W. van Schendel

The Bangladesh reader: history, culture, politics

Bangladesh is the worlds eighth most populous country. It has more inhabitants than either Russia or Japan, and its national language, Bengali, ranks sixth in the world in terms of native speakers. Founded in 1971, Bangladesh is a relatively young nation, but the Bengal Delta region has been a major part of international life for more than 2,000 years, whether as an important location for trade or through its influence on Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim life. Yet the country rarely figures in global affairs or media, except in stories about floods, poverty, or political turmoil. The Bangladesh Reader does what those portrayals do not: It illuminates the rich historical, cultural, and political permutations that have created contemporary Bangladesh, and it conveys a sense of the aspirations and daily lives of Bangladeshis. Intended for travelers, students, and scholars, the Reader encompasses first-person accounts, short stories, historical documents, speeches, treaties, essays, poems, songs, photographs, cartoons, paintings, posters, advertisements, maps, and a recipe. Classic selections familiar to many Bangladeshis—and essential reading for those who want to know the country—are juxtaposed with less-known pieces. The selections are translated from a dozen languages; many have not been available in English until now. Featuring eighty-three images, including seventeen in color, The Bangladesh Reader is an unprecedented, comprehensive introduction to the South Asian countrys turbulent past and dynamic present.

Green plants into blue cakes: working for wages in colonial Bengal’s indigo industry

In the extensive historical literature on indigo, the factory that turned green plants into cakes of blue dye remains uncharted territory. This chapter intends to begin redressing the balance by looking at labor in indigo factories. It concerns with Who worked there? Where did they come from? What is known about their social and economic backgrounds? What was life in and around the factories like? How was the labor process organized? What did laborers earn? Investors provided the capital to set up indigo factories and pay the wages of factory laborers. For over 150 years the literature on indigo has been remarkably vocal about the injustice meted out to cultivators and remarkably silent about the fate of indigo factory workers. Just as indigo was an indigenous natural dye that colonial enterprise developed successfully for European markets, so jute was an indigenous natural fibre that gave rise to a booming industry. Keywords:blue cakes; factory laborers; green plants; indigo factories; wages

The Pakistan Experiment and the Language Issue

The partition of 1947 created two new independent states, India and Pakistan. The eastern part of Bengal joined Pakistan. Pakistan was a highly ambitious experiment in twentieth-century state making. And yet, from the beginning the state was beset with enormous challenges. This excerpt from a recent survey history of Bangladesh explains how these challenges worked out in East Pakistan and why political struggles soon crystallized around the issue of the Bengali language. This historical background is indispensable to understand the intense emotions surrounding the national language in Bangladesh today.

Party over State

Many Bangladeshis expected the postwar recovery to be quick. Now that West Pakistani economic exploitation had ceased, a very popular government had come to power, and the world was extending aid to the new country, things were rapidly going to get better. These expectations soon proved to have been too optimistic.