The Oh, Hello and welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood, the textbook duo today

with a focus on two countries on the Indian subcontinent.

Naomi Hossein will explain what's been going on in Bangladesh,

where a popular uprising deposed a tyrannical prime minister, and Sandipto-Das Gupta

will talk about the invention of the Indian nation through a study of its constitution

writing. In early July mass protests against Bangladesh's prime minister Sheikh

Hasina broke out which the government responded to brutally shooting down

demonstrators in the street killing 200 and injuring 20,000.

The immediate cause of the protest was a quota system for government jobs that favored

descendants of those who fought in the country's war of independence,

but as we'll hear, there are many more grievances against her rule.

That war of independence was sparked by a massive genocidal attack by West Pakistan, now Pakistan, on the Bengali separatist

in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh in 1971.

The separatists were driven by anger at West Pakistan's discrimination against those in the east.

The West Pakistani army, in conjunction with the militia known as their Rosicars,

killed between 300,000 and 3 million Bengales in an attempt to suppress the rebellion.

The U.S. under the expert guidance of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger supported the Geno

Cideres because they regarded West Pakistan as a Cold War ally and a conduit to improving relations with China.

Here to explain the protest is Naomi Hussein, a professor in the Development Studies Department

at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

For the second week in a row were treated to some canine background vocals.

I did my best to take out the barking, but at the expense of partially garbling Naomi's speech.

...