The Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971 was not just a struggle fought on the battlefields, but a humanitarian crisis that captured the world’s attention.

I stood beneath the January sun, locking eyes with a Birangona woman on a balcony above me. Her warm smile steadied my trembling heart. Inside, 21 Birangona women awaited us at Sirajganj Uttaran Mohila Sangstha. I was finally here. The year was 2010.

As per the blueprint of Operation Searchlight, the Pakistani army had four key targets in Dhaka city on the fateful night of 25 March 1971.

With the much vaunted and long awaited talks between the President and Mujib still in progress, it is no time to speculate about their likely outcome.

The legacy of 1971 is, thus, not just about the past; it resonates powerfully in the present, particularly in the context of the Rohingya refugee crisis.

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:

The entire month of March in 1971 stands etched as a profound turning point in the birth of Bangladesh. The harrowing events of March 25th in Dhaka bore witness to a deliberate onslaught by the Pakistani army upon unarmed civilians, leaving an indelible mark of trauma upon the collective consciousness.

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.

On the night of March 25, 1971, The Pakistan Army unleashed Operation Searchlight in Dhaka. That was supposed to be the day when the

Despite the absence of city singers, musicians and dancers, there is no shortage of such artists in the rural areas.

Folk-ballads are living archives that represent the imagination, values, ideas, and aesthetics of the people to whom they belong. Folk-ballads are living archives that represent the imagination, values, ideas, and aesthetics of the people to whom they belong.

In classical Urdu epics, kings would transmigrate their lives into a bird and lock it away in a secured place. To kill the king, one had to go after the bird.

The Partition of British India (1947) had complex and wide ranging implications for the jute economy of deltaic Bengal. The border between East Pakistan and India separated Bengal’s jute fields from the jute factories. East Pakistan received more than 75 percent of the total jute growing land of undivided India, whereas all the mills were in India.

February 2, 1988. Presiding an evening session of the Second National Poetry Festival at the University of Dhaka, famed artist Quamrul Hassan doodled what would become one of the most important works of his career, and our art history.

“One day, you and I will be as far apart as this kite is now from the natai,” he said and giggled. “You will be a gentleman working in an air-conditioned office. I will be a labourer in some distant land.”

Finding Bangladesh is a quest of a group of young people which focuses on collecting, preserving and initiating conversations on Bangladesh's ancient histories, mythologies and legends. The aim is to revive lost tales of our land and help us in being more sentient

Here in Atlanta, in the land of fried chicken and grits, Pahela Baishakh is celebrated with great fanfare. As the chill of winter gives way

As an old saying goes: "Bengalis have thirteen festivals in twelve months." This experience-based adage gives an impression of a

Like thousands of other people in East Bengal, he had made the mistake, the fatal mistake of running within sight of a Pakistani army patrol. He was 24 years old, a slight man surrounded by soldiers. He was trembling, because he was about to be shot.

The first day of the Bangla New Year is mostly when lathikhela (stick dance and fight) is organised in rural areas. Nowadays, lathikhela