A profound transformation is taking place in Bengali intellectual thought and literary history—one that is not confined to aesthetic debates alone. Behind it operates a new configuration of political, religious, and social power. From Syed Waliullah's Lalsalu (1948) to the recent controversies surrounding contemporary writer Shahidul Zahir's works, there is an opportunity to examine them together. The tendency to read literature not in its own aesthetic and philosophical space, but to subordinat...
