In the fifth episode of Counterpoint Generations, Counterpoint Editor Zafar Sobhan and Professor Rehman Sobhan step back from daily headlines to reflect on history — focusing on the great homecomings, returns, and janazas that have shaped Bangladesh’s political and emotional landscape.
It is often the person of colour who has to bring up colonialism in the room. To name racism even when it makes everyone uncomfortable. To remind people that representation is not neutral, and that curiosity does not absolve power.
The right to live in peace is not a gift from empires. It is a demand, shouted into the barrels of their guns. It is a world, built stone by stone, in the ruins they leave behind.
The axes of Bangladeshi politics have shifted dramatically. Where do the political parties line up in the new dynamic?
The uncomfortable truth is this -- America is the capital of a global corporate empire. But the real rulers are not politicians but corporations, whose loyalty lies only with money. The Transnational Private Sector -- TPS -- is not a mere American phenomenon. It’s a global empire, and its influence reaches every corner of the planet.
The India-Bangladesh relationship is undergoing not rupture, but delayed normalization. Bangladesh is asserting the right to disagree without permission. India is confronting the limits of informal hegemony
Tarique Rahman's Homecoming and New Political Alignments
Hadi dead. Daily Star and Prothom Alo Attacked. What Next?
Given how rapidly an emerging narrative hardens in current discourse, we must start our critical evaluations of Hadi’s legacy as soon as possible: Hadi’s image must be snatched away from those who want to worship him.
The decision for Bangladesh is simply this: Either we recognize what is happening to our degree of liberty now, or we will soon read about it in the pages of history books as if it is a novel about something that was simply unavoidable.
For the Interim Government, this election will be how their legacy is viewed by posterity. Whatever they have achieved and whatever mistakes they have made, everything will be subsumed by this election. If they are able to preside over a good election and hand over power without incident to an elected government, then they will be judged a success.
Her entry into politics in the early 1980s was a response to national crisis, not personal ambition. She became more than a political leader. She became a symbol -- of democratic resilience, of refusal to capitulate, and of the belief that political legitimacy must come from the people, not from force.
For a nation like Bangladesh, the challenge is not whether to depend on others, but how to manage that dependence intelligently. The question, then, is not how to escape vassalhood, but how to master it.
Bangladesh’s current urban planning, development, and management systems are so fragmented, multi- layered, and institutionally weak that administrative restructuring alone will not be sufficient at the moment.
