Bangladesh was born a secular nation based on the ethos of democracy and socialism. It had a secularist framework that did not reject religion, rather it gave an equal space to every religion with the promise that none shall be allowed to use religion for political ends. Bangladesh failed to live up to such foundational character as, over the past fifty years, following two subsequent military dictatorships, the political actors kept undermining the processes of democracy through the abuse of power. Bangladesh emerged from the Bengali-speaking people’s struggle for a separate cultural and social identity based on Bengali nationalism. Hence, a Bengali state was a natural consequence. This synthesis of a nation based on the thesis of cultural and linguistic unity, gave birth to a new antithesis – the marginalised ‘ethnic minority’ communities, besides the continued alienation of the poor. Other cultures as deeply rooted in the soil of Bengal as the Bengali culture, were being left out in the cold. Bangladesh unwittingly recreated and continued the politics of ‘class exploitation’ ‘marginalisation’ and ‘impunity of the majority’. A vision of an inclusive, participatory democracy was replaced by a ‘dictatorship of the majority’, thereby disempowering and depriving a large segment of our people, alienating them from growing together with the mainstream and in turn making them extremely vulnerable. Thus, poverty and alienation are not just a class and gender issue but a cultural and ethnic issue as well. The increased political marginalisation and deepening of divisions between the rich and the poor as well as the ethnic and religious groups, which is a result of callous state policies and narrow political views, has turned Bangladesh into an oligarchy, a nation for the vested few, leaving a vast majority in limbo. While there are some people who continue to live with prejudice and intolerance, there are far many more live as one people, in natural acceptance of their ‘different’ neighbours, with love and compassion, unaware of the politics of ‘separation’. It is this ‘separation from the Source’ that keeps us unhappy and in pain, to quote Rumi.