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This chapter discusses the role of the judiciary in Bangladesh in promoting and enforcing the principles of constitutionalism. It introduces the historical background of Bangladeshi constitutionalism and also outlines briefly the constitutional position of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. The author discusses how the Bangladeshi judiciary has renounced its constitutional responsibility of protecting the rule of law during the martial law regimes, and become a partner of the usurpers of the Constitution. During the democratic periods, the judges have, however, largely attempted to create a ground for actions in furtherance of constitutionalism. Also, the globalization process generally and the development of global human rights jurisprudence in particular have had a positive impact on the Court's changed role. The author also discusses how Public Interest Litigations (PILs) are helping willing and perceptive judges obtain the goals of justice and constitutionalism. The post-Emergency (2007-2008) judiciary in Bangladesh has engaged itself in regaining public confidence and rebuilding its image. The author concludes that his analyses of the judicial role in achieving and protecting constitutionalism show that while structural and political factors may retard the realization of this judicial role, a willing and able judiciary (steeped in the values of rule of law, justice, and human welfare) may effectively respond to the call for judicial vigilance for the protection of justice and good governance by overcoming any systemic inhibitions, and prohibitive legal and doctrinal boundaries.

This chapter analyzes how Bangladeshi American women and teenage girls in Hamtramck renegotiate conceptualizations of the public-private divide through ongoing interpretive and explorative spatial practices while referencing religious and cultural frameworks. It discusses how Bangladeshi women across generations organize the gendering of spaces within paid labor, public and private celebrations, streets, mosques, home-based religious gatherings, and schools. The analysis centers on how Bangladeshi women in Hamtramck are self-consciously and actively engaged in a process of negotiating their relationship to urban space, searching to interface with the city and its institutions in ways that maximize their sense of mobility, mastery, and centrality within public, semi-public, and domestic spaces of the city. In doing so, they advance new agendas of cultural citizenship, thus encouraging municipal environments and institutions to become more democratic spaces that represent and uphold the values of those who participate in them.

The status of international law within the domestic legal order, in the absence of clear national incorporating legislation, remains weak in Bangladesh. Until recently, very few treaties that have been ratified have been placed at the Parliament for codification into domestic law. Despite recommendations of various international treaty bodies as well as decisions of the Supreme Court flagging this issue, the government so far has not taken any action to implement these recommendations and decisions. Until such action is taken, courts in Bangladesh in effect remain barred from relying on international law and only may invoke it as an aid to interpretation when there is no domestic law on the issue or when the domestic law is unclear.

This chapter explores the ways through which women position themselves in the making of the film, Mintu the Murderer. Even though Bangladeshi communities had influenced the ideal, conventional female deportment, in the film industry—particularly within the realm of screen—their deportment had already been negotiated. In Mintu the Murderer, Shavana, who played as Rani, and Shadnaz, who played as Sufia, were both against the idea of displaying their bodies on screen, because they found it vulgar to do so. Shavana, however, acts for fame, while Shadnaz acts for a living. In contrast, Jenny, who played as Tara and whose body had already been displayed as an object of lust onscreen, emulated a Bangladeshi modern woman. However, “extras” such as Josna, who played as Lopa, had a starkly different experience: they are always asked to act as either rape victims or dancing girls.

This chapter addresses the labour-market situation and labour-force participation of ethnic-minority women, focusing on the local labour market situation of Indian women in Birmingham and Leicester; the position of two much smaller ethnic-minority groups (Pakistani and Bangladeshi women), again in two specific local labour markets; and the relationship between changing levels of qualification, different family circumstances, and labour-market participation among Black Caribbean women. Indian women, in Birmingham and Leicester, experience clustering in the manufacturing sector, and disadvantage in terms of job level within it. Although many young Bangladeshi women had succeeded in accessing educational opportunities, mature women in this group were living lives very different from those of White British female residents. The experience of women of differing ethnicities indicates that living in the UK when young and educational achievement within the UK system both raise economic activity and employment rates.

This chapter situates the rising prominence of Bangladeshi and Yemeni Americans in Hamtramck within an account of the city’s development since its founding as a township in 1798. Beginning with a history of African Americans, who have the most enduring presence in Hamtramck of the groups included in the chapter, the chapter then analyzes the experiences of Polish Americans in Hamtramck, who were the dominant majority for many years. The chapter considers how institutional racism, aimed most directly against African Americans—but also affecting all immigrant groups who were not “white on arrival”—has influenced power structures at municipal, state, and national levels and impacted the development of social relations in Hamtramck. It considers how changes in Hamtramck connect to national socioeconomic fluctuations, internal migration, and immigration reform, as well as regional patterns of Muslim American incorporation found throughout the metro Detroit area.

This chapter analyzes how Yemeni and Bangladeshi American women and teenage girls in Hamtramck establish a particular type of gender organization—what I call “civic purdah”—across a variety of different contexts. Although there is no exact word for it in Arabic, Bangladeshis and other South Asians use the word “purdah” to signify gender separation, most often in expressed through patterns of dress (hijāb) and proximity, enacted in an effort to protect the sanctity of women’s bodies and spaces from the gaze and interference of unrelated men. Civic purdah signifies the way that women interpret and apply the purdah ethos in the municipal context as a means of participating in different aspects of city life. When enacted in public spaces and institutions, civic purdah can be considered a means for advancing cultural citizenship, defined as engaging in the dominant society while maintaining differences from the norm.

Chapter 4 looks at the Bengalis’ continued links with their now independent homeland and with its politics (which it outlines), as the London community consolidated and settled and men were joined by their wives and families. This is a smaller scale politics, with different groups taking different positions, but it involves strong loyalties. As well as activity in Britain and the influence of immigrant money, the chapter discusses direct political involvement by returned immigrants and the possibilities of two centred politics. It also discusses the relative disenchantment of the younger, British-educated generation, and continued bonds with Bangladesh that are less overtly political, such as through regional organisations and their charitable activities. The chapter includes a discussion of the different meanings of secularism, and a critical examination of the growing conflicts between secular and religious politics.

In the late 1980s, Assam was rocked by an independentist militancy under the leadership of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) that the Indian government eventually suppressed by the 1990s with the help of two counter-insurgency campaigns and a series of clever political moves. Despite accusations of human rights abuses in Assam during the army operations, Indian officials claimed that their strategy in Assam was successful. Members of the ULFA surrendered their weapons, and agreed to give up their armed struggle as well as their desire to achieve independence for Assam. The author discusses the founding of ULFA in 1979 when the ‘Assam movement’ was campaigning around the issue of immigration to Assam from present-day Bangladesh. This chapter assesses the results of the Indian government’s strategy in Assam, focusing on its use of coercion and some of the de facto and de jure bargaining between factions among the militants and the government.

This chapter focuses on the migration history of the chars and shows that people arrived on chars from different areas at different times. Both groups of migrants—Biharis and Bangladeshis—who live on the Damodar chars have a tradition of outmigration from their own lands. At present, the majority of char dwellers belong to the Bangladeshi Hindu community and these refugees were granted patta to settle on chars by the district government of Burdwan after the Partition. The char dwellers live in a hostile environment, coping with floods, using skills and resources they have learned over years of experience with this phenomenon either in Bangladesh or in India. Chars could be only one area where the lower castes settled on the Indian side of the border. Geography and history come together in exploring twentieth-century legacies of colonial rule and in viewing divisions such as the Partition as political solutions.

This chapter reviews stereotypes of migrancy in Monica Ali's From Bangladesh to Brick Lane. The stereotypical depictions of culture in the novel—the feminization of the garment industry, the dereliction of estate housing for immigrants, and the specter of unassimilable migrants—interrogates the essentialism of both British and Bangladeshi identities, altering what Sara Suleri's so-called “dislocated idiom of migrancy” reveals of the crises of stereotypes of destitution, displacement, tenement housing, and crowds. Also, the novel's engagement with the domestication of transnational labor compels readers to think about the extent in which the uneven differences of globalization depend on the traffic of stereotypes.

The introduction provides the background of the study, discussion of the conceptual building blocks and an outline of the book. Three events are referred to as examples of the growing appeal of political Islam to a section of British-Bangladeshis and the contestations within the community. This chapter also critically discusses the existing theoretical frameworks on diaspora and diasporic identity, and challenges the extant formulations of these concepts. It argues that they are limited and limiting, because they see diaspora as an end product instead of an ongoing experience, and diasporic identity as a fixed state instead of a dynamic process.

Chapter 1 traces the social and political evolution of South Asians in the United States and underlines their history of racial exclusion, political activism, and transnationalism. The chapter traces the formation of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi communities and situates these communities in the larger context of the major Asian American groups.

This introductory chapter presents an overview of the ethnography—more specifically, the cut-piece phenomenon—of the Bangladeshi action film, Mintu the Murderer. The term cut-piece is derived from the practice of cutting scenes or images out of a film's reels before submitting it to the Bangladeshi Film Censor Board. Cut-piece films as well as the practices, institutions, and space generated around them are generally considered obscene in Bangladesh. In this context, “obscene” would mean the representation of sexuality in ways that are considered socially and morally unacceptable. But there is a contradiction at the core of obscenity: in order to ascertain and disavow what is obscene, a socially inappropriate and “coarse” representation of sexuality must be brought to public attention.

This chapter describes the public consumption of the film, Mintu the Murderer, through Bangladeshi print media. Throughout these newspapers and magazines, critics and fans have created a discursive opposition between the terms “healthy” and “obscene,” which has been appended to the vulgar films and the people who made them. Mintu the Murderer was not an exception as there had been (i) articles about the sexually explicit color pictures of the actress Jenny in the cheap pornographic magazines, Agomon and Manobjomin; (ii) articles about the divorce of the actress Shadnaz with her husband in Shornali magazine; and (iii) anonymous articles about the court cases that maligned the reputation of director, Shahadat Ali Shiplu, for making vulgar films. Nonetheless, the work continued. The noise or awaaz generated around those involved in making the Mintu the Murderer eventually guaranteed the film a position in the public realm.

This chapter describes Project MINA, an intergenerational and transnational project using a mixed-methods approach to investigate migration, nutrition, and ageing in two generations of Bangladeshi women living in the UK or Sylhet, Bangladesh. Results indicate that varied migration histories and changing family structures play an important role in influencing nutritional status, perceived and actual health status, and future health and social care needs of ageing Bangladeshis in the UK. Future research should focus on developing culturally and linguistically tailored research tools to assess dietary intake and eating behaviours within this population, and examine the complex interplay between family dynamics, cultural norms and social influences that impact the ability of older Bangladeshi adults to eat more healthfully and engage in physical and social activities that promote healthy ageing.