Analysis, Awami League, Bangladesh, China, Constitution, Current Affairs, Democracy, Dr Yunus, Islamism, Journalism, Liberation War, Myanmar, Politics, Review

Sheikh Hasina: The Power of Leadership

Jahanara Nuri

In the early nineties, Shahbagh dawned pale and mysterious. It rose like an ancient city from rice-washed waters. Streets glistened as if inked with dust from Nawabi bakharkhani and ashes. Stalls at crossings exhaled jasmine, tuberose, marigold. Restaurants thickened the air with parata, paya, dim vaja, and dal vuna. Rickshaws and cars rattled past like iron insects. From the crossing, standing before PG Hospital toward TSC, you saw the Northern Road slip toward Bangla Academy and the Science Building. It carried students, teachers, people — and the hushed footsteps of history itself. By nine o’clock, rickshaws jostled for space. The campus pulsed with the life of a nation anchored at Shahbagh. Dhaka University and Shahbagh bore history’s cruelty. They witnessed resistance, oppression, survival, and pride. Shahbagh was never just a marketplace for flowers, food, books, and medicine. It was also an altar of ideas and creative dreams. Writers and thinkers debated over tea, killing kings and generals with words. The tar on the streets around TSC drank blood every decade — not of clerics’, but

of young dreamers’. Socialist Student Union members, Student League, Secular bloggers, DU professors bled on its pavements, etching a red chapter in the history the city could not wash away. Assassins silenced voices one by one. When they struck my teacher, Dr. Humayun Azad, they carved permanent hatred into his face. He survived but lived only half in this world, until death claimed him in a German twilight, six months later. DU Student Union's 2025 election became a theatre. Rigged stages allowed supporters of Avijit Roy’s killers to take their seats. Since July 2024, 761 armed zealots, along with Jamaat-Shibir and the Islamic Alliance, have been roaming freely in the country, plotting a Caliphate on soil that had chosen freedom a hundred years earlier. A sharp question remains: why did no cleric fall to these assassins? Silence answers. It shows whose hands guided the knives and who threw the bombs and grenades. Many forces contended for Bangladesh’s soul, but none gnawed like the venom of religious politics led by Moudusit, Salafist Jamat E Islam, Islamic…

Bangladesh, Democracy, Dr Yunus, Islamism, Opinion, Secularism

Bangladesh at the UNGA: Stagecraft for an Islamist-Nationalist Regime

Iconus Clustus

Muhammad Yunus’s reformist rhetoric masks an exclusionary coalition that sidelines secular forces while seeking international legitimacy.

1. UNGA: Stagecraft and Legitimacy The United Nations General Assembly is where states strive not just to be heard but to be recognised as legitimate actors on the world stage. Against this backdrop, Bangladesh’s interim regime has chosen Muhammad Yunus as its emissary, projecting an image of “national unity” and “reform.” The symbolism is calculated: a Nobel laureate with global stature fronting a fragile, contested coalition. This choice is less about representation and more about stagecraft. For Western ears, Yunus’s polished rhetoric about democracy and renewal is reassuring; for the regime at home, it serves as a shield against scrutiny. Yet this diplomatic theatre conceals a harsher reality, one in which the UNGA is being weaponised not to advance Bangladesh’s democratic aspirations, but to launder the legitimacy of a project that is deeply exclusionary and regressive. 2. The Regime’s Composition: A Coalition Built on Exclusion Behind the international façade lies a coalition defined less by inclusivity than by exclusion. Its

core is a marriage of convenience between the centre-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the far-right Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (rehabilitated into politics in 1979 when BNP opened the doors to Islamist participation), and the pseudo-centrist National Citizen Party (NCP). The NCP, born from the 2024 uprising’s Islamist-infiltrated student movement, cloaks its rejection of 1971’s secular Bengali nationalism in a “Muslim-Bengali” identity, softening theocratic leanings for broader appeal. Liberal, secular-nationalist, and progressive forces – AL, CPB, JSD, BSD – which collectively commanded roughly 40-45% of votes in past elections (2001 estimates) and hold deep roots in the liberation struggle – have been conspicuously sidelined. The gravitational pull within this alliance is unmistakably toward an Islamist-nationalist axis. Jamaat has reemerged not only as a political actor but as a dominant force, its cadres intimidating opponents and seizing local power in the post-August 5 chaos while extending its reach into institutions like the judiciary and the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD). The ICT-BD, once tasked with…

Bangladesh, Dr Yunus, Opinion

When the Tulip unfurls her petals!

Shweta Irina

The article discusses Yunus' recent trip to the UK and the corruption allegation of Bangladesh government against British MP Tulip Siddique.

Tulip in full bloom: AI Generated

‘Mandar dafa bajna /Abir gul lala kum kum/  Keshor charato karawato/Kutuhal has e/Mandar dafa bajna.’   (Mandolins are being played/colored powders getting sprinkled/  Tulip unfurling her petals/Women have curious smiles on their lips).  (Hindustani Dhamar on the spring festival)  …It was the year of 1989. Me and my immediate elder sister used to attend a Hindustani classical music class (as many other middle-class Bengali girls attend in their childhood or adolescence days and later most of them cannot continue for studies, work or etc. etc.) where our teacher used to train us in ‘Dhrupad’ and ‘Dhamar’- two unique forms of Hindustani classical music besides the too commonly practiced ‘Kheyal.’ Sometimes we used to ask the teacher meaning of all these Hindustani lyrics and he tried to explain at his best. The aforementioned lyrics of Dhamar was composed by any of the classical lyricists of the sub-continent (or to be more accurate, by the lyricists from Persia or Afghanistan up to

the Indian sub-continent) to welcome the advent of spring and the word ‘gul lala’ means Tulip in Urdu and this Tulip is opening her petals in the spring (Keshar charato karawato). We know how much our Hindustani classical music has been enriched by the composers from Persia like Ameer Khasru and others. In fact, the word ‘Dafa’ means ‘Mandolin’, a particular type of musical instrument which used to be played in any festival in Persia and the adjoining regions and still it is played across a long route from Persia or central Asia to the Pakistan-North Indian territories. Although reputed Bengali musicians like Kabeer Suman are now-a-days advocating for writing Bengali Kheyals for better comprehension of the Bengali learners (as language often seems to be a barrier in understanding the North Indian classical music  and learning Hindustani classical is a pre-requisite for achieving minimum skills in music of this region), but can we ever deny that how the ancient and…

Bangladesh, Dr Yunus, Journalism, Liberation War, Politics, Secularism

Shahriar Kabir’s Pen Refused to Bow

Sherlock Holmes

The Yunus regime stands condemned for unjustly imprisoning freedom fighter Shahriar Kabir, a steadfast symbol of secularism, on baseless charges. He is enduring torture behind bars and being denied critical medical care after experiencing a cardiac arrest. His plight underscores the blatant cruelty of this unconstitutional government, which serves the interests of war criminals and extremist leaders.

It has been more than seven months1 since Shahriar Kabir, an eminent writer, journalist, filmmaker and intellectual of Bangladesh, was arrested by the unconstitutional interim Government2 led by Dr. Muhammad Yunus on false allegations. Unlike him, during this despicable Yunus regime, many journalists, writers and political-cultural activists are either behind bars, indicted on false accusations or flying the coop3. In the last seven months of 75-year-old Shahriar Kabir's imprisonment, he, who cannot move without a wheelchair, has faced grim conditions as Yunus's phoney Government shows a complete lack of rule of law, resembling the law of the jungle. Futility in case filing, multiple impertinent remands, hare-brained judicial process, and naked violation of the Prisons Act of Bangladesh are pointed out. Significantly, the Yunus Government is going ape to hinder the basic treatment process of Shahriar Kabir, which is considered a fundamental responsibility of the state according to the de jure constitution of Bangladesh. Even after the second cardiac arrest of

Shahriar Kabir in jail4, the Yunus Government fiddled with the treatment. The corporate media has not reported, editorialised, post-editorialised, or discussed Shahriar Kabir's sufferings in newspapers or on talk shows, and there is no patina of so-called intellectuals' or human rights organisations' statements. Only social media activists, secular bloggers, and a single news portal, BD Digest, have broken Yunus's iron curtain against the media5 to crack the news and are up in arms about the megalomaniac Yunus administration. Shahriar Kabir, a freedom fighter in Bangladesh's Liberation War in 1971, dedicated his life to promoting and preserving the spirit of Bangladesh's liberation movement. He has been dry behind his ears for five decades of Bengali children's literature6. Being a nonpareil storyteller, his hearkening back to the wartime memoir and the bedrock of 1971 and writing in pellucid prose for young minds becomes the panacea for all communal and compromised ills. In his novels and short stories written for children, the fastidious…

Dr Yunus, Opinion, Politics

The Scandal at the Bay: How Dhaka’s Diplomacy unravelled

Jahanara Nuri

A storm erupted when Bangladesh's Press Wing hastily responded to Tulsi Gabbard’s comments on minority issues. Ignoring protocol, the response fuelled ongoing "hate India" sentiments, deepening political and religious divides. Gabbard’s oversimplification of the 1971 Liberation War clashed with its complex realities, creating further misunderstanding. Islamists seized the moment, adding fuel to the fire. As crackdowns on the Awami League intensified, Dhaka’s diplomatic fragility was exposed— a bitter lesson in the dangers of reckless rhetoric. The Head of the Press Wing of the Interim Government received a new crown: "Enemy of the People", whose mantra became: "Blame your opposition for the crimes you commit."

PART 1   One.  A single spark can set a forest ablaze. A single word, misplaced, can unravel years of diplomacy. What unfolded was no ordinary misstep─ it was an act of unchecked enthusiasm, a leap before looking, A whisper that turned into crying in the middle of the night.   The storm began with a statement—seemingly harmless. It was meant to fall into the right hands, yet perhaps because it landed in the wrong ones, it became a matchstick struck against dry kindling. Neither the Press Secretary, who played a starring role in this drama, nor his employer, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, seemed to remember this childhood lesson: Too much of anything is perilous. With one impulsive stroke, Dhaka’s diplomacy was cast into turbulent waters. Some whispered it was reckless; others suspected it was deliberate.  Two. An encounter with a spy chief  March 12, 2025 - South Asia.  In the front page splash of Indian media heat a news─ Ms. Tulsi Gabbard,

the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, the first woman to hold the role, and a combat veteran─ was the first Trump administration official to set foot in India, since January, 2020.   India, a pivotal U.S. partner in the Indo-Pacific, was poised to play a central role in Tulsi Gabbard's diplomatic agenda. On February 12, she etched her name in history as the first U.S. official to meet with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House, just days before his high-stakes discussions with President Donald Trump.   On March 18, 2025, she delivered a significant address at the esteemed Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, focusing on "Global Security and Minority Protection in South Asia." As India's premier conference on geopolitics and geo-economics, the Raisina Dialogue brings together global leaders to discuss pressing international issues. (Rezaul H. Lashkar, Mar 12, 2025, Hindustan Times).  ***  Her personal connection to Hinduism runs deep. Raised by a mother who embraced the faith and passed it…

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