The link between climate change and financial systems

March 27, 2024

DHAKA – It is easy to pick one of the definitions of the word “independence” from the dictionary. It is, however, not easy to understand the struggles that our previous generations endured to gain our independence. Without a proper understanding of the past, we run the danger of taking our independence for granted.

One just needs to witness the brutality experienced by the freedom-seeking Palestinians, who are “guilty” of resisting the occupying forces in their backyard, to imagine how difficult it was for our ordinary men and women to rise against a trained professional army equipped with sophisticated weaponry in 1971. The bloodbath that ensued on the dark night of March 25, 1971, prompted resistance and resulted in our eventual victory nine months later. Bangladesh emerged as an independent country to address some of the identity issues that plagued its colonial history. On this Independence Day, as we pay homage to the people whose ultimate sacrifice made it possible for us to breathe in an independent country, we also need to engage with the politics of identity formation that sets us apart from the nations with whom we previously shared the shadow lines.

Both regional dynamics and colonial politics deeply influence the emergence of Bangladesh. The year 1947 marks one of the originary moments of this nation-state, which posed a proverbial three-body problem as its plight got caught in the gravitational forces of India and Pakistan. In the aftermath of British colonial rule, Pakistan was forged with two wings separated by a physical distance of over 1,600 km, where the shared dominant religion of Islam acted as the only national glue. That connection soon proved to be fallacious as the overlooked