We cannot let the Bangladesh-India relationship and discourse be hijacked by the hard-liners on either side of the border who favour hostility and antagonism over cordiality and cooperation.
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.
Tarique Rahman's Homecoming and New Political Alignments
Hadi dead. Daily Star and Prothom Alo Attacked. What Next?
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.
We are glad that she breathed her last a free woman, surrounded by her loved ones, and that she lived to see the end of the despotism that blighted the last years of her life.
A timely conversation on media, culture, and power, as Professor Rehman Sobhan and Zafar Sobhan reflect on recent events shaping Bangladesh’s democratic landscape.
As we move forward to build a new Bangladesh, we need to put minority protection and minority rights front and centre, not because of inflammatory accusations from across the border from those who frankly need to do better protecting the rights of their own minorities, but because it is the right thing to do.
Debate is one thing. Disinformation is quite another. Let us have an open, honest, nuanced conversation about the Liberation War, but let us always be guided by the truth.
Hadi wanted elections. He believed in the electoral process. He believed in democracy. He was running for election in Dhaka-8. He believed in the slow, painstaking process of building a new Bangladesh and knew there could be no short-cuts.
In Episode 3 of Counterpoint Generations, Professor Rehman Sobhan and Zafar Sobhan revisit the 1971 Liberation War through rich personal memory and historical reflection, from turmoil to triumph.
The shooting of Osman Hadi becomes a lens through which Jon Danilowicz and Zafar Sobhan examine political violence, institutional accountability, and the deeper fault lines shaping Bangladesh’s current moment.
On this December 14 we should neither forgive nor forget the atrocities that were committed against the Bangladeshi people, not just on that day in 1971 but throughout the nine months of the Liberation War. Some sins are unforgivable, and December 14, 1971 is one of them.
A thoughtful examination of leadership, party dynamics, and the unfinished story of parliamentary democracy in Bangladesh, as discussed by Rehman Sobhan and Zafar Sobhan.
If Tarique wishes to be prime minister and lead this nation, as his mother and father did before him, then a time comes when he needs to step up and stand up, and show the nation that he too is made of the stuff of leaders. This is such a time.
Welcome to the first episode of Counterpoint Generations, a new Counterpoint original series where ideas, insights, and experiences meet across generations.