The Emergence of Bangladesh analyses and celebrates the first 50 years of Bangladesh as a nation, bringing insights from key scholars in Bangladeshi studies to an international audience, as well as 'bringing home' to a domestic audience the work of some of the nation's greatest intellectual exports, the Bangladeshi scholars who have made a mark in their field of study in academia. The book offers unique coverage of the battlegrounds on which the founding of the new nation was fought, including language, power and religion, and provides unique insight into some of the hot spots that continue to shape the development of the nation: the issues of gender, culture, ethnicity, governance, the economy and the army. Those with an interest in understanding the past or present Bangladesh will find this a trove of frank and readable analysis.