Chittagong’s neighbour Sandwip is absent from Bay of Bengal history because its nature is hard to define.
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.
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.
The subject of this paper is the old muslin industry of Dacca [Dhaka] and its neighborhood. I shall not deal in this article with the Muslins produced here with British yarn.
At the Hay Dhaka Literary Festival of 2012 the celebrated Indian writer Vikram Seth, after reading some of his fine translations of Chinese poetry, remarked that he found it odd that his fellow South Asians were incurious about the great civilization north of the Himalayas.
The misdemeanors of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan are legendary.Tomes have already been written about this ‘dark, diabolical prince’ of Larkana, Sind, in Pakistan.
Very few people know that Bengal was once ruled by Habshi African sultans. Four rulers from an African background occupied the Sultanate of Bengal during 1487-94. Those who know about that period are mostly confined to a narrow group of academics, whose interest levels on the topic seem to have been also very limited.
Behind his big glasses and mischievous smile hid over 50 years of experience in publishing. Very few people would be able to claim the same kind of knowledge and understanding of the ins and outs of publishing as Mohiuddin Ahmed, Emeritus Publisher and Director, The University Press Limited.
In December 1971, East Pakistan became the independent nation of Bangladesh after a nine-month war with West Pakistan and their local Bengali collaborators.
Hell had broken loose. The sky above the Bhomra bund of Satkhira suddenly turned bright, thunderous colours going in all directions.
It was in the early 1980s, that I became aware of Frederick Fritz Kapp popularly known as Fritz Kapp, a German photographer through his photographs printed in a book published from Calcutta.
On May 1, 1971, General SHFJ Manekshaw issued the Indian Army Operational Instruction No. 52. A structured policy to provide training facilities and logistical and operational support for the liberation of Bangladesh was prepared by Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) Eastern Command.
This is an excerpt of the paper delivered by Edward Said, author of the famous book Orientalism, at a conference on Jerusalem held in London on 15-16 June, 1995.
