Bangladesh
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In Remembrance of Shaheed Lt. Ashfaqus Samad, Bir Uttam (My Cousin Nishat Bhai):
A tribute, headed “by Shawkat”, to Lt. Ashfaqus Samad, a Dhaka University student who became one of the first guerrillas in Dhaka and was killed in action in the 1971…
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How Pakistan Became South Asia’s Reference Muslims
X.T.M argues that Partition cut one Muslim political world into three, and that Pakistan, having taken Urdu, now supplies the default picture of a South Asian Muslim. He calls this…
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Are All Postcolonial Nations Brahmanical Constructs?
X.T.M asks whether postcolonial states are Brahmanical constructs, arguing that every successor elite preserves the borders it inherits. He draws on caste mobility, Sanskritisation and Radcliffe’s line, and notes the…
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Bangladesh-India Open Thread
A reproduced news report, source not named, on Bangladesh’s anger at India for letting the ousted Sheikh Hasina address journalists in New Delhi; the post is titled an open thread…
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The Crescent and the Trident clash over their women
X.T.M argues that the Crescent’s seclusion and the Trident’s ‘protection’ of women are unequal in statute, citing Pakistan’s Hudood Ordinances, but equivalent in structure, as the bahu-beti bachao slogan and…
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Bangladesh whitewash Pakistan again
After Bangladesh’s 2-0 Test whitewash of Pakistan, the author argues that Bangladesh’s economic lead over Pakistan now shows up in visible things like cricket results, and reflects on Pakistan’s fast-bowling…
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Gurdaspur and Siliguri: The Two Necks That Held
The post argues that Pakistan opted out of the subcontinent, and that India kept both strategic ‘necks’, Gurdaspur and Siliguri, in 1947 and 1971, so claims that India is a…
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India and Pakistan Are Playing Chicken; simply to hurt themselves
Two nuclear states with shared languages, shared music, and shared families are accelerating away from each other, each waiting for the other to swerve. Neither is. Both are losing. A…
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Two Colonisations, One Border: What the Data Actually Says About Bengal’s Post-1971 Demographic Story
X.T.M argues census data tell two stories of demographic change in eastern India: Bengali Hindus settled Tripura with state sanction, while Muslim growth in Assam and Bengal border districts is…