Bangladesh is located in the north-eastern part of South Asia. The country has 4156 km border with India on the east, west and north; and by the Bay of Bengal in the south and has another 193 km with Myanmar on the south-east. The name ‘Bangladesh’ literally means the land of Bangla, the language of the inhabitants of Bangladesh.The borders of present-day Bangladesh were established in course of the partition of the then Bengal and the Indian sub-continent in 1947 as it became the eastern part of the newly-formed state of Pakistan. It was physically separated from the western part by 1,600 km (994 miles) across India. Thereafter, political, cultural and linguistic discrimination as well as economic deprivation led to popular discontent and agitations against the rules in the then West Pakistan. The Bangalees started pressing for recognition of their linguistic and cultural identity, and eventually for autonomy and for statehood.
