Bangladesh rewrites its history books to suit new orthodoxies

Bangladeshi high schooler Laiba navigates a changing curriculum shaped by political upheaval and historical revisionism.

Bangladeshi high schooler Laiba is being educated for the future, but what she learns has been determined by the latest chapter in her country’s battle over its past.

Last year, a student-led revolution overthrew the government of iron-fisted premier Sheikh Hasina when public anger over her increasingly autocratic rule boiled over.

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Her ouster has prompted Bangladesh to do something that has followed every sudden change in national leadership: rewrite its history books to suit new orthodoxies.

“The tradition of altering history must stop at some point — the sooner, the better,” Laiba’s mother Suraiya Akhtar Jahan said.

“Textbooks should not change every time a new government takes office.”

Radical changes to the school curriculum are routine in Bangladesh, where febrile political divisions dating back to its ruinous 1971 independence war against Pakistan have persisted.