Iftekhar Iqbal

Iftekhar Iqbal is a historian at the University of Dhaka and is currently based at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei. He is the author of The Bengal Delta: Ecology, State and Social Change, 1840-1943 (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Environmental history of Dhaka: An outline

Environment has been key to Dhaka’s birth and rebirth, growth and development as well as its urban predicaments. Recently, Dhaka’s environmental issues have led to public debates drawing a lot of interest.

Railways in colonial Bengal

After conducting a year-long survey of landscape, possible routes and profitability, Macdonald Stephenson, a Scottish engineer, proposed the first Indian railway scheme in 1845.

How the deadly water hyacinth invaded Bengal

Wars are not just about strategy, diplomacy, weapons, death and destruction of human life, but also about the way it affects natural environment.

South Asia's first Look East Policy?

Politics, patriotism, and palliatives for economic woes—all expressed themselves centrally in terms of the land and landscape of Bengal. The new province therefore fell apart and Bengal reunited.

Locating the Rohingya in time and space

There is no instance in the world where after decades of experience of citizenship and of exercising the rights to electing their representative to parliament an entire population becomes stateless without security to life, property and honour, except of course in Nazi Germany.

How communal politics ruined agrarian society

First, when it came to the ecological question, the two-nation theory, on which the partition was claimed to be based, was muted as seen in Punjab and Bengal where the question of partitioning the water bodies took the centre stage. Second, the immediate aftermath of the partition left thousands of people dead and millions homeless and filled with gruesome trauma.

October 5, 2020
October 5, 2020

Environmental history of Dhaka: An outline

Environment has been key to Dhaka’s birth and rebirth, growth and development as well as its urban predicaments. Recently, Dhaka’s environmental issues have led to public debates drawing a lot of interest.

April 8, 2019
April 8, 2019

Railways in colonial Bengal

After conducting a year-long survey of landscape, possible routes and profitability, Macdonald Stephenson, a Scottish engineer, proposed the first Indian railway scheme in 1845.

December 24, 2018
December 24, 2018

How the deadly water hyacinth invaded Bengal

Wars are not just about strategy, diplomacy, weapons, death and destruction of human life, but also about the way it affects natural environment.

October 16, 2017
October 16, 2017

South Asia's first Look East Policy?

Politics, patriotism, and palliatives for economic woes—all expressed themselves centrally in terms of the land and landscape of Bengal. The new province therefore fell apart and Bengal reunited.

October 13, 2017
October 13, 2017

Locating the Rohingya in time and space

There is no instance in the world where after decades of experience of citizenship and of exercising the rights to electing their representative to parliament an entire population becomes stateless without security to life, property and honour, except of course in Nazi Germany.

August 25, 2017
August 25, 2017

How communal politics ruined agrarian society

First, when it came to the ecological question, the two-nation theory, on which the partition was claimed to be based, was muted as seen in Punjab and Bengal where the question of partitioning the water bodies took the centre stage. Second, the immediate aftermath of the partition left thousands of people dead and millions homeless and filled with gruesome trauma.

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