The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh

The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh

Author: Archer K. Blood

Publisher: University Press Limited, Bangladesh

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13:

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An account of political events prior to the creation of Bangladesh; covers the 1970-1971 period.


The Blood Telegram

The Blood Telegram

Author: Gary J. Bass

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2013-09-24

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0385350473

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A riveting history—the first full account—of the involvement of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1971 atrocities in Bangladesh that led to war between India and Pakistan, shaped the fate of Asia, and left in their wake a host of major strategic consequences for the world today. Giving an astonishing inside view of how the White House really works in a crisis, The Blood Telegram is an unprecedented chronicle of a pivotal but little-known chapter of the Cold War. Gary J. Bass shows how Nixon and Kissinger supported Pakistan’s military dictatorship as it brutally quashed the results of a historic free election. The Pakistani army launched a crackdown on what was then East Pakistan (today an independent Bangladesh), killing hundreds of thousands of people and sending ten million refugees fleeing to India—one of the worst humanitarian crises of the twentieth century. Nixon and Kissinger, unswayed by detailed warnings of genocide from American diplomats witnessing the bloodshed, stood behind Pakistan’s military rulers. Driven not just by Cold War realpolitik but by a bitter personal dislike of India and its leader Indira Gandhi, Nixon and Kissinger actively helped the Pakistani government even as it careened toward a devastating war against India. They silenced American officials who dared to speak up, secretly encouraged China to mass troops on the Indian border, and illegally supplied weapons to the Pakistani military—an overlooked scandal that presages Watergate. Drawing on previously unheard White House tapes, recently declassified documents, and extensive interviews with White House staffers and Indian military leaders, The Blood Telegram tells this thrilling, shadowy story in full. Bringing us into the drama of a crisis exploding into war, Bass follows reporters, consuls, and guerrilla warriors on the ground—from the desperate refugee camps to the most secretive conversations in the Oval Office. Bass makes clear how the United States’ embrace of the military dictatorship in Islamabad would mold Asia’s destiny for decades, and confronts for the first time Nixon and Kissinger’s hidden role in a tragedy that was far bloodier than Bosnia. This is a revelatory, compulsively readable work of politics, personalities, military confrontation, and Cold War brinksmanship.


Fight for Bangladesh

Fight for Bangladesh

Author: Ziauddin M. Choudhury

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2011-02-02

Total Pages: 76

ISBN-13: 1456845799

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The Bangladesh War of Liberation was fought in several fronts by people in all walks of life. While the main war is largely known by the battles fought by brave freedom fighters both inside and outside the borders of then East Pakistan, much of the war’s success depended on the resistance and random acts of bravery by people in all nooks and corners of the country. The ranks of these unknown and forgotten fighters for liberty were filled by students, farmers, small shop keepers, and village wives. They are the unsung heroes of the war of liberation who people may not remember. The author of this book spent much of the dark nine-month period as a young chief of civil administration two sub-districts (called sub-divisions) of the then Dhaka district- Munshiganj and Manikganj. Like the vast majority of his civil service colleagues working in the country that time he served under the watchful eyes of a malevolent army dictatorship, helplessly watching the atrocities as they continued to occur during those terrible months. Like all Bengali government officers working in the country that time he was a suspect in the eyes of the occupation forces and was subject to surveillance. While working through the difficult times the author also had the occasions to hear and witness some courageous acts of our people that in their own way registered a protest against the atrocities, and even frustrated the cruel agents of Pakistan Government. The articles in this book are the author’s personal accounts of events and occurrences in the most turbulent period of the national history of Bangladesh. Some of these are simply narrations of some dire events, some are stories of chicanery and treachery, and some are stories of bravery of people in the villages who suffered the tumultuous time. The book is an assembly of these articles around a common theme, and a message that 1971 was essentially a people’s war, a war we all fought to rid us of an evil that had descended on us, and had launched a wanton act of aggression and mayhem. The recollections are expected to help our new generation to realize that our freedom did not come cheap; and that the harrowing experience of their previous generation and the murderous sufferings they endured knew no gender or religious boundaries. All of the articles were published earlier in Dailies and Magazines in Bangladesh.


The Gangs of Bangladesh

The Gangs of Bangladesh

Author: Sally Atkinson-Sheppard

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-08-28

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 3030184269

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This book presents a study of street children’s involvement as workers in Bangladeshi organised crime groups based on a three-year ethnographic study in Dhaka. The book argues that ‘mastaans’ are Bangladeshi mafia groups that operate in a market for crime, violence and social protection. It considers the crimes mastaans commit, the ways they divide labour, and how and why street children become involved in these groups. The book explores how street children are hired by ‘mastaans’, to carry weapons, sell drugs, collect extortion money, commit political violence and conduct contract killings. The book argues that these young people are neither victims nor offenders; they are instead ‘illicit child labourers’, doing what they can to survive on the streets. This book adds to the emerging fields of the sociology of crime and deviance in South Asia and ‘Southern criminology’.


Born Losers

Born Losers

Author: Scott A. Sandage

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2006-04-30

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780674015104

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What makes somebody a Loser, a person doomed to unfulfilled dreams and humiliation? Nobody is born to lose, and yet failure embodies our worst fears. The Loser is our national bogeyman, and his history over the past two hundred years reveals the dark side of success, how economic striving reshaped the self and soul of America. From colonial days to the Columbine tragedy, Scott Sandage explores how failure evolved from a business loss into a personality deficit, from a career setback to a gauge of our self-worth. From hundreds of private diaries, family letters, business records, and even early credit reports, Sandage reconstructs the dramas of real-life Willy Lomans. He unearths their confessions and denials, foolish hopes and lost faith, sticking places and changing times. Dreamers, suckers, and nobodies come to life in the major scenes of American history, like the Civil War and the approach of big business, showing how the national quest for success remade the individual ordeal of failure. Born Losers is a pioneering work of American cultural history, which connects everyday attitudes and anxieties about failure to lofty ideals of individualism and salesmanship of self. Sandage's storytelling will resonate with all of us as it brings to life forgotten men and women who wrestled with The Loser--the label and the experience--in the days when American capitalism was building a nation of winners.


1971

1971

Author: Srinath Raghavan

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2013-11-12

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0674731298

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The war of 1971 that created Bangladesh was the most significant geopolitical event in the Indian subcontinent since partition in 1947. It tilted the balance of power between India and Pakistan steeply in favor of India. Srinath Raghavan contends that the crisis and its cast of characters can be understood only in a wider international context.


Judicial Activism in Bangladesh

Judicial Activism in Bangladesh

Author: Ridwanul Hoque

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2011-01-18

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 144382822X

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This book critically examines the evolving global trend of judicial activism with particular reference to Bangladesh. It constructs judicial activism as a golden-mean adjudicative technology, standing between excessive judicial assertion and unacceptable judicial passivity that may leave injustices un-redressed. It argues that judicial balancing between over-activism and meek administration of justice should essentially be predicated upon domestic conditions, and the needs and fundamental public values of the judges’ respective society. Providing cross-jurisdictional empirical evidence, the study demonstrates that judicial activism, steered towards improving justice and grounded in one’s societal specificities, can be exercised in a morally and legally legitimate form and without rupturing the balance of powers among the state organs. This study has sought to displace the myth of judicial activism as constitutional transgression by “unelected” judges, arguing that judicial activism is quite different from excessivism. It is argued and shown that a particular judge or judiciary turns out to be activist when other public functionaries avoid or breach their constitutional responsibilities and thus generate injustice and inequality. The study treats judicial activism as the conscientious exposition of constitutional norms and enforcement of public duties of those in positions of power. The study assesses whether Bangladeshi judges have been striking the correct balance between over-activism and injudicious passivity. Broadly, the present book reveals judicial under-activism in Bangladesh and offers insights into causes for this. It is argued that the existing milieu of socio-political injustices and over-balance of constitutional powers in Bangladesh calls for increased judicial intervention and guidance, of course in a balanced and pragmatic manner, which is critical for good governance and social justice. “Writing about judicial activism easily gets shackled by fussy and pedestrian debates about what judges may or may not do as unelected agents of governance. The book . . . goes much beyond such reductionist pedestrianisation of law, for it courageously lifts the debate into the skies of global legal realism. The analysis perceptively addresses bottlenecks of justice, identifying shackles and mental blocks in our own minds against activising concerns for justice for the common citizen.” —Prof Werner Menski (Foreword)


War and Secession

War and Secession

Author: Richard Sisson

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-04-28

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 0520912039

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A decade after the 1971 wars in South Asia, the principal decisionmakers were still uncertain why wars so clearly unwanted had occurred. The authors reconstruct the complex decisionmaking process attending the break-up of Pakistan and the subsequent war between India and Pakistan. Much of their data derive from interviews conducted with principal players in each of the countries immediately involved-Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh-including Indira Gandhi and leaders of the Awami League in Bangladesh. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990. A decade after the 1971 wars in South Asia, the principal decisionmakers were still uncertain why wars so clearly unwanted had occurred. The authors reconstruct the complex decisionmaking process attending the break-up of Pakistan and the subsequent war b


I Am Yours

I Am Yours

Author: Reema Zaman

Publisher: Amberjack Publishing

Published: 2019-02-05

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1948705222

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It is time. It is time to free our voice. To speak is a revolution. For too long, through the most intimate acts of erasure, women have been silenced. Now, women everywhere are breaking through the limits placed on us by family, society, and tradition. To find our voices. To make space for ourselves in this world. Now is the moment to reclaim what was once lost, stolen, forsaken, or abandoned. I Am Yours is about my fight to protect and free my voice from those who have sought to silence me, for the sake of creating a world where all voices are welcome and respected. Because the voice, without intimacy, will atrophy. We're in this together. You are mine, and I am yours.


The Sobibor Death Camp

The Sobibor Death Camp

Author: Chris Webb

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2017-04-30

Total Pages: 522

ISBN-13: 3838209664

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The Sobibor Death Camp was the second extermination camp built by the Nazis as part of the secretive Operation Reinhardt—with intent to carry out the mass murder of Polish Jewry. Following the construction of the extermination camp at Belzec in south-eastern Poland from November 1941 to March 1942, the Nazis planned a second extermination camp at Sobibor, and the third and deadliest camp was built near the remote village of Treblinka. Sobibor was similarly designed as the first camp in Belzec, it was regarded as an 'overflow' camp for Belzec. This account of the Nazis' remorseless and relentless production line of killing at the Sobibor death camp tells of one of the worst crimes in the history of mankind. Chris Webb's painstakingly researched volume ranges from the survivors and the victims to the SS men who carried out the atrocities. What makes this work special is the research which has been gathered on the survivors, who by good fortune, courage, and determination survived Sobibor and built new lives for themselves, new families, but bore the scars of this terrible place for all of their lives. Closing a gap in the existing literature, Webb focuses on the victims and presents details of their lives which have been found and re-tells them to keep their memory alive, to show they are not forgotten. The cruel and barbaric murder process is described in great detail, as well as the confiscation of the valuables and possessions of the unfortunate Jews who crossed the threshold of this man-made hell. One cannot fail to be moved by the personal accounts of those who survived, their loved ones perished in this factory of death. The book covers the construction of the death camp, the physical layout of the camp, as remembered by both the Jewish inmates and the SS staff who served there, and the personal recollections that detail the day to day experiences of the prisoners and the SS. The courageous revolt by the prisoners on October 14, 1943 is re-told by the prisoners and the German SS, with detailed accounts of the revolt and its aftermath. The post-war fate of the perpetrators, or more precisely those that were brought to trial, and information regarding the more recent history of the site itself concludes this book. There is a large photographic section of rare and some unpublished photographs and documents from the author's private archive.