ABSTRACT
On the alluvial plains at the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers live about 175 million Bengalis, about two-thirds of them in the independent People's Republic of Bangladesh and the remainder in the Indian state of West Bengal. The story of Bangladesh covers its rivers and its people. But it also concerns two of the greatest cleavages of the Indo-Pakistani-Bangladeshi subcontinent: the division between Hindus and Muslims, which led to the partition of India in 1947; and the hostility between the two wings of Pakistan, which resulted in civil war, Indian intervention, and the independence of Bangladesh in 1971. An understanding of these two events is essential to the study of Bangladesh, as is a consideration not only of the almost two centuries of British rule but also of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim periods that preceded control by the Europeans.
