Views & Opinion

Bangladesh Awami League – Resilient at 70

Abdul Mannan: June 23rd is the 70th founding anniversary of Bangladesh Awami League, perhaps the most resilient political party of the sub-continent. It is also the party that led the Bengali nation to have a country of their own and produced not only the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman but also statesmen like his daughte...

The Awami League, seventy years after 1949

Syed Badrul Ahsan: Seventy years ago, on 23 June 1949, history took a definitive and decisive new turn. There were some courageous men - Moulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, Yar Mohammad, Shamsul Haque, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and, of course, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy - whose names are today engraved in the Bengali consciousness. These men, grown ...

A shepherd king born on this planet

Anwar A Khan:   "Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flow charts.  It is about one life influencing another"    ---  John C Maxwell Ninety-nine years back, a shepherd king was born on 17 March 1920 in a remote hamlet of Gopalganj District, Bangladesh as Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He showed the potential ...

Bangabandhu was heard in Bihar, India

Julian Francis: In March 1971, I was working as an agricultural volunteer on a Gandhian related poverty alleviation project in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, in the villages worst hit by the Bihar Famine of the late 1960s. I had been in India for three years as an agricultural volunteer. I know that I should/could have contributed more, but I was happy tha...

A chronology of 1971 and 35 directives

Anwar A Khan: Like most countries, independence did not come easy for Bangladesh. Between March and December, a lot of bloodshed and misery had resulted from the war but on December 1971, a new country was born in the name of Bangladesh. Our flag stands for freedom and we are so very proud, when it waves in the breeze and it usually draws a cr...