Bot In Focus
Thus Spoke Sher-e-Bangla
I deem it a great privilege and pleasure to preside over this Convocation of the University of Dacca; and to join you in offering my blessings and good wishes for the success and prosperity of those graduates who have been admitted to various degrees today.
The Baropakhya Christians: A forgotten incidence of peasant repression in colonial Bengal
The Blue or Indigo Mutiny of 1861, was an outpouring of anger by Indian peasants coerced into cultivating the unprofitable indigo crop by British planters.
A freedom fighter’s journey to Mujibnagar
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.
'We must reject religious majoritarianism to ride the wave of Asian resurgence'
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?
Silencing the subaltern voice
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.
In the Name of Lalon
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.
Bangladesh and 1971
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….
Vangiya Sahitya Parishat, the first Bengal Academy of Literature
‘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’.
1971 and the case for secularism in Bangladesh and India
Bangladesh has just celebrated fifty years of independence; this year also marks fifty years since its Ganoparishad ratified the Constitution of Bangladesh. Anniversaries are as worthy occasions as any to recall why certain ideological principles were chosen to guide the new nation.
Bishop Heber in Dhaka,1824
Bishop Reginald Heber (1783-1826) was an Oxford educated Anglican clergyman from England, a man of letters and a notable hymn-writer. As an intrepid traveler and a curious observer, he has left behind an interesting travelogue entitled: ‘
Dhirendranath Dutta: Portrait of a patriot
Dhirendranath Dutta was born on November 2, 1886 to a lower middle-income family in Ramrail village of Brahmanbaria sub-division under Tripura district, now known as Cumilla.
SM Sultan: An early portrait
These are the facts of Sultan’s life that have significance for the study of his paintings. He spent his boyhood in the villages of Bengal.
Syud Hossain and his times
Scion of an illustrious family, Syud Hossain was born in Armanitola, Dhaka in 1888. His great great grandfather was Mir Ashraf Ali, whose great grandson,
Legacy of the Kumar of Bhawal
Prior to the abolition of Zamindari in East Bengal (Bangladesh) in accordance with the ‘East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950’, the Bhawal zamindar estate was the second largest feudal landholding in the Dhaka district.
Bangladesh's new data protection act: brittle shield or blunt sword?
The Government of Bangladesh is drafting a data protection and localisation law (“draft data protection act, DPA” or “the law”), which, once enacted, will be the first of its kind data privacy law in Bangladesh.
Dispute settlement mechanism under the UNCLOS 1982
The Law of the Sea dispute settlement mechanism is an area of great academic, economic, and political interest where the relationship between public and private law is in full evolution and constantly shows new challenges. Historically, the law of the sea was split between public and private domains.
Early Barristers from East Bengal
The failed Indian rebellion of 1857 also led to the ‘demise’ of the rapacious East India Company (EIC) in 1858, when political power was transferred to the crown-in-parliament in England with the founding of ‘The British Empire in India’ (1858-1947), popularly known today as the British Raj.
