In his analysis of the Estado da Índia, which was the official name of the Portuguese Empire, George Winius distinguished between the formal administration by the Estado’s headquarters at Goa over overseas possessions and the ‘informal empire’, which he called the ‘shadow empire’, that the Portuguese established in the Bay of Bengal. The shadow empire was a unique experiment carried out by sailors, merchant adventurers, pirates, and missionaries, with little formal sanction either from Goa or from Portugal.
In the immediate aftermath of the Bangladesh Liberation War, as world attention fixated on the harrowing human toll of conflict and the fate of 93,000 Pakistani POWs in Indian custody, a darker, largely buried chapter was quietly unfolding in Pakistan.
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.
Rabindranath Tagore, whose genius touched nearly every branch of the arts and literature, left an indelible imprint on the world of drama—not merely as a playwright, but as an actor, director, and visionary of the stage.
With the passing of Professor Tony K. Stewart, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities Emeritus, the field of South Asian religions, and more specifically, premodern Bengali literature, has lost one of its leading lights.
The writing of history in the Bengali language by a Bengali began around 225 years ago with the publication of Raja Pratapaditya Charitra in 1801.
This endeavour seeks to offer a more nuanced, responsible, and humane approach to shaping our built environments
The Cold War was a war of armaments and ideologies—but it was also a war of words, fought in classrooms, libraries, and on the printed page.
Jamdani is not just the material or the motifs; it encompasses everything—from the river system and flora-fauna of the Dhaka region
Whenever Bata shoes come to mind, we are reminded not only of how footwear became woven into the fabric of everyday life but also of an extraordinary figure linked to its history in Bangladesh
Although the Bengali calendar has been in use for centuries, the tradition of celebrating Pahela Baishakh as a public festival is a relatively modern development.
Historians usually approach Bengal’s history from Gaur-Pandua in the west (i.e., Ilyas Shahi and Husain Shahi Bengal), but what of early Bengal?
When Bangladesh defeated Pakistan on 16 December 1971, one could be forgiven for assuming that the international community automatically recognised Bangladesh’s independence.
