Nusrat Sabina Chowdhury

In this essay, I offer a reading of the set of events now known as Gana Abhyutthan (Mass Uprising) by attending to Dhaka, the city.

Crowds, michhil, and political gatherings have played formative roles in the origin story of Bangladesh. The crowd at Bangabondhu’s speech at the Ramna Race Course in 1971 is a significant part of national folklore. The event of March 7 was a grand moment of declaration where the boundaries between popular demands for independence and constitutionalism were blurred to produce one of the most iconic moments – and sound bites – of East Pakistan’s struggle for nationhood.