If you are looking for ancient history, Bengal’s achievements are clearly limited. The Indus Valley Civilization that immensely enriched the sub-continent in the third and second millennia BC hardly reached Bengal. No part of the Vedas and the Upanishads is known to have been composed in Bengal.

A small yellow building that looks a little like a Greek temple faces the campus wall near the Teacher-Student Center of Dhaka University.

Tilman Henckell [Judge and Magistrate of Jessore] at an early period of his magistracy, turned his attention to the Sundarbans, and he was the founder of the system of reclamation which is now converting these great forests into immense rice tracts.

It stands proudly as a silent sentinel - forsaken, forlorn, dilapidated - entwined in the vicious vice-grip of invasive vegetation – serpentine vines and clinging creepers - that threaten to bring it down anytime sooner than later.

He is the “president of the people”, more precisely the “president of the poor people”.

The idea of death is feared by many but it is not in our control – perhaps only to a certain extent. Various life decisions we make play a big part in determining our fate.

No one doubts the magnitude of complexity that shrouds Dhaka, this city of 16 million poised between being the worst liveable and an economic colossus.

Earlier this month, I was a guest on a podcast titled Not Here For, a series by Kotha Bangladesh, that calls out injustices that we have historically faced and continue to face in this country today.

Theories abound. Bizarre rumours run wild. Apart from extremists on both ends of the spectrum, all rational minds with a heart condemn the divide; yet, it refuses to go away. It’s complex -- at times it gets ugly but, most of the time, a simmering tension over numerous petty differences regarding faith, culture and inexplicable prejudices run deep.

A new cartoon movement, known as cultural cartooning, has been gaining popularity all over the world. Cultural cartooning brings out the humorous side of our everyday life.

On March 10, 1947, a day of non-cooperation was observed in the colonial province of Assam.

The spectacular socio-cultural efflorescence known by the sobriquet of ‘Bengal Renaissance’ was an extraordinary period from mid- 19th to early 20th century in Bengal.

“Leaf Storm” or La Hojarasca in Spanish, the debut novella by world renowned Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, was first published in 1955. Largely applauded as the first appearance of Macondo, the imaginary village later made reputed in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Leaf Storm is a litmus test for a number of the themes and characters later to be crystallised in the book that earned the author the Noble Prize in literature.

Sher-e-Bangla was an institution rather than an individual. So say his critics as well as his admirers. And rightly so. But it seems very few have really appreciated the deeper significance of the epithet given him by themselves.

I was mostly lurking behind the group of marine biologists, young researchers, and local parabiologists scouting the dirt-ridden streets of Chattogram just opposite to the under-construction fisheries ghat.

The following account is concerned with Bengali printing before 1800, concentrating on the period after the Battle of Plassey in 1757 when the British East India Company established its control of the province.

Environment has been key to Dhaka’s birth and rebirth, growth and development as well as its urban predicaments. Recently, Dhaka’s environmental issues have led to public debates drawing a lot of interest.

“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.

COVID-19 has brought death, destruction and disruption everywhere. However,

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).