REFLECTIONS / Moon, memory, manifesto: A personal, lyrical essay on Atrai
These two things—the river and the train—continue to haunt and fascinate me.
21 November 2025, 18:28 PM
21 November 2025, 18:28 PM
ESSAY / Between silence and song: Early Bangla literature and the poetics of the ‘Charyapada’
Pandit Haraprasad Shastri read—and was deeply inspired by—Raja Rajendralal Mitra’s seminal work Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepal, published in 1882. That book was instrumental in inaugurating a whole new age in the history of Bangla language and literature.
24 October 2025, 19:37 PM
24 October 2025, 19:37 PM
Syed Manzoorul Islam: Teacher, taleweaver, torchbearer, trailblazer
As I write—still devastated by his passing—I hear his voice in my head: telling stories without end, stories that breathe life, stories that dream of a new world,
12 October 2025, 04:00 AM
12 October 2025, 04:00 AM
90th birthday of Serajul Islam Choudhury / Interrogating power, envisioning emancipation
His work does not merely interpret the world; it is involved in the struggle to change it.
23 June 2025, 02:00 AM
23 June 2025, 02:00 AM
Language, land, labour, and liberation: Reclaiming the radical roots of Ekushey
Every time the question of language surfaces it means that a series of other problems are coming to the fore.
20 February 2025, 18:00 PM
20 February 2025, 18:00 PM
Beyond martyrdom and momentum: The matrix of the 1969 mass movement
In the history of Bangladesh’s formation and its war against the military-bureaucratic regime of Pakistan, the 1969 mass uprising is a significant milestone.
31 January 2025, 02:10 AM
31 January 2025, 02:10 AM
Opinion / Uprising, unity, and uncertainty: Power, protest, and politics in 2024
To speak of politics in 2024 is also to recall the entire history of political culture that has unfolded in Bangladesh since 1972.
30 December 2024, 02:00 AM
30 December 2024, 02:00 AM
Our Victory Day and the questions of equality, justice, and human dignity
Bangladesh's hard-won independence, achieved through the Liberation War in 1971, remains the most defining political event in our history.
16 December 2024, 02:00 AM
16 December 2024, 02:00 AM
Fakir Lalon Shah: Subjects, sites, and signs
Lalon is an exemplary anti-casteist, anti-patriarchal, anti-colonial figure in undivided Bengal in the19th century.
17 October 2024, 05:00 AM
89th Birthday of Serajul Islam Choudhury: Bangladesh’s premier public intellectual
Serajul Islam Choudhury is the author of more than a hundred books and numerous essays.
22 June 2024, 18:00 PM
Labour, Life, and Liberation: The Emancipatory Significance of May Day
May Day is customarily credited with originating in 1886 from the eight-hour workday movement in the United States, but the Polish-German Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg provides a distinct perspective on its genesis.
1 May 2024, 04:00 AM
Of poetry, philosophy, politics, and praxis
When we cease to have rhythm, we are dead. And we cease to have poetry, we are spiritually dead, one way or another.
21 March 2024, 02:00 AM
Of place and places: Perspectives, positions, and propositions
To speak of place is to speak of the topical, the toponymical, and the topographical.
10 February 2024, 02:00 AM
Our leading socialist intellectual and our teacher
There is far more to be said about Serajul Islam Choudhury's significance as an intellectual and literary-cultural critic.
22 June 2023, 18:05 PM
Serajul Islam Choudhury: Our foremost intellectual and writer in Bangladesh
Today – June 23 – marks the 87th birthday of Serajul Islam Choudhury.
22 June 2022, 18:00 PM
Kazi Nazrul Islam and “World Literature”: Some Questions and Concerns
Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) has been customarily characterized as a rebel poet, particularly, if not exclusively, because of his 1922 poem called “Bidrohi” (the Rebel)—a poem that fiercely stages his political, linguistic, even metrical rebellion all at once.
27 May 2022, 18:00 PM
Shakespeare—Our Contemporary in the Time of Coronavirus?
The question was already raised by some: Did Shakespeare write mainly for children? So-called "pop" Shakespeare criticism answered that question in the affirmative.
22 April 2022, 18:02 PM
More than a pastoral poet
Today—March 14—marks the 46th death anniversary of Jasim Uddin (1903-1976). Popularly called “palli kabi” (folk poet), Jasim Uddin is also considered a major Bangla poet.
13 March 2022, 18:00 PM
Our Language Movement: Moments, Momentum, Milieu
Our Bhasha Andolan—the Language Movement—was undoubtedly a major event in our political history.
20 February 2022, 18:00 PM
Jibanananda Das: Tropes, Tensions, Tendencies
Today—February 17—marks the 123rd birth anniversary of Jibanananda Das (1899-1954), recognised today as one of the greatest Bengali poets of all time.
16 February 2022, 18:00 PM
Michael Madhusudan Datta: Resistance, Rebellion, Rupture
Michael Madhusudan Datta (1824-1873) is widely regarded as the first modern Bangla poet. Well before Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), Madhusudan is even reckoned as the first rebel poet in Bangla literature, although he is by no means a revolutionary like Nazrul.
24 January 2022, 18:00 PM
Our foremost peasant leader and revolutionary
He was described as an epic hero. His life was intimately involved in the land, labour and language of the poor peasant.
16 November 2021, 18:00 PM
Fakir Lalon Shah: Love, life and liberation
One cannot decisively introduce—much less sum up—the life and work of Fakir Lalon Shah (c. 1772-1890).
16 October 2021, 18:00 PM
Kazi Nazrul Islam: Poetry, Politics, Praxis
The only major Bengali poet to have come from the rural proletariat and the first one to have raised—in public—the demand for the total independence of colonial India in 1922, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) enacts insurrectionary ruptures and breaks with certain old traditions in Bengali poetry while inaugurating new ones.
28 August 2021, 18:00 PM
Kashinath Roy: A teacher, poet and mentor of extraordinary stature
My teacher Professor Kashinath Roy (1947—2021)—poet, short story writer, essayist—died on January 17, at 74. Or did he die?
22 January 2021, 18:00 PM
Badruddin Umar: Our leading Marxist revolutionary
December 20 marks the 89th birthday of Badruddin Umar.
18 December 2020, 18:00 PM
Remembering and Rereading Rokeya: Patriarchy, Politics, and Praxis
December 09 marks both the birth and death anniversaries of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932). The Rokeya Day in Bangladesh also falls on December 09. Indeed,
4 December 2020, 18:00 PM
Fakir Lalon Shah: Subjects, Sites, and Signs
Fakir Lalon Shah—who orally composed thousands of songs in Bengali —died on October 17, 1890—on Kartik 01, 1297 (the Bengali year).
6 November 2020, 18:00 PM