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Bangladesh ups security ahead of festive season, SAARC
By Farid Ahmed, Indo-Asian News Service

Dhaka, Sep 26 (IANS) Security will be stepped up in Bangladesh ahead of Durga Puja, the major Hindu festival in the country, to be followed by Eid-ul-Fitr and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit.

Durga Puja will be celebrated in the second week of October while Eid, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, falls in the first week of November and the SAARC summit is scheduled for the second week of November.

The home ministry is taking steps to ensure law and order throughout the country and to check crimes during the Islamic month of Ramadan that begins in the first week of October, a senior home ministry official told IANS.

The government is taking no chances in view of the 400 near simultaneous blasts that rattled the entire country Aug 17.

While security will be tight across the country during the festival period, this capital city will be the focal point. The home ministry and the police have set up two control rooms to monitor the situation round the clock during the festivals. 

The police department has identified 533 'sensitive' spots that are especially vulnerable to crime in the capital. Over 40 temporary police camps and 76 checkpoints will be set up to strengthen vigilance. Some 70 police teams will patrol the city round the clock.

Minister of State for Home Lutfozzaman Babar, at a high-level meeting Sunday, issued instructions to the police and intelligence agencies to remain watchful to avert any untoward incidents.

Bangladesh gets a peek into Gandhi's life
By Farid Ahmed, Indo-Asian News Service

Dhaka, Sep 26 (IANS) An exhibition featuring as many as 50 rare black and white photographs of Mahatma Gandhi is giving the people of Bangladesh a rare glimpse into the life of the great Indian leader.

Bangladesh Shipping Minister Akbar Hossain, who inaugurated the exhibition, said that while there were many leaders and politicians in the subcontinent, there was only one Mahatma.

The exhibition titled "Life of Mahatma Gandhi" provides a glimpse of the extraordinary person who led the independence struggle against the British in the subcontinent through his non-violent resistance based on satyagraha - the battle for truth.

The Indian high commission has organised the weeklong photographic exhibition that is on at the Indian Cultural Centre here Sep 23-29 ahead of his 136th birth anniversary Oct 2.

There are photos of Gandhi's visit to Noakhali, now a district of Bangladesh, nearly 200 km southeast of here, where he stayed for about four months in 1946 in an effort to end ghastly communal riots there. He moved around villages preaching peaceful coexistence. 

One of the photographs shows Gandhi spinning his charkha (spinning wheel) wearing a Noakhali hat. 

The photographs capture Gandhi's daily life, travels around the world and meetings with diverse leaders including close associates Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, Pakistan's founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Indian Viceroy Lord Mountbatten.

The exhibition also has photographs of Gandhi with his wife and children, and with friends and associates in South Africa, Karachi and London. 

The exhibition was organised in collaboration with the Gandhi Ashram Trust at Noakhali and the Bangladesh Bharat Sampriti Parishad (India-Bangladesh Friendship Society).

The trust was established a few years before Gandhi's assassination in 1948.

Along with the photos, the Gandhi Ashram Trust has also put on display spinning wheels, handlooms and other products produced by the people at the trust.

The purpose of the exhibition was to give people in Dhaka a glimpse of Gandhi's life, said Neeta Bhushan, head of the information and cultural section of the Indian high commission.

An official of the trust told IANS that it would arrange another programme at the ashram in Noakhali to mark Gandhi's birth anniversary.

Last year, a second statue of Gandhi was unveiled at Narayanganj, on the outskirts of Dhaka. The first statue is at the museum of the Gandhi Ashram Trust in Noakhali.