Drawing on unheard White House tapes, recently declassified documents, and investigative reporting, Gary Bass uncovers an astonishing story of superpower brinkmanship, war, scandal, and conscience. This is the definitive account of the build-up to the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War and the birth of Bangladesh. In the midst of this Cold War cataclysm, the Bangladeshis became collateral damage, victims of power games played by Nixon, Kissinger, Yahya Khan and even Indira Gandhi. Revelatory, authoritative and compulsively readable, The Blood Telegram is a thrilling chronicle of a pivotal chapter in South Asian history.
However, the foundation of the All India Muslim League (AIML) in 1906 in Dhaka was a landmark in Muslim politics in India as well as in Bengal. Although for three decades from its inception the League remained an elitist body, it was the first attempt to organise an all-India Muslim political community. Except for certain years, a provincial League was in existence in Bengal throughout the period. The following is an attempt to make a brief study of the nature and activity of the Bengal Muslim League. The study will further focus on aspects such as its stages of growth, the nature of its leadership and its relationships with the parent all-India body (i.e. AIML) and other parties in Bengal, always bringing out the policy dilemma fragmenting the Bengali Muslim community. The whole 1906-1936 period is divided into five phases.
I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge here the support of the members of my family and friends in the completion of this project. My wife, Nargis, and son-in-law, Shumon, shoulder some credit in offering criticism on some political issues from the point of view of an expatriate of Bangladesh origin. Our daughters, Verna and Mona, have checked the language of several articles with interest.
However, some changes in the attitude and behavior of the donors toward parliament can be noticed in recent years. A part of democracy assistance is now almost being routinely earmarked for strengthening parliament. In absolute terms, the increase can be seen as significant, although the share of parliament assistance of the total democracy aid budget still remains negligible. Moreover, parliament development programs now span the globe. More governments and organizations, as explained in a subsequent section,
Among my personal list of urgent institutional and structural reforms, are three sets of targets. With attention to these targets, we can build a platform for stability and compromise, by establishing fair, transparent and accountable governance and improving human security, rule of law, and respect for the individual. The first set of targets aims at replacing, gradually and over time, Andolan politics with responsive and responsible government based on functioning political institutions.
The revisionist history denies the secular basis of our national identity and distorts the historical process which led to our independence. The revisionists revive the atavistic communal nationalism whose utility had ended with the departure of the British colonial rule. They re-write the war of independence as military engagement primarily and deny or denigrate the role of the people. The revisionist history does enormous disservice to the nation: it stunts the articulation of democracy based on the sovereignty of the people and encourages resurgence of communal politics. Militant fundamentalism and authoritarianism are the worst consequences of revisionist history and resurgence of communal politics.
This book is a detailed study to establish Bengali Language Movement which awakened the identity and distinction of the people of the then East Bengal/Pakistan. This movement, as most people know, ultimately resulted in the crystallization of Bengali nationalism, and finally the struggle for freedom of the Eastern part of Pakistan. The book substantiates the various aspects of the themes illustrating the indomitable will of the Bengalis for an independent home of their own. The author has examined the ebb and flow of the movement and connected it to the general dynamics of Pakistan's politics along with its consequent impact on national integration. He has finally shown how the language movement and the war of liberation became an indivisible part of a single evolutionary movement. One of the unique features of the study is the biographical sketches of some of the eminent activists/actors of the language movement and the war of liberation. A list such as this can hardly be found together anywhere else. The names of these champions would have otherwise fallen victim to the inexorable processes of time and lost in the oblivion.
In the meantime, other changes need to be taken into cognizance. One is that the dichotomy between traditional and non-traditional security issues has become blurred to a large extent. What we see today is a continuum, with nontraditional and traditional issues forming two ends on a spectrum, and the transition from one to the other is indeed subtle. More noticeable is the second change, that is, the irrelevance of traditional tools of conflict management and resolution like third party mediation and problem solving approaches. Although we are talking about a new world order and cooperative security,
Non-dogmatic historians are always uncomfortable with the issue of how it all began - the defined hour of beginning. This is understandable, for beginning can only invite trouble in comprehension. But my argument here has been that it serves political history little by avoiding the moment of beginning. By eschewing the complications we forego the task of grappling with the phenomenon itself. The task is to delve into it and show that beginning had all that was to appear later, in fact what was considered as origin was actually the structure, visible as only origin, where the elements were arranged in a way as to appear collectively as beginning.
This book is based on my PhD work. In conducting the research I acknowledge gratefully the cooperation of a number of individuals. First I express my debt of gratitude to Professor Emajuddin Ahamed, former Vice-Chancellor of Dhaka University, who offered me his kind guidance. My indebtedness is due to my colleagues at Jahangirnagar University for their sincere cooperation and valuable suggestions. I am also appreciative of the help of Professor Abu Taher Mojumder. I am thankful to Jahangirnagar University for granting me permission to pursue my research.
This is a book written by a head of state and head of government when in office and first published in 1967. It is at once an autobiography of former President Mohammad Ayub Khan of Pakistan, and also a description of the major events in the history of Pakistan in which the author participated, and of the problems which the country continue to faces. President Ayub describes his village upbringing in the northwest of undivided India, his years at Aligarh University and Sandhurst in England, and his service in the British-Indian army before and during the Second World War.
While primary responsibility for refugee security rests with the host government, it has been repeatedly stressed that the problem of security should be an issue for which a multiplicity of actors share responsibility—refugees themselves, local populations, country of origin, the host country, donor states, regional organizations, the UNHCR its operational partners. For a resolution of the problems faced by the stateless Rohingya refugees, a multi-faceted approach is required. In fact, it is important to materialize a collaborative effort between the government and civil society to contain the social and economic impact of the protracted refugee situation. The international community needs to approach the stateless cum refugee issue in the context of broader development agenda and international law. The commitment of all stakeholders, including the government, humanitarian agencies, local communities, and donors, is required. Cooperative and combined effort can assist in alleviating problems and assist refugees to participate to the fullest extent possible in their life in Bangladesh and following their return in Myanmar.
Natwar Singh joined the Indian Foreign Service and served as a bureaucrat for 31 years. He joined the Congress Party in 1984, and became a Minister of State in the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s council with the portfolios of steel, agriculture, and coal and mines in 1985. In this much-awaited autobiography, the former cabinet minister talks justly about his experiences and services in various ministries. Singh has played a significant role in Indian politics for more than twenty years and has been a part of some of the most epochal events of independent India, including Indo-China talks and the formation of Bangladesh. In 2002, when the Congress party came back to power, Natwar Singh was appointed as the Minister for External Affairs. But his eventful career saw its end with the Volcker Report in the year 2005. His name appearing in the Iraqi food-for-oil scam forced him to resign from the cabinet and eventually from the Congress party. Singh talks about all these events and the ups and downs of the Congress party in One Life Is Not Enough, an account of an insider. His association with the party allowed him to observe some of the historical events closely, and he talks about Pakistan in the 1980s, under the rule of President Zia-ul-Haq, Indo-Chinese and Indo-USSR relations among other sensitive developments.
The relentless rise of Communism was the most momentous political development of the first half of the twentieth century. No political change has been more fundamental than its demise in Europe and its decline elsewhere. In this hugely acclaimed book Archie Brown provides an indispensable history that examines the origins of the ideology, its development in different countries, its collapse in many states following the Soviet perestroika, and its current incarnations around the globe.\n\nThe Rise and Fall of Communism explains how and why Communists came to power; how they were able, in a variety of countries on different continents to hold on to power for so long; and what brought about the downfall of so many Communist systems. A groundbreaking work from an internationally renowned specialist, this is the definitive study of the most remarkable political and human story of our times.
Manufacturing Consent is geared towards enlightening the readers on the practices in news media. The authors explain that editorial distortion is worsened due to the reliance of news media on governmental sources of news. They also tell the readers that a magazine or any form of media may be prevented from gaining information if they publish any information that attracts negative reactions from the government. This results in the news media organization losing their grip over their viewers or readers, which in turn decreases their advertisers. Keeping these dire consequences in mind, the editorial boards of news media businesses twist their reports to favor the government, with the sole objective of sustaining themselves in the market. Through the course of this book, the readers are provided with insights into five editorially distorting filers that are utilized in news reporting these days.
The Communist Manifesto, which was originally titled as Manifesto of the Communist Party, is an influential political manuscript that lays out the Communist League’s aims and program. The Manifesto presents an analytical insight into the class struggle of the historical and contemporary era. The book also highlights the problems of capitalism. The Communist Manifesto is divided into 4 sections. The first part is Bourgeois and Proletarians. It focuses on the Communist theory of the history and relation between the Bourgeois and the Proletarians. The next section, Proletarians and Communists, attempts to understand the relationship between Proletarians and Communists. The third part discusses the Socialist and Communist Literature and their flaws. The final part discusses the position of the Communists and its relation to the other opposition parties.
The volume represents a range of themes covering a myriad of issues and problems facing South Asian Nations. The essay address issues from clash of ideologies focusing on secularism and non-secular nationalism, to rationale for regional cooperation with an ideological thrust, to developing a sustainable framework for making policies of a new nation, to civil society’s proactive role in searching a common ground for consensus building, to threat perceptions emanating from ideological, socio-political and historical causes adversely affecting intra-regional relations, to efforts having a positive outcome to globalism with different implications for sovereignty and citizenship.
The world is awakened to a series of events and phenomena of far-reaching consequences. While global recession and efforts at overcoming its consequences remain at the centre of contemporary international relations, international community is also preoccupied with a series of other challenges emanating from factors as diverse as intra- and inter-state conflicts, climate change and environmental degradation, trade and investment, terrorism and crime, cross-border migration and a host of others.
I am grateful to Margaret Hall, Julie Gordon and Dorothy Macintosh formerly of the South Asian History Section of the RSPacS at ANU. For institutional support for this project, I am grateful to the authorities of the Australian National University and the University of Dhaka.
