Europe’s quiet strategic shift and Sweden’s new role in NATO

Across the world, quiet developments are converging around a single reality: power is being reorganised in the twenty-first century. The question is whether this transformation will bring greater stability and peace, or deepen strategic uncertainty.

Amid renewed tensions, including new threats against Iran, one development this week draws attention to Europe’s evolving security landscape: Sweden’s growing role within NATO.

NATO is reported to be moving toward the acquisition of Swedish airborne surveillance and air-policing technologies (Dagens Nyheter, 7 July 2026).1 The Swedish government confirmed yesterday at a press conference that NATO had selected Sweden’s airborne surveillance and early warning system. 2 The development represents more than another step in Sweden’s integration into the Alliance; it signals a gradual redistribution of strategic responsibility within Europe itself.

For three decades after the Cold War, NATO’s collective defence has depended heavily on American capabilities: intelligence and logistics, airborne early-warning and command systems. Yesterday’s announcement by Sweden’s government of the agreement marks another step toward a more shared distribution of responsibility within the Alliance. That old architecture is now evolving.

Sweden’s contribution strengthens Europe’s ability to monitor and defend its own airspace while remaining firmly integrated within NATO’s collective command structure. It also reinforces the strategic importance of the Baltic Sea and the High North 3 regions that have become central to European security since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The significance of the event extends beyond defence planning. It reflects a growing recognition that Europe’s long-term security requires stronger European capabilities alongside continued transatlantic cooperation.

In August 2024, speaking at the Prague Globsec Security Conference under the theme “How to Calm the Storm,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen argued: “If we want true peace, we must fundamentally rethink the foundation of Europe’s security architecture.”4

Europe’s response has not been limited to increased defence spending. It has also focused on the technologies that define modern security: surveillance, intelligence, integrated air defence, and advanced command-and-control systems.

This gradual transformation marks one of the clearest signs that the international order is entering a new phase. The question is no longer whether Europe can contribute more to its own defence. The question is how responsibility within the Alliance will continue to evolve.

Conflict Monitor

Eastern Europe

The war in Ukraine remains the defining conflict shaping European security.

Long-range strikes, continued military pressure, and diplomatic deadlock underline that the war has become a prolonged contest over sovereignty, deterrence, and the future of Europe’s security order.

Middle East

The region continues to experience overlapping crises. Hamas’s reported plan to transfer civil administration in Gaza has been viewed by some observers as a possible opening for political transition.

However, without agreement on issues such as disarmament and Israeli withdrawal, the path toward lasting stability remains uncertain. Military, political, and humanitarian pressures continue to reinforce one another.

South Asia

Strategic competition continues to shape South Asia’s politics. Expanding engagement by major powers are influencing policy choices, while smaller states like Bangladesh is under pressure to seek to balance development needs with strategic autonomy.

East Asia

The Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and the Korean Peninsula remain major security flashpoints. Military modernisation, technological competition, and diplomatic rivalry continue to define the region’s strategic landscape.

Africa

Security challenges remain concentrated around fragile institutions, insurgencies, and competition over resources. Humanitarian concerns persist alongside expanding geopolitical competition among external powers.

The Sahel

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger continue to redefine their security partnerships while confronting persistent insurgencies and political instability.

Latin America

Regional security is increasingly shaped by organised crime, migration, humanitarian pressures, and governance challenges rather than conventional military conflict.

Strategic watch

Power beyond the battlefield

This week’s developments reveal that strategic competition of the world powers is expanding beyond traditional military arenas.

China continues to project influence not only through trade and infrastructure but also through culture, science, technology, and institutional partnerships. The growing use of museums, academic exchanges, training programmes for young bureaucrats, and heritage diplomacy reflects a broader understanding: influence is exercised not only through power, but through ideas, identity, and institutions.

In the twenty-first century, the struggle for influence is no longer waged only on battlefields. It is also fought through knowledge and the absence of knowledge, through the preservation of culture and the rejection of it, and through the power to shape how nations imagine, think and ultimately build their future.

References:

I stand, breathless, as the quiet erosion of rights and freedom unfolds before my eyes. A siege waged in silence with treachery, yet deafening in its impact. The weight of witnessing women and their quiet endurance in the Delta creates a storm within me. I ache. It’s vast. It make me loose words. As a child I was there. I spent my youth fighting and my battle was to change position and status of women of my country.

Beneath my feet, I sense the quake trembling under the weight of whispers of extremes - cold and calculated. In my childhood, fear slithered through the air like a serpent in prayer robes. It’s now pressing against the soul of my birthplace, masquerading as holy. A book serves as a prop to sanctify their grip. My teenage was gripped to the point, I was going mad thinking, “I am not pure, I’m cursed.” I’m the genesis 3:16, or numerous directives in Holy books, ‘I was created to endure pain multiplied by the creator and “he shall rule over you-JN.”

I have seen hands that do not bless; only bind, words that do not guide; only command. And actions, sharp as a dagger’s edge, turned against you- the independent woman.

You watch as they take hold, weaving a web of control over you. Misogyny released. And in action in full force, subjugating women and children in particular. At this point, you feel doomed and already half-dead.

It’s a scene painted and repainted in stark contrasts, in my memory. The same monochrome tragedy unfolding, as if on a photosensitive surface, etching its shadows deep into the history of my country’s struggle in order to stay as a manifold and diversified colourful habitat.

There’s blood in that habitat: spilled, colour faded, mixed in rain, soil, sunrays and winds. It eventually blurred into the unseen, hiding in stockpiled memories. There is a plundering. Not of land alone, but of minds, of identities, and of dreams. Whether you are a Bengali, or a Muslim. The occupied person in me wander through the corridors of memory, searching for meaning in a war long waged. We waged to identify ourselves through an ideological invasion whose echoes refuse to fade.

And through it all, history watches - silent, patient, and unflinching.

As I write, I feel my soul witnesses land shifting beneath my feet, the despair, the cracks, as the nation’s progress eroding fast by the relentless attack and creeping control. The agony of the soul of Delta reaches me through the voices of her sons and daughters. Women have endured so much in Bangladesh! Just when there was hope for them to break the barriers, the door is being shut by wild stampede of the Islamists and their allies.

Dear reader, you will understand why I say this if you read the following words of a journalist from Dhaka:

“The honourable religious advisor requests media coverage before organizing a program, meaning it must be reported. However, no female journalists were allowed to enter. This is not the first time such incidents have happened while covering similar programs. There have been occasions when some of us were denied entry, but at other times, some organizers respectfully allowed us inside, with our male colleagues making space for us. However, since those events were not officially organized by any government-appointed authority, we chose to remain silent.

But today in 2024, at the event of the honourable advisor, I and several other female media professionals and reporters had to face this situation. A security guard informed us that a few women had already left after being denied entry. Some may speak up about it, while others may remain silent.

Despite this, I waited. Then, someone approached from a distance, looked at a few individuals related to the event, and told me, “Sister, I just asked them again. Women are not allowed to enter!”

At an event of an esteemed religious advisor, not only journalists but any woman was denied entry.

If nothing else, this was outright absurd in my country. No matter whose orders these were, can those responsible truly evade accountability?”

First they came for...

Let’s give this journalist a name, let’s call her A. She was among those who supported the quota reform protests in July. Analysing how that support led A to her current desperate situation, where she now feels compelled to share her agony on social media, is a subject for sociological research. Here, however, we focus solely on the irony of the situation we sometimes find ourselves in.

Her sorrow is not hers alone; that’s how past echoes and we again and again fail to listen to its meaning. Time and time again, those who dare to stand up for a cause of their community, often find themselves abandoned or persecuted.

In moments like these, when the weight of irony presses upon us, the time long gone returns, and whispers its warnings. we Bengalis usually take refuge to poetry. For poetry, like scripture, must be spoken, remembered, and etched into the heart.

There’s a poem known across the world. In hard times like these, it holds the wisdom that our history forgetting mind search. So let us begin with this poem.

“First they came for the communists 

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist;

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist;

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me.”

Recast in poetic verse, this was what Martin Niemöller - the German Lutheran pastor’s said in his 1946 post-war confession.

The story of Martin Niemöller began in the early 20th century on the banks of the Northern Rhine, while A’s unfolds in 2025 by the Bay of Bengal. Their lives, though distant, share echoes. In 1916, Martin Niemöller, then a German Navy officer once patrolled the Strait of Otranto, planted mines in Port Said, and raided Mediterranean commerce aboard the U-boat Vulkan. Years later, he chose faith over war, and became aclergyman.

A quarter of the 21st century has passed. In Bangladesh, we have danced with the waves of the Indian Ocean, listened to the songs of a thousand rivers, and stood in awe of towering mountains. Yet, as myth-loving beings, what have we truly achieved? There is little satisfaction in our search for meaning through religion. We allowed regression and tyranny through silence. The confession of the two times drifts in silence.

In the Northern Hemisphere’s cold embrace, my city breaths, shrouded in dense snow dusts. I sit quietly. My vision lost beyond a hundred feet. I feel like floating in my mother’s womb - a tunnel where I breath unconsciously, and time '‘ticks and talks’ as I grow, and move towards the end, where, always, a green Delta emerges. A red yolk hangs lightly from the midpoint of its forehead at dawn, turns gold by afternoon, and suddenly, sinks into crimson ocean as evening tides in. A weary shadow hangs over the streets of Dhaka, Chittagong, and Khulna - ancient ports connected to the rivers and seas that have carried centuries of history. Dhaka sleeps late and rises with the first call to prayer. Now, only the Muezzin’s voice lingers; all others have fallen silent. We do not hear sounds from temples at this moment. Church’s bell rings at day time.

I see myself in a female journalist ‘A’ ─ young, ambitious, a supporter of the student’s July anti-quota protests. I clutch my press card and step toward the program of the Religious Affairs offices. At the conference hall’s entrance, the guards block my path. Inside, Dr. A. F. M. Khalid Hossain, religious affairs adviser to the Interim Government led by Muhammad Yunus leading a discussion on current religious affairs policies.

I am A. I had covered many events before, faced resistance, was laughed at, even faced slander. But today, I believe, it would be different. After all, I ain’t an opposition. I was an activist. I turned red, when the supporters of the July protests said, “We are red.”

Their red meant Islamic red, not Chinese red. My name ‘A’ indicates I am from a Moderate Muslim family. I helped this government to seat in its power.

But as I step forward, the uniformed guard at the gate extend a hand, stopping me.

“Women are not allowed,” he says in flat voice.

“Why not? I have press clearance. This is my office duty.”

The man opens his mouth like a fish in short of air and needs to breath, then quickly closing it, and shifting his feet uncomfortably. His gaze flickers to the entrance, where a cluster of men stand. Their white panjabis, shirts, and jeans looked cleaner than in July. They smile warmly. A bubble of brotherhood. The guard hesitates to break the happy moment. He returns to me and speaks in a voice barely above a whispe-“No woman is allowed. Those who came before you already left.”

For a moment, I do not know what to do. The city goes silent, the cringing sounds of the rickshaws, the peeping honks of the cars—all of it fading. The word woman hits me like a slap. I freeze. I’m boiling with rage, drowning in the agony of the neglect and insult. Fortunately, my youth in the Delta unfolded before the age of Facebook, so I was spared those modern tantrums.

Our friend ‘A’ channels her pain into a series of overly formal questions, addressing the Adviser as “honourable” which, let’s be honest, probably just makes her sound like she’s auditioning for a role in a courtroom drama. In my younger days, I was fiery. I might not have used “honourable” three times. Instead, I would’ve probably done something heretical, something so bold it might’ve gotten me fired faster than you can say “professional journalist.”

If I were you, Lal

I found myself adrift, reeling, as if I were A. Yet I could neither stand in opposition nor align myself with that platform where radical Islamist youth, cloaked in the guise of secular students, concealed their true intent. ‘A’ had once defended their protest. She is blind to the dark shadows beneath their cause for an Islamic state. But those who veil their purpose in deception and then dare to tell her, “women are not allowed in programs run by the taxes we pay” were not only fraud, they were fascist in true sense. Such was the very essence of their treachery.

In that moment, none of A’s work, education, her participation in July movement mattered. The only thing that mattered was that she was a ‘female’.

‘A’ might have glanced past the guard at the sweet-talking men beyond, who still ignored her; their eyes would never meet hers. Some would turn away, others would whisper among themselves. She was invisible to them, just like I’d experienced all my life.

A was left puzzled. She finds her world suddenly meaningless. They embraced the Islamic students as fellow travellers, wanted to be inclusive. Now A’s secular school-going students were no longer considered, ‘friend’.

Seas apart, two comrades, in six months.

Did A understand now that she wasn’t alone in her struggle? Since August 5, thousands of journalists have lost their jobs—some fired for working during the previous government led by Sheikh Hasina, others for simply existing in a time when any ‘uncomfortable truth’ related to the Interim Government is unwelcome. Most of her brilliant colleagues had been marked as “the collaborators” of the fascists. Did she know that the Jinny they had released would make the battle for women’s lives manifold?

It was not just about being a journalist. It was about being a woman. A’s mind plays with the words.

Unravelling women’s dream

Perhaps ‘A’ had grown up believing in the dream of Bangladesh, inspired by journalists like Rupa and Munni Saha, leaders like Motia Chowdhury and even their Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whom they called “the Fascist.” Wasn’t she once revered as a beacon of empowerment, a woman who bore the weight of her family’s bloody sacrifice? A lineage that had given a hundred years of its soul to the nation. Didn’t they once view her as a fantastic news story\of women rising to the highest positions? A had watched also women like Shirin Sharmin Chowdhury, the first female speaker break barriers. She, in fact, had met many other women who had been elected to local governments.

Yet here was journalist ‘A’', unable to cross a door after six months of claims that their country was free. Did she think of the women journalists, who were silenced, threatened, or harassed by the Interim government? Of Rozina Islam, who was dragged out for reporting on corruption? Or the media houses besieged by Jamaat organised mobs.

I wonder if she had heard of the barefoot journalist Monazatuddin, who dared to write about North Bengal’s villages and stand up to power and religious goons. Did ‘A’ consider the hundreds of reporters who had been doxxed simply for doing their jobs? Or the men who, unable to counter a professional woman’s presence, sought instead to discredit her for being biologically a woman, undermining her life, morals, and merits?

Demonization of women who leads

It’s ironic, cruel, and uncivilized that even Sheikh Hasina, whom A once saw as a “fascist,” was not spared gendered attacks. Her policies were too strong to challenge, so critics tore at her as a woman, as the daughter of Sheikh Mujib,

though she never ruled alone. Mocked as daughter, mother, widow, and leader, her image became a canvas for slander on graffiti, posters, and social media. This treatment lays bare the misogyny entwined in Bengali extreme right Muslim mindset and their politics.

A devout believer and practicing Muslim Sheikh Hasina was branded an‘atheist’ by Jamaat is Islam and its student wing - Shibir. Will these Bengali Muslims ever free themselves from such deep-seated misogyny? I wonder!

Thousands voices from media: ghosts or living human

In newsrooms with windows overlooking the key streets of cities across Bangladesh, many chairs were emptied by the armed mobs organized by the group who named them as Students Agaist Discrimination. Journalists, news editors, broadcast planners once sat in those chairs. They lost their jobs, and in light speed new occupiers have filled them. Those who didn’t lose their jobs either lacked the will to fight or are backing the student mob and their current interim government.

The rule was set in hard ways—you survive, if you play safe.

But the silence that forced these people to leave their duties is louder enough to make A’s knee shake. She knew, the secular individuals who joined the movement were driven by emotion and thoughtlessness. Their dream for ideal democracy was their weakness. The thought that there exists an ideal form of democracy in the world, was kind of naive.

What next?

I wonder if ‘A’ ever thought of the press statements, the speeches, the slogans of her fellow protesters. Even in her Facebook post, she seemed to remain an outsider. Perhaps she, a smart girl, knew this was not her battle alone. It was for all who dared to believe ‘we, who dreamed of change, could survive together.’

Another battle for the future of women in Bangladesh begun again from where it started fifty-four years ago. Until we all win the battle for Bangladesh’s soul, ‘A’ can not win.

What does it mean when, for fifty-four years, a nation boasts of women’s empowerment, yet an extremist group shuts out country’s female workers, journalists, and intellectuals?

They vilify the Prime Minister. The moment she leaves for her life’s safety, they loot and portray her as a monster, proving themselves the greater monster.

Should we let this culture persist for a thousand years?

Imagine the voices of over a thousand journalists fading, unheard. What if we don’t demand to hear them again? The Delta has come full circle, yet silence cannot be our choice. We, the secular men and women—who speak, write, think—cannot allow ourselves to be barred from the rooms where decisions are made and ideas exchanged.

The nation now treads backward, dragged by extremists who deny women’s presence. They choose stagnation over progress. We must reclaim our secular state from this regressive force. This is the path the Delta must find, or this silence will echo, will deafen us. The unyielding silence keeps hurting us.

Martin Niemöller’s Confession in our lives

Let’s return to Martin Niemöller confessional speech delivered in 1940. He reflected on the rise of Nazi power in Germany after World War II, likely around 1946. (William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 1960).

His words was an elegy of silence and complicity. Lone soul mourning the acquiescence of intellectual.

Be it a clergy with a bible at the core of his heart speaking as the Nazi spectre rose, or a July protester who took hands of the Islamic Nazi that dreams only male rule and an Islamic empire. A’s experience and Niemöller’s words speak about how methodically regressiveness hidden in us erase those deemed unworthy by our intentions.

Through the sombre cadence of the world, humanity, a festivity of life and motion now resonates as a shadow in our bubble, a fading echo of worth. Martin’s words echo with persecution and guilt, burdening both A and me with the weight of repentance. Though we tend to disagree with ourselves, we find ourselves, perhaps, more on the side of victims than perpetrators. We would like to grab eagerly a call to solidarity.

We think we know there are a few things in the world, we can’t change soon, despite the truth that ‘change is inevitable.’

This is the essence of echoes around A and me. In our countless tongues we speak and write about silence and deafness, soundlessness and blindness; each iteration a solemn reminder that we are personally responsible in the face of creeping underdevelopment. Tyranny was always with us. We fought it, only to embrace a greater one. We took freedom for granted, and lost sight of our joint purpose.

Until we root ourselves in solid ground of our homeland, learn how to welcome differences, and show humility in our majority, tyranny will linger. Diversity is the antidote to tyranny; monoculture invites it back again.

For fifty-four years, tempests have raged against us, yet we have shifted course like waves in a restless sea. Our spirit, as sons and daughters of the largest Delta on Earth, has fought any attempt to subdue us—whether as Bengalis, women, or agents of change. Women in Bangladesh persist, carving their path like the Padma River through the Delta.

Men and women’s united voices against extremism must rise.

Women are key to our democratic nation, the litmus test for politics promising enlightenment. We must stand firm against forces pulling us backward, with our women by our side.

You may disagree, but under Sheikh Hasina’s leadership, despite growing opposition, Bangladesh has quietly revolutionized: laws protecting women from violence, economic programs fostering independence, and initiatives ensuring girls stay in school and colleges. The truth remains: the fight for women’s equality is slipping backward now, and even a single year of regression would be disastrous for every family.

The threat of radicalization, capturing institutions and governance, cannot be fought by policy alone. Only a resolute commitment to secularism and justice will prevail. International influence plays a role too, as global powers align with regressive forces, often at the cost of women’s dreams for a freer Bangladesh.

Our Irony with ‘My PM’ and ‘your PM’

On August 5, when I heard the mob was racing toward Sheikh Hasina’s residence, I whispered, “Not a single hand shall touch her.” Shaking, pacing in my small flat, I knew I could not bear it if the protesters laid their hands on her.

The irony was not lost on me. I had been exiled from the homeland I helped build, while she, in her pursuit of inclusion, had opened the doors to Hefazat, Jamaat-e-Islami, and the Kwamies. The Secularists, atheists, and dreamers of a more liberated homeland were shut out. One by one, the Islamists silenced the voices of my brothers, driving many of us - under relentless death threats - into exile.

Yet, on August 5, 2024, I trembled, consumed by the longing to know my Prime Minister was safe. She was no longer just a leader—she had become my homeland, the land I had witnessed in 1971, battered and bloodied. She embodied the countless women I had seen, forced to travel from family to unknown refuge, hundreds of thousands torn from their homes—Muslim, Hindu, ethnic families alike—ravaged by the brutal forces of the Peace Committee, Al-Badr, Al-Shams, and the Razakar militias.

It was that spirit, born from sorrow-soaked soil of Bangladesh, that transformed former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina into the tigress daughter of this nation. Her indomitable will surged, propelling our fractured homeland forward, defying the weight of extreme forces. With the strength of her Dravidian ancestors coursing through her veins, she moved like a flame—blazing a path toward a future that cast aside old foes.

She yearned for us to rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the past.

But I, too, yearned for that crowd- the children of Gen-Z, the secular, the Madrasa students, the workers, the graduates, who were looting her residence, dancing with her under garments. I yearned for them to keep their hands off my Prime Minister—for I could not bear to witness the final descent of our sons and daughters into the ultimate abyss of cruelty and unreason.

My son is of their generation. His years, learning, dreams and wishes are entwined with theirs. If they falter, I see the ancient banyan tree of Bengal’s villages—its roots, a thousand years deep—severed. And its mighty fall a sorrow neither my son nor I could endure.

On August 5, 2024, I wished for you all, our children, to guard the last sanctuary. Not to cross the threshold from which no return is certain. I wept, for you to turn back, to come home—so that we might meet each other’s gaze once more and speak, as only the rational soul can speak.

Author: Jahanara Nuri

Every nation is born twice: once in the moment of struggle, and again in the stories it tells about that struggle.

A nation tells itself a story: Who are we? What binds us together? What sacrifices brought us here? These stories become the foundations of belonging. They carry hope, courage, and meaning. But they can also become prisons when a society—or a faction within it—refuses to confront the shadows within its own past.

History is rarely a story of pure heroes and pure villains. It is a landscape of contradictions—the endless movement between tides and ebbs.

France offers a powerful example. The French Revolution gave the world the language of liberty, equality, and citizenship. These ideas challenged inherited privilege and reshaped the modern idea of the nation. Yet the same revolution also carried the violence of the Terror, executions, and internal conflict. France did not resolve this contradiction by choosing one memory over another. Over generations, it learned to live with the complexity of its own history: to honour the ideals born from revolution while acknowledging the human cost that accompanied them.

The maturity of a nation lies in the ability of its citizens to confront difficult memories. It does not come from repeating that “our history is glorious” or “our history is tragic.” Nations evolve by learning to hold contradictions—the tides and ebbs of their own historical journey.

This question remains deeply relevant to Bangladesh and its wider South Asian experience. Pakistan was founded on a vision of nationhood based on religion. Bangladesh emerged from a different historical journey, where language, culture, democratic rights, and collective memory became central to the idea of belonging.

The conflict between these visions did not end with the birth of Bangladesh. Within Bangladesh itself and across the region, it continues through debates over identity, religion, secularism, citizenship, and the meaning of the Liberation War.

The deeper challenge is not only political. It is historical.

Colonial rule did not merely draw borders on maps. It hardened and institutionalized categories of identity—religion, community, ethnicity, and difference—turning social identities into political categories. Many postcolonial societies inherited these questions and continue to negotiate their meaning.

But beneath these national stories lies an older human struggle.

The struggle over national identity is part of a larger human pattern: the search for belonging, resources, and power. Competition has produced creativity and progress, but when transformed into a desire for dominance, it has produced conquest, exclusion, and destruction. The modern world, with its endless battles for economic and political influence, now faces a question larger than any single nation:

Can humanity survive if competition remains our only imagination?

Yet history offers another possibility.

The same human beings who create borders also create bridges. They preserve memories, translate languages, build cultures, and search for meaning beyond their own boundaries.

Perhaps the task of every generation is not to inherit history as a weapon, but as a responsibility.

A nation does not become stronger by denying its roots or the contradictions within its history.

It becomes stronger by facing them.

The future belongs not to nations that silence their past, nor to those imprisoned by it, but to those capable of turning memory into dialogue.

It belongs to those who can remember, and still imagine something beyond it.

POLYPHONY believes that the most important conversations begin where certainty ends. We publish journalism, essays, literature, and theatre that seek not to simplify the world but to reveal its many voices and complexities.

Jahanara Nuri
Founding Editor, POLYPHONY

Journalist . Writer . Playright
Sweden · 27 June 2026

For millennia, rivers descending from the Himalayas have carried fragments of mountains toward the sea. Ancient rock, worn down forming fertile silts by wind, water and time. Layers upon layers of sediment accumulated along the oceans shelves across centuries, creating new land even as grounds formed last year disappeared beneath shifting currents during ebbs and tides. Islands emerged. Lands vanished. River channels wandered and meandered. Settlements were built, abandoned, and rebuilt elsewhere. In this landscape, change was not an interruption of life but one of its defining conditions.

People of Bangladesh inherited not only this geography but also its inner philosophy. The delta taught adaptation long before it became a political necessity. What appears fixed today may be transformed tomorrow. What is lost may return in another form.

Though modest in territory, the Bengal delta occupies a remarkable place in Asia. To its far north across the Indian neighbourhood rise the distant Himalayas, whose waters helped create the delta. To the south, the Bay of Bengal opens into the vast Indian Ocean, linking the country to wider maritime worlds from the time immemorial. To the south-east lie the hills that mark the threshold between South and Southeast Asia. Between mountain, river, land, and sea, the delta occupies a terrain where histories converge, cultures intermingle, the wider currents of Asia meet and travel to and from the world.

Within this terrain lives a nation of more than 175 million people. Often described through the identity of the Bengalis, Bangladesh is in fact a polyphonic society woven from over fifty ethnic, linguistic, and cultural traditions. Together they have produced one of the world’s richest cultural inheritances, anchored by Bangla—a language spoken by hundreds of millions worldwide and among the most widely spoken languages on Earth.

Geography has given Bangladesh its form. History has given it memory. Culture has given it diversity and resilience.

There are years that arrive quietly with an abundance of harvests, and years that arrive carrying storms. The year 2024 came to Bangladesh like a river in flood, carrying uprooted certainties, old grievances, forgotten ambitions, and the voices of generations.

The world scarcely noticed at first. It was distracted by wars that seemed endless. South Asia had elections that produced rather uncertainties for world friends. Gaza burned beneath the eyes of diplomats. Ukraine remained suspended in trenches and between negotiations. Across Europe, political forces once confined to the margins advanced toward the centre. Everywhere, the language of stability uttered by both the rulers and the dissents, but confidence in it was fading.

Amid this wider turbulence, another story was unfolding, less visible to the world perhaps, but no less revealing of the age people of Bangladesh and the world were entering. The republic found itself confronting a moment of profound uncertainty, stirred by forces both internal and external. Old tensions within the nation and in South Asia converged with shifting currents beyond it.

Bangladesh, almost surrounded by immense and inescapable India on three sides: the west, north, and much of the east, and had learned to navigate among larger powers. China lies farther to the north & northeast, beyond India, Bhutan, Nepal, and parts of Tibet, yet projected growing economic influence across the region, . Myanmar is to its South-east.

Decades after decades, came across distant oceans, the familiar language of democracy, markets, sanctions, and strategic partnerships. Bangladesh had learned to converse with all of them while belonging entirely to none.

It performed this delicate balancing act with the patience of a boatman navigating shifting currents in darkness.

Then the waters changed.

The Promise of Change

History has a recurring ritual. Political upheavals arrive draped in promises. They begin by speaking of discrimination and victimhood, then shift to the language of freedom and possibility. Only later do they reveal what they intend to preserve—and what they intend to dismantle.

Some promise justice. Others promise renewal. Nearly all promise a future unlike the past.

The July Uprising of 2024 was no exception.

To many, it represented a demand for administrative accountability, human dignity, and the political participation of those long excluded from power. Yet the crowds that filled the streets did not constitute a single movement. They brought together different grievances, ambitions, and expectations.

Some adopted the language of the marginalized while placing the genuinely vulnerable at the front of the marches to face bullets, concealing their own identities behind anonymous networks and carefully managed campaigns.

Nor, in any meaningful sense, were they all subaltern. Bangladesh’s Islamist organizations were not themselves marginalized actors. Instead, they positioned secular students and ordinary citizens at the forefront of a movement whose ultimate destination, as some of its leaders later declared, was the establishment of the “Rule of Allah.” Their political theology distinguished the “true believer” from other Muslims, implicitly creating a hierarchy of religious legitimacy.

That contrast gradually became visible.

The quota movement began as a demand to reform the government’s public-sector employment policy. By mid-July, however, its character had begun to change. Although the dispute was already before the courts, sections of the protesters continued to escalate their street mobilization.

According to contemporaneous reporting by Prothom Alo, protesters marched toward several residential halls at the University of Dhaka, entered hall compounds to bring students into the demonstrations, and announced over loudspeakers that fellow protesters were being detained inside. They called for “direct action” against those they described as terrorists. Reciprocal brick-throwing, physical assaults, and repeated clashes between quota protesters and Chhatra League activists soon spread across the campus, leaving hundreds injured. By this stage, the movement could no longer be described simply as a peaceful protest over public-sector recruitment policy.

In the months following the fall of the government, leaders of Islami Chhatra Shibir publicly described their organization’s role in organizing the movement.

The contest over the streets soon became a contest over public memory.

When Sabuj Ali, one of the first students killed on 16 July, was identified as a Dhaka College student and an activist of the ruling party, his death received comparatively little attention. Five students died that day. Yet public attention soon centred on the death of another student affiliated with a major Islamist student organization. His death became one of the defining images of the July protests and shaped much of the narrative surrounding the violence.

Operating through anonymous social media accounts and concealed organizational structures, activists associated with Islamist party politics mobilized teachers, parents, and students—many of whom, according to this interpretation, were unaware of the movement’s longer-term political objectives. They were joined by citizens motivated by a wide range of grievances, frustrations, and aspirations. The coalition was therefore tactical rather than ideological.

The Islamist student leadership opposed the quota system, arguing that public employment had become unjust and that an entire generation’s future had been obstructed. They also attracted individuals who believed they had been victims of political persecution. Together these constituencies strengthened the claim that the democratic order itself had exhausted its legitimacy. Contemporary accounts suggest that this broad coalition was sustained through an extensive social media campaign amplified by influencers inside and outside Bangladesh.

Only after the government had fallen did some of the planners publicly articulate a different horizon. The justice they ultimately envisioned, they argued, was one prescribed by Islam all along.

History has witnessed such moments before.

Removing a democratic order and constructing an Islamic political order are not the same undertaking.

The first may take weeks.

The second may take generations.

In Bangladesh, the protests against the government’s public-sector job quota policy lasted just over three weeks. They left behind bloodshed, fire, and fear whose consequences continue to unfold. Much of the international media portrayed the movement sympathetically while remaining critical of the government’s response. Human Rights Watch referred to the events as the “Monsoon Revolution.”

As the political transition unfolded, questions about external involvement also entered public debate. Among the most prominent voices was economist Jeffrey Sachs, who argued that the removal of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina bore the characteristics of a U.S.-backed “colour revolution” rather than a purely spontaneous student uprising. Sachs contended that Washington had pursued regime change after Hasina allegedly refused U.S. strategic demands, including those relating to St. Martin’s Island. He called for an independent United Nations investigation into possible foreign interference and criticised U.S.-funded democracy-promotion institutions, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), as instruments of political influence rather than neutral civil society actors.

These claims remain contested. Critics argue that they understate the significance of domestic grievances, including dissatisfaction with governance, human rights concerns, and Bangladesh’s long tradition of student activism.

Some analysts interpret the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade, signed by the United States and Bangladesh on 9 February 2026, as placing Bangladesh under significant economic and strategic constraints. In their view the agreement could make the country a useful platform for the United States to strengthen its strategic presence in South Asia and along the maritime routes of the Bay of Bengal.

Since 2022, critics have also pointed to what they describe as the increasingly active role of the U.S. Ambassador in Bangladesh’s domestic affairs.

Following the political transition of 2024, this perception gained wider currency in Bangladesh and has become part of the broader debate over the extent of external influence on the country’s internal politics.

A Nation challenging the Narrative of former Colony

Since independence, Bangladesh has struggled to realize its founding vision: a nation founded on nationalism, cultural pluralism, secularism, socialism, and democracy—a vision forged in the struggle against oppression and genocide.

At the same time, the nation had to confront religion-based narratives rooted in colonial policy. They were developed by Muslim political thinkers such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Muhammad Iqbal, and Choudhry Rahmat Ali. The Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan transformed them into a political programme. Pakistan’s civil-military establishment later institutionalized them.

Those narratives survived independence, sustained by successor groups that continued to define the Bangladeshi nation according to the ideological framework inherited from Pakistan.

The creation of Bangladesh in 1971 exposed the central contradiction of the Pakistani state. The Two-Nation Theory of Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah held that religion islam could unite people of different cultures, languages, and histories of Bengal, Punjab, Sindhi and other communities into a single Muslim nation. The experience of East Bengal, renamed East Pakistan after the Partition of British India in 1947, disproved that claim. Over 50 ethnic communities have been leaving in the delta. Pakistani rulers were defeated in the land it claimed was bound together by Islamic faith alone.

What is more, Bengal had never been a militaristic society. Its history was one of exchange, assimilation, and coexistence. Its fertile plains and vast river system attracted traders, settlers, conquerors, and empires. Every arrival left its mark. Many also brought conquest, exploitation, and violence. Nature was no less unforgiving. Floods, cyclones, and human-made-famines shaped the lives of its people. Resilience, not militarism, became Bengal’s enduring inheritance.

Despite sharing the same faith as people in the Western par of Pakistan, Bengalis were politically and genealogically marginalized, economically exploited, and culturally distrusted by emerging Pakistan state’s civil-military establishment.

Colonial administrators, followed by postcolonial elites, reduced nations to categories of religion, race, or imperial convenience. Bangladesh’s history tells a different story. It demonstrates that language, culture, historical memory, democratic aspiration, and the collective will of people can outweigh ideological formulas imposed from above.

Bangladesh did not emerge because Bengalis rejected Islam. It emerged because they rejected subordination. They refused to make religion an instrument of state power. The 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh envisioned a country where every citizen belonged. The new state chose a People’s Republic over an Islamic Republic, placing citizenship above religious creed. That constitutional choice carried the unfinished promise of 1971.

Advocates of political Islam sought to subordinate geography, language, and ethnicity to a single religious identity. Bangladesh’s nationhood rested on human rights, pluralism, inclusiveness, and equality. A secular democratic republic became the constitutional expression of that vision.

The Failure of the Two-Nation Theory

The birth of Bangladesh exposed the central contradiction of Partition of India. The British colonial state had divided the subcontinent along religious lines. Pakistan was founded on the belief that religion alone could unite diverse people into a single nation. That was proved otherwise during the period from 1947-1971.

The contradiction was not merely political. It was civilizational.

Despite forming the demographic majority of Pakistan, Bengalis were rarely accepted as equal partners. Bengali language, culture, and historical experiences challenged the assumptions on which the new state had been built.

The evidence survives in Pakistan’s own archives. Memoirs, military diaries, speeches, and official records reveal a consistent pattern of thought. Bengalis were portrayed as culturally inferior, racially deficient, and insufficiently Muslim.

Field Marshal Ayub Khan gave that worldview its clearest expression. In Friends Not Masters and in his private diaries, he described Bengalis as possessing “all the inhibitions of downtrodden races.” [1] He attributed their political aspirations to an “unstable temperament.” Bengali language and literature were dismissed as excessively influenced by Hindu civilization. Rabindranath Tagore, Ayub Khan complained, had become “their god.” [1, 2,3]

Such attitudes were not isolated opinions. They reflected a broader state narrative that rested on three recurring assumptions.

First came cultural invalidation. Bengali language, literature, and artistic traditions were portrayed as products of excessive of “Hindu cultural and linguistic influence.” Bengali attachment to Rabindranath Tagore, to the Bengali language, literature, and cultural heritage, as well as to local practices, was often interpreted not as an expression of Bengali culture but as evidence of “Hindu influence.” Bengali Muslims were often represented as culturally impure and therefore only partially committed to the ideals of Pakistan state.[2]

Second came political criminalization. Demands for linguistic equality, constitutional autonomy, or democratic representation were routinely portrayed as evidence of treason. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Awami League, and their supporters were branded agents of India. Even today, many who defend the ideals of the 1971 Liberation War continue to be described by Islamist groups and sections of Pakistani political discourse as collaborators or “India’s dalals.”

Third came racial and martial stereotyping. Colonial theories of the “martial races” survived inside Pakistan’s military establishment. Bengalis were described as physically weak, emotionally unstable, and lacking the qualities required to govern or defend the state. [1, 2, 3]

Ideas became policy.

Bengalis remained under represented in the military, businesses, and the higher civil services. Economic disparities widened. Social and political demands were treated as security threats rather than constitutional questions. Cultural identity itself became suspect.

The crisis reached its climax after the general election of 1970 and the Bhola Cyclone of 12 November 1970, which killed an estimated 500,000 people in East Bengal. The military government in West Pakistan responded slowly and refused offers of international assistance, exposing the depth of state neglect. In December, the Awami League won an absolute parliamentary majority and the constitutional right to form Pakistan’s government. That democratic mandate was delayed, then denied. On the night of 25 March 1971, the Pakistan Army launched Operation Searchlight, attacking civilians across Bangladesh.

The road to genocide had been prepared long before the first shots were fired.

The intellectual foundations of the violence in 1971 were neither accidental nor improvised. They had been constructed over decades through language, culture, neglect and disrespect that questioned the legitimacy of an entire majority population within the Islamic republic of Pakistan.

The implication was clear: Bengalis were not seen as less than partners of Islamic society in Pakistan. Muslims among them were seen as Muslims whose faith had been weakened by their own culture and historical inheritance and refusal to submit to “Pure Muslim brotherhood.”

This attitude permeated sections of the political and military establishment.

Pakistan Armed forces’ Brigadier Abdur Rahman Siddiqi later acknowledged that Operation Searchlight was viewed by some officers not simply as a military operation but as an effort to transform Bengalis into “true Muslims and Pakistanis.” [2]

Such statements reveal their ideological logic behind the genocide they committed in 1971. The people whose culture is portrayed as corrupt, whose language is treated as alien, and whose faith is considered deficient can more easily be cast as enemies within.

The extreme violence that culminated in genocide did not emerge in an intellectual vacuum. It was preceded by years of cultural contempt, racial stereotyping, and political exclusion. Othering became state doctrine. State doctrine became military policy.

This ideological othering denied Bengalis full legitimacy within the state that claimed to represent them, and it contributed to the rise of social-cultural movements after 1947.

The response had begun much earlier. From the Language Movement of 1952 to the mass uprising of 1969, Bengalis increasingly rejected a state that denied both their identity and their human rights. On 23 June, 1949, the Awami League emerged as a principal political force. It gradually was articulating the aspiration for a democratic state that could represent all communities. It gradually became the principal political vehicle for aspirations of people of Delta. Eventually, this was the party, that articulated a vision of Bangladesh founded not upon religious exclusivity but upon linguistic, cultural, and political self-determination.

The struggle for Bangladesh was therefore more than a war of secession and more than the creation of a new state. It was a struggle over the meaning of nationhood itself. It was a historical challenge to the idea that religious identity alone could override the deeper foundations on which nations are built.

The Bangladesh Liberation War affirmed that a nation cannot be sustained by religion alone. It must also rest on language, memory, democratic participation, cultural belonging, and the collective will of its people to stand together against oppression and exploitation.

The struggle for Bangladesh was therefore an assertion of a people’s right to define themselves, speak their mind in their language, preserve their culture and memory, and determine their political and economic future.

After July 2024, these questions returned to the centre of public life in delta.

Arguments about government policy became arguments about democratic process, with the Awami League labeled as “India’s dalal” and Sheikh Mujib as a “traitor.” The rule of law and the nation’s history were sought to be turned upside down.
Arguments about policy became arguments about memory.
Questions of administration became questions of identity.

Who speaks for the nation?
Who inherits its founding ideals?
Who defines its future?
These were no longer academic questions. They became political battlegrounds involving actors in both the interim government led by Muhammad yunus and the BNP-led administration. The BNP has aligned with Jamaat-e-Islam and other Islamist groups, ranging from moderate to more extreme Jihadi factions, including during the 2024 July protests.

In the hands of this alliance the meaning of the nation itself once again became unsettled. What had been settled in 1971 returned as an open question.

The World Beyond the Delta

Yet Bangladesh’s story cannot be understood in isolation.

The delta occupies one of Asia’s most strategic locations. It lies at the intersection of South and Southeast Asia and overlooks the Bay of Bengal, where regional and global interests increasingly converge.

India remains its indispensable neighbour. China continues to expand its economic reach across the region. The United States views the Indo-Pacific as central to its strategic calculations. Europe, though geographically distant, remains closely connected through trade, development partnerships, migration, and climate policy.

For a country of Bangladesh’s size, diplomacy has always required balance rather than allegiance. Its success depended not on choosing a camp but on maintaining constructive relations with all.

That strategic balance was one of Bangladesh’s most significant achievements during the first decades of the twenty-first century. The delta has long ensured that domestic political change attracts regional and international attention. The question today is whether that equilibrium can survive current period of growing domestic uncertainty ad international indifference—and why it has come under such strain.

The Question of Legitimacy

Political systems ultimately rest on a fragile foundation. Not fear. Not slogans. Not international recognition.

But legitimacy.

The belief among citizens that institutions deserve obedience because they reflect a shared political compact.

When legitimacy weakens, even powerful governments discover their limitations.

When legitimacy becomes contested, every decision acquires a shadow.

This is the dilemma confronting Bangladesh today.

Supporters of the current political order and its critics may disagree on almost everything else, but both remain engaged in the same struggle: defining the source of political authority in a rapidly changing nation.

The debate extends far beyond electoral procedures or constitutional arrangements.

It concerns the deeper relationship between state and a faction of the society.

The Crisis of the International Order

At the same time, the international environment surrounding Bangladesh has become increasingly unstable.

For decades, political leaders spoke of a Rules-Based International Order.

The phrase travelled easily through diplomatic speeches and summit declarations. It promised predictability in an unpredictable world.

Yet that promise now appears increasingly fragile.

International law is treated as absolute in some conflicts and negotiable in others.

Human rights receive urgent attention in some crises and conspicuous silence in others.

The gap between principle and practice is no longer easy to ignore.

This does not mean that international rules are irrelevant.

It means their credibility depends on consistency. Without consistency, trust erodes. Without trust, order itself begins to fray.

Between the River and the Sea

Bangladesh now stands at a crossroads familiar to many nations but unique in its own circumstances.

It must navigate domestic polarisation while preserving social cohesion.

It must pursue economic growth while protecting democratic institutions.

It must maintain strategic autonomy amid intensifying competition between larger powers.

Most importantly, it must rediscover a political language capable of speaking across its divisions rather than deepening them.

The rivers that shaped Bangladesh have never flowed in straight lines.

They bend.

They divide.

They merge.

Yet somehow they continue their journey toward the sea.

Nations, too, survive through adaptation.

The Unfinished Future

What is already clear is this: Bangladesh’s future cannot be secured through foreign patronage, the dominance of religious ideology, or the monopolization of ethical frameworks such as human rights and equality as instruments of political power.

The question facing Bangladesh is not only who governs today.
Nor is it simply which external power gains influence tomorrow.

The deeper question concerns what kind of republic will emerge from this period of uncertainty.

Will the years after July 2024 be remembered as a democratic transformation?
A temporary rupture?
A lost opportunity?
Or the beginning of a political settlement still struggling to take form?

History has not yet delivered its verdict.

What is already clear is this: Bangladesh’s future cannot be secured through foreign patronage, ideological domination, or political exclusion alone.

The waters changed in 2024.

Whether they carry Bangladesh toward renewal or deeper uncertainty remains one of the most consequential questions on the shifting stage of South Asia.

POLYPHONY was created in response to this reality.

The name comes from a simple idea: no single voice can explain the world. Human experience is shaped by a multitude of histories, cultures, memories, languages, beliefs, and perspectives. To understand our century, we must listen not only to centres of power, but also to the communities, individuals, and traditions that are too often overlooked.

POLYPHONY is an independent international platform for journalism, literature, culture, human rights, and critical inquiry. Through reportage, essays, interviews, analysis, literary reflections, and creative non-fiction, it seeks to explore the forces shaping our time—from democracy and migration to memory, identity, decolonization, social change, and the search for more just futures.

Our perspective begins in South Asia but does not end there. From the Bengal Delta to Europe and beyond, we are interested in the connections that link local experiences to global realities. We believe that culture and politics, history and literature, memory and public life are not separate conversations but parts of the same human story.

POLYPHONY has two publications: The POLYPHONY that highlights featured essays and featured series on nations. The other publication, the POLYPHONY Arts & Letters focuses on literature, culture, music, theatre and songs of nations.

Our publications are guided by a simple editorial principle. Every piece published here should contribute to understanding. It should illuminate a complex issue, recover a neglected voice or history, challenge assumptions, or offer a new way of seeing the world. In an age of noise, our aim is not to produce more noise, but greater clarity.

The twenty-first century is being shaped by profound transformations. The international order is evolving, while democracies and secular ideals are facing new tests. Emerging forms of power are reshaping societies. Questions of belonging, identity, justice, and human dignity are becoming increasingly central to public life. Yet writers, artists, journalists, scholars, and ordinary citizens continue to imagine alternative futures and search for ways to foster dialogue across divisions.

POLYPHONY is a place for those conversations.

Whether you arrive here as a reader, writer, artist, researcher, journalist, or simply a curious observer of the human condition, you are welcome.

The world speaks in many voices.

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Agrahayon — the season of new harvest. Plains of Bengal leaned gold under a pale sky.

The boy lay near the helm of the small passenger boat, body pressed to the wooden planks, eyes fixed on a massive trading vessel gliding along the Padma river. Smoke from cooking fires curled into drifting milk white clouds in deep blue. On deck, a white man in the Company uniform stood tall, his gaze as measured as the land he claimed.

The river moved slow but restless, carrying murmurs of unease. Villagers along the banks bent over their fields, hands busy, eyes worry. Even the songs of harvest seemed muted, caught between wind and water. The Company flag fluttered — bright but heavy.

“Where are we?” someone asked.

“Cheuriya, Kushtia,” said the boatman. Silence followed.

The boy felt the world shift within him.

His body became a counter-scripture — moving with the rhythm of the river, the drifting forest, the silty reflections on the banks, the whispering people aboard. Every sway, every pulse, a lesson no book, no shrine could teach.

The delta had taught him: nothing keeps one shape for long. The river splits, multiplies, erodes, diverts, unites in the end. Padma. Gorai. Another branch. Another mouth. Traders, pilgrims, gossip, grain — all carried in its flow. Fever carried him too.

It could have been the most auspicious day. Granaries full. Villages alive with music, fairs, festivity. Yet history saved no record of this afternoon — no ledger, no letter, no account for later eyes.

A colony of black marks appeared on his skin. Smallpox moved through Bengal without flag or fanfare, entering houses unannounced. The boy’s heartbeat loosened, falling into rhythm with the river, half inside his ribs, half in the current slapping wood.

Above, migratory birds cut the sky – dark strokes moving south from frozen north to the river islands along the Padma-Gorai-Modhumoti. Up, balance, down. Up, balance, down. He drifted with them.

The passengers whispered, “Smallpox!”

Distance grew. Should they set him adrift on banana trunks? The boatman hesitated. “Allah may save him,” he said, eyes on the current. “The Gorai runs safe, but the Padma does not return what it takes.”

They landed him on the damp eastern bank. Forest pressed close to water. No one met eyes. The boat pushed away.

Malom Shah found him there —a weaver at the forest’s edge —and lifted the boy as one lifts something fragile yet warm. His wife Motijan and Malom shah together tended the boy. Thirty nights of battle: breath falters and returns, falters and returns. At the door of the Malom Shah’s hut, something waits for an opening, so that the bird can fly from the cage.

The boy survived. He had a name — Lalon. His skin bore the map of pitted scars where smoothness once was. No caste survives such fire untouched. No purity remains unbroken.

Years later, he would sing: “Everyone asks, what caste is Lalon? Have you ever seen caste with your own eyes?”

The question begins here — on a river that refuses a singularity and takes a new name at every bend. He was a body returned from fire, a mind learning to inhabit its own form. The delta moves in many directions at once. So does a human inside one’s self.

A human within the mind. Moner Manush. A landscape mirroring awakened consciousness.

“Whoever holds the Human as their true guide. – All paths of practice find their fulfilment.”

He sings, and the words rise like fire over the ovens of thatched huts. In a land where Vedic sounds were long guarded, whispered among fire-worshippers and castes, his words fall differently. The Rigveda had named many gods, asked in doubt: which lord shall we praise? Brahmins preserved the syllables; purity guarded the right to question.

Lalon turns the question inward: Which lord will you seek? The one beyond reach, or the one before you – breathing, visible, mortal? He relocates the divine. Follow the one within you. The one at hand. The one you can see, touch, feel. Manush Guru. The living as scripture.

His songs crossed villages like mist across fields – indifferent to caste, creed, or authority. The singer mattered less than the act of singing. No manifesto. No perimeter. No comfort of final answers. Just coexistence – fragile, untheorized.

Two centuries later, in a regulated Bangladesh, courtyards shrink, informal music moves indoors, fear edits what ideology once condemned. UNESCO preserves heritage on paper. Lalon was not distant. His songs were rehearsals – for how to remain in proximity without doctrine.

In Sweden, choirs sing with discipline and warmth. In Kushtia, Bangladesh, a man or woman stands in a courtyard, voice wavering. Others join, not to harmonize, but to thicken the plurality. Agreement is unnecessary. The act is smaller than a revolution. Larger than obedience.
Western readers label him: mystic, humanist, reformer. He would step aside.

“If truth has many doors,” he asked, “why insist on only one?” The form, that is body, has minimum “Eight rooms and nine doors.” Why replacing one orthodoxy with another? Let’s replace orthodoxy with practice. Let’s sing together. Not to believe. To share air of this earth.

Lalon died in 1890. No authorized edition exists. Only bodies willing to risk voice carry him. A book can be archived. A song requires courage. Each time it is sung, it could be the last. Yet it continues. Quietly radical. In a century that craves certainty, his question remains indecent:
Have you ever seen the thing you defend?

Somewhere in the Bengal delta down the river Padma, someone is singing. The voice carries without permission. It reaches no cathedral, no parliament, no grant committee.

It reaches another body. That is enough.