Azeema Anhar is an English Language Instructor at ULAB and editorial assistant at Counterpoint.
We’re tired of being told to wait. We’re tired of being told to be reasonable. We’re tired of being told to consider the reputations of men, the stability of institutions, the sensitivities of cultures. We’re tired of the same headlines feeling like déjà vu.
Tea workers exist and spend their entire lives on lands that they do not and will not own, unable to build assets or escape the plantation system.
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.
In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint, Sam Dalrymple talks about his book Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia. He reflects on forgotten geographies and the near-misses of the past, and how hastily drawn borders still unsettle lives, loyalties and conflicts across South Asia and beyond.