To say I’m a proud Bengali is an understatement. It has shaped my childhood and every part of my personality and identity. From those long summer holidays in Dhaka visiting family and not wanting to come home; to weekends feasting with our family friends; to celebrating Bangladesh’s landmark festivals singing at and hosting shows every year. I’m so lucky to have had such a vibrant upbringing and…

Dr Halima Begum was born in rural Sylhet and raised in London’s East End. A former British diplomat, Halima is Chief Executive of the Runnymede Trust, the UK’s race equality think tank. She sits on the board and acts as an advisor to various organisations including the British Academy, Office for National Statistics, Trades Union Council, and the NHS Race and Health Observatory.

So, my motherland – Bangladesh – turns 50 this week. The 1971 Liberation War, in which Bangladesh eventually won its independence after a brutal armed struggle, is a poignant and significant moment for both the narrative of Bangladesh and Bangladeshis across the globe. For a number of years now, I have been exploring, researching and documenting the experiences of British-Bangladeshi communities…

Growing up in Newport, a small town in Wales, my experience of Bangladesh was through the narration of my Parents. For my Parents, being Bangladeshi in some sense meant feeling connected to the natural land. Their rose-tinted lense painted a picture of vivid green paddy fields, mango orchards and hot summers. My Brothers and I were desperate to visit this utopia and enjoy the experience for…

My Father arrived from Sylhet, in Northern Bangladesh, to London in 1963 [at the age of 27]. As a student, he worked, like many of his peers, at a series of Indian restaurants upon his arrival. My Mother joined him shortly after, in 1968 [at the age of 18] as his new bride. For my parents, London was a new world that presented new beginnings in the 1960s – and they had aspirations to build a…

By day the streets of Dhaka were quiet. Some shops and offices were open, some were shut. The buses were half empty and not many taxis were operating. Now and then an army jeep would come roaring up the road, making pedestrians and rickshaws dart swiftly out of its way. Although the bustle and gaiety of normal civilian life were missing, law and order prevailed. But at night a hidden giant rose…

I have a vision, not a dream.

If you ask my father what the best day of his life was, he won’t tell you it was his wedding day, or the birth of me or my sister. He will tell you it was a day in April 1986, when he received his British passport. As he has told me so many times before, the passport symbolised freedom, opportunity, and the chance to start a new life. It was in this movement, one family’s migration from…

To be a British Bengali. What does that mean to me? How has the last half century made me the person I am today? We as proud Bengalis stand proud, wherever in the world we may be! What defines us from our vast heritage, existence, the struggles, challenges and victories we have experienced?

I was born in 1963 in a Rajshahi hospital where there had been a malaria outbreak which killed the other babies in the maternity ward. I was the lucky one.