brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

 DHAKA, Oct. 12 — Over 100 plastic factories and about 1,000 rooms were burnt down in a devastating fire in central Dhaka district Thursday, local news agency UNB reported Thursday.

    It could not be known what caused the blaze that also left 15 people injured while extinguishing the fire.

    However, a section of people in the affected area said that the fire originated from short circuit in a plastic factory and it soon engulfed other factories and houses at noon.

    On information, eight fire-fighting units rushed in and tried to extinguish the fire. Later, 10 more units of firefighters joined in the drive and brought the blaze under control at 4:40 p.m. (10:40 GMT).

    It could not be known immediately whether anyone died in the incident in the densely populated area where many old shoe and plastic factories are also located.

    Affected people initially put the damages at about 20 million taka (about 300,000 U.S. dollars). Enditem

CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh Angry passengers ransacked train stations and roughed up a station master Wednesday, after a railway workers’ strike left them stranded in eastern Bangladesh, an official and police said.
 
The Bangladesh Railway workers’ union called the strike to protest government plans to make the state-run service a state-funded independently managed corporation.
 
The workers are angry because they think they will lose privileges that government employees currently receive.
 
Striking workers barricaded rail tracks with logs and stones, forcing at least six express trains heading either to or from the port city of Chittagong to halt before they completed their journeys, said Bangladesh Railway spokesman Shafiqul Alam Khan.
 
Angry passengers climbed off the overnight express from Dhaka at Kumira station near Chittagong and beat up station master Abdus Salam who had stopped the train to prevent it from crashing into barricades further along the track, Khan said.
 
Salam was being treated at a railway hospital, he said.
 
Passengers also vandalized stations and trains at Fauzdarghat and Bhatiari after their trains had to stop before they reached their destinations, officers at the Railway Police control room said on condition of anonymity according to official policy.
 
Police arrested at least two people for vandalism in Bhatiari.
 
Khan said authorities were negotiating with the union.
 
The strike disrupted railway traffic on another 21 routes in the eastern zone, which is headquartered in Chittagong. Railway police have been deployed at stations to prevent any more trouble, Khan said.
 
Hundreds of passengers in Chittagong, some carrying children and luggage, were seen walking to nearby highways to look for alternative transport.

In our legends it is said that the goddess Ganga’s descent from the heavens would have split the earth had Lord Shiva not tamed her torrent by tying it into his ash-smeared locks. To hear this story is to see the river in a certain way: as a heavenly braid, for instance, an immense rope of water, unfurling through a wide and thirsty plain. That there is a further twist to the tale becomes apparent only in the final stages of the river’s journey–and this part of the story always comes as a surprise, because it is never told and thus never imagined. It is this: there is a point at which the braid comes undone; where Lord Shiva’s matted hair is washed apart into a vast, knotted tangle. Once past that point the river throws of its bindings and separates into hundred, maybe thousands of tangled strands.

Until you behold it for yourself, it is almost impossible to believe that here, interposed between the sea and the plains of Bengal, lies an immense archipelago of islands. But that is what it is: an archipelago, stretching for almost two hundred miles, from the Hooghy River in West Bengal to the shores of the Meghna in Bangladesh.

The islands are the trailing threads of India’s fabric, the ragged fringe of her sari, the achol that follows her, half wetted by the sea. They number in the thousands, these islands. Some are immense and some no larger than sandbars; some have lasted through recorded history while others were washed into being just a year or two ago. These islands are the rivers’ restitution, the offerings through which they return to the earth what they have taken from it, but in such a form as to assert their permanent dominion over their gift. The rivers’ channels are spread across the land like a fine-mesh net, creating a terrain where the boundaries between land and water are always mutating, always unpredictable. Some of these channels are mighty waterways, so wide across that one shore is invisible from the other; others are no more than two or three miles long and only a thousand feet across. Yet each of these channels is a river in its own right, each possessed of its own strangely evocative name. When these channels meet, it is often in clusters of four, five or even six: at these confluences, the water stretches to the far edges of the landscape and the forest dwindles into a distant rumor of land, echoing back from the horizon. In the language of the place, such a confluence is spoken of as a mohona–an oddly seductive word, wrapped in many layers of beguilement.

There are no borders here to divide fresh water from salt, river from sea. The tides reach as far as two hundred miles inland and every day thousands of ares of forest disappear underwater, only to reemerge hours later. The currents are so powerful as to reshape the islands almost daily–some days the water tears away entire promontories and peninsulas; at other times it throws up new shelves and sand-banks where there were none before.

When the tides create new land, overnight mangroves begin to gestate, and if the conditions are right they can spread so fast as to cover a new island within a few short years. A mangrove forest is a universe unto itself, utterly unlike other woodlands or jungles. There are no towering, vine-looped trees, no ferns, no wildflowers, no chattering monkeys or cockatoos. Mangrove leaves are tough and leathery, the branches gnarled and the foliage often impassably dense. Visibility is short and the air still and fetid. At no moment can human beings have any doubt of the terrain’s hostility to their presence, of its cunning and resourcefulness, of its determination to destroy or expel them. Every year, dozens of people perish in the embrace of that dense foliage, killed by tigers, snakes and crocodiles.

There is no prettiness here to invite the stranger in: yet to the world at large this archipelago is known as the Sundarbans, which means “the beautiful forest.”

BANGLADESH was liberated three and a half decades ago on December 16, 1971 after nine months of bloody war with Pakistani occupation forces. The majority of the present generation in Bangladesh was born after this war. Most of them who are not aware about the history of their motherland will be facinated to know that the name of Bangladesh basically originated from the Sultanate Bangala. It was named as Bengala in 1498 by the Portuguese when Vascodagama came in this land. It was named as East Bengal and Assam in 1907. In 1947, it was known as Bengal. It was called East Bengal from 1947 to 1956. It was renamed as East Pakistan in 1956 after the adoption of the constitution of Pakistan and continued as such up to 1971. The name was changed to Bangladesh in 1971 with the declaration of independence.
The area which is now Bangladesh, has a rich historical and cultural past, combining Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Mongol/Mughul, Arab, Persian, Turkic, and west European cultures. Among residents of Bangladesh, about 98 per cent are ethnic Bengali and speak Bangla. Urdu-speaking, non-Bengali Muslims of Indian origin, and various tribal groups, mostly in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, comprise the remainder of its population. Most Bangladeshis — about 83 per cent — are Muslims, but Hindus constitute a sizable section — 16 per cent. There also are a small number of Buddhists, Christians, and animists. English is spoken in urban areas and among the educated.
Basically, Bangladesh has three distinct to graphical features — named as Pundra comprising greater Pabna, Rajshahi, Bogra, Rangpur and Dinajpur; Bango comprising greater Dhaka, Faridpur, Momenshahi, Jessore, Khulna, Barisal and Moulovibazar; and Samotot comprising the eastern side of Meghna, i.e. greater Comilla, Noakhali and Chittagong. Neighbouring West Bengal of India is has two topographical features — as Rar comprising area up to north of Murshidabad, Birbhum, Bakura and 24 Porgona, and Gour comprising area from Maldah District up to Sona Masjid of our Chapainababgonj. Bango is basically the land in front of both the tides — Bhagirothi and Padma — of the river Ganges. Modhupur-Bhawal-Boteshwar area is comprised of old land. Barind, Modhupur trap and Lalmai are geologically very old landmarks. But Chalan Bill to Bay of Bengal is comparatively low land.
Bangla language is comprised of 3 languages outside of Bangala, i.e. Mogodh (west inhabitant on the south of Ganga), Mithila (north of Ganga at Bihar beside Nepal) and Oria (Orissa). It is comprised of 90% Aryan and 10% of local Astroloid language. Dialect has originated in Bango and Samatot area dictated by the geographical location, as there was less communication due to flood and inundation, whereas in North Bengal movement across land is possible from Murshidabad to Dinajpur.
As a nation we are basically mixed. According to Anthropologists there is no other ‘melting pot of culture’ anywhere other than the people of Bengal. Few indigenous societies are still alive in this area. Ancient people of Bangladesh belonged to two groups, i.e. Proto-Austroloid/Austric — Saotal, Sri Lankan, South Indian from north to west up to Maori of Australia and New Zealand, and Mongoloid — in eastern side, i.e. Mongolia, China, Tibet, Myanmar, Chittagong Hill Tracts up to Indo China. Aryan — Germans are the oldest pure Aryan as claimed by Hitler was the first foreign influence in Bangladesh. Females were the energy behind the creation as Hindus gives main puja/prayer to Durga amongst all other gods and goddesses. Use of banana tree during ‘Gaye Halud’ festival by Hindu community was originated from indigenous society. ‘Milad’ a religious practice of Muslims is only seen so widely in this area, nowhere else. Human beings are basically accustomed to accept new things but use them as per own requirement, which is also applicable for Bangladesh.
Horshobordhon, Chandragupta Mourja captured seven Sindhus in 1500 B.C., those who fled to South India they are Drabir. Aryan took another 1000 years to reach Bangladesh.
In North India they established new generation by occupying vacant new land, but in Bangladesh they did not rather they mixed up with them. As per Nihar Ranjan Roy, the Aryan put them on in their own body. Again, Goutom Buddha brought Buddhism in opposing Hinduism, which could not grow in North India. Tantrik Buddhism — mixing of Hinduism and Buddhism — originated with their mixing keeping a lot of differences. The English established East India Company here to establish only market and to extract raw materials at cheap prices. Only the Nizams family of Hyderabad opposed Tipu Sultan to favour the English.
Culturally Bengal got due recognition in the third century B.C. In artistic heritage Maslin — originated from Masul of Iraq, a very thin cotton clothing remained very popular up to 16th century. Terracotta plaque of Birbhoom, Bordwan, Bakura of 1500 B.C. and Kantgir Mandir of Dinajpur of the 18th century are few examples of architectural art. Buddha Bihars, as in Mynamati and Paharpur in Bangladesh, enclosed with crucified plan inside, do not exist in anywhere in India but are existing in the region from Myanmar to Indonesia. Hill was the centre of attraction for the Buddhists of this region, South East Asia is the example.
Bengal School of Art of Kolkata became very famous for sculptural art. Quality statues of Bishnu and other gods and goddesses were made by Black Basalt. New Boishnob religion — Chaitanism — was created by Sree Chaitanno when Hinduism was facing a threat due to expansion of Islam. Brammo religion — believing in one creator, was preached by Raja Ram Mohan Roy drawing inspiration from Islam. The Buddhists — Pal dynasty — ruled Bengal for 400 years, followed by Sens. Bollal Sen, son of Lokkhon Sen (1st Sen King) established ‘Koulinn Protha’ in Karnataka by bringing 5 Kulin Brahmins from Kanouj for conducting puja/prayer. He thereby established fundamentalism by driving back the Buddhists from this region. Islam began to spread here when Ikhtiar Uddin Bakhtiar Khilji captured Bengal from the Sen dynasty.
Sufi religious teachers succeeded in converting many Bengalis to Islam, even before the arrival of Muslim armies from the west. About 1200 AD, Muslim invaders established political control over the Bengal region. This political control also encouraged conversion to Islam. Since then, Islam has played a crucial role in the region’s history and politics, with a Muslim majority emerging, particularly in the eastern region of Bengal.
The presence of sea trade existed from ancient time in the culture of Bangladesh. Huge business was conducted with SE Asia from the ports of Bengal, i.e. from ‘Tamrolipti Port’ at Tamluk of Hugli district. The horses of Tibet (Himalayas) used to be exported through Bengal to SE Asia and SE Frontier Province (Central Asia). The graveyards of businessmen of Gour were found in Indonesia; Atish Dipanker of Tibet went also to Indonesia through Bangladesh. The Buddhists of Bengal fled away to Nepal and Tibet, a lot of pandulipis or written manuscripts of Bengal was found there. It was even found in Myanmar. The ninth century onward, Arabs took very prominent role in trading here via water route as they were very good navigators; they used to call Chittagong port as ‘Samander’.The King of China sent a rappoteur/interpretator named Mahuan (means muslim) to Sultan Giasuddin. Horse, salt, black alloy wood, salt pitters (soda), rice, fine cotton were the main exportable items of Bengal.
The ancient history of Bangladesh was basically influenced by mixed experiences. With her very rich culture she could very well attract people from all over the world due to her strategic location, resourcefulness and people’s acceptance.