Bishop Reginald Heber (1783-1826) was an Oxford educated Anglican clergyman from England, a man of letters and a notable hymn-writer. As an intrepid traveler and a curious observer, he has left behind an interesting travelogue entitled: ‘

Muzaffar Ahmad (1889-1973), one of the earliest communists in India, became the representative figure of a socialist and communist circle in Bengal during 1921-22.

Henry Kissinger once wrote that “history is the memory of states”. In this vision of the past,

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.

Literature in Bangladesh about the war is in the nature of memorials to 1971, a thread between the dead and the living, a reminder of the absent as having once been, a mark of the present, of rupture and continuity.

Ak Khandker: Around June-July of 1971, those of us involved in the Liberation War were a bit frustrated. But in mid-August, our naval commandos conducted successful attacks on shipping at the Chittagong and Chalna ports.

Amar Ekushey (Immortal 21 February) is a day of special significance for us in Bangladesh, as we recall with reverence and gratitude, all those young brave-hearts who made supreme sacrifice by giving up their youthful lives for a noble cause.

This stain-splattered daybreak, this night-bitten dawn,

Before the Partition of British India (1947), Calcutta (Kolkata) was as much of a Muslim city as it was a Hindu one. Muslims who came to this city belonged to diverse classes, various sects and spoke in different tongues.

How was the Language Movement initiated?

I had written this letter to my friend Hafiz who was then a Lieutenant of the 1st Bengal regiment and was in winter exercise in Chowgacha Police Station of the then Jashore district adjacent to subdivision Jhenaidah where I was posted.

Like bunches of blood-red Oleander, Like flaming clouds at sunset Asad’s shirt flutters In the gusty wind, in the limitless blue.

The 1930s in Bengal were devastating for the poor. Global depression since 1929 had disabled the economy, and across the province there was ample evidence of starvation.

East Bengal has a population of about 45 millions and an area of about 15,000 square miles. Less than three per cent of its people have any education in the real sense of the term. The only way in which you can get to know this province, is to study its folk-songs and tales, which mirror its aspirations, achievements and frustrations.

A small incident took place at a school in Burdwan in 1944. A class teacher of Grade 7 was wrongly reprimanding a student, accusing him of stacking all the high benches of the classroom against the short ones the previous evening, when a lanky boy stood up and said, “It was not Abanti, it was me.” Impressed by the boy’s moral courage, the teacher excused him.

The Sundarbans is the world’s largest mangrove forest and locals generally identify the area as “Badabon” or “Athero Bhatir Desh” (land of the eighteen tides).

Since March 25, when the Pakistani Army was turned loose on a defenseless East Bengal, events have been unrolling which have been described as not less frightful than the war in Vietnam; and the world has glanced that way, at intervals, and looked away again, and done little or nothing.

The year is 1721. There are Indians, many no doubt Bengali, visible on the streets of London, some settled down there, others at a loss, mostly sea-farers off the East India Company ships bringing the Indian fabrics that have become all the fashion, silks worn by the rich, cottons by the poor.

The blood of the farmer is very sweet and everybody wants to taste it;

“We try to stop them, but they want to go. They say that Allah may help them to find a good malik. And so, they go; and we let them go because we need food, because here we don’t have enough.