The failed Indian rebellion of 1857 also led to the ‘demise’ of the rapacious East India Company (EIC) in 1858, when political power was transferred to the crown-in-parliament in England with the founding of ‘The British Empire in India’ (1858-1947), popularly known today as the British Raj.

Policies are ethereal. Instead of a specific set of instructions, it is a general sense of being and a spatial sense of direction as to where we might be heading as a country, an institution, a society and an individual.

I was born in 1899 in the Raychaudhuri family in the village of Gabtali, Sonargaon, East Bengal. My father worked in the Treasury in Mymensingh.

Speaking from his home in Agartala, the capital of the Northeast Indian state of Tripura, Mohendro Chakma recalls his role as the leader of the 19th group that was preparing to trek to the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), present-day Arunachal Pradesh.

The following is the field report on trip to Jessore, Khulna, Chalna and Kushtia submitted by Hendrik Van der Heijden, Economist, Pakistan Division, the World Bank, dated June 23, 1971.

The subject of this paper is the old muslin industry of Dacca [Dhaka] and its neighborhood. I shall not deal in this article with the Muslins produced here with British yarn.

At the Hay Dhaka Literary Festival of 2012 the celebrated Indian writer Vikram Seth, after reading some of his fine translations of Chinese poetry, remarked that he found it odd that his fellow South Asians were incurious about the great civilization north of the Himalayas.

The misdemeanors of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan are legendary.Tomes have already been written about this ‘dark, diabolical prince’ of Larkana, Sind, in Pakistan.

Very few people know that Bengal was once ruled by Habshi African sultans. Four rulers from an African background occupied the Sultanate of Bengal during 1487-94. Those who know about that period are mostly confined to a narrow group of academics, whose interest levels on the topic seem to have been also very limited. 

Behind his big glasses and mischievous smile hid over 50 years of experience in publishing. Very few people would be able to claim the same kind of knowledge and understanding of the ins and outs of publishing as Mohiuddin Ahmed, Emeritus Publisher and Director, The University Press Limited.

In December 1971, East Pakistan became the independent nation of Bangladesh after a nine-month war with West Pakistan and their local Bengali collaborators.

Hell had broken loose. The sky above the Bhomra bund of Satkhira suddenly turned bright, thunderous colours going in all directions.

It was in the early 1980s, that I became aware of Frederick Fritz Kapp popularly known as Fritz Kapp, a German photographer through his photographs printed in a book published from Calcutta.

On May 1, 1971, General SHFJ Manekshaw issued the Indian Army Operational Instruction No. 52. A structured policy to provide training facilities and logistical and operational support for the liberation of Bangladesh was prepared by Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) Eastern Command.

This is an excerpt of the paper delivered by Edward Said, author of the famous book Orientalism, at a conference on Jerusalem held in London on 15-16 June, 1995.

“Films cannot change society. They never have. Show me a film that changed society or brought about any change,” said master director Satyajit Ray in an interview for the American magazine Cineaste more than three decades ago.

In mid-eighteenth century Mughal India, slowly but surely, the old was giving way to the new in complex ways.

The years 1968-1969, were a tumultuous period in the political history of the state of Pakistan. My father a Bengali civil servant from East Pakistan, was an official in the then central government in Islamabad.

It has often been said that Britain lost its empire the day when, one hundred [two] years ago, 55-year old Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, commanding a regiment of 50 Gurkha and Baluchi riflemen,

One of the grand paradoxes facing Bangladeshis is expressed in the negotiations and contestations on the simple question about who they are, particularly in the context of the strains caused by the Universalist claims of their religion on the one hand and the particularist demands of their ethnicity and culture on the other.