Intimation of Revolution

Intimation of Revolution studies the rise of Bengali nationalism in East Pakistan in the 1950s and 60s by showcasing the interactions between global politics and local social and economic developments. It argues that the revolution of 1969 and the national liberation struggle of 1971 were informed by the 'global sixties' that transformed the political landscape of Pakistan and facilitated the birth of Bangladesh. Departing from the typical understanding of the Bangladesh as a product of Indo-Pakistani diplomatic and military rivalry, it narrates how Bengali nationalists resisted the processes of internal colonization by the Pakistani military bureaucratic regime to fashion their own nation. It details how this process of resistance and nation-formation drew on contemporaneous decolonization movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America while also being shaped by the Cold War rivalries between the USA, USSR, and China.

Subho Basu is Associate Professor in History and Classical Studies at McGill University, Canada. His research and teaching interests are South Asian History, History of Bangladesh and Pakistan, Subaltern and Decolonial Studies, International Development Studies, and Democracy and Society in India. He is the author of Does Class Matter: Colonial Capital and Workers' Resistance in Bengal, 1890-1937 (2004). He has co-authored, with Ali Riaz, Paradise Lost? : State Failure in Nepal (2007) and co-edited, with Crispin Bates, Rethinking Indian Political Institutions (2005).