The World Readers. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. xiv, 550 pp. (Map, illus.) US $27.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8223-5318-8.
Situated within the world’s largest river delta, Bangladesh contains the eighth-largest national population in the world, and the majority of its inhabitants speak the world’s sixth most widely-spoken language. Yet Bangladesh remains largely neglected by the international community, and tends to feature in the Western media only when there is a natural disaster or, as in the case of the April 2013 Rana Plaza garment factory collapse, a man-made one.
The latest addition to Duke University Press’ World Readers series is a gem. It offers both general readers and specialists an unprecedented and much-needed array of information, voices, images and perspectives on Bangladesh’s history, politics and culture. The 134 extracts that are contained within—including newspaper articles, letters, speeches, fiction, academic writing, posters, memoirs, poems, a recipe, and a host of other forms of text—cover a vast amount of ground. The book also contains a wealth of illustrations, including some gorgeous photographic plates.
The task of reviewing a book such as this one is of course largely impossible, given the amount and range of material contained within, but I will try to convey a flavour of what is here. The selections are grouped into nine sub-sections: voices from Bangladesh, early histories, colonial encounters, Partition and Pakistan, war and Independence, dilemmas of nationhood, contemporary culture, the development gaze and Bangladesh beyond its borders. Each section, and each contribution, is carefully introduced by the editors, giving the reader a strong sense of overall cohesiveness that makes the book a real pleasure to read, either from the beginning of the book in sequence, or equally satisfying, by dipping in and out at random. One way to approach the book in the first instance is simply to read these introductions in sequence to gain a fascinating overview of the country before engaging with the material.
The first section, containing diverse contemporary voices, immediately sets the scene for what follows, with entries by Shana K., a garment worker, Abdul Qader Mullah, a senior member of Jama’at e Islami (whose views might not match every reader’s understanding of the characterization given to him of ‘fundamentalist’), and Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, each vying for the reader’s attention. The early history section ranges across the diverse local and non-local rulers of the territory of Bengal including Afghans, Ethiopians and Arakanese, and traders from China, Persia and Arabia. Moving on, the entries on the pre-1947 colonial encounters range from new religious movements to European entrepreneurs, while the section on Partition and Pakistan combines the familiar (such as the Awami League’s famous “Six Points”) with useful insights into less familiar aspects of this period, such as the 1964 Garo exodus, and the destruction by the Kaptai lake dam project in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. We then arrive at war and Independence, which includes a chilling account of Operation Searchlight by Siddiq Salik, a junior officer in the Pakistan army in 1971, and an equally distressing transcript of a telephone call between Kissinger and Nixon. As one might have expected, many voices are represented in the dilemmas of nationhood section, reflecting a diversity of views on religion, the military and issues of ethnicity. The extract from Kalpana Chakma’s diary, discovered after her disappearance, allegedly at the hands of the army in 1996, is particularly moving, caught between army violence, local patriarchy and Bengali “ethnic oppression.”
By the seventh section, on contemporary culture, it has become clear that the impoverished nature of the outside world’s view of Bangladesh has been vividly exposed and long left behind. Rather than replaying all-too-familiar dichotomies of urban/rural, or religious/secular, the editors talk instead of a “multilayered cultural fusion” (367), and of the politics of cultural space. B.K. Jahangir’s piece on the timeless art of Zainul Abedin is a highlight, and one is immediately tempted to put Shornomoyee’s recipe for Ilish fish with mustard sauce to the test! The issue of development is approached imaginatively, combining some well-known academics with the voices of ordinary people. Finally, the section on Bangladesh’s global dimension draws on migrant accounts, and a piece by the Clean Clothes Campaign on the issue of garment workers’ rights within international value chains brings home the issues that underpin the tragedy of Rana Plaza (which occurred after the book went to press).
A real pleasure of this collection is collision between the familiar and the unexpected. It brings together in one place some of the key writings that will be essential for anyone wishing to engage with the country (such as Sheikh Mujib’s speeches, a Rabindranath Tagore story, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s 1905 proto-feminist satire Sultana’s Dream, Rounaq Jahan on the rise of the vernacular elite, Rehman Sobhan on the economic disparities of Pakistan, Richard Eaton on the rise of Islam); but at the same time readers will delight in the many unusual and unexpected pieces that lie scattered throughout its pages. And while the volume might be thought by some people broadly to endorse a particular vision of Bangladesh (diverse, multicultural, pluralistic) with which not everyone might agree, it is by no means didactic. For example, Lamia Karim’s view of developmental non-governmental organizations as “modern landlords” is followed by Ainoon Naher’s description of mobilization by village elites against outsider efforts to empower the poor. Different points of view jostle within these pages so that readers can make up their own minds about what remains a fascinating and complex country.
Overall, this is a hugely impressive feat of scholarship for which the two editors should be congratulated. The lyric of James (Nagar Baul)’s 2005 Baul-inspired rock song is as good a place as any for me to end, and for readers of this wonderful book on the ongoing story of Bangladesh to begin: “Forge your way through the milling crowd, Turn the leaves of sorrow; and find the garden of dreams” (410).
David Lewis
London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom
pp. 632-634