulana Bhasani, from Dhaka to the Indo-Bangladesh Border drew huge attention from national and international media.
‘Academy’, as many of us know, is a word that comes from the French word ‘academie’, evolving from Latin ‘academia’—the ultimate ancestor of both being Greek ‘akademeia’.
Apparently, Bengali (or Bangla) is the seventh spoken language in the world by population. By some statistics, its position is sixth, and even fifth in another! I am not elated by this because the number of speakers of a language does not demonstrate its acceptance nor its popularity, globally or locally.
British administrator and archaeologist Alexander Cunningham, who served as the first director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), founded in 1861, conducted the first archaeological survey in 1862-1863, followed by the second one in 1889-1891.
