The story of Gauhar Jaan

Gauhar Jaan aka Eileen Yeoward was not Armenian. Here’s why.
7 August 2020

Bulbbul: Not a revolutionary feminist consciousness

I want to begin by saying that I do not look towards Bollywood for feminist lessons or representations.
29 July 2020

The different intrigues and agendas tied to the Srebrenica Massacre

This year marked a quarter of a century since the Srebrenica Massacre of July 11, 1995, when around 8,000 Muslim men and boys were allegedly massacred by Bosnian Serbs—during the Bosnian War—in what has been described by some as the “worst war crime” to have taken place on European soil “since World War II”.
26 July 2020

Shirin Banu Mitil: A person out of a fairy-tale

Shirin Banu Mitil is my mother. This is the most beautiful truth of my life and the part of my identity that fills me with the most pride.
20 July 2020

Ignaz Semmelweis

One of the front-line defenses individuals have against the spread of the coronavirus can feel decidedly low-tech: hand-washing.
19 July 2020

Conservation of biodiversity and mother tongue during coronavirus pandemic

Fear, despair, pain are all around us in the time of corona. The outbreak of the virus has been devastating for humankind. However, there has been an awakening about the importance of the natural ecosystem.
14 July 2020

The Bengal Cyclone of 1876: The Empire on Trial

Benjamin Kingsbury’s An Imperial Disaster: The Bengal Cyclone of 1876 (Hurst & Company, London, 2018) is a stimulating intervention in the history of disaster in British India.
12 July 2020

A colossus from Brahmanbaria

The Honorable Justice Nawab Sir Syed Shamsul Huda, KCIE, an illustrious son of Eastern Bengal (Bangladesh) was born in 1862, in the village of Gokarna, formerly in Comilla then a part of Hill Tipperah, in British India.
5 July 2020

Rethinking Dhaka's Urbanism: A Child's World in a Manmade City

In 1998, at Shangshad Chattar, an infant was relishing fresh air in the country’s largest and most emblematic civic-space.
28 June 2020

The road to Plassey

This paper argues, contrary to received wisdom, that the Plassey conspiracy leading to the British conquest of Bengal in 1757 was engineered and encouraged by the British who in their project of the revolution roped in an influential section of the Murshidabad darbar.
21 June 2020

The newly urban woman in Mrinal Sen's cinema

For the legendary Bengali auteur Mrinal Sen, cinema often went hand in hand with agitprop, meaning the use of political messaging as an aesthetic element.
14 June 2020

The Bangladeshi-Armenian Harneys of Dhaka

A brief on the Armenians of Dhaka: Regardless of the absence of any definitive chronicle on the advent of the Armenians in Bengal, particularly to Dhaka, historians today unanimously agree that the Armenians started to arrive in Bengal, from the late 17th century onwards.
7 June 2020

Anisuzzaman, the unexpected heir

Some legacies are merely handed down, transferred to a presumptive next-in-line by the inert push of the past. Other legacies are earned – and thus more truly owned – by those who, unforeseen and perhaps even unwelcome, rise up to claim them.
6 June 2020

On free speech and the imperatives of democracy

It is almost axiomatic that free speech is indispensable to democracy.
31 May 2020

COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis of isolation

COVID-19 has had an unprecedented effect on people all around the world and Bangladesh is no exception.
22 May 2020

The giants of the sea: all but gone

When we get there at the break of dawn, Cox’s Bazar is asleep and unexpectedly cold. Pinching at our cheek, making everyone scrunch up their noses. But reassurances drop in from right and left that the coast is rarely ever cold, for a long stretch anyway.
17 May 2020

Disappointment of a son

On 3rd May, after 12 am, I turned on my computer and began to write a short article regarding my missing father. I didn’t know back then that I was about to get a call and would be able to talk to my father in two hours.
11 May 2020

'LAST MAN STANDING'

Some of us speak words and these words become weapons. Some of use actions in our daily lives – gestures of kindness and compassion,
11 May 2020

Kajol might not be able to speak out, BUT WE MUST

Mysterious events surrounding the ‘disappearance’ and ‘recovery’ of photojournalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol are by now well known.
11 May 2020

What is a book, anyway?

In the Palace Museum of present-day Beijing, 10 stones of about 90 cm height and 60 cm diameter contain some ancient Chinese symbols.
3 May 2020