An Iconic History of Bengal
In the sixties of the last century, I earned my primary degree with majors in Philosophy and Indian Studies and became a secondary school teacher.
Cartographic Imagination and Colonial Landscape Paintings in and around Bengal
Cartography in India might have had its roots in this expansionist ambition but went on to achieve much more than this. Rennell’s Map of Hindostan, published by an act of Parliament in 1782, inaugurated the cartographic identity of modern India for the first time on the world stage.
Steam Power and Scientific Knowledge in Early British Bengal
In Europe, steam power evolved gradually and uncertainly over the course of the eighteenth century, with innovative peaks and long plateaus, from Thomas Savery’s steam pump (1698) via Thomas Newcomen’s reciprocating atmospheric engine (1712) to James Watt and Matthew Boulton’s double-acting rotative steam engine with a separate condenser (1765-90).
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.
The enduring impact of Abul Mansur Ahmad’s journalism
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 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….
Sharing of Ganges water: What looms after 2026?
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.
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’.
