East of the Equator

Evacuating Bangladesh

2008-07-10T19:57:00.008+02:00

The lack of commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions leaves Bangladesh with no alternative but to consider mass evacuation. A. Hannan Ismail begins to ask what this might mean.Have boat, will travelBangladeshis have long been known as a mobile people. In fact, you could say that it is in our blood. And yet this wanderlust owes much more to another liquid substance: water.An

In defence of William Dalrymple

2008-02-11T20:17:00.000+02:00

In response to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uttorshuri/message/1679On 07 Feb 04, historian William Dalrymple ran an article on the Bauls of Bengal. One of the moderators on the Uttorshuri mail group was not exactly sure if the title, 'The song of the holy fools' was an insult or a term of endearment. This should not have needed clarification but here below is my short explanation. Dalrymple's

Muslim good Hindu bad

2008-02-11T20:13:00.000+02:00

In response to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uttorshuri/message/1858I'd like to thank all the people who have responded with their thoughts to date and who have shared reading references on 1947. Let me quickly confirm what many will have already guessed: I am not a professional historian and therefore apologize up front if some parts, or all, of my original message came across as banal or

Jinnah and Pakistan

2008-02-11T20:01:00.000+02:00

This message was prompted by a passing remark in the article, 'Sri Ramakrishna's Message For Today' by RK Dasgupta (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uttorshuri/message/1699). The writer repeats a common perception that Mohammed Ali Jinnah pursued the creation of a "Muslim state" (often used to mean an Islamic state) as a post-British settlement in south Asia. While this was obviously not Professor

A new kind of democracy

2008-02-11T18:51:00.000+02:00

At the start of the caretaker administration's term in Jan 07, General Moyeen, Chief of the armed services, presented a thesis on governance and the relevance of its forms to the political culture in Bangladesh. The paper was received with the usual howls of derision and suspicion from Bangladeshi liberals at home and abroad. A lot of this had to do with the fact that the person who was putting

Backed by the military

2008-02-11T18:41:00.000+02:00

International coverage of events in Bangladesh typically prefix "military-backed" to "caretaker government". It's become a standard and helps to invoke racialized stereotypes of jungles, bunnies and bananas. Expatriate Bangladeshis who use such references add to such stereotypes.Before stereotypes shut down all possibility of critical thinking with respect to the caretaker government in

Assessing the Caretaker Government

2008-02-11T18:25:00.001+02:00

It's more than 13 months since the Caretaker Government took office. However, it only took a few weeks for liberal expatriate Bangladeshis on the blogosphere to start shifting around uncomfortably in their seats. I have always viewed such perspectives as well-meaning but typically naive and lacking in strategic outlook. Just as one cannot understand an image on a computer screen by looking at

Why Deb is wrong

2008-02-11T15:08:00.000+02:00

Last September I met Dr. Debapriya Bhattarcharya in Paris. For those of you who don’t know, he is Bangladesh’s new ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva and formerly executive director of the respected Dhaka-based think tank, the Centre for Policy Dialogue.We were both attending an informal experts’ meeting on aid effectiveness and I was pleased to see Bangladesh represented by two

The Paris Declaration and National Ownership

2008-02-10T02:41:00.000+02:00

Ownership as a concept is used in the Paris Declaration in a way that assumes the presence of a unitary state. That no such state exists is not theory but fact. Most states in the global North and global South are bound by a web of involvements, rights and obligations that have deepened in both layer and complexity over the past 60 years. Such interdependence see sovereign decisions exercised at

Celebrate your language(s) on 21 February

2008-02-10T02:27:00.000+02:00

Imagine if you were the last person in the world who spoke your language. You would live with the knowledge that when it was your time to go, the world that lived with the words you used to speak and think and dream would be gone forever.On 24 January, the BBC ran a story about Marie Smith Jones, who passed away at the age of 89. She was the last of Eyak-speaking people of Alaska. For the last

After the Deluge: villagers recover following Bangladesh's worst floods in a century

2008-02-09T22:26:00.000+02:00

New Internationalist, Nov, 1998 by A. Hannan Ismail VILLAGERS on Char Ishapasha heaved a sigh of relief when the flood waters started to recede this September. For two months, the inhabitants of this island had survived by living on rafts, while the deluge of the Brahmaputra River consumed everything in sight. Abdul Karim was one of the few who stayed to