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Defending History: The Authentic Voice of Bongobondhu in The Unfinished Memoirs

Iconus Clustus 20 August 2025

Conspiracy theories alleging The Unfinished Memoirs was ghostwritten by 123 officials are baseless, confusing it with a separate archival project. Bongobondhu's 1967-69 jail notebooks, verified by facsimiles and corroborated by media, confirm his authorship. These claims lack evidence and aim to undermine a vital historical text chronicling Bengal's fight against oppression. Mujib's legacy remains authentic and unassailable.

20 August 2025

Claims that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s The Unfinished Memoirs was ghostwritten by 123 officials are baseless. The text is rooted in Mujib’s 1967–69 jail notebooks, preserved in facsimile, corroborated by contemporaneous media, and consistent with his nationalist politics. The conspiracy confuses Mujib’s autobiography with an entirely different archival project. Such disinformation is not an innocent mistake—it is a calculated attempt to weaken Bengal’s memory of its liberation struggle. Did Sheikh Mujibur Rahman really need 123 ghostwriters to tell the story of his childhood, his activism, and his dream of a free Bengal? The very idea borders on the absurd. Yet in the turbulent wake of Bangladesh’s recent political upheavals, a wave of conspiracy theories has emerged claiming that The Unfinished Memoirs—a cornerstone of Bengali nationalist history—was fabricated by former IGP Mohammad Javed Patwary and a team of officials. These claims, amplified by sensationalist media and echo chambers online, are not harmless speculation. They are disinformation designed to erode the foundations of

Bongobondhu’s legacy. As someone committed to historical truth, I argue that these accusations crumble under scrutiny. They rest on a deliberate conflation of two entirely separate bodies of work, lack any substantive evidence, and collapse in the face of overwhelming documentary, textual, and historical proof that the memoirs are indeed Mujib’s own words. The Source of the Rumors The allegations originated from documents allegedly uncovered by Bangladesh’s Special Branch of police in August 2025, suggesting Patwary and his team were rewarded with cash and apartments for ghostwriting Mujib’s autobiography. A legal notice has even demanded an official probe into whether Mujib wrote the text at all. But this narrative unravels upon closer inspection. The supposed “evidence” confuses The Unfinished Memoirs with a very different project: the 14-volume Secret Documents of the Intelligence Branch on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. That series—published under Sheikh Hasina’s oversight—compiles 48,000 pages of declassified Pakistani intelligence files. Patwary and his officers played a technical role: scanning, transcribing,…

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Critical Review of the “US-Bangladesh Agreement on Reciprocal Trade”

Iconus Clustus 19 July 2025

This paper critically examines the leaked draft of the U.S.–Bangladesh Reciprocal Trade Agreement, revealing it to be a deeply asymmetrical arrangement that compromises Bangladesh’s regulatory sovereignty, economic autonomy, and geopolitical independence. Under the guise of market access and tariff relief, the agreement imposes sweeping U.S. oversight across digital governance, labor law, defense procurement, environmental regulation, and data control. Rather than fostering mutual benefit, the proposed terms reflect a strategic restructuring of Bangladesh’s legal and economic infrastructure to serve U.S. commercial and strategic interests. The analysis situates this deal within the broader context of post-colonial dependency and calls for urgent public scrutiny, renegotiation, and activist resistance.

19 July 2025

1. Introduction In July 2025, a confidential draft of the so-called U.S.-Bangladesh Agreement on Reciprocal Trade was leaked. At first glance, it appeared to be a bilateral deal to facilitate trade flows between the two countries. However, on closer inspection, the document revealed something far more consequential: a complex and far-reaching framework that, if ratified, would embed U.S. influence deep into Bangladesh’s economic, legal, and digital infrastructures. Drafted amid political instability and under an unelected interim government, this agreement must be understood not merely as a trade pact, but as a coercive tool of structural realignment: one that reorients Bangladesh’s legal, economic, and geopolitical frameworks to align with U.S. priorities, without public consultation or democratic mandate. This paper offers a critical examination of the agreement, exploring its key provisions, underlying logic, and broader implications. It further contextualizes the agreement within a lineage of similarly coercive international arrangements and concludes with strategic recommendations for activists, policymakers, and civil society actors committed

to protecting Bangladesh’s sovereignty. 1.1 Security Classification • Marked CONFIDENTIAL, with “Modified Handling Authorized.” • Declassification set for 4 years after enforcement/negotiation closure. • Suggests it is either a draft or pre-ratification version. • Legal effect is not yet public—yet expectations and timelines for Bangladeshi compliance are clear and immediate. 2. Critical Analysis of the Agreement The agreement, sprawling across 21 pages, is organized into six major sections: taxation, non-tariff barriers, digital trade and technology, rules of origin, commercial and national security terms, and investment and services. While billed as reciprocal, the obligations it places on Bangladesh far outweigh those asked of the United States. 2.1 Tariff & Non-Tariff Barriers One of the most striking aspects of the draft agreement lies in its treatment of tariff and non-tariff barriers. Bangladesh is effectively being asked to lower customs duties specifically on U.S. goods, potentially undermining the country’s ability to protect its local industries through strategic tariffs. Even more troubling, however, is…

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From Shahbagh to Karbala: Rhetoric, Revisionism, and the Return of the Mob [1]

Iconus Clustus 4 July 2025

In Mahfuz Alam’s hands, the word “mob” becomes a political mirror — reflecting only those struggles that threaten the new order. From Shahbagh to the People’s Courts, he retrofits secular justice movements into spectacles of irrational rage, while carefully omitting the rise of Islamist forces now embedded in power. His rhetoric isn’t argument — it’s choreography, built from contradictions and cloaked in abstraction. But the real danger isn’t what he says — it’s what he replaces: memory with manipulation, ethics with performance, revolution with revision. When Mahfuz speaks of Karbala, he isn't invoking resistance — he's rehearsing a morality play for a regime in need of a conscience.

4 July 2025

“Mob means an opportunistic group that nurtures vengeful, directionless, revolutionary pretensions.” — Mahfuz Alam, Special Adviser to the Chief Adviser Let us begin with Mahfuz Alam’s own postscript — a sentence that reads like it’s been pulled from a thesaurus and passed off as philosophy. It is intended, one assumes, as a capstone to his moral framing of Bangladesh’s so-called “July revolution.” But this single line — vague, self-congratulatory, and strategically abstract — is far more revealing than its author might have intended. It does not define the mob; it betrays the mob of meaning. In Alam’s universe, a mob is not defined by who they are or what they do — but by who they threaten. And so begins the rhetorical sleight-of-hand: a redefinition of history, morality, and memory, with the aim of shielding the Interim Government’s foundational moment from scrutiny. But in trying to separate July’s student uprising from mobocracy, Mahfuz performs a quiet substitution: he lifts the

moral crimes of the present and lays them upon the past. The Mob Is Always the Other Who does Mahfuz include in his invented taxonomy of mobs? It’s instructive: • The 1971 violence against Biharis. • The early repression of anti-Mujib student voices. • Fifty-three years of attacks on religious minorities — but with no attribution. • The People’s Courts. • The ‘96 People’s Stage. • October 28 • Shahbagh. This is not analysis. It is a political Rorschach test — what shows up as “mob” in Mahfuz’s inkblot are the struggles that confront the forces he is now aligned with. Especially chilling is his treatment of Shahbagh — the spontaneous secular uprising that demanded justice for war criminals. In Mahfuz’s telling, it becomes “mob justice,” no different from communal riots. A movement rooted in the memory of the 1971 genocide is flattened into a faceless frenzy, and those who chanted for accountability are smeared as enemies of law and…

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Justice: An Illusion for the Religious and the Ethnic Minorities of Bangladesh

Robi Das 12 March 2025

Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council in its recent Press Release said that 2276 incidents of violence against religious and ethnic minorities have taken place since 4 August 2024. The Yunus government rather than ensuring justice for the victims, they are either denying or downplaying the incidents, which makes justice an illusion for the religious and the ethnic minorities of Bangladesh.

12 March 2025

The religious and ethnic minorities are not safe in Bangladesh after the fall of Sheikh Hasina government on 5 August 2024 (Paul & Das, 2024). Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC) recorded 2276 incidents of violence against religious and ethnic minorities from 4 August to February 2025(Minority Watch, 2025). The incidents include murder, rape, sexual assault, torture, abduction, land grabbing, forced resignation and vandalism of places of worship. The mobs under the meticulous design of the present Yunus government and his political allies, e.g. Jamat-e-Islami, Hizb-ut-Tahrir etc. Attacked the ethnic communities living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Apart from the reports of BHBCUC, there are reports that the properties and places of worship belonging to Ahmadiya community were also under attack (Al Hakkam, 7 August 2024). It is further reported that sufism is under attack in Bangladesh and 100s of shrines are destroyed systematically (Chaudhury, 2025). The Hindus in Bangladesh have been attacked from 4 August 2024. Victims said that

shouting allahu akbar and naraye takbir, mobs backed by Islamist fundamentalists, e.g., Jamat, Hizb-ut-Tahrir etc. attacked houses, business establishments and places of worships. The mob used social media, like – Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc. to organize these attacks. After 5 August, the Islamist mobs attacked schools and colleges where Hindu teachers are working (The Daily Star, 31 August 2024). Mobs are attacking Hindu teenagers allegedly for making derogatory comments over social media on Islam or Prophet. One of them was Utsav Mondal, a 16-year-old boy of Khulna, who was snatched from a police station when he was in the custody of Police and Army (Times of India, 6 September 2024). Later they lynched them. We do not know where Utsav is now or what happened to him. Hunting Hindu men and children for allegedly making blasphemous comments are continuing (D. Dutta, 2025). The Army killed Hridoy Rabi Das of Karimganj, Kishoreganj on 16 November 2024 since it was alleged that he…