After the so-called “1/11″, the whole country felt trapped and confused as the walls of militarisation were quickly closing in. Emergency Rules crept into the public sphere stifling the very spirit of democracy. It was an environment like this that inspired launching Muktangon as a blogging platform.

Most of our bloggers are relatively new in the blogsphere but many of them have considerable track record in political and human rights activism. Although none of us is party-political in the conventional sense, many of our members are direct products of Anti-Ershad movement (of the ’80s) and anti-Jamat-Shibir movement (of the ’90s). Together we aspire to create a serious and clean discussion space, and to share the values many of us once thought so important. We want to seek each other out through this blog who we believe also share the same values, and reach out to others who do not. We want to engage with our relatively younger Generation Y members in this depoliticising climate who are increasingly becoming so fashionably apolitical (for good reasons, perhaps).

We hope to turn Muktangon into an incisive and analytical platform for all kinds of critical discussions. One of the underlying philosophies of blogging at Muktangon is that we view blog-writing as a collective process. As part of this process, the post writer merely initiates a topic in order to generate discussions. In that respect, we view blog as a piece of writing that combines propositions, counter-propositions and arguments contributed collectively by the participants, no matter whose name is shown on the title line.

The core values of Muktangon encompass: commitment to social justice; respect for universal human rights; aspiration for democracy and good governance; struggle against fundamentalism (in all forms), segregation, and prejudices.