The Unbroken Thread: Decades of Attempts to Erase Bangabandhu’s Family and the Secular Soul of Bangladesh

15 August 1975, 21 August 2004, and 5 August 2024 are not isolated tragedies. They mark a half-century assault by the same anti-liberation forces to dismantle a pluralistic nation. Three dates stand out in Bangladesh’s post-independence history like open wounds: 15 August 1975, 21 August 2004, and 5 August 2024. They are not coincidences. They mark successive assaults by the same ideological forces that opposed the very creation of Bangladesh in 1971, those who fought to keep the country chained to Pakistan, including Razakars, Al-Badr, Jamaat-e-Islami and their modern extremist offshoots. Their objective has never merely been the removal of…