Exactly 169 years ago, in the jungles of what is now the Indian state of Jharkhand, Bengal Army sepoys fired the final shots in what became known as the ‘Hul’, or uprising, of 1855.

Although Rammohun Roy was notably many things, he was not an unlikely person to write a grammar—or, in fact, two grammars: one in English and one in Bangla, the latter being a free translation of the former.

When writing a confidential report on the Bengali workers of Karnaphuli Paper Mills to the Superintendent of Police, D.I.B Rangamati, Sub-Inspector of Police Md. Nurul Islam noted with disgust and frustration:

A chronicle of race science in Bengal.

Kazi Nazrul Islam, according to Kazi Abdul Wadud (1895-1970), perhaps the first formidable critic who took him seriously, “was the first writer among Bengali Muslims of the modern era who was able to conquer the hearts of Hindus and Muslims alike of Bengal.”

In Europe, steam power evolved gradually and uncertainly over the course of the eighteenth century, with innovative peaks and long plateaus, from Thomas Savery’s steam pump (1698) via Thomas Newcomen’s reciprocating atmospheric engine (1712) to James Watt and Matthew Boulton’s double-acting rotative steam engine with a separate condenser (1765-90).

Rabindranath Tagore is perhaps the only poet whose songs were chosen as the national anthems of two countries: India and Bangladesh.

Kalim Sharafi dedicated his life to uniting cultural activism with political resistance to combat communalism in Bengal.

I deem it a great privilege and pleasure to preside over this Convocation of the University of Dacca; and to join you in offering my blessings and good wishes for the success and prosperity of those graduates who have been admitted to various degrees today.

The Blue or Indigo Mutiny of 1861, was an outpouring of anger by Indian peasants coerced into cultivating the unprofitable indigo crop by British planters.

The necessity that was felt a few days after the Declaration of Independence of Bangladesh was that of a Government which could take upon itself the burden of directing the liberation struggle.

The Daily Star (TDS): Your family was closely involved with the Liberation War of Bangladesh. Could you please provide some insights into this historical involvement?

Historian Willem van Schendel divides the historiography of the War of 1971 into two broad categories: i) first-generation historiographies and ii) second-generation historiographies.

The year 2023 marked the centennial of Abul Mansur Ahmad’s journalism—a milestone that holds not only significance but also relevance in understanding his enduring impact.

In a jungle by a wide river bank, a small group is sitting amongst the dangling roots of a luscious banyan tree. The single-stringed ektara, four-stringed dotara, wood-bead necklace mala, hand-spunned bright-coloured cotton gamccha and white outfits identify the members as Bauls, the traditional mystic musicians of Bangladesh.

Listen, from one Mujibur/ A thousand Mujib’s voices rise/ The sounds and echoes of those voices/ Ring out through the wind and the sky/ Bangladesh, my Bangladesh…. 

‘Academy’, as many of us know, is a word that comes from the French word ‘academie’, evolving from Latin ‘academia’—the ultimate ancestor of both being Greek ‘akademeia’.

Apparently, Bengali (or Bangla) is the seventh spoken language in the world by population. By some statistics, its position is sixth, and even fifth in another! I am not elated by this because the number of speakers of a language does not demonstrate its acceptance nor its popularity, globally or locally.

British administrator and archaeologist Alexander Cunningham, who served as the first director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), founded in 1861, conducted the first archaeological survey in 1862-1863, followed by the second one in 1889-1891.

Both my parents had been actively engaged in the struggle for the liberation of Algeria from French colonialism. A few months after its independence, we left France to live in Algiers, sharing the house with two Algerian families whose women, Fatima and Jima, were like other mothers to me.