আবার আসিলাম ফিরে, ধানসিঁড়ি আর সেই বাংলাকে নিয়ে...

To speak of Bengal is to speak of defiance. Across centuries, the soil of Bengal has never been silent; it has answered oppression with rebellion, and stagnation with the daring of new ideas.

It was here that the Santhal rebellion shook the foundations of colonial exploitation, and here that Mangal Pandey of the Bengal Regiment fired one of the first shots of 1857. The indigo fields of Bengal turned into battlegrounds when peasants refused to bow to the tyranny of planters. Soon after, the Swadeshi and Anti-Partition movement transformed streets and classrooms alike into arenas of protest, where the cry for freedom was also a cry for self-reliance.

Chittagong uprising showed how Bengal’s youth embraced fire and steel when words alone were not enough. In 1971, when language and identity were under siege, Bengal stood once more at the heart of history, as Bangladesh’s war of independence carved out a new nation.

But rebellion here has never been only of arms. The Renaissance of Bengal was itself a revolution: of literature and philosophy, of science and reform, of identity and imagination. Later, the uprisings at Naxalbari carried that fire into new terrains, challenging power in the name of justice. Even in our own times, in Nandigram, Bengal’s voice rose once again against dispossession, reminding us that the will to resist has not dimmed.

This year’s Agomoni celebrates that unbroken thread of bidroho, biplob, and andolon. In calling upon Maa Durga, we also call upon the spirit of resistance that has shaped Bengal’s destiny: a spirit that dares to question, to fight, and to dream anew.