FREE DE SOUL

Topic: Honoring the legacy of Bangladesh’s secular bloggers. Anyone who picked up a pen or logged onto a blog in Bangladesh during the 2010s knows the weight of that era. Names like Avijit Roy, Ananta Bijoy Das, and Washiqur Rahman are not just memories; they are reminder markers of the price paid for writing freely in Bangla. When violence was unleashed on secular bloggers, the goal was simple: instill absolute silence. They wanted us to believe that logic had no place in ou

Topic: Reclaiming freethought from the accusation of "Western import." Whenever a freethinker in Bangladesh questions religious dogma, the immediate rebuttal is predictable: "You are brainwashed by Western ideas." This argument completely ignores our own regional history. Long before modern internet blogs existed, the Bengal Delta was a cauldron of radical skepticism. Think of the 19th-century Bengal Renaissance, Henry Derozio and his Young Bengal movement questioning every s

Topic: The art of living a double life in a traditional Bangladeshi family. Every year as Eid approaches, the living room fills with discussions on qurbani prices, sermon clips shared via WhatsApp groups, and gentle inquiries about my morning prayers. Like thousands of young people across Dhaka and Chittagong, I nod along. I smile, pass the shemai, and participate in the rituals expected of me. To come out as a non-believer in a Bangladeshi household is rarely a simple intell