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Since late 2000s, the political landscape in Bangladesh moved from democracy to an authoritarian kleptocracy, and experienced a new set of political and social narratives. This paper aims to contest some of these dominant/official narratives which have been discursively constructed and promoted by the secularist parties (including the ruling regime) and groups in Bangladesh over recent years. Examining the sociopolitical and historical facts and figures of the country, we have identified five major contested narratives related to (a) Bengali nationalism in East Pakistan, (b) foundational ideology of Bangladesh's war of liberation, (c) state-sponsored Islamization in Bangladesh, (d) pro-liberation and anti-liberation dichotomy, and (e) war crimes trial. Drawing on a robust content analysis of the credible secondary sources substantiated by qualitative interviews, we have examined these dominant narratives and found that they are not supported by historical evidence and popular mandate, yet have been constructed largely to support and legitimize the current authoritarian regime. The paper offers both counter-narratives and some pragmatic policy recommendations to elude increasing polarization and sociopolitical instability and foster a peaceful democratic society in Bangladesh.

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The supreme thrust of the present analysis is to explore the influences of foreign exchange reserve, exchange rate, and crude oil price on the stock index of the Dhaka stock exchange (DSE) of Bangladesh. Moreover, this study evaluates the identity of any unpremeditated relationship among the variables from the viewpoint of an emerging country like Bangladesh. Through using monthly time-series data, this study tries to discover the evidence of a long-run affiliation among the variables by using Johansen’s Cointegration test and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM). Besides, the Granger Causality technique is introduced to examine the casualty among variables where the empirical results show a causal linkage between the Dhaka stock exchange index, foreign exchange reserve, and exchange rate, moving only in one way from Dhaka stock exchange index to foreign exchange reserve and exchange rate. In contrast, no causal link was identified between Dhaka stock exchange indexes and crude oil prices. Lastly, Impulse Response Function suggests a permanent effect of all selected macroeconomic factors on the Dhaka stock exchange index in the long run and Variance Decomposition Analysis settles that, the reform in Dhaka stock exchange index can be caused by the innovation in foreign exchange reserve, exchange rate, and crude oil price.