A depository of country’s rich cultural heritage

Heritage, archives of Bangladesh history, situated at Kajla under Motihar thana of Rajshahi is helping researchers and historians through its rich collection of documents and records.
Professor Dr. Md. Mahbubar Rahman, Director of the Institute of Bangladesh Studies (IBS) of Rajshahi University, is the founder of Heritage. Entirely through his personal initiatives and funding, he has built this Heritage. The building stands on a six-storey foundation.
Professor Dr. Md. Mahbubar Rahman told The Independent that some one had to come forward to preserve the past glories and heritage of this country for the benefit of our future generation, otherwise we will be lagging behind as a nation. There are no places where we can preserve our historical records, though there are a few archieves collecting only state records.
Heritage is an independent professional depository of important documents, photographs, posters, private correspondences, diaries, magazines, books and audiovisual and digital items. It aims at creating a new type of open, service-oriented and user-friendly archieves in Bangladesh.
Heritage focuses, on various social movements like pro-democracy movement, labour and peasant movement, women’s movement, environmental movement, Islamic movement, nationalist and human rights movements and various transformations like emergence of NGOs. urban growth, new entrepreneurial groups, labour migration and popular culture.
It deals with post-colonial period (1947 onwards) it also holds older materials. From March-2002 to September 2008, Heritage has in its collection several thousand periodicals on 1,800 issues, 1,700 posters on socio-cultural, political issues, 1,600 leaflets, documentaries and books on 63 districts of the country, books on indigenous people and the Chittagong Hill Tracts, several thousand magazines and newspapers, paper clippings, anniversary issues of various newspapers and magazines and coins of various ages.
Heritage is kpet open from 5-30 pm to 8-30 pm. A quarterly journal titled “Sthanio Itihas” (Local History) is being published by Heritage.
Heritage is also planning to make records available to the general public through exhibitions, exchanges, publications and audiovisual presentation.

Courtesy of The Independent