BANGLADESH stands at a peculiar crossroads. Revolutions often end with the fall of a regime, leaving the victors to improvise their next steps. Rarely does the euphoria of an uprising give birth to a document that tries to discipline power itself. The July Charter is...
Bangladesh鈥檚 public administrative system remains stuck in the past, a relic of British colonial rule. The state machinery of a country mostly depends on bureaucracy which was originally designed to serve the foreign rulers during the British colonial period. But...
I WORE the uniform for more than three decades. Now, whispers turn to shouts, and I hear the derogatory term, 鈥楰ochukheti,鈥� hurled at my peers, as if we alone are to blame for every grand failure born of their ineptitude. With this new combat, this so-called...
I LIVED in Britain from 2000 to 2007 for higher education. It was an eventful period marked by attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Western invasion of Afghanistan, the unilateral Anglo-American war on Iraq, 7/7 attacks on London鈥檚 public transport...
WHEN I look at political rhetoric, what often gives me pause is the malleability of what words and symbols can do, when they are time and again deployed, to change the parameters of what countries might consider the norm. For years, I used to...
I first considered calling this essay Political Zionism. But what matters more than terminology is the kind of politics that has taken root since last July in Bangladesh, and how, a year later, we are using that event as a tool of partisan gain in the name of...
THE struggle for democracy in Bangladesh constitutes one of the most compelling political narratives in South Asia. Emerging from the Liberation War of 1971 which was a conflict rooted in demands for political rights, self-determination, equality and...
GEORGE Shultz once said, 鈥楾rust is the coin of the realm.鈥� For Bangladesh, emerging from the shock and release of the 2024 mass uprising, this phrase is not a metaphor; it is a budget line. If the post-uprising government cannot rebuild public trust...
IN THE grand arena of democracy, intellectuals were meant to be a chorus 鈥� offering commentary, warning of hubris, and speaking uncomfortable truths to both audience and actors alike. Edward Said captured this essential function by describing intellectuals as...
SUCH sky-high expectations were impossible to meet, even by a hugely popular government led by an internationally respected Nobel Laureate. The student-led people鈥檚 uprising had removed a murderous tyrant who had left behind a nation in shambles. The judiciary, the police, the bureaucracy, the military and even academia had all been completely politicised...
IN 2025, Bangladesh鈥檚 54th anniversary of Independence Day cannot be observed by bypassing the July 2024 movement. Some people may not endorse the epithet 鈥榮econd independence鈥�, the outcome of the student uprising that ended Hasina鈥檚 autocratic rule and created a 鈥榥ew鈥� Bangladesh. They may have a reason. It may be that they compare the second..
NINETEEN seventy-one arrived, not as a year, but as a violation, a savage tear in the thin skin of what we dared call life. I was a child, a splinter of a being, four years old, yet the tremors of that brutal rending still reverberate in the hollow spaces of my bones. They call it the Liberation War, a tidy phrase for a messy, monstrous thing. It was the air we choked on, thick with...
THE streets of Bangladesh are filled with Bangla 鈥� on signboards, in conversations, woven into the fabric of daily life. Yet, a closer look reveals something more layered: 鈥樴Λ唳距Π唰嵿Ξ唰囙Ω唰�鈥� 鈥樴Λ唳距Ω唰嵿 唳唳� 唳曕Π唰嵿Θ唳距Π,鈥� and 鈥樴Ξ唰嬥Μ唳距唳� 唳膏唳班唳唳膏唳傗��. Bangla script carrying foreign words, a blend so common that it often goes unnoticed. On social media, Bangla shifts between alphabets, appearing...
THE fifteenth amendment of the Bangladesh Constitution mentions, 鈥楾he state shall take steps to protect and develop the unique local culture and tradition of the tribes, minor races, ethnic sects, and communities鈥�. The suffix 鈥榓divasi (indigenous peoples)鈥� is not in the constitution. The 鈥楽mall Ethnic Groups Cultural Institutions Act, 2010 broadly defines the term...
FEBRUARY 21, 2025 marks the first observance of the historic language movement since the July 2024 mass uprising in Bangladesh. The groundbreaking political change brought about by last year鈥檚 student-led movement is likely to provide new or more nuanced ways of reflecting on the language struggle of the Pakistan period that, among other things, fundamentally...
