Inside the office, the smell of smoke still lingers. Guitars, tablas, dhols, khols, ektaras, amplifiers, chairs, tables, books, and files lie in heaps of blackened debris. Walls are stained with ash. Floors are layered with fragments of a long cultural journey.

Bangladesh Udichi Shilpigoshthi took to the streets of the capital this morning, staging a protest march and rally to condemn the arson attack on its central office—an assault that, the organisation says, has wiped out 55 years of cultural archives and struck at the heart of the country’s progressive movement.