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.

On March 7, 1971, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman stood at the Ramna Race Course and faced a gathering of over 10 lakh people.

On the evening of the 25th of March of 1971, Yahya Khan, third President of Pakistan, was driven from an elegant, storied house at 22,

Perhaps the only memorial for the martyrs of the 1971 war in Pakistan stands quietly and forgotten near the village Barach, about 25 kilometers southeast of Mithi, the desert district headquarters of Tharparkar.

26 March 1971 is a significant date in South Asian subcontinent not simply because Bengali majority of Pakistan decided to assert a right to secede in the face of brutal military crackdown but also because the very fundamental framework of the parameter of nation formation in South Asian subcontinent had been altered.

Since the late-1910s, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had been at the forefront of India’s quest to shake off the yoke of British colonial domination, otherwise known as the “Raj.”

When speaking about our Liberation War of 1971, we often commend our freedom fighters for their sacrifices and bravery and condemn the then Pakistan army for inflicting inhumane torture on our innocent people, especially our women.

February 20 was the 120th birth anniversary of the famed American architect Louis I. Kahn whose monumental architectural creation is the National Assembly (Sangsad Bhaban) of Bangladesh.

The National Capital Complex in Dhaka, designed by Louis Kahn, is an epic work in the annals of modern architecture. Even after sixty years of its conception, Kahn’s complex remains a wondrous phenomenon that is continuously renewing the purposes of architecture.

What Einstein’s E=mc2 is for physicists, Louis I Kahn’s “Silence and Light” is for architects. Kahn’s lecture on “Silence and Light” in 1969, five years before his death, was the recapitulation of his collective thoughts based on metaphysical reasoning that he considered a key to his point of view, applicable to all works of art, including architecture.

While in London about the year 1770, William Bolts required some types for printing in Bengali. Such types were non-existent, and the type foundry of Joseph Jackson was engaged to prepare a font. In I773 or I774 he suddenly left for India, and the types remained behind.

The Drik-Path building peeks into the sky in the middle of the busy commercial area of Panthapath, Dhaka. This is where Chobi Mela Shunno (0) is taking place this year.