Bangladesh

Bangladesh was built by rivers. The Ganges, called the Padma here, joins the Brahmaputra and the Meghna to form the largest delta on earth before reaching the Bay of Bengal. Most of the land lies only a few metres above the sea, and each monsoon the rivers spill across the fields and leave behind the silt that makes them so fertile. In the south-west the Sundarbans mangrove forest shelters the Bengal tiger, while the east rises into the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the tea gardens of Sylhet.

The land formed the eastern half of historic Bengal, ruled in turn by Buddhist and Hindu dynasties, sultans and Mughal governors, whose ports exported fine muslin across the Indian Ocean. At partition in 1947 it became East Pakistan, separated from the western wing by the breadth of northern India. The Language Movement of 1952, when students were killed demanding recognition for Bengali, later gave the world International Mother Language Day. Independence followed the war of 1971.

Bengali culture prizes words and song. Rabindranath Tagore wrote the national anthem, Kazi Nazrul Islam is the national poet, and Baul minstrels sing mystical folk songs at village fairs. Pohela Boishakh, the new year in mid-April, fills the towns with processions. Rice and fish make up almost every meal, with hilsa the prized catch. The economy runs on garment factories around Dhaka and Chittagong, rice and jute, fisheries, and the earnings of Bangladeshis working abroad.