In Focus
(De-)Politicising Covid-19 Pandemic? Public Health Perspectives and Lessons Learned
“Please do not politicise this [corona]virus.” This statement of WHO (World Health Organization) chief a few months back provokes concern that there is something problematic in politicising Covid-19.
27 September 2020, 18:00 PM
Learning in the time of Covid-19
COVID-19 has brought death, destruction and disruption everywhere. However,
24 September 2020, 18:00 PM
When the Dufferins visited Dhaka
The failed Indian Rebellion of 1857, which saw the ultimate triumph of the East India Company, nonetheless also led to its demise and the emergence of the last great colonial empire in modern history- the British Empire in India - popularly known today as the British Raj (1858-1947).
20 September 2020, 18:00 PM
Is democracy possible?
Discourse on democracy is so overwhelmingly taken for granted that even the blatant autocrat or invader claims to act in the name of saving or installing democracy.
13 September 2020, 18:00 PM
Bangabandhu: the architect of Bangladesh's foreign policy
We celebrate 2020 as “Mujib Borsho”, to mark our Founding Father Bangabandhu’s birth centenary; we also mourn, and reflect on, his brutal assassination 46 years ago on the 15th August 1975.
6 September 2020, 18:00 PM
ANIS BHAI: TEACHER
Dr. Anisuzzaman’s life was a radiant gift to us, his departure an irreparable loss. The usual metaphors that have been applied (tower of strength, conscience of the nation, a reassuring lighthouse, an iconic intellectual/cultural presence , an institution by himself, a large and shady tree, the embodiment of humanist principles, and so on) may all be applicable.
23 August 2020, 18:00 PM
Decolonising the cities to address flood, rain and water
The city is conceptualised in many different ways – as a body, a machine, an organism, a second nature and now a third or even fourth nature.
16 August 2020, 18:00 PM
An Indefatigable Crusader: Dr Syud Hossain
Syud Hossain was born on June 23, 1888, in Calcutta the son of Nawab Syud Mohammed Azad (1850-1915), who belonged to an illustrious old aristocratic family of Dhaka.
9 August 2020, 18:00 PM
The story of Gauhar Jaan
Gauhar Jaan aka Eileen Yeoward was not Armenian. Here’s why.
7 August 2020, 18:00 PM
Bulbbul: Not a revolutionary feminist consciousness
I want to begin by saying that I do not look towards Bollywood for feminist lessons or representations.
29 July 2020, 18:00 PM
The different intrigues and agendas tied to the Srebrenica Massacre
This year marked a quarter of a century since the Srebrenica Massacre of July 11, 1995, when around 8,000 Muslim men and boys were allegedly massacred by Bosnian Serbs—during the Bosnian War—in what has been described by some as the “worst war crime” to have taken place on European soil “since World War II”.
26 July 2020, 18:00 PM
Shirin Banu Mitil: A person out of a fairy-tale
Shirin Banu Mitil is my mother. This is the most beautiful truth of my life and the part of my identity that fills me with the most pride.
20 July 2020, 18:00 PM
Ignaz Semmelweis
One of the front-line defenses individuals have against the spread of the coronavirus can feel decidedly low-tech: hand-washing.
19 July 2020, 18:00 PM
Conservation of biodiversity and mother tongue during coronavirus pandemic
Fear, despair, pain are all around us in the time of corona. The outbreak of the virus has been devastating for humankind.
However, there has been an awakening about the importance of the natural ecosystem.
14 July 2020, 18:00 PM
THE BENGAL CYCLONE OF 1876: The Empire on Trial
Benjamin Kingsbury’s An Imperial Disaster: The Bengal Cyclone of 1876 (Hurst & Company, London, 2018) is a stimulating intervention in the history of disaster in British India.
12 July 2020, 18:00 PM
A colossus from Brahmanbaria
The Honorable Justice Nawab Sir Syed Shamsul Huda, KCIE, an illustrious son of Eastern Bengal (Bangladesh) was born in 1862, in the village of Gokarna, formerly in Comilla then a part of Hill Tipperah, in British India.
5 July 2020, 18:00 PM
Rethinking Dhaka's Urbanism: A Child's World in a Manmade City
In 1998, at Shangshad Chattar, an infant was relishing fresh air in the country’s largest and most emblematic civic-space.
28 June 2020, 18:00 PM
THE ROAD TO PLASSEY
This paper argues, contrary to received wisdom, that the Plassey conspiracy leading to the British conquest of Bengal in 1757 was engineered and encouraged by the British who in their project of the revolution roped in an influential section of the Murshidabad darbar.
21 June 2020, 18:00 PM
The newly urban woman in Mrinal Sen's cinema
For the legendary Bengali auteur Mrinal Sen, cinema often went hand in hand with agitprop, meaning the use of political messaging as an aesthetic element.
14 June 2020, 18:00 PM
The Bangladeshi-Armenian Harneys of Dhaka
A brief on the Armenians of Dhaka: Regardless of the absence of any definitive chronicle on the advent of the Armenians in Bengal, particularly to Dhaka, historians today unanimously agree that the Armenians started to arrive in Bengal, from the late 17th century onwards.
7 June 2020, 18:00 PM