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For years, August 15 in Bangladesh commemorated one event above all others: the assassination of the country’s founding president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and most of his family in 1975. It was observed as a day of state mourning. It rarely evoked the day British rule over the subcontinent ended in 1947 and Bengal was bifurcated. That older date was treated as an event belonging only to India and Pakistan (which attained independence one day earlier).

Before Andrew Louis wrote and directed two seasons of the Tamil series Vadhandhi, he made the movies Leelai and Kolaigaran. Vadhandhi was backed by Wallwatcher Films, whose founders Pushkar and Gayatri happen to be Louis’s classmates and old friends. Pushkar and Gayatri serve as creative producers on Vadhandhi, whose first season, subtitled The Fable Of Velonie, came out in 2022. The gripping second season, The Mystery of Mani, was recently released on Prime Video.

The title of Joe Sacco’s latest graphic narrative, The Once and Future Riot, is unlike Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza, or The Fixer. Not immediately referencing a place or a people, The Once and Future Riot indicates a sense of tension instead. And not just between past, present and future, but also palpably in the ability of the journalist or the graphic artist to draw their reader towards some semblance of “truth”.

An Independence Day event at Delhi’s Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, where Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Zoya Hasan was invited as the chief guest, was cancelled on Friday after members of the Vishva Hindu Parishad allegedly gathered outside the school to protest, The Print reported. The Vishva Hindu Parishad is part of a group of Hindutva organisations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The National Human Rights Commission on Friday said that it had issued notice to the Union government following reports that 19 Central Reserve Police Force personnel died allegedly by suicide between January and May 22, PTI reported. The rights panel said that the reported figures raise concern about the well-being and safety of the paramilitary force personnel.

Kinjal Ben stood up on her toes to look at herself closely for the first time in weeks in the forsaken oval mirror on the wall. She dipped her middle finger in her little sindoor pot and planted a big circular bindi in the middle of her broad forehead. Suddenly, her face shone, radiated by the little circular mirrors of the embroidery around her outfit’s neckline, and her brown eyes, lined with thick kajal, sparkled.

As August 1947 drew near, MK Vellodi was faced with a peculiar problem. The seasoned civil servant from Madras had taken over as the acting High Commissioner of British India to the UK only a few months before, in April. He had been tasked with overseeing the Independence Day celebrations at the historic India House, British India’s diplomatic mission in London, on August 15.

Commentators predictably reacted to the news of the signing of a mutual defence pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan on August 7 by reaching for the label “Islamic Nato”. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement stipulates that an armed attack on any one of them would be treated as an attack on all. Jerusalem went a step further, describing the alliance as an anti-Israel alliance. But the Nato comparison is the wrong framing.

Chief Justice Surya Kant on Friday criticised the Bar Council of India for directing state bar councils not to enrol students from the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research graduating in 2026 as advocates, calling the now-revoked action “absolutely uncalled for”, Bar and Bench reported. Kant said: “It’s a dialogue between students and me.

Two Naga persons were killed in firing by suspected militants in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district. A group of men armed with “sophisticated weapons” attacked Langka Naga village at around 8 am, an unidentified police officer said. Residents said an armed group from the Naga village opened fire at the suspected attackers after the incident.