Rabindra Jayanti 2019, Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti 2019: Abroad, too, cities with large Bengali populations celebrate the phenomenon called Rabindranath. New York, London, Chicago, Toronto, Paris boast Rabindra Sangeet academies, the number of students increasing by the day. The real reason is the desire to keep close to one's language, the land of one's birth.
Not at all. You are not a witness: you re a part of history, Tawfiq.
Tajuddin Ahmad spoke these words when Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury thanked the newly sworn-in prime minister of the first government of Bangladesh for giving him the opportunity to be a witness to history on April 17, 1971.
Tawfiq, then a sub-divisional officer of erstwhile Meherpur sub-division, indeed witnessed the momentous occasion, a red-letter day in the history of the country: the oath-taking ceremony of the Mujibnagar Government, which performed all of the wartime tasks and led the Bangladesh War of Liberation.
It was on this day, 50 years ago, when the provisional government-in-exile took oath at a mango grove in Baidyanathtala, a border area in the present Meherpur district. Baidyanathtala was later named Mujibnagar.