Ancient treasures
Bangladesh lost a very rare opportunity to display its national art treasures in the cultural capital of the western world. The fiasco involving the exhibition of its cultural artefacts in the Musee Guimet in Paris must be treated as a well conceived plan to foil the presentation of the true historical image of Bangladesh as a very old nation of Bengalis before the international community. The eminent persons, celebrities, academics and civil society luminaries including the print media that opposed the exhibition and launched a vigorous campaign to abort the show had played unknowingly into the hands of the forces who want to depict us as a nation without any heritage. It was really very painful to watch the short-sightedness of these standard bearers of Bengali culture who argued that the artefacts would be impounded by the Musee Guimet once they get hold of them!!! It was a laughable assumption. Without being disrespectful to them, I must say that they had no idea how such exchange programmes take place these days among the civilized nations to promote the image of the country as a modern, progressive, developed and tolerant multicultural society.
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