The many tales of a city
Syed Badrul Ahsan is seduced by a timeless Dhaka
Dhaka Nogor Jibone Nari
Ed Sonia Nishat Amin Dhakai Khabar Eds Habiba Khatun, Hafiza Khatun Muktijuddhe Dhaka 1971
Eds Mohit Ul Alam, Abu Mohammad Delwar Hossain Dhaka A to Z street atlas
Eds Shahnaz Huq-Hussain, Amanat Ullah Khan Asiatic Society of Bangladesh
There is a particular charm in knowing that Dhaka has been around as a town or city or both for the past four hundred years. Which reminds you of the time when much cheer went into a celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of Calcutta (read Kolkata in these times), bringing in its wake all focal points of history through which the city had coursed along over this long period in time, history to the making of which it had an enormous contribution. Dhaka (earlier known as Dacca and spelt that way) is of course rather different from Calcutta in that the latter has historically had the cosmopolitan about it. The story of Dhaka, on the other hand, has been of a large village progressing to the level of a town and then shooting into a number of directions as a city. It was a sleepy place during British colonial times and indeed remained that way well into the post-partition period, right up to the mid-1950s. The city began to stir in the 1960s with all the new architecture coming into it as part of the grand design of Mohammad Ayub Khan, then Pakistan's military ruler-cum-president, to transform it into the second capital of Pakistan. In came Louis I. Kahn and his aesthetics-based architecture. In the early 1970s, what had essentially been a provincial capital, despite the grandiose Ayub schemes of development, suddenly saw itself transformed into the capital of a newly independent Bangladesh. But such reflections on modern-day Dhaka are but a hint of its claim on the past, on history as it were. The story has been captured, to our immense satisfaction, by the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh through an ambitious project it set for itself some years ago to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Dhaka. One might add here that the project was fundamentally an exposition of the intellectual dimensions of the city, an exercise now brought into the public domain by the Society through a number of volumes focusing on the varied and various factors which have enriched Dhaka in these four centuries. Observe one of these works --- and they all promise to be substantive points of reference for future students of history --- to understand the nature of what the Asiatic Society has tried to put across. Dhaka Nogor Jibone Nari, charmingly edited by Sonia Nishat Amin, brings into the deliberations on the city a wide range of areas where women have played a pivotal role and in doing so have contributed to the growth of Dhaka's character. The themes captured in the volume include the progression of women from handicrafts to corporate management; health and law. The points are pretty exhaustive, encompassing as they do such areas of women's activities as their stepping out of the confines of the home and moving on to education ending at the university. And, yes, there is the broad field of literature where women's progress has been a critical factor in overall Bengali intellectual growth and expansion. Add to that the activism which has propelled Bengali women into politics and you then have a fairly good idea of how far Dhaka has come through time's relentless movement. Ah, there is about Dhaka the overwhelmingly traditional when it comes to matters of gastronomy. Even in these banal times of lopsided urban progress, there are the remnants of the old heritage, glimpses of which you come by in what is now known as Old Dhaka. The Asiatic Society has captured this tradition in Dhakai Khabar. And what you get is history as it has come to be associated with the eating habits of the people of the city. Well-edited by Habiba Khatun and Hafiza Khatun, the work brings together such facets of Dhaka's gastronomic history as food in Mughal, British and Pakistani times. Besides, revealing chapters are expended on food served on social occasions as also the nature of the daily intake of food by residents of the city. To all that is added the ubiquity of sweets, pithas and pickles. And let us not forget the unique ways in which food has always been served in Dhaka before being prepared by cooks and chefs made adept in the trade over a continuum of time. You get all of this in Dhakai Khabar. And more. Speaking of more, there is the perennially political which has consistently defined Dhaka. And politics, of the history-making kind, was what happened in 1971. Muktijuddhe Dhaka 1971, edited by Mohit Ul Alam and Abu Mohammad Delwar Hossain, is a recapitulation of the militancy which defined the city in the times right before the War of Liberation broke out in March 1971. And then the story moves on to the hope and despair which alternated in the lives of the city's residents throughout the nine months of the war. The massacre of Bengalis by the Pakistan army is focused on in detail along with the subsequent secret resistance put up by freedom fighters. Alongside such a presentation of history comes a narrative on the torture methods employed by the army and its local collaborators on citizens at various camps in the city. But if the tales of torture make sad, dismal reading, there is the uplifting about such write-ups as those in the global media about the course of the Bengali struggle. Some other subjects covered in this volume relate to the role played by women during the war as also the place of Dhaka University in the struggle against Pakistan. Muktijuddhe Dhaka will rekindle memories among those who lived through the travails of a year when optimism and madness operated side by side. Ah, here's some more good news coming from the Asiatic Society. We have, finally, an A-Z of Dhaka city. You are now in a position to navigate the city (ignore the thousand and one traffic-related impediments you stumble upon on a quotidian basis), get to know is features, its varied density, its class-based distinctions. That is surely saying something. The team at the Asiatic Society has done a splendid job. Professor Sirajul Islam, Professor Mahfuza Khanam and Dr. A.K.M. Golam Rabbani, together with the board of editors, have through their work ensured a continuity of history. Which reminds us of the vast input from Professor Sharif uddin Ahmed towards making a success of the project. As chief coordinator and chief editor of 'Celebration of 400 Years of Capital Dhaka', he has engineered a revival of our historical instincts, much to our happy surprise and unmitigated pleasure. These volumes on Dhaka as it has journeyed to its present must go out to those who stand to gain by them --- men and women, both at home and abroad, curious about Bangladesh's history in general and Dhaka's in particular. Syed Badrul Ahsan edits Star Books Review.
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